New Location for Techmirth

Techmirth.com is now the place you’re looking for.

I’ve found a very economical and easy way to host the self-hosted version of WordPress. LimeDomains offers free hosting if you register or transfer a domain name to them. This equates to about $1 per month for hosting.

I really wanted some of the features only available in the self-hosted version of WP so my research for cheap hosting led me there. So head on to Techmirth.com now!

Describe me in one word

I’ve recently found what I think is my major strength. In trying to describe it I’ve mostly found that I can describe what I’m not. Describing it in terms of what it is gets long, and I’ve been looking for a way to sum it up quickly.

I’ve finally found a Label that I don’t mind being tagged with. One that I could actually like to have for a while. Driver. That’s what I am. I’m a driver. Someone who doesn’t come up with the end in mind, but takes where you are right now and without being told, begins to move and shape the things that need to happen to get to the intended end.

This video interview of Eben Pagan says it well.

Thanks to ReadWriteWeb for their article on hiring and posting the video.

Stop Motion Matrix

I watched The Matrix again recently and then stumbled on this today. Thought my son would like it.

ReUse and ReCycle

The last time I used a Yellow Pages phonebook it was to make a front wheel stand for my indoor bicycle trainer. It has worked great for the last five years.

Dave Young asks when was the last time you saw one that actually showed wear from looking up phone numbers?

Changing personality traits

My Myers-Briggs has changed over the last eight years. When was first given this test by an Industrial Psychologist at my place of employment I was an ENTP. I took it about five and one half years ago and was an INTP. I figured I was just near the center and was an introvert or extrovert depending on how much coffee I had drank.

I took it again today and here are my results:

ENTJ – “Field Marshall”. The basic driving force and need is to lead. Tend to seek a position of responsibility and enjoys being an executive. 1.8% of total population.

Free Jung Word Test (similar to Myers-Briggs)
personality tests by similarminds.com

This is the first time I’ve seen percentages given. I’m not surprised I cut the ENT part nearly down the middle, but the swing to the J…that was surprising.

Great Quote #1

“Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.”

-Fermin Romero de Torres, from The Shaddow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

Avoid the heartache of a hard drive crash by backing up

Having been the victim of a hard drive failure, and having heard faculty, students, and friends go through the same thing I thought I should share the method by which I use to avoid the heartache. I rest easy at night knowing that my documents, email, contact, calendar, and all other data are safely backed up. Not just once, but four different ways.

Items to keep in mind regarding Backups.

The first thing you must remember when selecting a backup system is that is must be a “Set it, and forget it” system. Anything that relies on a human to start the backup each time will never work. We get distracted and forget. The second thing to remember about backing up is to have more than one system in place in case one has a hiccup. Lastly, have at least one back up in the same location as your machine, and at least one in a completely different geographical location as the machine you are backing up.

The Hardware & Software of backing up

In the old days we used to use tapes to back up and we would rotate them out to a safe deposit box once a week. Was that ever a pain. Working for a digital firm like Rockbridge brought new challenges since all staff work in seperate locations. We have been using MozyPro for about three years now and it has worked well. It’s Mac and Windows compatible and centrally managed through their website. It also fulfills our need for an offsite backup.

Along side Mozy I personally use Drop Box to store all my documents in. I work off an iMac and a Windows laptop and this not only backs up anything I store in these folders but automatically syncs them accross any computers I wish. I share some of these folders with our accountant, a marketing firm, and a friend who’s starting a side business. I use the free version of Drop Box, but there is a paid version that allows for more than 2 gigabytes of data to be stored. I rarely get close to two gigabytes and when I do I know it’s time to do some archiving.

I have a NAS (network attached storage) device that I back up all the computers in our house to. This device is simply an enclosure that has both wireless and wired network access and houses a hard drive. (Ours has two hard drives that mirror, or automatically copy each other, in case one of them decides to stop working.) However, if you are just concerned with one computer a usb connected external hard drive works just as well. Nearly all of these come with their own back up software. Apple provides Time Machine for Macs which creates automatic backups and works wonderfully.

Archiving the most important files

If you have files that need archived and are critical must haves, such as tax filings or a movie of baby’s first steps, it’s always a good idea to burn a CD or DVD and label it with as many descriptors as you can. Trust me, in a year when you are flipping through the disk on your desk and can’t remember what’s on a specific disk. You’ll thank yourself for being so detailed.

What do you use for backing up? What have you used and didn’t like, or worse, didn’t work when it needed to? Sing praises or vent in the comments.

Electronics recycling for cash – Gazelle.com

Between my wife and I we’ve gone through just a few cell phones, and other small electronics. I found Second Rotation (now Gazelle) a couple of years ago and have been very pleased with how the site works, the fast turn around, and the amount of money they pay for used items. I recommend you give it a try if you have old cell phones or small electronics. Now they’re even taking old laptops.

Embeding an mp3 on any webpage

Thanks to Amit Agarwal for his post on how to embed an mp3 using Google Reader’s player.

The Google Reader player has volume control,auto-detects the song length, and has a time slider for jumping around in the track.

The code for the player is:

“<”embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” src=”http://www.google.com/reader/ui/3247397568-audio-player.swf?audioUrl=MP3_FILE_URL” width=”400″ height=”27″ allowscriptaccess=”never” quality=”best” bgcolor=”#ffffff” wmode=”window” flashvars=”playerMode=embedded” /”<”

Removing the quotes around the <

Replace MP3_FILE_URL with the link to your mp3 file.

This adheres very well to the K.I.S.S. principle, or the Fischer Price principle. Which ever you want to call it.

Multiple computer syncronicity, file versioning, and un-delete.

I’m on vacation, so I’m catching up on all the cool sites that have launched recently. A theme emerged quickly from the file sharing, online backup sector. Mozy is officially old school. Dropbox is now my favorite new app. Mozy simply backs up files for un-delete or replacement to another machine, in a very awkward way. As I’ve had to use it a couple of times, and it wasn’t fun to figure out how to get files replaced from one machine onto another machine.

Dropbox not only makes this easy, but does with multiple machines continuously. Setting up was easy, and setting up again was even easier. I started setup on my desktop, and then did it again on my laptop. I was going on a short weekend trip and planned to do a little homework (online MBA program). Perfect time to test out something new.

Without even thinking I had saved a partially written post to my desktop (which is a synced folder since it’s my working palate most of the time.) Usually I save my post to GoogleDocs, but not this time. The prof. required APA format for the paper so Word it was. Word with it’s desktop centric anchors. I opened my laptop and while waiting for it to come alive I remembered I had saved to my desktop and not to GoogleApps. Oh, but wait, that’s supposed to be synced w/ my laptop. So, I logged in, got online and waited. About fifteen seconds later my partially written post was open and ready for me to finish it. Technology making life simpler.

Before I settled on Dropbox I also looked at Syncplicity. Looks identical on the surface. And maybe they are, but Dropbox was smart in highlighting their un-delete and versioning tools. Good bye Mozy, it was nice knowing you.

Dropbox has public sharing, photo sharing, and makes some great opportunities for remote workforce collaboration. I could see SharePoint document libraries getting replaced.

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