Technology - J. David Carr

Home Backup Process

August 5, 2022/in Personal, Technology/by David Carr

Over the years, I’ve had an evolving process for backing up things that are important to me. Not unlike many others, I started off creating backups on CD or DVD media, with the presumption that I could archive data (e.g., documents, photos, software) permanently this way. We now know, of course, that optical media is nowhere near permanent, with a life expectancy of 5-20 years, depending on type. I later relied on encrypted volumes in a second internal hard drive, mirrored with an external hard drive. This is certainly an improvement but also not optimal.

Creating Deep Links in Apple Notes

April 30, 2022/in Evernote, Mac/Apple, Productivity, Software/by David Carr

I’m in a really weird place with my workflow lately. I capture tasks in OmniFocus and use that as both my digital inbox and task management application. In the past, I used Evernote as my primary reference solution, adding both long-term storage (articles that I found that I know I’ll eventually need to refer to again) and project content (e.g., brainstorming personal goals to understand motivations, incremental targets, capturing status updates). I also used it for meeting notes from 2011-2015 while working for a company that had assigned me a Mac as my work laptop.

When I started working another company in 2015, they only used Windows machines, and since I was in a role that was more prone to HIPAA controls, it was not an option to have Evernote on my work laptop. I started using OneNote for capturing meeting notes and relied on Evernote only from my personal computers for personal content.

cPanel Backup

April 17, 2017/in Technology/by David Carr

One of the services I perform for web clients is periodically making backups of their web site. This includes backing up the web directory (all of their HTML files including WordPress and any accompanying theme files and plugins) and taking a backup of their site’s MySQL database.

Rather than doing this manually, it’s easier (and more reliable) to just schedule the process in cPanel. Unfortunately, if you’re using a reseller account like mine or if you have multiple sites, you can’t select a single web site in the native cPanel Backups module. You’ll have to write a bash script and run it at your desired frequency through Cron.