Today, as I was writing a paper for school, I realized that I had somehow deleted a reference that I needed. Immediately, I began thinking of how I could go get another copy of this file. But before I started off into the many databases that my school provides, I remembered that I run Time Machine. I opened the folder that used to contain the file, hit the Time Machine icon on the Dock and clicked the big arrow on the Time Machine interface to show the last version of the folder. Sure enough, there was my file. I clicked restore and I was back to work. Time Machine didn’t save the day, I could have surely found another copy of this reference, but it did save a good 10 minutes, which is a big help when trying to write a paper!
Why must a technical system change its social system?
Too often a technical system is designed to automate work processes, but that system is developed in a way that changes the organization’s work practices in fundamental ways. These changes cause resistance from those that will have to use the system and often from their management. Furthermore, these system implementations reinforce the belief by many that IT staffs operate in “a vacuum” and don’t coordinate with the right people.
“…If only you had talked to the people that know how this really works before you did this, we wouldn’t have this problem…”
My job site has recently introduced Wordpress blogs on its intranet. They allow anyone with access to the intranet to create either an individual or team blog.
The blogs have been launched along with other social networking tools, which include a MediaWiki installation, XMPP instant messaging and a home-grown tagging site that sports functionality similar to del.icio.us.
I’m taking master’s degree classes right now and I want to be sure that I save my work and have good working backups.
The old way of doing things
I had been using ChronoSync and SuperDuper with a 160 GB external hard drive for backups. SuperDuper would run nightly and duplicate my drive and ChronoSync would run every 20 minutes on my home directory to capture all of my work. This was all working fine, but the 160 GB external hard drive was 3-4 years old and had been in continuous use all that time. This drive had saved me no less than two times so I felt it was time to upgrade.Continue reading ‘Use rsync and launchd on Mac OS X to synchronize/backup a folder’
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