Now that ownCloud has a desktop syncing client, creating reduntant local/remote file systems is easier than ever!

But, perhaps now that you've gotten a tast of backups and redundancy you're reminded that your web servers, your Mac, your EC2 (to a local copy of course) instances and etc. don't have an "ownCloud" or drop box to backup to.

Local servers should be backed up remotely, and remote servers should be backed up locally. Redundancy is your friend in case Amazon explodes or your house catches on fire...you're good to go!

S3

For this setup we're going to assume that Amazon is indeed going to be fairly stable and use their s3 file storage system. It's cheap, reliable and easy to work with.

rsync

If backups are old hat (but perhaps s3 isn't) then you're familiar with rsync.  rsync is a great command line tool which makes incremental and smart synchronization between file systems on unix machines (and there's some windows ports).

But rsync doesn't work directly with s3 sad...

duplicity

Luckily, these smart guys made an rsync like tool which DOES work with s3 (and a host of other file storage services). http://duplicity.nongnu.org/

Using this guide http://icelab.com.au/articles/easy-server-backups-to-amazon-s3-with-duplicity/ we can see that it's quite easy to create a crontabbed backup script.

Here's the code I ended up using for my script.

#!/bin/bash

export PASSPHRASE=your_gpg_passphrase
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your_s3_access_key
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your_s3_secret

export MYSQL_PASSWORD=your_mysql_password

mysqldump -h localhost -u backup_user -p${MYSQL_PASSWORD} --all-databases | gzip > /var/dbdumps/AllDB.sql


duplicity --include /var/www --include /home/usernames --include /var/dbdumps --exclude "**" --full-if-older-than 30D / s3+http://com.mycorp.myhost.backup

Crontab

Then after making it exectuable I added a line to my crontab (crontab -e)

0 0 * * * /path/to/backupScript.sh > /path/to/backupScript.sh.out


and bam... every night we have a backup to my s3, and every 30 days I get a full backup.

I'll report an exact cost... but whatever the cost my mind is now at rest, and that's worth a considerable amount!

Remote to Local

Last supposing you have some remote servers that you want to synchronize locally simply modify script to use ssh, scp or sftp:

duplicity --include /var/www --include /home/usernames --include /var/dbdumps --exclude "**" --full-if-older-than 30D / sftp://username@localaddress/location

That's easy!

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While DropBox is a great service, it's not free past 2GB and it's also prone to security flaws.  Simply put, when you give your data to a 3rd party service you increase your risk of compromise.

Owncloud is not quite as easy to setup as DropBox, but given their consistent development it wont be long.  In the mean time follow the steps below to achieve a proprietary DropBox service hosted by you (or a friend).

1. Download and Install ownCloud file server / storage on your Apache or windows server (very simple to setup).
2. Find a webDav client that syncs to a local folder.  On Mac CyberDuck works great, and it's also available on Windows.  Android has a few webDav apps, as does iPhone.
3. CyberDuck or the like wont run in the background so either create a startup script to get it going, do it manually, or wait until the ownCloud Desktop plugin is released.
4. As a bonus, the web interface to ownCloud includes a media player (and I imagine a video player might be forthcomning), giving one the ability to carry their media library with them.

Enjoy!

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I wrote the following scripts (fresnelSim.r and reflective_fresnel.r) in R to help calculate what angles and distances to place the reflecting mirrors at given a Focal length and mirror size.  And I made a nice screen cast to help explain it!

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The tea party wants to slash government spending and lower taxes.  Thankfully I have some good ideas that even the leftest of the liberals can agree with to help the tea party along in their quest.  However, I say, why stop with government?  Let's cut spending across the nation and with all the money we save lets spend time investing in our communities and fun!

Goats and Sheep for lawn mowers!

Instead of paying for gas and labor to mow the lawn why not let our fuzzy friends do the work for free?

Furthermore, the dung would fertilize and build the soil requiring less water to keep it green.

And while we're at it, how about these low tech low cost solutions?

• White Roofs to lower building cooling costs in the summer.
• Solar Hot water heaters to reduce heating costs not only of water, but the building as well.

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Notes on construction:  cost about $50.

• Pump $30
• Various Plumbing $15
• Gravel Free... but going to get it was a pain
• Lumber and cinder blocks, $5 from Resource 2000

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The green movement is often chiefly characterized by solar panels, CFL's and Global Warming.  But it's so much more!  I've been working with hydroponics recently and have started reading a great online magazine, Urban Garden Magazine.

This article is a great summary of what being green should stand for, with economic theory to support itself as well!

The interesting thing about local, grain-based currencies was that they lost value over time. The people at the grain store had to be paid, and a certain amount of grain was lost to rain or rodents. So every year, the money would be worth less. This encouraged people to spend it rather than save it. And they did. Late Middle Ages workers were paid more for less work time than at any point in history. Women were taller in England in that era than they are today—an indication of their relative health. People did preventative maintenance on their equipment, and invested in innovation. There was so much extra money looking for productive investment, that people built cathedrals. The great cathedrals of Europe were not paid for with money from the Vatican; they were local investments, made by small towns looking for ways to share their prosperity with future generations by creating tourist attractions.

