My New Years Resolutions

Hey everyone, I thought I would share some of my New Years resolutions with you guys to spark some discussion and to hold myself accountable to an extent by sharing them publicly.  I’ll start off with the tech related ones and then go from there.  After reading over my resolutions, feel free to drop by the forums and share yours!

Resolution Number One:  Backing Up My Data – aka the I Really, Really, Need to Do This Resolution!

After losing years of photos, videos, and writing (the most important thing!) due to an unfortunate formating accident on my external backup drive (while my system drive also got wiped to reinstall Windows a few days prior and had yet to have the backed up files transferred back to it! D’oh!!), you would think that I would have learned my lesson and had 9 different copies of every files spread across the world and even a backup drive strapped to a probe on its way to Mars .  Unfortunately, my backup strategy is more talk than walk.  I have definitely started backup up more, but my backup solution could use a lot more work.

Here’s my backup plan (some of which I am already doing so I’m halfway there!):

Locally and On Site:

• Backing up files to 2 TB internal drive
• Making daily (or weekly?) copies from backup drive to external WD Passport drive
• Copy important documents and photos to laptop by using Dropbox

By keeping my important files synced across multiple computers using Dropbox, I’ll be protected from a drive failure.  Further, by making regular backups to an external drive that I normally keep un plugged, if the house catches on fire (eek, hopefully not!), it will be the one thing I’ll run and grab before turning into a balcony ninja to get outside (i kid, i kid).

Off Site and Physical:

• Using two WD Mybook drives (ironically, I installed a Seagate drive in one lol), I’ll make a full backup to one, then take it to my mom’s house.  Then, whenever I go back, I’ll make a full backup to the other external drive and then take that one with me and switch it out with the first one.

By doing this, I’ll have something offsite that also will not take ages to download from Internet backups.  Speaking of the Internet:

Internet / Cloud Storage:

There are quite a few online cloud storage providers that will happily take money to allow you cloud-based storage.  Some of the popular companies are Amazon, Carbonite, and Mozy (though I haven’t heard much about Mozy in a long time to be honest).  I mentioned Dropbox, and that is also a contenteder.  The thing is, I really don’t want to have to pay and would prefer a free service even if that means I can’t store everything on the Internet.  Right now I have a lot of stuff scattered about on various sites.  For example, I have documents stored on Google Docs and Adobe’s servers, photos on Flickr, Picassa, and my own website.  Further, I have music on Google Music and Amazon’s Cloud Player.  Finally, I have a conglomeration of stuff sitting on my Windows Live Skydrive.  Skydrive and a flash drive really saved my ass when I lost my data as most of it (except my writing ) was on the flash drive and on Skydrive.  Thanks Microsoft!

For my online/cloud storage solution, I plan to:

• Go through and find/catalog what I currently have stored where on the various cloud services
• With the help of SDExplorer extension, make regular backups of all my documents and photos to Microsoft’s Skydrive service.
• Dropbox, as mentioned above will also serve as a cloud backup for my really important documents
• Decide on one or two online services and backup all my photos to them, instead of having them scattered throughout a bunch of sites.

There are some caveats and restrictions with the free services that I’m using.  Namely, Dropbox has tight storage restrictions (2GB for the free tier, if you are a student and refer people you can get a bit more storage, however) and Skydrive has an individual file size restriction of 50 MB.  Fortunately, that 50 MB per file restriction wont really affect me, and the generous 25 GB of total storage will easily hold all my photos and documents off site.  If you do have files that are greater than 50 MB, you can get around the restriction by using a program like WinRAR to compress and split them into 50 MB (or less) pieces, and then upload all the individual pieces .

What do you guys think about my backup strategy, anything you would change or improve?

Resolution 2: Write More – aka the “I Need More Time In The Day” Resolution:

As you have likely noticed, I’ve been a busy person lately and the site has suffered as a result in the form of new articles!  Especially since my time is split between PC Perspective and Verry Technical, and I’ve had little time to write for either.  Next week is going to be the busiest week of the year over at PC Perspective being as it’s CES 2012, or the Consumer Electronics Show!  CES has yet to even begin and I’ve already written a bunch of CES news articles (because of CES leaks- I guess they just couldn’t wait!) for PC Perspective!

I’m hoping to continue taking night or afternoon classes school wise this semester so that I can write during the day.  I’m currently working on managing my time effectively.  Therefore, the steps to my resolution are as follows:

• Get more organized…  Wait, let me restate that for myself:  Get More Organized!
• Allocate certain hours during the day that are solely for writing.
• Further, break down time between PC Perspective and Verry Technical, say write for one for an hour, then switch over.
• Stay on schedule

It is not necessarily that my desk area is trashed and I can’t find anything, just that I tend to get distracted or let things interrupt me.  If I can get a strict(er) schedule going where I have a certain range of time in the day where I just write, I think I’ll be a lot better off in that respect.  I think this resolution is definitely something do-able and I look forward to writing more!

Resolution 3: Get Fit!

Need Moar muscle  Check back in a couple of weeks

My friend Ryan is going to be running in a marathon this spring and that has motivated me to also start working out more than I do now.  Once I find me some comfortable running shoes, I plan to start running more and lifting more weights.  Another friend of mine has recommended the Stronglifts 5×5 program and I’m also considering giving that a go.  Anyone have any experience with that workout routine?

Hmm.. Well, that’s it for my New Years Resolutions!  What are yours?