Omega Point

Catherine’s Guide to Backups, Part 1

So there I was at Best Buy, finally tak­ing care of that “back­ups” busi­ness.¹

Since Apple added their super-convenient Time Machine app to Mac OS X 10.5 Leop­ard, I’d been mean­ing to get around to using it. A year later, I bought a sim­ple exter­nal USB drive, a West­ern Dig­i­tal MyPass­port. Easy. Tiny. USB-powered.²

So I finally made it to the counter to pay for the thing. No, I hadn’t shopped there before. Would I like to sign up for the Best Buy blah blah card thing? I sure would! And I pro­ceeded to do so. Take that, peo­ple behind me in line.

“Oh, my email address? Cer­tainly. It’s ‘catherine’…”

*tap tap tap*

“at”

*tap tap tap*

“cather­ine–”

*DELETE DELETE DELETE*

“Uh…no. I mean, yes, my name is Cather­ine. You spelled that cor­rectly. My email address is Cather­ine at CatherineWinters.com.”

*tap tap tap*

“Cather­ine with a ‘C’.”

And so on and so forth. So that was pretty fun.

Pro­tip: Once Best Buy secu­rity agrees not to call the police if you promise never to set foot in the store again, you can par­ti­tion your exter­nal drive as half Time Machine and half stor­age, for­mat­ting it for convenience’s sake as NTFS, not MacOSX-native HFS+. The NTFS 3G dri­ver for OSX allows you to both read and write NTFS-formatted dri­ves, and you’ll still be able to con­nect to Win­dows PCs should need arise.

If you do this, how­ever, you have to be really care­ful about eject­ing the stu­pid thing prop­erly. If any files get dam­aged, you’ll lose write access to the NTFS par­ti­tion and the result­ing error mes­sage will in no way be help­ful. If you sud­denly find that you can’t write to an NTFS-formatted disk, plug the thing into a Win­dows PC and run chkdsk on it to fix the errors.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, I just saved you three hours of Googling.

Next Time: In Case of Fire.

1. Yeah, you know that time that your com­puter died and you lost every­thing and you said, “next time, I’m going to do reg­u­lar back­ups” and then you didn’t? I’m mar­gin­ally smarter than you. [↩]
2. Unfor­tu­nately, my 5-year-old Dell 24″ mon­i­tor has a crappy, crappy USB hub that causes my Mac­Book Pro to ker­nel panic when­ever Time Machine starts–Windows users: that’s the OSX ver­sion of a blue­screen. There’s an app for that. So I lose a USB port; no hub for you, WD My Pass­port! This is actu­ally a good rea­son to use Firewire, come to think of it. [↩]

In Which Catherine Is No Longer Lazy

So I recently started jog­ging. I know, I know, I’m ruin­ing my image as couch­bound layabout, but it’s true. (If, by chance, you were unfa­mil­iar with this image, let me take this oppor­tu­nity to spoil all chance of being thought of as in par­tic­u­larly good shape.)

I’m tall. Really, really tall. (Yes, taller than that one friend of yours. No, I don’t care if he’s sin­gle. A swim­mer, you say? Does he have a sister?)

Now, what you may not be aware of is that there tends to be a few down­sides to being tall.

On the plus side, I never get heart­burn and laugh heartily at the signs that read “please ask for assis­tance for items on this shelf” at the phar­macy. On the other hand, humans tend not to have joints built to han­dle a larger frame, and with much greater dis­tances to pump, our hearts don’t work as long.

One other issue tall peo­ple can face is actu­ally pretty dif­fi­cult to claim as a par­tic­u­larly bad thing, — though it is if you’re as unaware of it as I was. Dif­fer­ences in pro­por­tion and scale being what they are, I can gain 20 or 30 (or 60) pounds with­out any­one really notic­ing much dif­fer­ence.¹ Includ­ing me, unfor­tu­nately. (Yes, that’s right. I just com­plained about my appear­ance being too for­giv­ing. Stone me now.)

How­ever, as ridicu­lous a “prob­lem” as that is, it’s actu­ally not super for one’s health, par­tic­u­larly if you don’t real­ize it for a year. In late 2008, wracked with knee pain so severe that my doc­tors had been talk­ing about osteoarthri­tis and the pos­si­bil­ity that I might be unable to walk by the age of 40, it was dis­cov­ered that I was just in dis­as­trously poor shape. In fact, despite walk­ing fairly reg­u­larly and hav­ing a “healthy” BMI^[2], I’d man­aged to develop vir­tu­ally no mus­cle mass whatsoever.

On the one hand, this was a relief. On the other hand, it would have been nice to have had no cul­pa­bil­ity whatsoever.

So, back I went to phys­io­ther­apy. Again. Years ago, I tore the crap out of my rota­tor cuff while work­ing as a shop assis­tant in a giant ladies’ cloth­ing store. Car­ry­ing jeans, yes. You see, the thing about jeans for tall women is that they have to be much longer, con­tain more fab­ric, etc. The thing about bones for tall women is that they don’t just tend to be longer, they also tend to be big­ger. So we’re not talk­ing about car­ry­ing around Size 0 capris here, we’re talk­ing dozens of pairs of Size 16 and 22 jeans, each leg sev­eral inches longer than what a reg­u­lar store car­ries. It adds up, trust me.

