General

John Gruber writes about his recent hard disk crash:

Hard drives are fragile. Read as much as you can bear to about how they work, how incredibly precisely they must operate in order to cram so many bits onto such small disks. It’s a miracle to me that they work at all. Every hard drive in the world will eventually fail. Assume that yours are all on the cusp of failure at all times. It’s good to be spooked about how long your hard drives will last.

Luckily he had good backups, which saved his butt.

Merlin Mann gives more hints on smart backup strategies:

Perform automated, redundant, and rotated backups as often as you can afford to lose every single bit of information that’s been changed or added since your last backup. Because it’s going to go away.

This is exactly why I prefer CrashPlan instead of Time Machine. CrashPlan will automatically backup to multiple destinations, which can include both a local drive and CrashPlan Central, which provides off-site backups for extra security. Unlike Time Machine, which doesn’t work well on network drives other than a Time Capsule, CrashPlan is perfectly happy backing up over the network, which is a big plus for laptops.

CrashPlan is only one part of my backup strategy. Although I use it to back up my MacBook continuously, I use Time Machine on my iMac with a FireWire drive since it stays on my desk. I also use DropBox to sync most of my critical folders between my iMac and MacBook. I also do regular full drive backups with SuperDuper.

When I got up this morning before my flight I was shocked to read this announcement at TechCrunch and Daniel’s response. Adam Jackson wrote one of the most reasoned responses with some good advice for Daniel.

I’ve known Daniel Brusilovsky for several years and I work with him as CTO of Teens In Tech Networks. I know he’s a good person and I find it hard to believe he would do this. I’ve heard several conflicting stories and I haven’t talked to Daniel yet, so I don’t know the real story. I’ve also heard from more than one source that it didn’t actually involve a MacBook Air.

I’m not a fan of Michael Arrington or TechCrunch. He loves to create drama (see the CrunchPad/JooJoo). When he has an axe to grind he’ll go out of his way to dig up unfavorable stories about a company and he usually ends up looking more like the Drudge Report than an impartial news source.

I wasn’t too thrilled when Daniel started working for TechCrunch for that reason. I was afraid he’d get caught up in some of Arrington’s drama and that’s exactly what happened.

What he allegedly did was wrong, but he’ll learn from it and move on. It’s not an isolated incident. There have been several Pay Per Post schemes which are very similar to what he supposedly did.

I’m leaving tomorrow for San Francisco to attend Teens in Tech Conference and Macworld Expo, as well as looking at some apartments in the city. I was lucky enough to get a non-stop flight from FLL to SFO (and with onboard WiFi).

My car (a 2009 Toyota Corolla) is on the recall list, so I’ll have to deal with it when I get back from the trip. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get out of the lease without too much trouble so I can get something not made by Toyota.

Please keep your shitty music to yourself, originally uploaded by mike3k.

From 6 Dollar Shirts. I need this one for the gym, where everyone blasts music on a boombox instead of using headphones.

Adam Jackson’s One Year in San Francisco series is a good guide for anyone considering a move to San Francisco.

My requirements are a bit different, though. I’d prefer to own a condo, rather than rent an apartment; and I need at least a 2 bedroom with 1000 sq. ft. or more so I can set up a home office. I’d prefer to live outside the city, but with easy access by Bart so I wouldn’t have to take my car into the city. I only took a car into San Francisco once, and I regretted it after I had to spend $20 to park.