Holding Back is Painful...

I always wonder what exactly I wanna write about on this blog and I keep thinking about all my interests and can't seem to stick to one. You've seen me write about photography, Christianity, technology, applications, and all sorts of non-sequitor stuff about life. I really dunno where to go with this blog. I was thinking of just keeping it random but I dunno how random I could possible be. Not to mention it makes it hard for adsense to figure out what ads to put.

Anyway, it's the new year so I figure I should make a new year's resolution. Unfortunately, its really hard and really painful. You see, this year, I'm actually thinking of holding back on the buying of gadgetry and niceties that make my life so "techy." As much as I love them and want to use them and find them useful, they really are expensive little trinkets. But even realizing this, it is really hard just to think "no, i don't need it." I don't mean this as in a life or death or even a social status way, I think of this "i don't need" thing on a self satisfying level. Yes, my hobby is merely self-gratuitous and tops the list as one of the most ego-centric things I do. Even so, although I know how iniquitous and horrible and maybe even corrupting thing it is, it is a really hard new year's resolution not to even think of getting things. Just to name off a few things I was actually thinking of getting this year:

more RAM for my computer
upgrading my dSLR to an Olympus E30 (which is like 1000 bucks)
a nice pair of noise-cancelling headphones
building a new computer
and so on....

Yeah, I'm screwed, but I'll still try. (This post probably didn't sound convincing).

Back Up!

Just yesterday, one of my friends' laptop hard drive broke and completely lost it. He wasn't exactly the most tech-savy dude and had a lot of important files on there including pictures, reports, and bank account numbers (which I NEVER recommend you place on your compy alone). Being the not-so-tech-smart man that he is, which I don't blame him for, he didn't even think of buying an external drive or even backing up his stuff on a disk. In fact, he thought that laptops were rock solid and were like desktops, never failing unless you kicked it really, really, really hard.

I just hope that you're never in this situation. To make sure that you don't get yourself in this situation, I reccommend you backup your stuff on disks AND on an external hard drive. why? Becuase I'd hate to say this but laptops have a half life of somewhere between 2-3 years unless you bought some crazy thinkpad (i'm guilty of this, btw) or just never take your laptop off your desk.

Now if you're thinking, hard drives and discs cost money, isn't there an alternative? Well, you're in luck cuz there are a few solutions out there. There is one drawback though, it'll take more time to use it and it doesn't give you much space to work with. For the past few days, I've been ranting on about dropbox which gives you 2 gigs of free online storage. Its a great way to back up your files. On top of that, theres sky drive which also gives out storage. If you're willing to pay just a little cash, carbonite is a really good backup place to put all your stuff. Other things your could try is e-mailing yourself in gmail but thats a real hassle. Another way to do it is if you already have another computer. Then all you gotta do is just transfer the files between the computers (again, you can use dropbox).

Important!!! you don't delete the file off your computer after you've backed it up. The purpose is to have TWO copies of the file in TWO different places so if one goes bad, you have another.

Back from Retreat! More Dropbox lovin'

So I just got back from my church's winter retreat where we all go up to a secluded place, devoid of all distractions and do church stuff (I'm assuming most of my readers don't care much about what I personally did there). Anyway, being the photographing lover that I am, I obviously brought all my camera gear and took probably over 1,000 photos. Unfortunately, facebook doesn't let me upload more than 200 pics at a time, which I think is super duper lame.

I know most of you are probably thinking, why anyone might need to upload more than 200 photos at once, well, I do, so there. Anyway, I came back, found out about the lame limit, and then looked to my dropbox! apparently, if you sync your photos folder, dropbox will actually create a photo album for you so that you can share with all your friends. I find that to be such a neat feature. Not only that, unlike facebook, people can actually get the whole picture and not some lame compressed image. That way, they don't need to keep asking me for the 'actual' photo.

If you really wanna know what I mean, try it out for yourself!