Scientific Ink

Tag: Web

  • Hard drive crash, meh


    Nerf darts pepper a whiteboard, originally uploaded by Own Page One.

    So my work laptop’s hard drive died last week, on Thursday, my first day back after the holiday. I had dropped it in June and it was predicted the hard drive would go as a result, so I had tried to be mindful about what was on it and what was backed up. Computer gremlins intervened, however, the backup program I was using was timing out and not backing up the computer, so I hadn’t had a full backup of the files and settings in a few months.

    This hard drive loss, however, was the best ever. I think it isn’t because of any special precautions I took, but more because the way I use my computer has changed. Essentially, I’m now in the habit of relying on external vendors to do my backups for me (web applications that as part of their service commitment do redundant backups themselves).

    • Documents. I don’t store anything in the documents folders that isn’t also stored on Basecamp (our project management software). It’s not perfect version control, but I treat basecamp as the source of current files, and pull down from there when it is time to edit again, ignoring the files I’ve stored, and often tossing the file once it has been uploaded.
    • Music. I suppose I’m still old fashioned, I buy my music on CD, so when the digital files get blown away, all I lose is the time invested to rip them.
    • Photographs. I shoot digital now, after resisting giving up my film camera for a long time (what am I supposed to do with it now???!). I post the better shots onto my flickr account. Because I have a pro account, I have no bandwidth limits, and I can archive my photos there. This isn’t perfect, flickr wants jpegs and my camera gives me RAW files, so I do lose something in the translation (I’m not storing the original files). But, I’m no photoshop jockey, and huge jpegs are good enough for the quality of my photography.
    • Bookmarks. I don’t really use my browsers to store bookmarks anymore. I archive links on del.icio.us and when I need them again, find them there. I do put a few frequently accessed sites into the bookmarks toolbar, but that’s just to save typing. I know those URLs by heart. So, nothing lost there.
    • Email. I’m using IMAP settings for my email, so there was essentially no break as I hopped to a surrogate computer for a few hours while the local Genius Bar replaced my hard drive.
    • Settings and Software. This was what took the longest to recover, but it wasn’t too bad, a few hours.

    All this made me wonder about our home desktop. Although my husband assures me our computer backs itself up to another hard drive rather continuously, I’m following my own best practices and uploading saved photographs to flickr. This has a side benefit of reminding me of some of the great places I’ve been (Yellowstone, Banff) and good people I know (Geoff, Andy to name a few). Hmmm, why don’t I work for a place that sends me to cool mountainous national parks anymore?! Anyway, the hard drive crash has given me a holiday gift – fond memories!

  • Catalog Choice – Eliminate unwanted catalogs you receive in the mail

    catalogsTis the season to purchase gifts. It’s also the season for carrying a pound of catalogs to the recycling bin each day. Those catalog folks do have my number – they know I purchase clothing, and shoes, they know I like wine, like outdoorsy stuff, yoga, and workout gear. I get pounds of catalogs at my house.

    I feel guilty about the catalogs that do have me pegged, like I somehow asked to be papered in catalogs offering hiking boots, backpacks, and yoga gear. The ones that never fit me, though, simply annoy me. And, for those stores I like, I’d rather let them store “my” catalog on their Internet rather than store a printed copy at my home.

    So, I was grateful to read I can rid myself of unwanted catalogs by stopping them at the source, instead of recycling them at the end, after someone has printed, mailed, and then walked them to my door. I signed up for Catalog Choice and entered in this week’s batch of unwanted catalogs. I’ll keep declining catalogs as they come, and then wait for the day I don’t have to toss them (apparently about 10 weeks away).

    Catalog Choice – Eliminate unwanted catalogs you receive in the mail

  • Personality Profile – Considerate Creator

    So, a bunch of us at work took the PersonalDNA online personality test. They seem to do it right, not asking for personal information up front, providing an interesting experience (not too many questions, not totally superficial, sliders, multi-way sliders, 2-D charts).

