I’ve not posted much for a while, there’s a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff, in draft, I’ve just to organise my notes and get around to posting… if only I could get away from…

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Real back-up is expensive, whether it be media or time. How much you spend on back-up (time or money) should be based on the value of your data, and the cost of the time that the data may be off-line (or the value of that data in some other measure).

When specifying a server for a small company I’ve been told that the price looks expensive. I explain the hardware in the server and it’s cost, and when I get to the back-up device that’s when they choke. No one ever expects their hardware to fail, that is a user’s biggest error. On a long enough time-line hardware always fails. What I say to the bean counters is this: All of your data, details of everything anyone owes you is gone, you could get no income from any debt that you currently have, and you wouldn’t know that you should how do you recover? This back-up device will ensure that that doesn’t happen…. That tends to persuade most people.

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For the majority of us, most of our time spent on a computer (when not surfing) involves entering data of some kind. If you’re one of those ‘graphics’ types, then this won’t affect you, but if you spend time (even a small amount) typing, then this affects you.

Text input isn’t hard, we either spend time learning how to touch-type, or we become very adept hunt-and-peck-ers. It’s managing the text once it’s *in* that it becomes difficult, sure, cut, copy, and paste are simple to do, but what about that bulleted list, where you need to indent a few lines again because you realise that they could have their own section? If you select the lines and hit the tab then all the text disappears and is replaced by a tab! Really helpful.

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What a trial it is setting up blogging software, especially if you want to host it yourself. Sure, you can have it hosted elsewhere, but you’re either restricted on setup and configuration, or you have to pay. I’m not technically illiterate, and I have the hardware to hand, so I wanted to host the blog myself. Read more…