In honour of World Backup Day, I am running a backup on my desktop – it’s been far too long – using my purpose built home file server and a sexy little program called “Syncrify“.

At some point, I hope to actually finish the tutorial I’ve written on setting up a home backup server. For now though, read Part One which details building the machine itself.

Until then, I thoroughly recommend you backup your own machine. Its easy to do, there’s many low tech options:

• Copy your documents and images onto a portable hard drive.
• Burn them onto a few DVDs.
• Or, if they are less than 2Gig total, sign up to Dropbox, and put them there, accessible on all your computers.

Remember guys, it takes a few minutes each week/month/year (if you are as useless as me), but can save a world of heartache!

Had fun designing this, a pretty minimalist portfolio site, lots of lovely big photos of Dan looking awesome/moronic. Heads up to:

• JPlayer: the HTML5 mp3 player (with Flash fallback).
• Cicle: the (free) font for the navigation and titles.
• Andy Colthart: the great photography (shot in my mate Dave‘s flat)

Anyway, check it out at WhatsTheStorey.com, and if you need a guitarist/producer/dad joke teller, give Dan a shout.

And, no, before you ask, I didn’t beat the tide.

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

Click on that, and see the whole mountain range by our town. Oooh!

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

I didn’t get a photo today, so here’s one I took earlier

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

Can you see me in the mirror?

The giraffe is looking at me!!!!

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

All these pictures are pretty hi res, so click on them to see a bigger one
Can you see the baboons on the rocks in this one. They look far away, but at points they were only about 50 metres away. Pretty scary, but luckily I had a stick!

If I’m honest, I was pretty happy to be taking this photo, and not standing on a 20 foot rock on the edge of a cliff in a strong wind.

Look at the treeseys!

This is where the cross used to be, but some vandals destroyed it it blew over in a storm. Sad eh? Used to look over the whole town. Was beautiful, and lit up at night.

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

This is out of a window in Grant’s house. I love our camera!

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

I don’t even remember what day I took this, but aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

Clearly, I am a truly masterful sewing maiden!

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

Taking photos for the Freedom website – unfortunately, my camera changed its settings, and I didn’t realise. So I have a load of photos in the smallest size, on the worst quality settings. Looks okay though, I suppose….

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

You gotta click that one, and look at the big version. I took 5 photos of my two mates jumping, with our Pentax. I was perched on an adjacent rock, hence the good angle. I then stitched the photos together manually. Pretty cool, eh?

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

Look at that ball, in mid air. Very proud of myself!

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

You LOVE it! x

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

This is where we are going camping – in the tree bit just below the mountain, so there is wood for a fire to cook our food.

Don’t look at the clouds – I’m sure that can’t mean anything bad, and its not like there have been huge thunderstorms most nights since I arrived…

x

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

I’m going to miss everyone so much

The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.

Let’s face it, this is a bad photo. I’ve just finished a long drive, and I feel that excuses me fully. In my right hand, you can see… A Mad Caddies Hot Sauce bottle (you can just make out the blurred ‘Hot Sauce’ on the side). If you want some, check it out here. It was part of my Christmas present delivery for Nick that just arrived! Bed now!