Technology

Don’t Forget to Backup!

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Why should you back up your data? Because your computer hard drive will die eventually – it is only a matter of time. To save yourself the time and pain of trying to recover lost data, be sure to backup your data regularly.

The 3-2-1 Rule

The guys over at DPBestFlow have succinctly defined some best practices for keeping your data and photos safe. It’s called the 3-2-1 Rule:

  • Have 3 copies of any important file (a primary and two backups)
  • Have the backups on at least 2 different media types (hard drive and optical media, for example)
  • 1 copy should be stored off-site

Some Ideas

So how do you set up a system of backing up your files to comply with the 3-2-1 system? Here are some services and methods that I

  • Jungle Disk (and other online backup services) – Provides automated, off-site backup. It does daily backups of all the files I decide to backup, plus it mounts an additional Windows drive that I can save files to “the cloud” directly. For this service, you pay per MB stored and per MB transferred. Other options are Carbonite (unlimited size backup for a one-time fee) and Mozy.
  • External Hard Drive – Every month I take a snapshot of my entire computer on my external hard drive. Use an encryption program like TrueCrypt to make sure your data is safe even if the external hard drive device is stolen.
  • Media Server – I have a custom-built desktop computer that automatically keeps my data mirrored on two hard drives, which protects against hard drive failure. You can do this in RAID, but I find it easier to use a tool that runs as a service in Windows – SyncBack.
  • Backupify – Although all the new cloud services are nice, we as consumers have no recourse if our accounts become inaccessible for some reason. This free service will automatically backup your data on Google (Mail, Contacts, Calendar), Twitter, Facebook (Facebook photos is a big one), Flicker, and much more.

Good luck backing up!

Why Computer Science is Awesome!

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That’s a video from a “theory” computer science course – a type of course that all computer science students have to go through (at the University of Illinois, they are the _73 courses – 173, 373, and 473). There are some lucky students who find these courses fun and interesting, but most students find them extremely challenging. The topics that are covered in these classes are, however, the basis of computer science (or computational science, which is separate but similar), as this video is explains really well.

BIS – Issue with Blackberry Tour

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As a new Blackberry user, I was not aware of the BIS, the Blackberry Internet Service, when I set up my Blackberry for the first time. Basically, the BIS allows you to manage your email accounts that are used on the Blackberry, like the Display name for sent email, and the annoying “Sent from my Blackberry” signature.

To get to the BIS interface for your carrier, just search “[carrier] BIS” in Google. For example, search “Verizon BIS” to get to https://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=vzw

If you set up your email on your device, however, you probably get this message:

Your account is not accessible via HTML browser. Please use your device to access BlackBerry Internet Service.

I struggled with this error for a bit, until I found these two resources. The second one shows how to enable your account to use the BIS. Note, however, that the “Create User Name” option is now in the Menu (click the menu button once you’re in the Email Settings) on the Blackberry Tour. Once you set this up you should be good to go for your BIS account.

Your account is not accessible via HTML browser. Please use your device to access BlackBerry Internet Service.

How to change the login mode for a BlackBerry Internet Service 2.4 account

Public Service Message: ../index.htm

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One of my pet peeves is when people post links or URLs in prominent locations (posters, advertisements, etc) with the “/index.htm” or “/default.php” or “/default.aspx” or any of the derivatives of these. Please people – with very few exceptions, URLs with default.htm or index.htm or things like those do not have to have those parts of the URL!

For example, the NCHS of the CDC website can be accessed at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/Default.htm or at the much better looking URL http://www.cdc.gov/nchs.

Just some helpful advice. Please take these annoying little parts off of web addresses so that it looks cleaner. Thank you.

New University of Illinois PH Interface

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The University used to have an online searchable “phonebook” that was invaluable when students needed to contact each other. The information displayed by default listed name, email, major, address, phone number, web site address, and department (if the student worked for the University). This has all been disabled except for email address in the new PH system. I wrote about this situation on The Quad.

Anyway, a biproduct of the new web interface is that my Firefox extension NetID Lookup was broken for about 7 days. It is now fixed, and you can go to http://addons.mozilla.org to get the latest version (1.3). Thanks, and please provide feedback if you use and enjoy this simple extension.