And you thought being green meant you could just get new light bulbs

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Is the economic reality we want for ourselves really one in which a few select folks get all of the big opportunities and then hire us little folks to make their dreams come true?

Mine isn't. I want to work with, amongst, and against other thriving and competent creative, driven and smart people. I want to be rewarded for my ingenuity and dedication, and also to be able to extend grace and mercy to those who have fallen behind.

I don't want trickle down economics, I want cell division economics. Wealth is not a zero sum game... properly invested wealth begets wealth.

And ultimately freedom is the most wealth we can have... how can freedom be trickled down? Freedom economic, mental and spiritual must be given from one person to another, one generation to the next. It's not to be hoarded or lorded over others, but given freely so that one's own freedom and wealth are increased all the more.

Which is better? To be free amongst slaves? Or to be free amongst peers?

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Leisure is the basis of culture.... and happens to be one of the best works of philosophy in the 20th century. In it, Josef Piper says that what we spend our non-work time on is what shapes our social, spiritual, and economic structures.

I happened across this page at the Bureau of Labor Statistics today (yes yes, I know, strange huh...) and was fascinated by the portrait of America that it painted ala Josef Piper.

For all the many hours, words and thought spent on cultural analysis by the amateur and paid professional, the Preacher and the Politico, there can't be a better resource to encapsulate American culture.

From, the BLS here's what I've learned about my people (and myself):

• There is nearly 2 times as much free time in a day as work time.
• We are lonely, but don't know it... we spend about 3 times as much time in front of the TV as we do with friends.
• We know that education is the key to greater freedom, greater income and probably greater happiness... and yet we spend nearly 30 times as much time zoned out in front of a TV as we do engaged in reading material[1].
• We love athletes, covet their bodies and worship the sexuality and heroism they represent... but can only manage to spend about 15 minutes a day achieving such perfection.
• Flexibility and freedom with work happens in greater degrees with more education.
• Men work a bit more in the office, Women work a bit more at home... but both work a lot at the office and at home.

Imagine what our culture could be like if we exchanged a bit of our TV fanaticism with reading while running/biking at the gym.  If Friends the TV show was replaced with real friends.  And if a love of wisdom through reading, education, conversation and formal training were to nudge into our work and leisure lives replacing toil with meaningful work.

TV is our people's major leisure activity and the love of  watching it is also the basis for our culture... which is, isolation from community and self, ignorance and disengagement.   And unless we actually do something about it the consequences will continue to be:

• Less freedom and flexibility with work
• More obesity, lower quality of life, earlier death
• Less wealth
• Less meaningful civic and social activities

So yeah... anyone join me in an anti-TV revolution?  (Don't worry...you don't have to throw your TV out the window, you simply have to turn it off every now and then.)

1. Not saying that TV can't be educational, but that most education happens when actively engaged in the subject... reading is a great way to get that egagement

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Do you double down in blackjack ... or always play the same bet?

Does the thought of losing a lover cause you to swear off love, or to love more intensely?

Now for a moment imagine a world with a certain future.

You will work in the same job for the rest of your life.

It's always temperate.  There are exactly 12 hours of sun a day.

Everyone has a job and no one needs your charity.

You will get married, but never be in love... and you'll die of a heart attack before your spouse does.

Nobody does anything remarkable... in fact remarkable isn't a term anyone knows... it's more like expectable.

Give me uncertainty any day.  Even if I'm doomed to a boring life, the shear possibility that it wont be boring is what wakes me up in the morning.

Uncertainty is not the problem, inability to imagine solutions to daunting challenges is.

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"I've been listening to these tea-party guys and it makes perfect sense!" he says.

"The problem is, you've been sucking on the teat of the company cow for far too long.  Your lack of efficiency is the result of being paid too much with no competition.  You Mr. Greentheo have gotten accustomed to being a tyrant in your own corner of our company and today it stops!"

Would being paid less inspire you to work more efficiently?

Why should we expect that the government could keep providing the same services, the same benefits if we stopped funding it?

No, the sad truth is that the same theories that produced one of the scariest global financial crisises in history are now telling us that doing away with government and allowing the free market to rule instead will lead to greater general prosperity.

Is it not worrisome that the prevailing wisdom of our sage philosophers is that all you need to know you learned in Kindergarten and that big business and the free market economy has our best interests in mind?

You can do more with less for a time, and certainly we are all called upon to do so at various points in our lives.

But for the long term, growth comes when you do more with more.   America needs to invest in the things that will produce general prosperity, particularly health, education, infrastructure and science.  To do so we need properly funded government run by smart and hard working people who are paid well for their time.

If we need further proof we have only to look at the free market itself... could you produce above and beyond what you currently do if you and your coworkers budget were cut in half?  How much more could you produce if your budget were doubled?

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