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Mozy was one of my favorite programs on Windows. It’s an automatic online backup system that worked very well. It was small, easy and just worked. They give you 2GB free or unlimited for $4.95/month which is incredible.

Mozy features:

• Open/locked file support
• 448-bit Blowfish encryption
• 128-bit SSL encryption
• Automatic or scheduled backups
• New and changed file detection
• Block level incremental backups
• Bandwidth throttling
• File versioning
• Public or private key encryption

Well the folk over at Mozy released a beta for Mac today. As soon as I seen the news, I started the install. Install was a breeze and in a few minutes it was searching my hard drive for “Backup Sets” which are pre-determined file types. These include Word and Excel files and Mac specific items such as iCal, Address book, iTunes Library and iPhoto Library. You can also choose individual files and folders if you would like too. I choose my Documents and SItes folders in addition to some Backup Sets as you can see below.

So far I’m only 62% done with my initial backup so I haven’t had a chance to try a restore yet. But if its anything like the Windows client was, it will be easy and seamless. So far I’m impressed by the beta. I haven’t run into any issues yet but I really haven’t done too much yet. The program runs in the menu bar so its out of the way. With 2GB’s of space for free, you really have no reason not to be backing up important files now.

[Mozy Mac Beta page]

Wednesday is my favorite day of the week. I wake up, have some breakfast and wait patiently until 2pm when my Local Comic Shop opens so I can go and pick up this weeks comic books. I recently got back into comics after about 15 years thanks to podcasts like iFanboy and Geekscape but the real unsung hero is my Apple Macbook. Without programs like ComicBookLover, Wednesday’s List and iComicsOnSale, I wouldn’t have really gotten back into reading comics.

ComicBookLover

ComicBookLover aims to be the iTunes for digital comics and it comes pretty close. Its laid out in a similar fashion to iTunes with a 3 pane browser on the top, your library on the bottom and your lists on the left. You can also view by cover art. CBL allows you to organize your entire collection by tagging the file with all the relevant information such as issue name, volume, publisher and year. Just like iTunes, it support Smart Lists. This allows you to make a List based on search criteria which I have found invaluable.

Viewing comics has an impressive feature set such as Single, Western or Manga view. You can rotate images on the screen 90 degrees and it supports dual monitors. What I like to do is rotate the screen and turn my Macbook on its side like a book to read. The 13′ widescreen is almost the perfect size of a comic page. Pages are automatic sized based on which view your using and it provides an On-screen display to navigator when using Full Screen mode.

ComicBookLover will set you back $24.95 but if you read digital comics in any form, its well worth it.

Wednesday’s List

Railhead Design’s Wednesday’s List is a one trick pony. It pulls this weeks Diamond shipping list and allows you to print out your Pull List. The interface divides up each publisher in its own section and lists the name, Previews order number and price. Just check the box next to the comics you want and your ready to save, print or email your list. You can even sync with iCal. My favorite part is you can add in your local tax rate and it gives you a running tally for the comics you selected. I also print and bring my list with me so I know what I’m getting and what its going to cost me.

Wednesday’s List costs $7 and is a Universal Binary.

iComicsOnSale

iComicsOnSale or iCOS is a Dashboard widget. iCOS is similar to Wednesday’s List in that it allows you to print out weekly pull lists. I prefer iCOS because you can view a summary of each comic, cover, price, pages and writer/artist information. They even have a featured comic page highlighting one comic each week. That being said, I don’t use iCOS for two reasons. One its a widget and would work so much better an actually program and two its very unstable for me. It uses an insane amount of memory some times and it eats my pull list. The latest version is still beta so its to be expected but I’ve moved to Wednesday’ List for my Pull Lists because of this.

iComicsOnSale is free and they have just launched a new website which lists this weeks new comics with full descriptions.

iFanboy Podcast

While iFanboy is not an application it is a weekly podcast and video podcast that I can’t live without. And technically I subscribe to both podcasts using iTunes but thats nether here nor there. iFanboy do a audio podcast called the Pick of the Week where they pick one comic for that week and discuss it along with other books that were released. It comes out every Sunday and I listen to it on my way to pick up my comics every Wednesday. Then when I get home, there video podcast is waiting for me. The video podcast differs from the audio as they focus on topics and not weekly books.

So definitely check there podcast out. I look forward to it each week and its always the first I listen to and watch.

I have 3 Joost invites to give away to anyone that wants them. The first 3 people who leave a comment here gets them. Don’t forget to leave your email address so I can send them.

First come, First Serve.

UPDATE
Invites are sent.

UPDATE 5/2/07
I now have 999 invites for Joost. If you would like an invite, just leave a comment with your email and I’ll send one out.

As you can see I have a new home, Dreamhost, and a new look (yes again). While I wasn’t unhappy with my old host, they were only running MySQL 3.x so I couldn’t run Wordpress 2.1.x. I looked around at a new host for a few days before I settled on Dreamhost. I’ve read good and I’ve read bad but it ultimately came down to features and price. I mean I paid $23 for a full year using one of the hundreds of promo codes floating around the web.

