TECHPopuli

Dead Hard Drive, progress report

The folks at Tech Superpowers in Boston were very helpful, and flexible, in working with me on my non-standard, replacement plan.

I'll get my laptop back with a new drive on Monday, and later in the week I'll find out whether the data will come back.

The TSP people were cautiously encouraging about the data recovery. And there are other options if they are unsuccessful.

Maker Faire 2007 this weekend

The Maker Faire is this weekend in San Mateo Calif.

It's another cool reason to live in the SF Bay Area.

CrashPlan online backup system

Twitter/BarCamp/DevHouse friend RodBegbie points me to the online backup system:

CrashPlan

What I like about it is that you can set it up to put your backup on storage that you control, like a spare machine in your office, or at a remote location, or even on a friend's computer.

I'll be evaluating a few others, but this is appealing.

You don't want to do that

Yesterday afternoon I suffered that computer-user right-of-passage: My primary hard disk died.

No warning, the apps just froze up, and when I rebooted I got, what I now know to be the unambiguous, flashing-question-mark icon. When I described this to the Apple Store support guy, he immediately said, you have a recent backup right?

Umm no. No really recent backup. I mean hey, it's a 6 month old drive.

OK, my bad.

There's a gnawing ache in my gut when I think about some of the things on that drive, but it's slowly going away.

The good news is that the machine is still under warranty, so Apple will replace the drive, no charge. But before I take them up on this I'm exploring data recovery options.

So do like I say, not like I do. Make regular backups. I'm gonna start now.

iPhone and Leopard delayed? or not?

Earlier today Engadget reported that Apple was about to announce a delay of the iPhone until Fall and Leopard OS until January.

But now they are saying that their report was the result of a actual-but-inacurate, company-wide, internal Apple email which described the schedule slips.

Engadget is covering, about being duped by this, by speculating: "Presumably Apple is now on the hunt for whomever was able to spoof its internal email system."

Hmmmm.

Tech Review Article on climate change

Technology Review has published part 1 of a series on planning for the effects of climate change:

Part I: Planning for a Climate-Changed World

As the global picture grows grimmer, states and cities are searching for the fine-scale predictions they need to prepare for emergencies--and to keep the faucets running.

Eye exercise improves memory?

From the Daily Express website:

WIGGLING your eyes from left to right helps to boost your memory...and it doesn’t cost a penny.

Scientists say the eye movement fires up both the left and right hemispheres of the brain at the same time.

And they believe this is the key to improving our ability to remember things like whether we locked the front door or turned the oven off.

Dr Andrew Parker, who carried out the research, said that only 30 seconds of moving eyes from left to right could produce results.

Anything that helps improve my memory is good. Now if I can just remember to do this exercise.

Very good meeting of Boston Media Makers, virtually

I really enjoyed yesterday's monthly meeting of the Boston Media Makers, and I didn't even go.

Group founder Steve Garfield used the new Ustream technology to "broadcast" the session live on the net.

The video was a little shaky, and the audio occasionally screechy, but I was able to follow the content of the talks and learned a lot.

Good work Steve.

Live Stream of Boston Media Makers meeting

Steve Garfield is live streaming audio and video of this morning's Boston Media Maker meeting. Surprisingly good.

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