The Public Wiki section on this domain

ome months ago I decided that only urgent messages are worth the use of E-mail. Somehow I just got fed up, even though I was spam-free.

A couple of days ago I took what I hope to be a step towards life without E-mail. I set up a Wiki where most of my correspondence will take place. Wikis are a collection of pages where content is editable by everyone, given access privileges of course. Why not use forums or bulletin boards for rapid communication? Here is a short comparison:

*Dependent on the package

This photo (direct link) has got to be seen for its enormous size to be comprehended. Zooming appears almost infinite, without loss in quality. The site provides the tools for viewing and interacting with the data in real time.

If this photo were printed, it would measure 6.67 m by 2.67 m (300 dpi). The photograph shows Delft and its surroundings in the autumn of 2004.

On the right: my illustration of the extent of magnification

ardware and software support for multi-head displays continues to improve. In practical terms, more and more computers under a wide variety of platforms allow you to extend your workspace (Desktop) to additional monitors. Most people do not take advantage of this convenient extension. Some even prefer to stick to virtual desktops (switching between several desktops within a single monitor), yet it is important to remember that what is out of sight is out of mind. With a large workspace, you need never minimise an application.

Next time you invest in a new workstation, ask the salesman about dual-head support. Going to the extreme, can anyone argue that the individual below does not enjoy playing Quake?

Picture from PlanetQuake

Do you happen to view your bank statements on-line? Long process, is it not? It can be automated with this huge library of Perl scripts for many different banks around the world. A click or two can reveal your balance, transactions, etc.

The BBC takes a glimpse at Sony’s new portable MP3 players, which somehow imitate the iPod shuffle.

Unlike hard disk-based players, (Sony’s) flash devices hold fewer songs, using solid state memory rather than a disk.

The Sony line-up includes MP3 players which hold a similar number of songs to the iPod shuffle – about 250 – but the players have much longer battery life.

The home of the Walkman finally realised the importance of this entertainment niche.

Regardless of your operating system, good practice is to put recently added/changed files in a container (let us call it transfer). Files should be accumulated in transfer until the next backup cycle. Once a backup of that container is obtained, files can finally be moved appropriately to their destined directory. The notes that follow deal with a method of automatically backing up transfer using a server or another hard-drive. It also places emphasis on back-up of Web sites — a task which can become closely-related.

Note: instructions are Linux/Mac-specific, but can be adapted to Windows

Until recently, I used to get gunzipped tar archives of all my sites from CPanel. I did this every morning. Some weeks ago I automated part of the process by getting more crucial (and frequently-changing) pages and storing them remotely. It all works as follows:

Set up a set of batch scripts (let us call them dummy1..2) which include the following commands:


cd /home/roy/Main/Transfer_Archives/Sites/Roy/
wget -r -l1 -t1 -N -np -erobots=off http://schestowitz.com/


If you are not sure what the latter is doing, type in man wget and read the documentation. Then, set up cron jobs which include the following tasks:

Get local copies of important Web pages (see above)
38 23 * * * /home/roy/Main/Transfer_Archives/Sites/dummy1
38 23 * * * /home/roy/Main/Transfer_Archives/Sites/dummy2
...
Compress all the pages
50 23 * * * tar czvf /home/roy/Main/Transfer_Archives/www-`date +%Y-%m-%d`.tar.gz /home/roy/Main/Transfer_Archives/Sites
Make a copy of compressed pages
58 23 * * * cp -rf /home/roy/Main/Transfer_Archives/ /home/server2/transfer/roy


The last line puts a copy on the SAN, just to be 100% covered. Such scripts allow you to sleep while your sites/files are being backed up.

Google Desktop was made public less than a day ago. There is now a free 700k download for Windows.

Quoting the site, here is what Google Desktop offers:

• Find your email, files, media, web history and chats instantly
• View web pages you’ve seen, even when you’re not online
• New! Search directly from your desktop with the deskbar