Category: Hardware

Long-term Backup Solutions 2013

I just realized how much disk space my videos eat up. PhRUG videos have now reached > 100GB, and with the new HD camera I’m expecting to use more space soon – Startup Weekend Manila 5 videos alone ate up 20+ GB and that’s just a 3.5 hour playlist.

So let’s take a look at the current long term backup solutions:

AWS

Cloud based
cheapest is Glacier at ~₱0.40 per GB / month, typical is S3’s ~₱3.20 per GB / month

pros

  • convenient, can be automated, takes no physical space

cons

  • costs pile up as time goes by e.g. ~₱4,800 per TB/yr for glacier, 8x that in S3
  • backup and restore speed limited by bandwidth

Hard Disk Drive

Hard Disk Drive
~₱2.00 per GB, not cheap initially, but cheaper on the long run

pros

  • backup and restore is fast and easy esp if you have an external docking station

cons

  • if not filled, it’s not “around the cost of 5 months of Glacier”
  • not sure how many years a rarely used HDD will last

DVD

recordable DVD
similar cost to HDD ~₱2.00 per GB

pros

  • somewhat convenient, combines the “spend only as you need” of cloud and possible long term storage of HDDs

cons

  • backup process is slow (writing is faster than cloud-based, but switching disks take time)
  • finding quality media that would last years requires trial and error
  • takes up more physical space than HDD when you reach terabyte levels

Tape Drive

Tape Drive
browsing around Newegg tells me they hover around ₱4.00 per GB

pros

  • small, built for long storage life

cons

  • have to find a tape drive to borrow (business opportunity!)
  • backup is slow, though still faster than cloud-based on crappy broadband

Any other thoughts on long-term backup?

Haswell, Laptops, and MBPs

Intel officially released Haswell, it’s latest processor series, at Computex 2013 this week. While there’s not much to say about in terms of performance so desktop users using Sandy/Ivy Bridge processors don’t have a reason to upgrade, the energy efficiency boost in Haswell is poised to shake up the laptop / tablet / all-in-one market.

And it’s quite possible that future MacBook Pros will be negatively affected by this change.

How?

It’s all a matter of battery life.

When going out to buy a laptop, all of us have our own criteria that we rank in terms of importance. Here are some of those criteria:

  • Price
  • Performance
  • OS
  • Build quality
  • Mobility (battery life + weight)
  • Looks
  • Upgradability

For a die-hard Mac user, all of these are no-brainers — the only decision they have to make is whether to get an Air or a Pro. But for the rest of us, these are all valid criteria to think about.

In my case, I don’t really care about the following:

  • OS – OS X, Windows, and Linux are okay. I’ll be dual-booting or using virtual machines for Linux development work anyway.
  • Performance – multimedia laptops (including MBP) share the same narrow performance range, same goes with ultrabooks and Air. This is because all of them use the same processor families.
  • Build quality – it’s not that I don’t care about build quality; it’s just that it’s easy to take this out of the question when you only consider Apple, Asus, and Lenovo.
  • Looks – nowadays, every freaking non-Thinkpad laptop looks like an MBP and every freaking ultrabook looks like an Air

So I’m left with 3 criteria: Price, Mobility, and Upgradability.

When you have to choose between ultrabooks vs Air, it’s more of a matter of what specific specs you want: For the most part, a “stock” Air is cheaper than many ultrabooks, but weaker; while a fully upgraded Air will be more powerful but will be much more expensive than other ultrabooks.

On the other hand, when it comes to multimedia laptops, the decision goes this way:

Apple – really expensive, long battery life, not easily upgradable

Asus, Lenovo – ok price, so-so battery life, upgradable

And that’s with Ivy Bridge.

If laptop manufacturers take full advantage of Haswell’s capabilities (and that’s a big if), it’s going to look like this:

Apple – really expensive, really long battery life, not easily upgradable

Asus, Lenovo – ok price, good battery life, upgradable

This is where I think multimedia PC laptops can close the gap between them and MBPs. Previously, having an 6-hour battery life makes Macs an easy choice for many people on the go. But when every laptop has an 4-5-hour battery life, will your average on-the-go PC user still consider getting an MBP for twice the price just to get twice the battery life?

In other words, the jump between 3 hours of battery life to 6 hours is a big deal as it’s a sweet-spot for working (a person can only be fully productive for about 6 hours a day) but we’ll have to wait and see whether the market thinks going from 6 hours to 12 hours is worth paying the premium.