Database issues
The transfer could have been smoother but that was partly my fault. I switched over the DNS before being fully prepared. The biggest issue I ran into was import my SQL databases. Trying to import from a MySQL 3.x to a 4.x doesn’t really work that great. So I had to run the SQL queries manually. I would copy and paste the new tables followed by the inserts. One thing I wish I knew before was that wp_countries is part of Slimstats which I didn’t need to import. That table itself was well over 60% of my file size. My life got much easier after I figured out I didn’t need it.

Wordpress
Dreamhost offers 1 click installs and upgrades of Wordpress which I love. It was getting to be a chore manually upgrading my wordpress install everytime a new version was released. I can also now use the Mint Bird Feeder plugin so I don’t have to update my feed files each time. So overall Wordpress has gotten a lot more hands off for me which I love. Now I can spend more time blogging instead of doing behind the scenes work.

Mint
Getting Mint back up and running wasn’t too bad. I did move Mint to its own database where as I was sharing it last time. I took the time to upgrade to the latest Mint version along with a couple outdated Peppers. Only Pepper I had problems with was Bird Feeder. With the update to Wordpress 2.1, something didn’t take. So I replaced the RSS files with the originals and downloaded and installed the WP-birdfeed plugin which adds the code on the fly. Its been working great but I lost the last 4 months worth of subscriber data.

Domain Names
My last order of business is transferring all my domain names to GoDaddy. I just purchased alecpeden.com after reading Paul Stamatiou post about Online Presence, and loved how much control I had at Godaddy. So I’m in the middle of transferring over the last two i have with another registrar and I should be good. Right now I’m not sure what I will do with alecpeden.com but for now it redirects to here.

Dreamhost
So far I’m happy with my chose to do with Dreamhost. I’m digging having everything under one roof now. I now even have a alec @ the8thsign.com email. Shocking.

Also Dreamhost has a nice Rewards system for referrals. Someone made out of me when I used a code I found online so now you can help me out. I’ve created code “the8thsign” to use if want to sign up and get $97 off your order. This is a referral and I do make money on this somehow but $97 off is nice. My first year went from $120 down to $23.

New Design
I know I just changed designs a few weeks ago but I was never really happy with it. So now with moving to a new host, I got a new look with I’m loving. I’m still making changes and you may see some weird stuff for the new week while i mess around but overall I’m pretty happy with its current state. I still have some work to do but it shouldn’t take me long.

I’ve decided to move the8thsign.com to Dreamhost from my current host so expect some weirdness for the next few days while I get everything transfered over.

Last Friday I received my Income Tax return and felt the need to buy myself something nice. I just got done watching Geekbrief TV where Cali reviewed the Apple TV and I was sold. I’ve been on a strict budget for the past few months so I felt a little guilty dropping $300 on an Apple TV. So I made myself an internal compromise. I said if I sell my Xbox 360 HD DVD drive, I’ll buy myself an Apple TV, which would pay for at least half of it. I immediately call up the local Apple Store to make sure they had some Apple TV’s in stock. They did and off I went.

Well its been a full week and I have to say I love the box. Previously I used Front Row on my Macbook hooked up via DVI. While it did the job, it wasn’t an elegant solution. The Apple TV setup was a breeze which if you used any Apple product, thats a given. The interface is what really sold it for me. Since I don’t have cable, I get my TV shows from iTunes, download podcasts and subscribe to Netflix for my media fix. Only thing I would have liked is a DVD player inside but I understand the decision not to include it. My Xbox 360 does have a DVD player and it works. Thats good enough for me.

While my new Apple TV is awesome, I’m going to have to give credit where its due here. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my Apple TV as much as I am if it wasn’t for Visualhub who has helped me convert all my existing media over to h264. The program is simply awesome for converting to different video formats and its amazingly fast. I did run into one small problem when trying to convert previously ripped h264 files from Mediafork but it was easily fixed by changing a setting. The latest version 1.23 even supports outputting to Apple TV. If you need to convert some media to Apple TV, I cannot say enough good things about Visualhub. Worth every penny of the $23.

The 40G hard drive is tiny in comparison to my iTunes library which last I checked was around 140 gigs. Hacking the Apple TV’s hard drive is definitely in my future but I’d really like to go to a 250 gig drive which they don’t make yet. So in the meantime, I’m just keeping unwatched media synced which its actually pretty nice. I know what new podcasts are out and new TV shows and don’t have to worry about wading through everything. For the rest I just stream from my Macbook. I have the Apple TV hookup via wired ethernet so syncing and streaming is fast.

I started a tumblelog to post stuff thats interesting but don’t really warrant an entire blog post or I just don’t have the time.

Visit me at http://the8thsign.tumblr.com/ and subscribe to the RSS feed at http://the8thsign.tumblr.com/rss