Backing up selected file using expanding disk image on OSX

I was looking for a way to backup my photos online using Google Storage or Amazon S3. But I don't need (as a rule) to backup my .jpg files or the .psd files Photoshop makes. For disaster recovery eg the house burns down, the minimum is the .nef files.

One way I can do this is to create disk images containing only the file types I need

First I created a disk image of type 'sparse disk image'.

File > New > Blank Disk Image


give the image a name in the top of the box,


and change the settings at the bottom. Because this is a sparse image, it expands as you add more files and data to it, so even setting it to be DVD sized doesn't take up much space straight away. Think of it more as the maximum size you want it to get.


Then after clicking 'Create' you are asked for a password. Make it a good one! If for some reason you don't want the image to auto-mount on your own Mac, then you need to deselect 'remember password in my keychain'


then Disk Image goes and creates your image, and mounts it on the desktop for you


After that you can search for the files you want to back up, and simply drag them onto the mounted disk image




and here they are

Google Storage vs Amazon S3

Google Storage from https://code.google.com/apis/storage/docs/overview.html#pricing	Amazon S3 from http://aws.amazon.com/s3/
Storage—$0.17/GB/month data in: $0.10/GB data out: $0.15/GB for Americas and EMEA $0.30/GB for Asia-Pacific Requests PUT, POST, LIST—$0.01 per 1,000 requests GET, HEAD—$0.01 per 10,000 requests	High durability: $0.150 per GB Low durability: $0.100 per GB data in: Free until November 1st, 2010** data out: First 1 GB / month: free next 10Tb / month: $0.190 per GB PUT, COPY, POST, or LIST: $0.01 per 1,000 Requests GET and All Other Requests: $0.01 per 10,000 Requests

So based on that, seems like Google did a copy/paste of the S3 price list, but made the actual storage more expensive. Its not clear from Google if the storage has a durability SLA.

Looks like S3 is the better bet based upon pricing.


https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1qBweKcoATMzOGDkhtSzEZSovw2MT8FKD2YLx2RthxsU&

X-Lite VOIP / SIP back on Snow Leopard

I've tried most (all?) of the OSX / Mac VOIP / SIP clients, and the only one I've had any luck with is X-Lite from Counterpath.

But then I upgraded to Snow Leopard and v3 broke. They released a v4 beta, but that timed out and you could only make calls by setting your system clock back before July 2010. Sigh.

But now its back, in full v4 release. Woot! Thanks guys!

xlite.counterpath.com/download/mac

NMBLOOKUP: Looking up IP address of SMB and NETBIOS names on OSX

How to Look up the IP address of SMB and NETBIOS names on OSX.

You know how it is. In your browse list you see a whole bunch of machines, and there's one you want to connect to by IP. On a windows machine you would just do

ping machine

and it would call the local NETBIOS or WINS database.

No such luck on Macs. What you can do instead is to use NMBLOOKUP

$ NMBLOOKUP machine
querying machine on 192.168.0.255
192.168.0.17 machine

Google Voice: dialling from a web page

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kcnhkahnjcbndmmehfkdnkjomaanaooo?hl=en-au

Howto: Sipgate Firefox extension: SipgateFFX Your login information is wrong

How to fix SipgateFFX: Your login information is wrong


The SipgateFFX is quite a cool addon. But it doesn't exactly give you a lot of feedback.

After some trial and error I discovered that if you have a regular individual account, you need to deselect 'I'm using sipgate team'.

Your username is your Sipgate website username, not your SIP ID, and the password is your Sipgate website password, not your SIP password.

If it is working, on web pages with phone numbers you should see some modifications. Doesn't work for phone numbers in gmail though.

Howto copy GPS EXIF data to a new file

Some image editing programs don't copy the GPS EXIF data, or maybe there was a problem with adding the GPS data. EXIF tool can copy specific tags into a different file:

exiftool -tagsfromfile source.jpg -GPS:all destination.jpg

Nice!