I was backing up our SVN repositories to DVD a while ago and wrote an entry on our wiki detailing how I’d done it. Thinking this is the kind of thing people will have to do at some point I thought it could be useful to share.
The method I’ve used is to create a single tar file of everything you’re looking to backup and then split that file into chunks which fit onto a single DVD.
Install GNU Core Utilities
Before we start, you’re going to need gsplit installed. This comes as part of the GNU Core Utilities package, so you can either download it from there or use your favourite package management software.
You can either build from source,
wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-6.9.tar.gz
tar xzvf coreutils-6.9.tar.gz
cd coreutils-6.9
./configure
make && make install
Or use a package management tool like MacPorts.
sudo port install coreutils
Split your content into chunks
Put all the files you want to backup into one folder, create the tar achive and then split that into chunks.
mkdir archive
# … add some content to the archive/ folder …
cd archive
tar -cvf archive.tar *
gsplit -b4500m archive.tar
After you’ve burned each generated file to a DVD, delete both those and the source archive.tar file as they’ll be using quite a lot of space on your drive.
Restoring
Should the worst happen and you need to get your content back, copy all the files from across your DVDs to a folder on your machine and run the following.
cat x* > archive.tar
tar -xvf archive.tar
I’ve always been on the lookout for a small application to remind me to take regular breaks from my computer, as it’s easy to get totally involved in what you’re doing and lose track of time.
The few I’ve found in the past have always had their problems, from terrible interfaces to being overly intrusive – think alarm calls and locking the computer. Thankfully I’ve found the perfect app for the task – AntiRSI.
As well as reminding you to take breaks, it’s small, unobtrusive and highly configurable. As an added bonus it even takes idle time into account so if you’ve told it you want to take 5 minute breaks each hour and leave the machine idle, the counter for your next break will adjust appropriately, clever!
I’ve seen Ladytron once before, about four or five years ago at the GUU and it was one of my most disappointing gigs. Terrible performance, restless crowd and a fire alarm going off midway through their set that dumped us all outside in the rain.
The reason I’ve given them another chance was that after years of promise they’ve finally delivered an album that proved they were capable of more than just the occasional decent song. The album, Velocifero, may not be perfect but it’s one of the best from what’s been a disappointing year for music.
Support was from the fantastic shoegaze/pop band Asobi Seksu, whose album Citrus I’ve been enjoying for what seems like forever. Thanks to the London trains running behind we only caught their closing song, but it made a big impression with loads of chaotic noise. It gave some extra life and kick to music that can occasionally sound lightweight and I’ll definitely be going to see a full gig by them when I get the chance.
Ladytron came on about half an hour later and things didn’t start well with the vocals being so low in the mix that they were – unintentionally – unintelligble. This carried on for the first three or four songs until someone finally realised and brought the drums down to a reasonable level. Unfortunately it was too little too late and from where I was standing the band had already lost the crowd.
That’s not to say there weren’t any highlights, but they were few and far between. Old favourite Seventeen was good and a few of the newer songs towards the end of their set were also decent, but it wasn’t enough to salvage what on reflection was a pretty awful gig.
In collaboration with Mister, I’m happy to announce the launch of things we have found, a place for us to share our reactions and insights to living in Glasgow via photography.
While it’s just the two of us getting things rolling, we hope to grow the site by adding fellow contributors from around the world to create a collective visual journal of the interesting and bizarre.
I pushed an update to the Mailbuild gem this morning in response to a bug report from Michael Larocque, who found it wasn’t properly defaulting to the first List ID if none was specified explicitly.
Full details can be found in the commit on the github mirror.