Mes­sage­board tes­ti­mo­ni­als sug­gested Vancouver’s best phys­io­ther­a­pist was Kelvin Tam of Kelvin Phys­io­ther­apy Clinic. I am pleased to report that this appears to be highly accurate.

“So let me guess,” he said, look­ing at my chart. “You hurt your shoul­der play­ing volleyball?”

“No.”

“Bas­ket­ball? Soft­ball? Soccer?”

“…lift­ing pants?”

I think Kelvin still thinks I might be mak­ing that up. This would be much bet­ter if I hadn’t seen him a fur­ther time for my elbow, suf­fer­ing from both golfer’s and ten­nis elbow — from using the mouse too much. I had to make a sig­nif­i­cant lifestyle change there too as well.

Annoy­ingly, if I had injured my shoul­der or elbow play­ing sports, I prob­a­bly wouldn’t have had this prob­lem with my knees. Of course, I likely wouldn’t have suf­fered those injuries either.

So, sev­eral months of phys­io­ther­apy and exer­cise later, I’m finally mov­ing up from walk­ing to jog­ging. So far, things seem to be work­ing out okay. I’m cur­rently in week two of the Couch-to-5K Run­ning Plan from Cool Run­ning. So far, so good, but it’s pretty exhaust­ing, I have to say. I sus­pect I’m still not quite in good enough shape, given my strug­gles last week, so I’ve inserted a sec­ond “week one” into my own exer­cise regimen.

I’ve also been eying the Nike+iPod gad­get for my iPhone — which is ridicu­lous, frankly. I don’t need that and I really don’t want to use any of their social media fea­tures like shar­ing how far I’ve run/limped about. Let’s all just assume that things are going really well for me, okay?

Any­way, deal­ing with sports bras and run­ning shoes is novel, but deal­ing with bikes is fun! Yes, I’m secretly an aspir­ing bike nerd, and I’m finally able to ride one again. Sadly, it turns out that Catherine-sized bikes are fairly dif­fi­cult to come by, but I’m pleased to report things are pro­gress­ing smoothly despite that. I will post details of the great bike-building project shortly!

[1] Case in point: as of the writ­ing of this post, the last time a close friend has called me a “skinny bitch” was approx­i­mately 36 hours ago.

[2] Seri­ously, Body-Mass Index is the worst pos­si­ble mea­sure of phys­i­cal fit­ness there is. Not only does it have trou­ble scal­ing at the top and bot­tom ends, but it doesn’t even account for what that mass con­sists of. Ouch.

Trackballs: A part of our heritage

In the sum­mer of 2007, I learned I had a bit of an RSI prob­lem when a can of Coke I was hold­ing sud­denly slipped from my grasp and plum­meted to the ground. I couldn’t apply enough pres­sure with my thumb and fin­gers to hold it in my hand.

One short diag­no­sis of ten­nis and golfer’s elbow later, (“Cather­ine, you use the mouse a lot, don’t you?”) my doc­tor ordered me to find a less dam­ag­ing point­ing device. Since then, I’ve mostly relied on my laptop’s trackpad.

That’s all well and good while using my lap­top, but for desk­tops, I needed a bet­ter solu­tion. It’s really just Cirque that still makes USB track­pads, and those aren’t super either.

The Apple iTunes store pro­vides a dozen or so “track­pad” apps, most of which use VNC to func­tion as an input device alone. These let you use your wifi net­work to get your iPhone going as a track­pad. Sur­pris­ingly, this works fairly well, but it really does take gad­get overkill to a whole new level.

So that leaves track­balls. Which is good, because I like them! ^[1]

So beau­ti­ful. So majestic.

Con­se­quently, for the past 18 months, I’ve been using a Kens­ing­ton Expert Mouse 7.0, the lat­est ver­sion of the clas­sic ADB track­ball. Kens­ing­ton track­balls are so good, in fact, that some­times I print out trackball-advocacy lit­er­a­ture and go door-to-door, invit­ing peo­ple to hear the good news.

The lat­est ver­sion of the Kens­ing­ton Expert Mouse boasts the same four but­tons in a but­ter­fly lay­out, as well as a one-dimensional “scroll ring” around the ball. The ring’s move­ment could be a lit­tle smoother, but it moves eas­ily and is dif­fi­cult to nudge by mistake.

So yes, I strongly rec­om­mend the Kens­ing­ton Expert Mouse to any­one, if only because I rely on other people’s con­tin­ued inter­est in track­balls to ensure com­pa­nies keep pro­duc­ing them. Aside from that, track­balls are gen­er­ally fairly good, ego­nom­i­cally speak­ing, and also make it more dif­fi­cult for mouse-only friends to use your com­puter, pro­vid­ing you with ample oppor­tu­nity to look smug. If you’re into that sort of thing, I mean.

