Joey’s Blog

Starbucks is offering free music again via iTunes. Since I’m weaning myself off iTunes in favor of my wife’s new Zune, I don’t have a need for these songs. I am not weaning myself off Starbucks, so when I think of it, I’ll grab more codes and post them here.

These codes can only be used once, so if you are the first to read this then you are the lucky one. Check back every couple of days to see if I’ve posted more codes.  Don’t be a hog, if you don’t like the artists, then don’t use the code. Also, if there are multiple codes for the same song, then please only take one.

Enjoy.

• Carly Simon - “So Many People To Love” Song: RMFJP4MK649H, A3KMNRYW9KEL, LA7FY3JX6M49, 9TR7HW949XL7, MRXET4THLY9T, TMN9LWJJWXWN, 44EHT3LT3JTH
• Hilary McRae - “Every Day” Video: THEWENKFP4JP, 9MW7F3NX3KKA
• Counting Crows - “Washington Square” Song: JE9WK7F6MEWT, W7R43R7HPMLX, WM6EFR3FFWWP, MLRFKL9FAP79, XFM6A64JL4X4, XKKRKFEJM7HH, XLLW7KMK9MFP, J3774667TRXT, N9J9P6WMRY7K, 9KX34KMPYYML

I created a new proof template for Gentry’s professional work. Over the past three years she has had over 1,000,000 proof views (yes, I keep track). I started to think that if I placed ads on these proof pages, and 1 out of 100 page loads also included an ad click, then I would make a few dollars — maybe even enough to pay for this pointless blog every year.

I was reluctant to advertise on these pages, but I thought I would give it a try and see what happened. Please note that I would never consider placing an ad on her main web site.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think. Do you think the ads are too obtrusive? While you’re there, feel free to click on an ad and put $.07 cents in my pocket. Or, if you’re feeling nice, click on the large footer ad and Google will generously give me $.12 or maybe even $.13! By the way, I tried the Google competitor “WidgetBucks” and got $.01 for my first click. I went back to Google — $.07 sounded like a fortune!

Here’s the first wedding to use the new ad-infested proof viewer.

Thoughts? Comments? Do you know of a better ad provider?

Gentry had bridal and engagement shoots in Stillwater Saturday and I never turn down an opportunity to visit my college stomping grounds. While she was working, I took a walk, checked out the stadium progress, found my old percussion instructor and grabbed some shots at Theta Pond.  The ducks and geese were cooperative today and I got some good photos. One goose was a little too aggressive and pecked my jeans a couple of times.

My favorite photo in the set is the black & white of “Blue & Rust.” That sculpture brings back a lot of good memories of good friends. Even though I was a horrible drummer (didn’t apply myself to drumming like I did actual school work), my best memories from college revolved around being in the OSU drumline. Before each game, the drumline would meet in front of that sculpture to warm up.

By the way, hit refresh and my blog’s banner image will change. Refresh enough times and you’ll eventually see the panoramas I made of the inside of Boone Pickens Stadium and the Library/Student Union areas.

Click on each image below to enlarge.

This is a draft. I’ll update it tomorrow with some SyncBack screenshots.

Should I backup my computer?
I’m surprised how often someone asks me if they should backup their PC. The answer is always YES! Think about this… Of the gazillion parts that comprise your PC, only two are mechanical: 1. The cooling fan, and 2. The harddrive. You can recover from a fan failure, but losing your hard drive is like being robbed. You may be able to recover all of your documents/photos/MP3 files, but chances are they are gone forever. As co-owner of Gentry Photography, we have a responsibility to our clients to make sure their images are protected. You can reshoot seniors, but since we specialize in weddings we have a policy that states wedding images cannot “live” on a single disk. After all, you cannot reshoot a wedding.

There are many free tools and methods for backups. In the old days, people would simply copy files to a backup disk. On the other extreme are large systems which copy data from servers, then use robotic arms to shuffle tapes around. We’ll shoot somewhere in the middle for home and SOHO users.

Get an external disk.
The easiest way to get started is to simply plug an external USB (or Firewire) drive into your PC. As I stated in an earlier post, I connect multiple drives to my home server, but the concept is the same. Don’t simply buy an external disk the same size as your internal drive thinking you will just keep an exact replica. Shoot for 3x-4x of your current drive capacity. Why so large? Regular backups are not simply for mirroring your disk, but you can use backups to offload data from your internal disk to keep it clean. You may also want to use your backup program to keep multiple copies of your data.

Keep this in mind. If you off-load data from your PC to an external disk, you are still at risk of the external disk crashing. For the photo biz, I actually have two scheduled jobs: 1. Backup the PC to external disk once per week. 2. Synchronize the backup disk with another disk once per week. This ensures that someone’s wedding images never exist on one disk at a time.

Select backup software.
Microsoft Windows includes a basic tool for performing backups and restores. In 2000/XP, Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Backup. With this tool, you can use the simple wizard interface to schedule backups of your PC or even selected folders. You can select your external drive as the backup drive if you have it mapped to a drive letter. Microsoft Backup places all files in a compressed BKF file. The BKF files make good use of compression if most of your files are documents, spreadsheets, etc… However, since many video and photo formats are already compressed, you won’t see much benefit from the BKF compression. I have not used the backup tool in Vista yet, so I’m not sure how it has changed - if at all. This is a good tool. As RonCo says, set it and forget it!

If you need more flexibility than what Microsoft Backup can give you, then check out 2BrightSparks SyncBack. This is the tool I use for personal and photo backups. This tool allows very flexible configurations. You can select whether to backup a folder, synchronize two drives, include/exclude files or folders, and practically any other option you can imagine Unlike Microsoft Backup, SyncBack does not compress files or group them into larger collections. Based on your settings, SyncBack simply copies the file structure from your PC to the backup drive. Be careful, in the rare event that you create a new file in a folder with the same name as an existing file on your backup drive, then you will have a file conflict and could lose data.

I like SyncBack because it allows me to access backed up files directly from the backup disk. (Remember, files are not grouped together based on backup job). However, this same feature is also one of its drawback for some enterprise users. The tools works great for me, but for larger installations, SyncBack needs the option to copy individual files as it does now, or as compressed groups like Microsoft Backup. Furthermore, SyncBack needs the ability to keep X versions of a file on the backup disk. In the corporate world, we use our large backup system to retain three versions of every file backed up. When a file is changed, the oldest version is simply deleted. There will always be three versions of this file. SyncBack could use this functionality

There is a new class of “cloud” type services that host your backups securely on the Internet. There are kinds of new features and pricing models available. One such serivce is Microsoft’s SkyDrive. Currently, they are giving users 5GB of free online storage. One benefit of hosted services is the ability to access your files from any Internet accessible computer, including your mobile devices. SkyDrive doesn’t have any automation tools that I am aware of.

There are several other tools for making backups and they all have similar features. The most important thing is not what tool you are using, but that you are performing scheduled backups. Let me know what tool/techniques you use to protect your data.

Just when you think the Mike Gundy parodies are dead, one more pops up. Since this is my church and my coach, I find it hilarious. Enjoy & Go Pokes!