I’ve been as busy as ever these past few weeks but I have been slowly making progress on all my little projects. Yesterday Apple posted a few 160GB iPod Classics to the refurb site so I scooped one up. Should be here next week. When I bought I considered also getting an apple dock but at $50 it doesn’t seem worth it for my needs. I did pickup one of the JBL On Stage II speakers. It’s kinda pricy at $129 but it gets great reviews and sounds much bigger then it is. I’ll review it when I’ve gotten a chance to test it out. It’s a nice device if you have an iPod, but it also has a 1/8″ jack on the back so you can also use it as computer speakers. Multi-tasking is key in my book.
I’ve begun using Amazon’s S3 service by way of Jungle Disk. Very cool service. Basically, Amazon is offering unlimited storage that is pay as you go. You get a small charge per stored GB ($0.15) and a small charge per transfered GB ($0.10). I’m testing the service with about 30GB of image files and I expect my monthly bill to be below $10. Amazon offers a simple to use pricing tool to help you figure out the cost. If it works out well I’ll expand it’s use to cover my VMs and other important data as well. Can you have too may backups?
Jungle Disk is a basically a client for S3. Amazon provides the tools for data transfer and access but doesn’t offer any way to directly access the data. Jungle Disk, among other provides, does. What I like about Jungle Disk is that it keeps it simple and just gives me a drive. On a PC you get a drive letter, on Linux you get a standard mount point and on the Mac you get a mounted share just like any other share. It’s great and simple. I’m using rsync to run the backup right now. It’s going to take something like 36 hours to complete but that is a function of my internet connection speed and not Amazon or Jungle Disk. I’m getting a sustained transfer speed of about 230KBps which I would say is pretty good. 30GB takes a long time to move, no way around that. The benefit of rsync though is that one the initial backup is done I will only need to update the data and not replace it. I’ll get a more meaningful review up when I’ve gotten more comfortable with it.
Last but not least: It’s the dead of winter here in the northeast but I’m already looking towards starting a vegetable garden. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m going to start small of course but I still need to find a place to put it. Much reading and research left to do… Progress reports as it happens…