Matthew Botos

Merle commented that my comptuer problem had reminded her to do her own backups, so I thought I’d share my methods:

My Linux and Windows machines use rsync and cwrsync to backup important files to one other each night. For “off-site” backup, I copy these to my half-empty iPod about once a month. There’s already a slick solution to this for Mac which provides a good starting point.

Having all your files unencrypted on a highly portable device isn’t the best security, so I looked for an encryption solution and found TrueCrypt. One look at the user manual convinced me I was in the right place: it covers plausible deniability, concealing one encrypted filesystem within another, and even discusses all the algorithms it uses. Plus it’s open source.

I soon learned that Windows iPods are FAT32 formatted, and thus subject to the 4 GB file size limit. TrueCrypt writes it’s encrypted filesystem as a regular file, so it took 2 to make enough space. After that, I just had to script up a few rsync commands to dump the backups of both my machines to the iPod. The script also mounts and unmounts the encrypted filesystems, so all it needs now is to be automatically kicked off whenever the iPod is connected.

It took the better part of a week, but my computer has finally recovered from a scrambled partition. All my data is intact, though I was very happy to have a complete backup of everything that mattered. The experience, in addition to convincing me never to use a partition editor on anything but a blank drive, also made me think a bit more about data portability. Without another Linux system, some of my contacts and passwords still wouldn’t have been accessible. Exporting custom data to a common format would be a good addition to any backup scheme.

An overnight storm left the air cool and raindrops on my flowers for a few early morning photos. Maria and I then spent the day exploring Wheaton Village. Their museum chronicles the history of glass working in New Jersey with an endless array of pieces. They even have a selection of glass electrical insulators invented by none other than Ezra Cornell!

For lunch we were joined by some very friendly and sometimes aggressive geese. The real highlight, though, was watching the glassblowers and potters in action and getting to talk to them a bit about their craft. From there, it was a quick jaunt through a quick storm to Ocean City for a walk on the beach and dipping our toes in the water.

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Following a partition resize gone awry, my Linux box has gone on a marathon 4-day fsck (disk repair) run. It still hasn’t recovered, and at this point I’m losing faith. My faith has been restored in two other things, though: regular backups and multi-platform open source software.

Retreating to the Windows machine that primarily runs iTunes, it’s been straightforward to reuse my Firefox and Thunderbird profiles. OpenOffice will happily read my financial spreadsheets, and the alpha of Sunbird even manages to open most of my Evolution iCalendar file.

Mike Mullane’s Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut is a book that actually does live up to its billing: a revealing, unfliching, often hilarious look at the life of a shuttle astronaut. He only occasionally delves into the technology of the program, instead focusing on much more interesting interpersonal relationships. The contrasts between military and civilian astronauts, their struggles with NASA management, and the influence of early political correctness are all intriguing. Against this backdrop, he traces the ups and downs of astronaut life from mission assignments to the unbelievably complicated process of using the space toilet.

We spent Mother’s Day at Longwood Gardens, enjoying the orchid show and other indoor gardens amidst passing thunderstorms. The orchids were as beautiful and varied as they were plentiful. There were plenty of other things to see as well, though it still felt like we only had time for a small part of the garden. In a humorous aside, Catherine coined a new term for the pit zips on my raincoat: tickle access.

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Both Fark and Digg picked up this Boston Globe article on college swim tests and the handful of MIT graduates who still have to pass it in order to graduate. As a Cornell alumni, I have to weigh in that we, too, had a swim test. You passed it your first week as a freshman or you got enrolled in a swim class to fulfill the physical education requirement.

It’s a shame that only 14% of colleges still have such a requirement and the number is dropping. The Earth’s surface is over 70% water, and if you believe in global warming, that number is only going to increase.

I’ve realized recently that I interact with people on an almost purely “transactional” basis, and therefore fully identified with Philip Greenspun’s comparison of city and village life from Travels with Samantha:

A fundamental difference between village life and city life is that primary relationships are replaced with functional relationships. In the village you buy your food from Bob, whom you’ve known since childhood, who happens to be working in the supermarket. In the city you buy your food from a supermarket clerk whom you could see every day and never learn his name. Minneapolitans haven’t understood this. When you walk into a store or a restaurant, people say hello to you, unlike in Boston, where they’d wait for you to approach them and attempt to transact business. Here you relate as people first, as consumer and vendor second.

ER has a running plot involving the strife and genocide in Darfur, which Merle noted seemed to be the extent of its media coverage. The Wall Street Journal has run a few pieces on it, including their opinion of this week’s peace agreement. They acutely summarized the past international response, noting the limited efforts from African, Arab, and Eurpoean governments before addressing our own:

This leaves the United States, the only country in the world with the capability and, potentially, the will to aid Darfuris and every other group threatened with genocide or brutal oppression. President Bush has certainly been engaged with the crisis in Darfur, more so than any of his alleged moral betters in places such as France and Sweden. Yet having endured so much opprobrium and resistance to his last two acts of international hygiene — the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq — it’s no wonder he’s reluctant to carry another burden, particularly when American interests are not directly at stake. There’s a lesson here for all of those liberal internationalists who now demand the Administration “do something” in Darfur: If you want to stop genocide, don’t shackle the world’s only policeman.

If you have a phone with a date and time display hooked up to your VOIP line, it may be syncing to the timestamp on incoming caller ID messages. This has been working fine on mine, only the time was Pacific instead of Eastern!

Packet8 provides a voicemail time option on their web page, but caller ID timezone is controlled on your local VOIP gateway/router. To change it:

1. Connect to the router with a browser
2. Enter the password (default “admin” on the BPG510)
3. Change the timezone under System > Localization
4. Change the password under System > Administration while you’re at it

Finally, for the change to take effect, you may have to reboot the device and wait for an incoming call to resync.