Heck, TikiBar TV understands this:
“Rather than charging a micropayment for your show, sell fans a nice fancy mug!” – Dave Slusher
BitPass Bites the Dust.
Just received and email from Bitpass.com saying they are no longer:
Dear Valued Bitpass Merchant
We want to thank you for your past business, however due to circumstances beyond our control, we are discontinuing our operations…”
“On January 26, all US Bitpass Buyer accounts will be closed and we will begin the process of refunding all unspent monies to the accountholder”
Kinda sad, I remember Scott McCloud was using BitPass to sell access to his online comics.
As of this writing, BitPass.com has yet to reflect this development.
Backing Up with rsync, iCal, and Applescript
This morning marks the completion of the first full backup I’ve done in quite a while. But not the last. For the past 3 months, I’ve been working on an automated backup system – so I no longer need to wonder if things are backed up. They are. In at least two places.
A little background:
- I only have Macs in my house. One of them…the Mini, acts as a server
- I’ve got a StrongSpace account. Not that this makes much of a difference, any accessible volume could work the same (I’m intrigued how S3 might work into the mix as well).
The backup system is tiered;
- Every couple of days, the “client” Macs, the ones that get used everyday, backup to the Mini with
rsync -aE --exclude='.*' /usr/bin/ssh /[path to source folder (see below)]/ [username]@[url of local server]:/[path to your backup directory]/I’ve got these all wrapped up in a single backup.sh file, with a line for:
~/Library/Application Support
~/Library/Mail
~/Library/Keychains
~/Library/Documents/Projects
~/Library/Documents/Palm
~/Pictures
~/Desktop
- Then, the Mini backs up the client folders to StrongSpace.
rsync -rltvz --exclude='.*' /usr/bin/ssh /[path to client backup folder]/ [username]@[url of online server]:/[path to your online backup directory]/ - I’m using SSH Keys (the
/usr/bin/sshin the strings above) to automate the login (see MagpieBrain for instructions on setting this up). - On all the machines, the backup.sh file is wrapped in an Applescript
do shell script "/Users/garrickvanburen/Documents/Projects/RSYNC/garrick_backup.sh" - The Applescript is called from an alarm in iCal, like this
What’s your backup strategy?
ELSEWHERE:
David Roessli takes a different approach.
Mistaking Relevance for Trivia
Last night, I had bad dream about attending a live recording of a radio program.
From what I can remember, the point of the show was to dismiss highly-personal communications as trivial while a panel of teen girls shared the melodramatic relationship unfolding within their MySpace pages.
While “trivia” (or gossip) might not be the most noble of messages to share, the vast majority of our gestures are just that. In Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language – Robin Dunbar posits that we talk for gossip. Gossip being as much about relationship as primates grooming each other.
I suspect gossip comes right after spam in volume of daily email. I don’t think this is bad – especially with good filters. Filters we don’t really have yet, filters that consider anything not relevant to me now as spam (“news”, “gossip”, “trivia”, and otherwise).
Not having those filter yet is mostly OK – because we don’t yet have the quantity of publishers that demand it. Tomorrow – when news/gossip/trivia is published block-by-block – we will.
Garrick is at MPR’s The Loop Tonight
I’ll be in the audience of tonight’s recording of MPR’s The Loop: Digital Divisions.
Hopefully I’ll see some you there as well.
My notes and thoughts from the event:
- All the chairs are filled. A good cross-section of Minnesotans. Far more diverse in age, background, and ethnicity than the last time I was here at MPR HQ.
- They made fun of the usual suspects – without any sense that the iPod is the same as the Walkman and the transistor radio before it, that text messages have a lot in common with telegrams, and that being transported to another world in books is somehow not exactly the same as Second Life.
- There were 100 people in the room. Maybe 10 were on mic for the 90 minutes we were there. Like the elderly gentleman next to me, I too, expected more of a discussion, less of a performance. It would have been more interesting to actually have a discussion.
- Blah. Feels like an opportunity squandered.
ELSEWHERE:
Jesse Ross feels differently.
Huge thanks go out to Jeff Horwich (Host of In the Loop) for stopping by and leaving an excellent comment. I think there are some fairly simple ways to dramatically minimize the risks he identifies, while increasing the value of people attending the program. I’m reminded of Unconferences and the notion that:
“The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage.”
Garrick on the MN PodSafe Music Awards
Many thanks to AJ for putting together the first Minnesota PodSafe Music Awards and asking the PodcastMN community to help pull it together.
If you haven’t hear my voice in a while…I introduces the nominees and announced a couple of the winners.
Listen to the MN PodSafe Music AwardsSome Post-Pre-Dad Thoughts
Daddy Types is collecting thoughts for Soon-to-Be-Dads.
Mine:
Everyday, take your family for a walk.
And a bonus story:
One of our neighbors rang the doorbell one night back when Little C was just a few months old. Jen and I were watching TV and I was giving Little C his early evening bottle.
The neighbor asked if I could help him unload a new swingset from his car.
The he noticed what I was doing and said: “No rush. Enjoy this time. It doesn’t last that long.”
The News Block by Block
Chris nails the idea I’ve talked about on this blog (1, 2, 3) and in numerous lunches: the blog-on-every-corner news.
St. Anthony Village is a pretty small town geographically, 3 square miles. Imagine if just the houses on the corners published something community-related every other day. That’s 1/3 of your neighbors writing about what’s happening on their block – regularly. More frequently than any of the papers – all without an ‘Associated Press’ byline.
Sure, the same topics will be covered…but the importance (relevance + intimacy + community) will be so much greater. Plus, far greater comprehensiveness on any given subject whether High School Ice Hockey or City Council proceedings. Overlap verifies.
Later 11 Apr 2007
I just picked up blogbyblock.com.
Color Me Stressed
I took the ColorQuiz 3 times this afternoon. Hear the results
Balance in the Air
A couple very recent quotes on balancing your life from two of my favorite bloggers: