Backup date/time and SyncBackPro

Posted on July 17, 2018 by Dale

My backup tool of choice is SyncBackPro. It’s a quality product at a reasonable price.

One of the things I backup is my Apple iPhone and iTunes folders. I take a snapshot of these by using the Compression feature, with a custom filename.

You can generate a custom filename this by creating your own variable in the Profile Setup/Variables area.

In the screenshot (about) you can see that I’ve created the Variable Name DATETIMENOW with the Value %YEAR%%MONTH%%DAY%_%HOUR%%MINUTE%%SECOND%

In the screenshot, this translates to 20180717_213656

I then use this in the Profile Setup for the actual backup:

As simple as that.

That Futon Bed I Have

Posted on June 6, 2014 by Dale

Was purchased from Back To Bed.

I’ve been very happy, good quality and great price.

When I moved, I lost the bolts which connects the headboard to the base.

So I gave the St Kilda store a call, explained the problem, and they said they would get back to me.

A day later they called back and said they had some, and I could have them for the price of FREE.

Very happy.

Fixing a sticky Lockwood Deadlock.

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Dale

There hasn’t been many blog posts of late, as I’ve moved into a new apartment in South Melbourne, and the processing of moving has taken up a bit of time.

One of the first problems in the new apartment was with the lock. I’d put the key in the lock, turn the key to deadlock the lock, then take the key out.

Except the key wouldn’t come out.

Ah, it’ll need some graphite to fix the sticky lock. Off to the local locksmith to buy some. The local locksmith is called Local Locksmiths.

Naahhhhh, you don’t need graphite, your actual problem is that the screws holding the key barrel are loose.

Lockwood Lock

By jove he was right. Tightened the screws up, and the problem was fixed.

Recycling an old mattress

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Dale

Into the van I needed to get rid of two old double-bed sized mattresses. I’m currently sleeping on a king single futon bed (loving it) and the two double-bed mattresses were taking up expensive space in a storage lockup.

So I needed to remove them.

Hiring a van to take them to the local rubbish dump, and then paying dump fees started to look expensive. Sure I could have dumped them on the side of the road, but that’s illegal…

So I looked into other options, and settled on Melbourne Mattress Recyclers. Made a booking. The guys showed up when they said they would, and it was cheaper than a van+dump fees.

Now I have more storage space. Win-win 🙂

SuperCheap Auto were selling these the other day,

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Dale

and these CrashCards seem like a really clever idea:

Ever been in a car crash or know of someone that was in one and found yourself scratching around for a pen and paper so you can get all the right information for your insurance company, only to find that neither pen or paper are at hand and more often than not the anxiety and stress of the situation has thrown all rational thinking out the car.

This situation is happening nearly every minute every day and is the inspiration behind an exciting new product CRASHCARD. My business partner and I decided to develop a very simple inexpensive process that could be used by all drivers regardless of age, gender or experience , After many months of research and development and with consultation with Insurance assessors , police and the dept of road safety we developed CRASHCARD .

Its simple and easy to follow as its packaged in a blister pack the card itself is durable and rigid and being a DL size format makes for easy postage. The crashcard pen is locked into place this guarantees you won’t be looking for a pen when you need it the most. But best of all it cost less than two gold coins , just store it in the glove-box and feel comforted knowing its there
– www.crashcard.com.au

I have one of these in my glovebox. Hopefully I’ll never need to use it.

So when I moved into a new place, and was told the key couldn’t be duplicated …

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Dale

Did you know you can duplicate keys from a photo like this??? This is why this is not a photo of my house keys.

Due to the original key being made of “soft metal” or something. Or maybe it was the lock itself.

Looking at the key, it didn’t seem an insurmountable challenge for a talented locksmith, so I trundled off to Professional Locksmiths in Melbourne. First heard of them when I needed to get a copy of an unusual work key. Which they were able to copy.

“Yes, we can copy that. It’s going to cost $11 for the key blank. We can do it now for you.”

Five minutes later, I was out of there with my newly copied key.

Professional Locksmiths
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Best burgers in Melbourne – Danny’s Burgers

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Dale

A friend introduced me to Danny’s Burgers. And I’ll be forever grateful, Danny’s truly have the best burgers in Melbourne. I mean, if you had a choice of McDonald’s, Hungry Jacks or Danny’s, you’d go Danny’s.

For me, a burger shouldn’t taste exactly the same every time. And you should be able to taste the individual flavours of the ingredients. Sitting here, I can’t remember anything about McDonald’s burger, aside from the word BLAND.

My favourite Danny’s burger is lamb, with a side of chips.

Getting there.
360 St Georges Road, North Fitzroy

Catch a 112 Tram from Flinders Street, get off at the corner of Holden St and St Georges Road. Walk 100m.

An easy way to do a PDF to Word conversion

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Dale

Don’t you just hate it when, after you’ve spent quite a few hours on doing something, some smarty pipes up a suggestion which meant you’ve just lost those hours.

So it was with a 150+ page PDF to Microsoft Word conversion. Finished it, and to be honest, it was fairly crappy as the Word document has complex tables like this:

which is hard to capture when you go from PDF –> Word. And after 80 pages, my care factor was starting to get low.

The smarty suggested PDF to Word. PDF to Word is a website where you upload your PDF, and your converted Word document is mailed back to you. My 156 page document was converted in minutes.

Grrrrrrrrrr

Ok, the downsides, or faults if you like, in the converted document?

the header and footers were not converted.
heading styles were not created.

But for FREE, it is a great utility.

If it’s free, how do they make money? They sell PDF software, such as Nitro PDF Professional, which is about a 1/5 the price of Adobe Acrobat Professional.

Let’s take a break from that computer

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Dale

I’ve been accused of sitting at a computer for far too long. “Get up and go for a walk”, I tell myself. I never do, as I get too wrapped up in the current task I’m working on. That’s why I so like the idea of ErgoMinder.

From a support perspective, I thought the personnel department were trying to impose their “touchy, feely” policy on the rest of us. Now I’m older and wiser, I understand the importance of taking a break. Shame Ergominder is no longer being sold.

The importance of a product like ErgoMinder, is for the recovery from, and the prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury. RSI is a type of Musculoskeletal disorder.

… many MSD occur due to daily work involving the maintenance of static postures, which result in muscle fatigue, for example, holding the telephone, and repetitive work such as keyboard and mouse tasks. Conditions that have this type of gradual onset are probably more common in office work than sudden injuries.
– WorkSafe Victoria – Officewise: A guide to Health & Safety In The Office

So with ErgoMinder no longer being available, and no time to develop a clone of it*, I looked around for a replacement product.

I’ve started to use Workrave, and I’m beginning to like it.

My first impressions are that it does everything ErgoMinder does, but it has less exercises (9 vs. 15). I’ll let you know what I think in two weeks time.

* – it would be fairly easy to clone ErgoMinder. All the exercises and screenshots are easily extractable, I would just need to write the “timer” program. Other priorities though.

It’s the ErgoDudes to the rescue!

Posted on October 12, 2009 by Dale

ErgoMinder, from a support perspective, had it’s problems. ErgoMinder described itself as:

ErgoMinder is a program with three cartoon characters – called Ergo-Dudes – who remind you in a light-hearted fashion to take micro-breaks from your computer work. Most people know that they need to take breaks from computer work, and that they need to move and stretch regularly. The problem is remembering to do this while your mind is on your work. ErgoMinder solves the problem by giving friendly reminders, at interval times of your choice, in which the Dudes suggest easy exercises that you can carry out on the spot in less than a minute.

It was a Visual Basic 4 program, and it was fairly simple, as all it needed to do was:

at the time interval set by the user, remind the user to do an exercise.
keep track of which exercises were displayed,
but don’t display certain exercises, for the user who said “I have RSI” or “I have back issues”.

Now Ergominder had a couple of support issues:

didn’t support Citrix or Microsoft Terminal Server
the help file was expected to be in c:\windows\ergodata.
wouldn’t run off a network share, had to be copied down to each users PC.

Even with those issues, I still like it, as it got people taking micro-breaks. Which reduces fatigue, and the chance of RSI with it.

ErgoMinder is no longer sold, which is a great shame as it was a fun product, Ergo-Dudes and all.

You can Google for an alternate selection of micro-break software here.

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Stories, and bit rot, from the IT Support Trenches

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