I shared a little tip about backing up to a USB drive a while back, and after a bit of tinkering, I have a new method which uses rsync to speed things up a bit, and as the name suggests, keep things in sync rather than just blindly copying.

The other thing that I'm suggesting, is that you mount/unmount the USB drive between backups, mainly to protect the filesystem if it's mounted when the power goes out, or if you have to grab it in a hurry.

So here is what I suggest setting up as a cronjob (replace sdb1 with your own usb drive info):

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/backup
rsync -vrlptg --del /path/to/photos/ /mnt/backup/photos
umount /mnt/backup/

Important to note, I have used the --del option here, which means files deleted from the source location, will also be deleted on the backup drive. Since I use my backup drive more as a "mirror" of the data, rather than an archive - this works well for me, your situation may be different.

A nice way of going about protecting your data, is to use 2 (or more) drives and alternate them once a week, this script will keep whichever one you have plugged in up-to-date.

Just a quick friday afternoon post, to let a few readers know that my latest website, easyrecipebook.com is now "online", although still in a beta stage at the moment, there's plenty more features to add!

The aim of the site is to provide a directory of recipes that the average home-cook can whip up without needing hard to find ingredients or spend hours preparing.

Have a click around, and let me know if you do cook any of the recipes from it (I'll be adding a comments feature to the site shortly), hopefully easyrecipe book can become a good resource for people looking for easy, healthy food to cook after a long day at work.

Looking Accross the Water

A Murcielago LP640 at the Clipsal 500

... a few more images of exotic cars and the race here.

I use Open Office as my primary office suite. It provides me with every feature I need, and being free is even better. Another service that has been around for a while is Google Docs. The aim is to allow you to store your documents online, and be able to access them from anywhere. This however, means editing from within your web browser, and requiring an active internet connection.

My ideal solution would allow me to access/edit my documents in a Google Docs fashon, but then sync these docs onto the local drive of my computer. Currently there is an extension in beta development that allows you to do this, however it simply wouldn't work for me correctly, and seems to need a lot of work done to get it to a usable level. The idea is excellent though!

The reason for having documents online is for the ability to access them anywhere, from any computer, and collaberation. The ability to "share" documents with users is a major point, as it means documents do not go out of date, and inter-office documents can be used by everyone at once.

An almost (surprise) contender to this race is Microsoft. They are developing Office Live (an online version of Office), which could almost spell the end for google docs in the office environment, as most workplaces already have MS Office in use. Google Docs and Open Office would have a compelling reason to switch if they can get the offline/online mix right.