PolarLava::Blog

"It's not going to stick because the ground is still too warm.  We nearly always see snow —at least flurries, in October."

Those would be my now immortal words to a coworker who moved to Buffalo from Florida last year.  I guess I was a little (!) wrong.  The official total was 22.6" at the airport.  At my house we were probably at about half that, but it's hard to tell because it was so wet that it packed down a lot.  And then it warmed up and started melting rapidly.  But in any case this was basically a "once a century storm" sort of thing.  There were predictions that we could see a few inches of snow with the "chance" of conditions producing "the perfect storm".  Which is exactly what happened.

I spent two long chilly days at home with the family, but had plenty of work to do around the house.  I don't have many trees in my yard, but my neighbor behind my house has two huge maples at the back of his lot.  These two trees dropped a good deal of limbs and debris in his yard, two other neighbor's yards as well as mine and  on my garage.  Thus there was plenty of cleaning up to be done.  Next up was hauling in wood and getting the fireplace going as it became clear that we might be without power for days.  Fortunately for us, it was "only" two days.  Others have not been so fortunate as they are still without power and in some cases, will be for the next week.  Compounding that was the rapidly melting snow and many have also been flooded.  Again, not me as we sit on ground that is always high and dry.  You can see the effects on my neighborhood from the pictures.  Fortunately the only tree casualty in my yard was my Japanese Maple that had a large branch fall on it and snap one of it's branches.  The other problem was my phone line's anchor pulled out of the house so the line fell in the street.  The wires remained connected so once the power came back on I still had phone and DSL internet access.

And that coworker?  Well, she unfortunately lives in Amherst, one of the hardest hit areas.  They got closer to 3 feet of snow and will be without power for quite some time yet.

So last Friday I decided that Amazon's S3 was the way to go so I opened up an account and started playing with a few s3 tools.  I've started collecting the useful things I've found on my s3 del.icio.us tag for those who might be interested in following suit.  Not something I'm looking for, but if you are simply looking to backup a Windows workstation, Jungle Disk looks like a good choice.

One thing I hadn't considered before was storing my mp3's ripped from my music collection.  That's a quick 7-8GB (and growing) I hadn't considered.  But to store that is still only $1.20/mo and $1.60 to upload it.  I'd say that's pretty reasonable and it seems safe and secure in the long run.  Thus the big upload push has begun…  Next up will be figuring out how to backup/rsync my website on a regular basis.

So for some time now I've contemplated the prospect of online backup/storage.  I don't have a lot of confidence in my home PC, nor do I have the time or mental fortitude to build and maintain a backup server.  I simply have other things I'd rather do with my time these days.  Thus I always thought that having secure remote storage would be ideal.  But when I first thought about it it wasn't a viable option because of the cost and the bandwidth to shuffle things back and forth.
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This past week I read with interest Jeremy Zawodny's blog entries Replacing my home backup server with Amazon's S3 and A List of Amazon S3 Backup Tools.  Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) seems just like the sort of thing I'm looking for although I haven't had time to really look into some of the tools available.  One thing that I wish it did have was SFTP or SCP access.

Among the comments some suggest using DreamHost to do something similar, but at a lower cost.  I'm all for that and for file storage I this would probably be workable even though I'd never consider using them for web hosting…I've read too many bad things even with all the talk I hear about how wonderful they are.  Thanks but no thanks.  Besides, this is outside the scope of what this entry is about.  It would also be nice primarily because it would be readily available via SFTP and SCP.  But the real downside is that it violates their Terms of Service which states "The customer agrees to make use of DreamHost Webhosting servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website…" so at any time they could shut your file storage down.  Plus their infrastructure surely isn't as fault tolerant or distributed as Amazon's.

So at this point I'm looking at it a bit, but without any clear decisions.  I know I need to do something as most of my data at home is not reliably backed up and my photo collection just keeps growing.  At this point I know I would need 3-4GB right out of the gate to store all of it.  I'm sort of waiting to see what else Jeremy has to say on the matter, as well as his commenter's.  But if you're reading this, have some experience with online storage and have some ideas, please point me at anything you think might be useful.

OK, this is going to be bit of rant…

What's the point of blogging about something and not allowing comments or trackbacks?  It's one of the reasons I started PolarBlog —Personal Weblog (PWL) that it's based off of didn't have a commenting system, thus I started working on it and realized PWL wasn't going to be continued.  As for trackbacks, well…I'm about to start working on that soon.