Fixing broken earphone plugs

Rico’s tweet a couple of days ago reminded me of my drawer full of perfectly fine earphones — the only reason I can’t use them is that they have worn connections on their plug causing only one side to work. (Actually, both sides can work but you have to hold the wire near the plug at exactly the right position. Move a bit and one side loses sound.)

This got me wondering: is it easy to replace a busted earphone plug?

A quick Google search told me the answer was “yes“. This Instructables article on replacing the jack on a pair of headphones only required a cheap replacement plug and some basic tools.

Seeing this as a good opportunity to procrastinate on my current projects, I bought a 3.5 jack at my friendly neighborhood hardware store when I went out to lunch today.

busted jack and new metal jack

Here it is beside the busted earphone jack.

soldering tools

And here are the tools I used:

  • wire cutter – for cutting and stripping the wire
  • pliers – to hold the jack in place while soldering
  • lighter – to burn the wires’ insulators prior to soldering
  • soldering iron and solder – for soldering, obv
  • tissue and water – I can’t find my soldering stand with sponge so I had to improvise the latter; it’s just a quick solder so no need for a stand

As much as the smell of molten solder can be kinda nostalgic, I moved my workspace from my enclosed air-conditioned room to the open living room for safety.

wires soldered to jack

After an hour or two of trial and error, mostly in threading the wires into the pins and testing stability of the connection, here’s the wires soldered to the pins. The actual soldering took only around 5 minutes and I was surprised that it didn’t suck like my soldering in high school.

finished product

And here’s the fully assembled jack. A quick test confirmed that both sides are working properly even when playing around with the wire.

Total cost: P25 for the plug, ~2 hours for research, prep, and assembly.

Quick Tips on Installing Mint on a Laptop

A recent system upgrade gave me a spare SSD for my laptop. I decided to install Linux Mint on it given my good experience on the Ubuntu based OS.

Here are some tips/thoughts related to this install:

Gnome 3 = Full Retard mode

It’s been a while since Ubuntu introduced Unity as the default display manager and it still feels sucky. The mere fact that I can’t change the number of workspaces easily on Mint 12 Gnome was enough to make me format the drive and try again with Mint 11 (which is still Gnome 2).

So I suggest you give Mint 12 a try first for a couple of hours and see if the “simplified” desktop appeals to you. If you’re not satisfied, just go with Mint 11 or Mint 12 KDE.

Lenovo wifi bug also happens on Mint

Remember that post about wifi not working in Ubuntu on my Lenovo laptop?

The same thing happened on my Mint installs. And the same solution still applies.

Changing lockscreen and login background on Mint 11

Remember that post about changing your lock screen on Ubuntu?

While that solution works, there’s also a simpler solution:

$ sudo ln -sf /path/to/another-background.jpg /usr/share/backgrounds/linuxmint/default_background.jpg

Note that, unlike in the old post, this only changes the background and not the whole lock screen.

As for the login background, some people might say that the default background trick will work but unfortunately it doesn’t. The real solution is an old trick from Ubuntu, namely:

$ sudo cp /usr/share/applications/gnome-appearance-properties.desktop /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow

Logout. The appearance window will appear on the login screen and will allow you to change the background. After making your changes and logging in, prevent the window from opening again at login by doing:

$ sudo unlink /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/gnome-appearance-properties.desktop

Learn how to setup a web server pt3: Installing MySQL and PHP apps (e.g. WordPress)

WordPress Installed

Here’s a quick update to this mini-tutorial. Previous parts can be found here and here.

Installing MySQL

Installing MySQL is so simple that I don’t need to hide it behind the cut. The one in the Ubuntu repositories work just fine:

$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.1

Note that you will be asked to enter a root password somewhere in the installation.

To wrap up the installation run

$ sudo mysql_install_db

to initialize the installed server and

$ sudo mysql_secure_installation

to secure it.

In mysql_secure_installation, you’ll be asked for your root password and then you’ll asked if you want to change it. Just enter “n” since there’s no reason to change it this early. Then you’ll be asked if you want to do some things to secure the database which is, of course, what we want to do so just hit Enter for each question to choose the default answer (“Y”).

Continue reading “Learn how to setup a web server pt3: Installing MySQL and PHP apps (e.g. WordPress)”