    The results were interesting, grouping us differently than I might have predicted. Surprisingly, I grouped with our graphic designer (and others) as a “creator.” Now, I’m a project manager, I typically do not “make” much besides status reports and burndown charts on hours and budgets. I hold a little structure/the larger project view, but that doesn’t fit my idea of being a creative person.

    The more I think about it, though, I do have several pastimes that involve making things – photography, gardening (though with all the change the past few summers, my garden is a bit worse for wear), journaling, blogging, knitting. I spend an inordinate amount of my free time making things, and I really resist structure in those activities. For instance, my favorite knitting reference is The Handknitters Design Book (apparently not pictured anywhere online!) which is a technique recipe book. Allison Ellen provides only a few start-to-finish patterns, but she shares lots of information and inspiration on how to assemble your own patterns.

    Hmmmm. Do I need to get a bit more of that creative spirit into my day job?

  • My random notes from ArbCamp

    ArbCamp was Saturday 10/27.

    What amazed me was the number of students who were able to attend – driving to Ann Arbor from E. Lansing, Flint, and some coming from the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area. Talking to the students was a highlight for me. The only business cards I exchanged were with students. I think my first business card was post-grad-school-graduation, so this particular crop of students has several years of wisdom on myself at that age. They impressed me for their preparation, their entrepreneurism, and their networking skills.

    Here’s a list of websites I jotted down:

    Here’s the “new idea” that everyone else seemed to know but me: microformats.

  • Unintentional experiment

    So, I was looking for a new dentist because my former dentist is not on a bus line and too far to walk. I twittered the request and then posted here in my blog. Then, the blog post got pulled into facebook as a note. Sample sizes are small, but….

    • twitter.com/dunrie – 33 followers – 1 recommendation
    • facebook – 57 friends – 1 recommendation
    • pownce – 15 friends – 1 recommendation
    • this blog – 8 17 subscribers – 3 recommendations (note: subscriber number from FeedSmith plugin, was collecting subscribers a week ago and didn’t have the full set, 17 number as of 9/9/2007)

    First, thanks to all who recommended someone!

    Second, I have to admit I was surprised by the numbers. Sure, it is a teeny sample size, but I would have predicted that twitter would have the most reach and return the most dentists. I would have thought that the facebook version of my blog would have had more reach than the blog itself. I expected that my blog would have the least reach.

    So I have two hypotheses for why.

    • The blog may have lower reach but it is less transitory than a tweet or even itself fed into facebook as a note. Perhaps the sheer volume of other distractions on those media mean that my question only had a brief window to be read and acted upon, and that window of attention is longer with the blog.
    • The tweets, facebook items, and pownce items go to the same network, and the blog has the least similar audience (guessing here, I don’t actually know). Supporting evidence: the blog comments included someone I had known in grad school but wasn’t in my current “network” on the other services.

    Anyone got a better idea?

  • Twitter is like stand-up all day long (this is good)

    Stand-up may be the highlight of my workday. There’s something about it–quick status updates, celebrating achievements, sharing milestones, the rhythm of it, team bonding, flagging confusion or misunderstandings, in-jokes (ending of course with “let’s be careful out there”), the ritual…

    We briefly tried chat standup, but it was annoying and boring, so we went back to verbal standup. We briefly considered using Campfire within Basecamp as a chat stand-up. It seemed like a good idea, there’d be a record associated with each project, but it seemed to be organized by project and therefore over compartmentalized. We didn’t try it and have stuck with verbal stand-up at 10:30AM.

    Recently, I’ve been twittering status messages. Twitter is like standup all day long, in a good way. Earlier this week, I was invited to a 10AM client conference call in an email I read at 8AM. I twittered that I had a surprise client meeting. A remote team member saw my twitter, IM’d me and asked if he needed to chime in on it. I might not have thought to ask him given the turnaround time, but he contributed.

    Yay standup, yay twitter, go team.