For my key­board, I’ve been alter­nat­ing between my Mac­Book Pro and a 2005-series white/clear Apple key­board. I own a Microsoft Nat­ural Pro ergonomic key­board, but I never liked the “mushy” feel­ing of the keys. The last-generation Apple keyboard’s keys aren’t buckling-spring. so it’s no Model M, but they def­i­nitely have suf­fi­cient give and are nicely clicky — within the lim­its of dome-switch keyboards.

Aside from feel, many Microsoft key­boards have a bit of an issue that’s always bugged me: they tend not to detect the left shift key being depressed when char­ac­ter entry keys have already been hit. This makes my hastily-typed smi­ley emoti­cons look ter­ri­ble: ;0

I am pleased to say that Apple’s key­boards have never exhib­ited this problem.

Track­balls: A part of our heritage.

[1] Little-known Cana­dian trivia: the Royal Cana­dian Navy devel­oped the first track­ball back in the 1950s.

How­ever, astute Cana­di­ans will note that this photo from Wikipedia shows the DATAR track­ball assem­bly using flat-head screws, rather than supe­rior, patri­otic Robert­son screws. For shame!

Mobile data rates: Canada’s national shame

With the US release of the iPhone per­me­at­ing even Cana­dian news, I’m find­ing that my cur­rent smart­phone solu­tion just isn’t as desir­able as that which I can­not buy. These days, I’m more than happy with my Treo 650, despite Pal­mOS show­ing its age. I expect a Linux-based Treo will fol­low the recent Palm Foleo by the end of the year. How­ever, I don’t actu­ally even use the data side of my smartphone.

That’s right, I have a smart­phone with no web access at all. Why? Well, the 650’s wifi capa­bil­i­ties kind of suck, but it’s usable. How­ever, if I want to use EDGE, I don’t have a lot of options.

Canada has three national mobile phone com­pa­nies: Bell and Telus, which are both CDMA, and Rogers, which uses GSM. (It’s actu­ally four national com­pa­nies, if you include Fido, which is now owned by Rogers, and which uses the Rogers net­work, but has sep­a­rate brand­ing and billing plans, includ­ing things like per-second billing.)

Despite hav­ing an oth­er­wise highly devel­oped telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work, there is a flaw: Canada’s cel­lu­lar com­pa­nies are goug­ing us on data fees. Observe. Sadly, at one point, Fido had a $20/month unlim­ited EDGE plan, as well as a $30/month unlim­ited incoming/outgoing calls plan. Need­less to say, after their acqui­si­tion by Rogers, both of these were qui­etly canceled.

So right now, my want-to-buy device seems to be the Nokia N800 tablet. It’s a tiny 800x480, WiFi/Bluetooth web brows­ing, media-playing, handwriting-recognizing, 8GB-extensible Linux device. There’s no phone, but then again, I already have a phone.

So, who wants to buy me one?

OpenMoko: like the iPhone, only Linuxier!

Like most Mac-owning, right-thinking indi­vid­u­als, I’ve been anx­iously await­ing the Apple iPhone, despite liv­ing in Canada, where mobile data rates are unfor­tu­nate, to say the least. Also, the whole “closed plat­form” thing. That and the “how do you dial this with gloves on?” bit. And the fact that there’s no word of any Cana­dian release date, and there’s only two GSM car­ri­ers in Canada any­way… and they both use the same net­work. But hey, it syncs well with iCal and has a real web browser! I want one already!

So enough about prod­ucts whose chief value is mak­ing its user look cooler and more afflu­ent than non-owners! There’s a far more geeky smart­phone just over the horizon!

Behold, Open­Moko! It’s made of Linux! FIC (not that FIC) has spear­headed the open smart­phone plat­form with their currently-almost-released Neo1973 phone being the first capa­ble of run­ning Open­Moko. The actual hand­held looks… cute, actu­ally. Kind of 70s retro, like a non-translucent clamshell iBook.

The fea­ture­set is impres­sive, with WiFi, AGPS and a 640x480 screen, and includes every­thing we’ve come to expect from a smart­phone, save for a cam­era. Accord­ing to the Open­Moko wiki:

“The 2nd gen­er­a­tion Open­Moko device will be intro­duced at this time. We have some­thing spe­cial in the works, but again, you will help shape this device.”

That sounds like a cam­era to me, since one’s miss­ing, but who knows?

The UI seems some­what dated, which is not alto­gether unheard of with Linux, though it will obvi­ously be skinnable in some way — a fea­ture I’d def­i­nitely want to make use of. I’m not totally impressed by the look of the dialer in par­tic­u­lar. I’d like to see some­thing a bit higher-contrast, personally.

I do like the fact that it uses a sim­i­lar multi-touch panel as the iPhone, but isn’t that patented? Oh. Yes it is — but maybe not by Apple.

Per­son­ally, I find the most impor­tant fea­ture of a phone or PDA is ease of use and how well it can sync with my com­puter. I’m eager to see how well the Open­Moko plat­form does among the early adopter crowd, but for now, I think I’ll be hold­ing off on that preorder.