May 28, 2005 at 04:05 PM
Since I received a request from someone for the Automator Backup Workflow that I mentioned a few posts ago I decided that I would post the Workflow here because I’m sure that there are many others that can benefit from it.
A Few Notes
A few points before I begin explaining the workflow:
- This is in no way a complete backup solution. I’m not even sure that the workflow copies fork files, etc.
- However it is a good solution for backing up music purchased through the iTunes Music Store, as well as backing up documents and whatnot.
- Do not rely on this workflow for backing up applications or even application settings.
- Also, if anything bad happens to any files that you are copying using this workflow, please do not send an email blaming me for screwing up your files. I’m providing this workflow as-is in hopes that it will help a few of you out.
The Directions
And now on to the directions (each step below corresponds to the respective step in the workflow):
- Select the network volume that you want to backup your files to in this step. If you’re backing up to a Samba volume (Windows, Linux, etc.) enter the the path as follows in the dialog: smb://computername/volumename. If you are backing up to an Apple Share enter the path as afp://computername/volumename. You may also specify multiple volumes in this step if needed.
- This step will connect the volumes specified in step 1.
- Select the files/folders that you wish to back up. Add as many as you like.
- Select the destination folder to copy the items to for backup. You will need to mount your backup volumes in order to accomplish this.Note:You will need to repeat steps 3 and 4 for each backup volume that you selected in step 1.
- Select the backup volumes that you have mounted in step 1 to be passed to step 6.
- This step will eject all of your mounted backup volumes that you specified in step 5
I hope this will be of some help to at least a few of you. I use this workflow on a weekly basis to backup my purchased music from iTMS, however for my daily incremental backup needs, I still rely on Deja Vu. Also, if there are any improvements that anyone can suggest, please feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll try to keep up with them and post the revised workflows.
The Goods
Download the Network Backup Workflow for Tiger Automator
Tags: apple, automator, backup, sitenews
May 17, 2005 at 01:05 PM
Mr. Grimes has passed along the musical baton to me, and to avoid being beaten with it, I decided I should get my act together and do my part.
Total Volume of Music Files on My Computer
My Powerbook currently contains 35.09GB of music files (368 artists, 6707 songs, 19.2 days) which only includes full albums and doesn’t include The Girlfriend’s music as well. My complete library is on my local fileserver and is ~40GB.
The Last CD I Bought
It’s been an extremely long time since I bought any music that wasn’t in digital form. The latest one would probably be an album from a friend’s band: BulletProof & Ignorant by The Danny Mainstreet Band.
Song Playing Right Now
Little Sister by Queens of the Stone Age
Five Songs I Listen To A Lot, or Mean A Lot to Me
- Doctor Rock by Motorhead
- Like Suicide by Soundgarden
- Colorblind by Counting Crows
- Change by Blind Melon
- Forever by Kiss
I could list so many more here, but I guess I have to limit myself to five.
5 People to Whom I’m Passing the Baton
Tags: sitenews
May 15, 2005 at 09:05 AM
Dashboard has definitely been one of the most useful features of Tiger for me this far. It is also one of the features that has caused the most controversy since it’s announcement last summer. At that time, many parallels had been drawn between Dashboard and Konfabulator. While there are many similarities between the two, and after having used both, I can definitely say that Dashboard is my favorite.
Dashboard
There have been an huge amount of useful widgets released the Dashboard already, even after Tiger only being in the public’s hands for a few weeks.
¬â€
¬â€
ShortStat Widget
Although this one hasn’t been released just yet, I was lucky enough to be a beta tester for this great widget while the guys over at The Big Noob were developing it. ShortStat Widget integrates with Shaun Inman’sShortStat website stats tracking program. After being a ShortStat-aholic (compulsive website stats checker) for quite a while, this widget is definitely a godsend. It displays the current day’s amount of hits (along with uniques) as well as a short list of recent referrers. Definitely saves me a lot of time during the run of a day.
Along with the ShortStat Widget, there are so many other widgets that I use that save me a tremendous amount of time:
- Apple’s Weather Widget - One of the widgets included with the default installation of Tiger, but this is one I use on a very regular basis. It saves me from opening up Safari and heading to The Weather Network every time I want to see the current forecast, or what’s in store for the coming days.
- Air Traffic Control - displays all of the active wireless networks in the vicinity. Definitely a great tool for those of us that have an Airport-equipped Powerbook or iBook and use public wireless networks on a regular basis.
- TV Tracker - I don’t watch a ton of television, but I hate waiting for the blasted cable listings to scroll through on the cable provider’s listing channel.
