Author Archives: Laz

Backup Your Data Now!

by

4

Greetings to all you surfers out there. I wanted to visit a topic that I most likely will not only visit often as time marches onward, but write about a bunch too, and that is backing up your data. Most folk don’t like to think about the bad things that might happen to your precious computer(s). This applies to home users and big time data center folk alike. I have found backups and the true art of backing up data to be one of the most mis-understood, under utilized and under appreciated art forms out there.

Lots of people don’t think about backups for one thing. Another is they have that “it won’t happen to me” mentality. Well, I have seen more than my share of drives fail, and brothers and sisters, it dang sure can happen to you. In fact, I have seen two statistical anomalies/impossibilities in the last couple of years alone, and that was two separate servers, made by two separate vendors, that at two separate times, had two drives fail at the same time. This took out a RAID 5 array on one server, and a mirror on the other. Luckily though, my team knows and understands backups so it was really a non-event, we pulled the data off of tape and were back in business.  Aaah, but if there wasn’t a good backup!!??

Another thing, I see folk (usually management) that don’t “get” backups. They think it’s some automagic thing that just happens because the backup operator pressed a button marked “Backup Your Stuff Now By Pressing This Button”. Well kids, it ain’t that easy. There are lots of factors and hurdles to think about and overcome when it comes to backing up your data, again that’s true whether it’s your home PC or a whole server floor full of machines. I’ll get into all of this later, but for now I just wanted to get the topic out in the lime light, and try to remind everyone that they need to backup their stuff!

One quick tip that I have for desktop users, like folk at home or in small offices. Go grab you an external hard drive, one that connects to your PC with the USB interface. That way you can turn it on when you need it, and simply copy all of your important stuff onto it. You can get software even, that will do the copy jobs for you. Some have nice features that track changes, compress and sort your files. That’s all well and good, but it’s not required. As long as you have a copy of the stuff that you need somewhere, you will be doing much better, and be much more worry and stress free when (notice I said when, not if) your main hard drive decides to go belly up.

Computer Buying 101

by

0

I have posted a new article where I talk about some basics of computers, buying computers, what all the acronyms and abbreviations mean and what they mean to you.  Also, I talk about some observations and trends that I see, and in general try to give those not familiar with computers, especially hardware, some ammunition for talking to that sales person somewhere.  It’s a long article, so it will take a few minutes to read, but it took several hours to write so maybe it’s a good trade.  As I think of more things to add, I’ll update it, just like any other article on this site.  Technology keeps changing, and so does information, so I am not afraid to update the information I am collecting here as I see fit.  Feel free to check it out, and let me know what you think.  It’s in the Library section, along with our other articles.

Ping, Plot, and Trace

by

1

I like to share with you cool tools and utilities that I run across in my travels. One that I have used for years is called Ping Plotter. This program has proven itself over the years to be a powerful ally when troubleshooting network connections, performance, what have you. Basically this tool provides a very nice, graphical way to ping and perform a traceroute to the specified address, including drawing a map of the traceroute and latency along the way. You can even have it perform, map and record traceroutes at certain intervals, thereby monitoring your target over time.

You can download and use Ping Plotter for free (with some nag screens it seems), or you it can be purchased in a couple of versions. The price has gone up since I bought it, it was $15 years ago and now is up to $24.95, and well worth that price. There is a “pro” version available too, but it’s a bit pricey at $199.95, but that gets into some advanced features and licensing that most folk probably won’t need. I have been quite happy with my version, and have found it very useful time and time again. I recommend checking it out!

Linux versus Windows on System Calls

by

1

I found an interesting article on the Interweb today, based on something a peer told me during a service call. It has to do with the differences between how system calls are handled between Linux and Windows performing the same task, in this case, serving up a single web page with a single image. The fellow comparing the two even provided pictures that map out how the different operating systems map those calls, or more simply what is going on under the hood when the system does what is asked of it.

This is a short article, but is a great example of some fundamental differences between Linux and Windows, that are deeply entrenched in the source code levels, This is also a shiny example of one reason why Linux outperforms Windows in most cases (that’s been my experience anyway), and why Windows is harder to secure.

Before I provide linky goodness, let me make a disclaimer. I am not bashing Windows or Microsoft with what I said above. The performance observation is just that, my observation based on my experience. The issue of securing Windows is the same, I am not saying you can’t secure Windows, it’s just a lot harder.

Now, on to the show, take a look and let me know what your thoughts are!

More on RSS

by

1

Well now, I got some good info recently, and I felt it was my duty to share with everyone.  I have been a fan of and tinkerer with RSS feeds for years now, so how I missed this one I have no clue.  Regardless, after my last post about “What is RSS?“, my friend Mack mentioned Google Reader in the comments of that post.  Ok, I must be living under a pretty large rock, because despite all of the Google services I use day to day, I had never heard of Google Reader.  I have been using a program called ShardReader as an RSS aggregator on my computer, but hadn’t thought about a web based implamentation.

Actually, say I hadn’t thought about a web based version is not true, I wrote some (IMHO) pretty cool PHP code to categorize, list and display multiple RSS feeds in one place years ago.  However, this was for the purpose of displaying that information to my website visitors, I never thought about using it for myself.

That being said, there is nothing wrong with SharpReader, or any software that works for you.  However, I had to write up something about Google Reader because of the beauty that it is in fact web based.  I came to realize that it’s beautiful because now I can take my feeds with me wherever I go.  If I have access to a web browser, and a few minutes to kill, I can catch up on my news (I am a news junkie you know).  I was able to get started with no fuss using my gmail email account.  Best of all, I can still use SharpReader when I feel like it, and I was able to export my feed list to a standard OPML file from SharpReader, and import it right into Google Reader.  Now that is exactly how open standards are supposed to work!  Good job guys!

So, if you are looking for a very good RSS news reader, plus one that you can use anywhere (even off-line now!), check Google Reader out, I have been genuinely impressed and I bet you would find that you like it.