Macintosh

For a long time I’ve been using a Drobo connected to my Airport Extreme base station as a backup drive for Time Machine. I know it’s not a supported configuration, but it’s a lot more practical than having to keep an external drive plugged in to my MacBook Pro, which I often move around so I can work in different rooms. There is no good reason it shouldn’t work the same way a Time Capsule does. I don’t like the Time Capsule because it uses a single drive and can’t be expanded like the Drobo.

It works most of the time, but after a while it gets very slow and once in a while it corrupts my backup sparse image. After using it for several months, a single backup often takes longer than a day and if I put my MacBook Pro to sleep when it’s preparing or finishing a backup, that backup fails. The last few times it took over a week to successfully complete a single backup.

After my backup image got completely trashed and couldn’t be repaired, I decided to look for other backup options. CrashPlan is the best backup solution I’ve found for several reasons. Like Time Machine, CrashPlan runs continuously in the background. CrashPlan maintains multiple versions of files and can restore a particular version.

Unlike many other backup programs such as Mozy which are tied to a particular online service, CrashPlan gives you several options for backing up. In addition to CrashPlan’s own CrashPlan Central online backup service, you can back up to any folder (including a mounted server volume such as my Drobo) or another computer running CrashPlan. You can also invite friends to back up to your computer or back up to a friend’s computer. You can even back up to multiple destinations at the same time.

After trying it for a few days, I upgraded to CrashPlan+, which backs up continuously instead of once a day. I’m still on my 30-day free trial of CrashPlan Central, but I will probably opt for their $100/year family plan, which will let me back up multiple computers.

I’ve made some fixes to my Post To Tumblr script to make it more reliable. I found that many newsfeeds don’t have a summary property, so I’m using description instead, which is more correct. I’m also testing the existence of all properties before I use them.

Here’s the updated script. You can also download it here.

on urlencode(x)
	set TheCode to do shell script "python -c 'import sys, urllib; print urllib.quote(sys.argv[1])' " & quoted form of (x)
	return TheCode
end urlencode

tell application "NetNewsWire"
	if title of selectedHeadline exists then
		set q_title to my urlencode(title of selectedHeadline)
	else
		set q_title to "Untitled"
	end if

	if permalink of selectedHeadline exists then
		set q_url to my urlencode(permalink of selectedHeadline)
	else
		set q_url to ""
	end if

	if description of selectedHeadline exists then
		set q_content to my urlencode(description of selectedHeadline)
	else
		set q_content to ""
	end if

	set tumblr to "http://www.tumblr.com/share?v=3&u=" & q_url & "&t=" & q_title & "&s=" & q_content
	open URL in new tab with tumblr

end tell

I use Tumblr to collect & share clippings from NetNewsWire & other items too small for a blog post. With the previous version of NetNewsWire, when I added an item to my clippings, the RSS feed from NewsGator was automatically imported into Tumblr.

Since that feature is gone in the NetNewsWire beta, I came up with another way to share items in Tumblr. Here’s an AppleScript that opens a new tab to post the currently selected headline in Tumblr in a way similar to the Tumblr bookmarklet.

on urlencode(x)
	set TheCode to do shell script "python -c 'import sys, urllib; print urllib.quote(sys.argv[1])' " & quoted form of (x)
	return TheCode
end urlencode

tell application "NetNewsWire"
	set item_title to (title of selectedHeadline)
	set item_url to (permalink of selectedHeadline)
	set item_content to (summary of selectedHeadline)

	set q_title to my urlencode(item_title)
	set q_url to my urlencode(item_url)
	set q_content to my urlencode(item_content)

	set tumblr to "http://www.tumblr.com/share?v=3&u=" & q_url & "&t=" & q_title & "&s=" & q_content
	--display dialog tumblr
	open URL in new tab with tumblr

end tell

Download the script here and drop it in NetNewsWire’s script folder.

You can follow my Tumblr at mike3k.tumblr.com.

I’ve been using Quicken 2006 and earlier versions for my personal finances for a long time. Recently it started corrupting my data files every few days. Thankfully Time Machine saved me when that happened.

Since that version is 3 years old, I thought I should probably upgrade to the newest version, so I checked quicken.com and found that the latest Mac version is 2007, although a much-delayed update is due later this year. The 2007 version doesn’t have many major changes, so I didn’t bother upgrading.

Quicken still isn’t Intel native, which will be a problem with Snow Leopard, since Rosetta isn’t installed by default. Attempting to open Quicken 2006 in Snow Leopard results in the following alert. I’d rather keep my Mac pristine and not pollute it with Rosetta.

I researched several alternatives and found iBank & MoneyDance to be the most promising. Both claim to import QIF files exported from Quicken.

First I tried iBank and found that it imported everything from different accounts in the QIF file into a single account, so I gave up on it.

MoneyDance imported my QIF file cleanly, but I found that it wasn’t compatible with my bank’s online service, so I gave up on it.

I was very reluctant to trust my finances to an online service, but based on Chuq’s recommendation I decided to try Mint. I found that I really like it a lot. It feels almost as snappy as a desktop app and always has up-to-date information from all of my financial institutions. I ended up creating a Mint Fluid desktop app, which loads faster than the non-native Quicken and feels just as nice as any of the desktop apps I’ve tried.