Without having commenting and/or trackbacks, you don't have a blog, you have a public journal.  Which is fine I guess if that's what you want, but what's the point?  You spew your opinion for everyone to read, but you have no interest in any feedback on it?  How Republican of you!  ;)  Hell, I spew my writings which are probably better suited to a journal format but nonetheless, they are open and available for comments.

This is where I get to throw my friend Chris under the bus.  You post an entry seeking feedback, but you have comments disabled.  I have the luxury of talking to you on a daily basis so I can easily provide feedback.  But if you're writing what is a public message and seek feedback, how would the average schmuck do that if they don't know you?  Sorry Chris, you were just the best/most recent example I have seen of this behavior.  :)  As for feedback, yeah my site deserves to be there, but then again I'm already there 24x7x365.  Thank you.

Onto my next commenting gripe…sites that require you to login to post a comment.  I don't want Chris to feel alone, so I'll throw Rob under the bus with you as his site requires you to login to comment.  In his case it's a bit different because he has a small community blog where several people gather to post and comment.  That's cool I guess.  But this is a very common thing you find on the "big sites" whom I'm too lazy to link too. You know who the players are in that arena, I don't need to tell you.  I believe it's an option on most of them, but lots of people seem compelled to disallow comments and then spew from their pulpit.  Their prerogative I guess, but I'm sorry I find it annoying.  I don't want have to sign-up somewhere just to comment on something I may have stumbled upon.  Let's face it, it's unlikely I'll be back anytime soon.  Trust me.  I get quite a few comments from strangers even on older entries.  I doubt very many of them have found what I have to say so compelling that they are now loyal readers.  I'm not stupid, I'm just one guy with and opinion and a keyboard.  And so are you, get over it.

And I know the biggest argument will undoubtably be "spam".  Yeah, I got sick of the spam once they found their way to my blog.  At first it was the random hit now and then.  Then it was somebody who obviously scripted something to post comments to any PolarBlog site.  I guess I should be flattered on one hand, but on the other I know these low-lifes are just looking to spread their lame offerings.  I came up with a quick fix that temporarily resolved most of it, and then the new RBL system which has been 100% effective in stopping it all without blocking any valid comments.  It took a lot of work to implement, but was well worth it now that it's done and working well.  I take pride in that one, because as pointless as writing my own blogging software probably is —there's lots of other more polished offerings, PolarBlog is the only one I'm aware of that offers Realtime IP Blacklisting for comments.

In a similar vein to not allowing comments are blogs that don't offer RSS, ATOM, or other syndication feeds.  What's with that?  It's 2006 for God's sake, if I want to read and/or follow what you have to say on a regular basis, let me pull it to someplace that's convenient for me to be notified of it and read it.  If I read you regularly I'll put you on my blogroll as I'm willing to help drive traffic to your site.  Oh, but I'd like to see you do the same if you read me regularly.  After all, it's only fair, right?

OK, I'm stepping off the soapbox now…  :)

—Comments disabled due to excessive spamming of this entry.  Jackasses!

I generally try to go for a 20 minute walk most days at lunchtime.  For the most part this means a quick jaunt around the Erie Basin Marina and back to my office —The building on the left end of La Riviere Drive in the photo.  Yesterday it was a bit chilly with the temperature only in the upper 50's and it had rained on and off in the morning.  So looking out my window (which overlooks the marina and Lake Erie) it was grey and overcast, but not too bad.  So I set off on my walk.  I was about three quarters of the way out to the end of the marina when I could see it was raining out over the lake.  It seemed moderate, but not moving real fast so I kept going to the end.  But as I began heading back, the winds began to pickup.  I made it about 25% of the way back when it started to rain.  And not the moderate rain I thought I might get caught in, but wind driven, heavy sideways rain!  Oops!  So as I plodded onward —because there's no shortcuts on this walk unless you want to swim, I quickly got soaked.  But only on one side!  It stopped raining before I got back to the other end of the marina and the sun started to come out.  But it was too late for me.  I was drenched completely on my right side and the right half of my left leg.  Needless to say, when I returned to the office a number of people had a good laugh at my new two-tone appearance.  It was a cold soggy afternoon sitting in my office as I slowly dried out.  Oh, well…live and learn.  :)

Well, it's my birthday today.  Ordinarily it probably wouldn't be special, but this one is…because I am now all knowing!