I’ve been around these parts for a while. I’ve had a many hardware failures resulting in data loss and witnessed it happen to others time and time again. I have come to terms that if you own a hard drive, some where in the future, sooner or later, it will die. If your data disappears with it or not is all dependent on having a backup somewhere.

At the same time I feel I have many friends who haven’t gone through these experiences to learn this hard lessons yet. Technology is cheap, and thusly the creation of valuable content has become easier and easier. Everyone has personal photos and videos that they adore and would break into tears if any of those memories disappeared.

This is where the project comes in. I want to create a simple system of storage for my friends in the bay area to come by and use as an off site backup. This would be space for personal data and not a full system image. The plan would be to run some sort of RAID so the backups would have a hard time failing. After a month since someone’s last backup, I’d send them an email demanding they’d come back and do another, the next day I’d call.

As much as backup solutions within current operating systems are getting better and better. I feel it isn’t enough. You don’t have mom or dad nagging at you to do your backup, nor does it ever tend to be offsite (which is more important then you think). Having something that’ll always be there for you, only a month stale at the most is rather worth while.

It would personally bring me joy to know that many of my friends wouldn’t be going through much of the same heart break I’ve gone through in the past when a drive has died and my data has become lost. Sadly I’ve got two road blocks. First is cost, this isn’t something I’m willing to build from cash out of my own pocket, nor is it something I want to pay the power bill for. The other issue is my current residence could not accommodate such a thing when considering noise and power consumption (I have a hard time as it is running my little Shuttle machine).

Anyone else have any thoughts or comments on this subject?

The Golden Gate Bridge is nothing more then a tourist trap over the weekend. I don’t know why I didn’t see this from the get go. Reed and I took a ride over it this morning. It was rather windy and a major pain dealing with others that don’t understand the rules of the road.

Once in Marin, I fell a few times thanks to the new clippy pedals I got. My rear derailleur has gone from ok to poor since then. I’ll deal with it tomorrow morning. We biked a bunch through Marin, stopping one too many times to bitch about things or futs with bikes or Reed idiotic candy runs. After missing our turn for the ferry station, biking up a windy road, some jerk off passes both I and Reed, almost clipping him. Reed was quick to bike after the guy and pull him over. Spent about a minute chewing the dick out.

Once we got to the ferry building, Reed went back the way we came to go to his home for a pair of pants (he was wearing the tightest pair of biker shorts) while I waited for a boat. Waiting inline to get on, a tourist behind me allowed his bike to fall over right onto mine. His explanation was that he had one too many to drink and that it’s ok because his bike “was a rental.” After getting onto the boat, since there were so fucking many tourist bike rental fuck-tards, there wasn’t enough space for everyone’s bike to be stuck onto their tiny rack. Apparently it’s common practice to just pile all the bike together into one big mess.

Getting through Pier 39 was a major headache, people just walk into the street without thinking. I was unable to pass a taxi cab that rode 4 blocks in the fucking bike lane. I don’t care what others say, I still feel taxi cabs are more of a danger to cyclists then anything else on the road, including buses. I was very happy to make it to Morley’s lovely new home.

After the grand tour, talking a bit and an explanation of N@, Reed got there. We went out for burritos. It was rather grand finally eating something warm. Did a bit of unconstructive complaining about the current weather outside, I started to suit up. Said goodbye to Morley and Reed, hopped onto my bike and got going.

During my ride home, while crossing something like 16th street on Valencia, some hobo on a bike nearly collided with me after he just moseyed into the middle of the bike lane with his janked up mountain bike (wow people really find the look of shocks so appealing), like less then an inch away from very much being in the hospital right now. While passing through the MUNI tracks hell hole at the Church side of the Wiggle, two cars wouldn’t let me merge over after I signaled. The last one also thought it best to speed up to make sure I wouldn’t get into their lane.

Not even mentioning the small 10 year old on a tiny bike running into my front wheel in Golden Gate Park this morning. If I didn’t actual whitens any of my interactions with the outside world today, I’d be very surprised at how completely annoyed I am right now. But it’s just amazing me right now abut how stupid people are.

So, moving on, perks of today were riding about 15 – 20 miles and I am a very sore boy right now (As Eli points out, the sore is sore in a good way), and also burritos with Morley and Reed. Yay.

One thing I don’t get out of long exposers for fire dancers is anything static to tell who the hell is spinning, Well it’s a rarity, which is why I like this photo.

Yet another holy shit moment in internet history

On a side note, for those of you questioning the safety of riding a bike versus other means of getting around. Also very pretty photos of cars vs bus vs bikes, a good illustration on how the parking problem in SF is self created.

Just in case you were wondering where it’s at today. I’ve been told there’s a spiral in the rear, but I haven’t looked back there in years.

Photo credit to Mella.

Since I started working again I’ve been having the hardest times waking up in the morning. None of my previous solutions of getting my ass up and out of bed haven’t been working. Here’s a list.

• Setting multiple alarms in series on my Hiptop. I just dismiss it, delete the rest in the series and go back to bed without knowing it.
• Zen alarm clock. I’ll get up, dismiss, go back to bed. It does not blissfully wake me up anymore.
• Sticking my Hiptop on the other side of the room. Will dismiss and go back to bed.
• Having multiple different alarms go off at once. I just go back to sleep after I dismiss them all.

I would love to build something like this, but can think of too many ways to disable/mute it while still half a sleep. I’m hoping that someone has found some easy to buy solution to this that they could recommend to me.

Some would suggest better sleeping habits, I’ve try almost everything I hear about. The only thing that’s worked thus far as the 90 minute cycles, and I’ve been reading recently that it’s mostly moot as everyone has a variable “time to sleep” which throws off when you want to wake up.

I’m becoming more tired during the day, it’s very noticeable, which is why I need to do something about this now.

Parody of the London Metropolitan Police 2008 Counter-Terrorism advertising campaign. The original and information on the campaign can be found at this link, along with PDFs for two other magazine ads which request the viewer to report anything they find as being suspicious. This includes taking photographs or notes such as for school, storing chemicals like fuel for a camping stove, or maintaining several cell phones which could be used for a job that pays the bills. All this paints me as being odd, suspicious and very much a potential terrorist in the eyes of the London Metropolitan Police who want you, the reader, to report me.

As it turns out anyone who’s part of any law enforcement body could also be a potential terrorist. Police officers are really good at documenting things that are currently happening now and the past using cameras and written notes. Anyone that’s dealt with violent crowd control is no stranger to mace and possibly tear gas, there’s also the handling and storage of fuel to run their transportation. And why is it that more and more officers of the law use cell phones to communicate while on the job then the everyday radio these days?

Even though many of us question the actions of our local law enforcement agencies every day (as we should and are allowed to) should we be suspicious and paranoid about everything they do? I’m sure someone in the London Metropolitan Police force owns and operates a Casio F91W wrist watch, should I cry to mommy about it then go hide in the corner due to fear of being hourly signaled to death? We bring terrorism close into our homes by terrorizing ourselves/family/friends/community/state/country through paranoia and suspicion.

The parody image utilizes some photos which are filed under Creative Commons, attribution is listed on the Flickr page the image links to. The rest of this image was generated by me and does not contain any visual content from the London Metropolitan Police website. Thanks to Mitch for allowing me to photograph his camera, and those at the Noise Bridge meeting who got a good laugh out of my new text. The "In suspicion we trust!" quote is taken from Crimethinc Ex-Workers’ Collective, they have some awesome stickers for sale and in PDF format for print. This image is listed under the Attribution – Non Commercial – Share Alike Creative Commons license. Please remix if you like.