Thanks to government advice which led to panic buying of petrol I’m not able to go out last night as all of the local petrol stations are totally out of petrol!
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For ease of use and peace of mind I’ve now signed up for CrashPlan+, another online backup solution (last time around it was Mozy until they removed their unlimited package). The software has most of the features I was after and after testing different parts of the service including restores I was more than satisfied and started to add some of my data to an initial backup set. Everything was going quite well for the first week apart from less than stellar upload speeds (uploading to other sites indicated this wasn’t my connection). Some time around last Monday, though, the connection to CrashPlan Central was lost. About a day later, it seemed to reconnect but the upload of data was now very sporadic and extremely slow i.e. just an occasional burst of data and not for very long. For a time I wondered if this was my ISP. Wouldn’t CrashPlan inform me if there was something wrong with the server I was trying to upload to? I then emailed CrashPlan’s support and got a reply about a day and a half later. The response confirmed that there is a problem with the server I’m uploading to and that it’s being worked on. No time estimate for this was given. I am still waiting for a response as to whether there is any way to check the status of the service other than a small status icon in the CrashPlan desktop application (also note that you cannot always trust the upload rate reported by hovering your mouse pointer over the CrashPlan icon in the Windows system tray – if you’re using Windows of course). So after a week of solid uploading and now nearly a week where I’ve not managed much at all, I’m not sure what to make of the service. Perhaps I’ve just been unlucky? A certain reader of this site doesn’t seem to have experienced such issues and he’s been using the service for a good while now. I hope it gets fixed soon as I have a lot more files to backup. Even if constantly uploading, I expected the backup to take at least 6 weeks of my PC being on 24/7. Update 06/05/2012
I had realised there was no data being uploaded at the beginning of last week. At times I the software lose it’s connection to the server but this normally corrects itself within 12 hours or so. Not so this time, however. On Wednesday I emailed support and it wasn’t until Saturday that I got a reply to say:
This is the second time in the 2.5 months since I began using CrashPlan that I’ve not been able to upload any data whatsoever for a whole week. That’s a lot of data. The email also said that uploaded data was safe but how about all those GB of data that could have been uploaded over the two weeks or so of non-connectivity I’ve experienced? It would be considerably better if support answered emails within a reasonable amount of time but the slow response time makes me even less confident in the service. I’ve uploaded a few more photos to my photo site. I’m backdating them and am nearly back up to date.
Let’s assume that Google is yet to perfect the indexing of photos intelligently: the photo above shows an iPhone user checking-in her location, Wimbledon’s Centre Court, on Facebook. It’s one of my more recent favourite photos. In addition to the aesthetics of the photo, I like how it records some of the technological and social media innovations of the last couple of years. For the record, I’m not sure I’d ever use a feature such as Facebook’s check-in feature. Having said that, I have seen temptations such as 100 Yen discount for checking into Japanese restaurant. When the meal only costs between 500-700 Yen, that’s quite significant! On another related note, in the last year or so Facebook really seems to be taking off in Japan. Previously, many of the Japanese user-base seemed to be those with an interest in English or those who lived abroad. Anyone have any theories as to what’s caused this shift? There’s a Big Issue seller I often see near work. As people walk by he says, ‘Big Issue. Free.’ Well, no, he doesn’t. Listen carefully and he adds an almost inaudible ‘ish’ at the end of his sentence! Sneaky… but you’ve got to admire that courage. The best of luck to you, sir.
I hadn’t heard the news and walked passed St. Paul’s Cathedral this morning only to find the protesters and their tents had gone and cleaning work underway. In the photo you can just about make out two men filming. There were lots of police still around, too. For the first time in ages I saw a PSP player on the Tube today. It got me thinking to a recent visit to Tokyo over Christmas, there were lots of PSPs being used and surprisingly, in contrast with London, few Kindles. For games, people here are seem more than content with smart phone touch screen games. Talking of Kindles, I’m beginning to think the 3G Kindle was the wrong choice. I hardly ever 3G and didn’t use it in Japan as my emergency Internet browser, as was my plan. Plus annoyingly, a couple of months after buying it, the new models showed up. Typical.
I took this photo a few weeks back in Trafalgar Square. Does anyone know what was going on?
This winter’s first snow hits London following a very cold week. Here’s hoping for minimal disruption on Monday’s commute – wishful thinking?
In case you can’t see properly, there are wrist rests of some description on these mouse mats. I’m not sure you’d want to use these at work…
This guy was guiding cars in and out of a car park in Shibuya, Tokyo. Check out that headset/mic to top off his uniform. |
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