- IMDB Widget - For any of you movie fans out there who are forever going to IMDB to look up an actor’s name, director, release date, etc. this widget is definitely for you.
- Flidget - created by Rob Mientjes and Anatoly Papirovsky this widget is a must have for any Flickr user.
There are so many more great widgets that have been released and as time goes on, I’ll continue to add to this list. Think of this post as my personal “Widget Repository”.
Next Up
Next on the agenda, will be a look at Spotlight and Smart Folders.
Tags: sitenews
May 08, 2005 at 11:05 AM
After spending a couple of weeks using Mac OSX Tiger I can honestly say that Apple has definitely made a huge improvement on the operating system; both in speed and the quality of its applications and features.
Since I first installed Tiger on my 1GHz. 15” Powerbook (512MB RAM), I’ve been nothing but impressed by Tiger. I’ve been using my Powerbook both for casual purposes (checking personal email, organizing photos in iPhoto, surfing the web) as well as for professional purposes (web development/graphic design) and I can honestly say that my efficiency has risen in both aspects. The new features that Apple has made available in this release have been a godsend. Over the next few weeks, I plan to comment on some of the aspects of the operating system and how they’ve changed either for the better, or for the worse.
Automator
This little gem I can definitely see coming in very handy for me, as it already has in a couple of cases. One use that really stands out in my mind for Automator is its possible uses as a backup tool. I plan to at some point explore the possibility of setting up a workflow that will fetch MySQL backups from my webserver and save them to a network backup drive. Hopefully I’ll be able to set up a workflow to also grab a copy of my home directory as well.
Another use I’ve already found for Automator is to serve as a local backup tool. I have a workflow set up that will mount a network volume for me copy and some folders over to the network drive. This has worked flawlessly, but I’ve hit a couple of walls in the process that I can’t seem to find solutions to. First of all, when the workflow is complete, I’d like for it to disconnect from the network drive. So far, I’ve not found anyway to do this with Automator’s built-in actions. Secondly, when I copy files to the network drive, I’d like only updated files to be copied (incremental backup). I’ve only been able to “Replace Existing Files”, which is fine for now, but it means about a 3 to 4 GB transfer of files over my network on a nightly basis.
As I begin to brush up on some AppleScript, I think the possibilities for this tool will be endless. Does anyone else have any workflows they’ve put together that they’d like to share? Also, if anyone knows of a way to disconnect from a network drive using Automator, or how to only replace updated files during a Finder copy, please drop me a line, or leave a comment.
Some Handy Links
Below are some handy Automator links that I have been collecting over the last couple of weeks:
Next Up
Next time I’ll be looking at
Dashboard.
Tags: personal
May 01, 2005 at 12:05 PM
This redesign has been a long time coming. CSS Reboot was just the thing I needed to get off my ass and get started on it. Although, I didn’t really begin this design in earnest until this past friday afternoon, and just completed it moments ago.
Not Quite Finished
Although the redesign may look completed, there are still a lot of things that I want to add to the design. Not to mention the fact that my portfolio got ignored during the redesign process. I’ve stripped down my use of plugins throughtout the site, but as I make revisions to the design, a few might creep back.
Down the road, my portfolio will be redesigned, and possibly this blog could be integrated back into the portfolio site, to give both of my sites a more consistent feel. You can tell by the use of colors that I had fully intended for this to happen this time ‘round, but again, that time thing got the best of me.
But I Thought You Were Switching To Symphony
All in due time…I had planned to switch to
Symphony but the development team’s timeline has changed somewhat, and version 1.0 is not quite ready to go. I could have used the beta version of Symphony, but my knowledge of Wordpress is a lot stronger, and with the time constraints I’ve been working under for this design, I needed to go with the more familiar product for the time being.
Symphony is shaping up to be one excellent product, and I can’t wait to begin to use it. I encourage everyone who hasn’t taken a look at the demo site, to pay 21 Degrees a visit and give Symphony a test drive.
Thanks
Just wanted to say a little thank you to
Steve P. Sharpe for all of his testing, troubleshooting, and words of encouragement this morning. Also, kudos to him for the work he did on his
SPS-Archives plugin. The plugin isn’t released just yet, but he was gracious enough to allow me to use it for my
archives section.
Finally Done
Thank goodness this site is finally done, now I can begin to refine all of the things that I ignored during the redesign. They may not be too obvious to most, but there are a few things bugging me that need to be seen to.
Expect to see more frequent posting from me now that this design is completed. I’ve got a lot of posts sitting in “Drafts” that will be finished off and posted here before too long. The first one in the pipe is a little review on Tiger since I picked up my copy at Compusmart yesterday.
Tags: sitenews
