I HATE APPLE

When you install Dropbox it creates a dropbox directory somewhere on your computer (you choose), which is synced to the dropbox website behind the scenes. Just move/keep any file you want backing up in there.

dropbox is just another idisk

not a time machine, if that helps

don't even think of it as another disk. it's a folder. anything you put in the folder is magically copied every time it changes.

So I should use that Dropbox folder as my main documents folder? Or do I just copy my documents folder each day to that folder? The latter sounds annoying since I only change a few things each day, but have a pretty sizable documents folder.

simplest approach is to put the dropbox folder inside your documents and *move* as much as you want into there.

the free account has a 2gb limit btw

Right, & you mean move as often as I want to backup, so that this isn't automated.

Which is fine! I need to get back to ~~~cloud~~~ backup. I just want to know if there's some automated step here that I'm missing.

no, i don't think you get it. it's just a folder on your computer. you keep stuff in it like any other folder.

but it has special properties in that anything that there is an up to date copy of anything you keep in this folder. you don't need to do anything (apart from be online) for this to happen.

it's totally install-and-forget. any backup thing that isn't is nearly pointless.

I get that: so it becomes the folder that I save stuff to. What's the risk that dropbox is gonna fry that folder?

zero.

cool, on it

stuttering youtubes are maybe a sign of a slow connection? haven't had that at all xp

― dayo, Friday, 29 October 2010 11:47

Well it's an 8Mb/s connection and the video plays fine on my MacBook.

it's a sign that you are using the flash plugin and should enable youtube's "experimental" html5 video mode imo

― mh, Friday, 29 October 2010 15:17

Well this is weird. I'm signed up to html5 on my Mac but I thought that seeing as the iPad doesn't have Flash support at all then any YouTube videos I was seeing automatically must not be Flash. I mean, it was launching the dedicated YouTube app. It neither worked without pausing every few seconds on that, or in a page with video embedded.

But I just went to youtube.com and forced it into html5 there, and sure enough, it works OK! So thanks for that. Don't really understand why it worked but it did.

Even better get the html5 YouTube plugin for safari -- much more reliable than google's version

― stet, Friday, 29 October 2010 15:48

Can you explain? I didn't even know you could install plug-ins on iPad Safari.

This was the video, btw, if anyone is interested (most YouTube videos have been fine)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXbCwq4ewBU

I've been watching 15 min long starcraft 2 replays on youtube via ipad. and I have a corny iphone 3g tethered internet connection which I'm sharing via my macbook. so I dunno

I was wondering if it was because it's HD.

that could be it. I didn't know you could select res on the youtube app, the standard 480p looks fine on mine

Thanks for checking it out. I didn't select HD, it's just that I see an HD version is available, so maybe it's trying to play that in the YouTube app for some reason. Actually it doesn't look that HD before it starts stuttering, so maybe not. Anyway, avoiding the YouTube app seems to now make it work, so I'll stop fretting about it.

You can't install plugins on iPad safari, no, just Mac. But it's great there.

Interesting about using the html5 version -- I've always preferred using the native app because it seems more reliable.

(sorry, thought the stuttering youtubes bit started on a MacBook, not your iPad! That browser thing drives me nuts, too. iCab seems a lot better at handling it, though -- saves tabs to disks if memory low)

i bought a HD enclosure to see if i could access the broken HD. i broke it within five seconds of opening the box.

i plugged my ipod in to sync it. i clicked "cancel" on a box saying it was already synced to another computer because i didn't know which was the right thing to do and now that box won't come up again and it won't sync. moreover, last.fm has not acknowledged it.

why is every. single. step of this shit so trying? why can't things JUST FUCKING WORK FOR ONCE LIKE THEY'RE MEANT TO. i'm so demoralised about all of this.

also google chrome won't work on 10.4.11 and i'd forgotten just how much of the firefox experience is spent glaring at a spinning beachball

and i'd forgotten my old itunes problem whereby it has to think and the beachball has to spin for 5 secs before playing certain random mp3s

dropbox is just another idisk

...for nothing left to lose.

Good luck USA for next week:

iPhone users could well be rolling into the office an hour late today across Europe. A bug affecting Apple’s handset’s alarm has hit after clocks went back one hour at the weekend.

The fault means that although the phone’s clock will automatically step back one hour to account for daylight saving time, the alarm sticks to its previous time. The result? Lots of people getting up an hour late.

hard drive in parents' 4 1/2 yr old mac mini died, apple are charging for parts only (£60), pretty good i think

lol just realized my powerbook doesn't have an expresscard slot anyway.. BUH

gah my airport express network has gotten so shitty this weekend. DO NOT UNDERSTAND. i have literally tried everything :(

Bluetooth interference? I just started having this problem.

Buy a microwave? New cordless phone? Baby monitor?

http://www.istumbler.net/

install that. see if there are networks in your range that are using the same channel. check to see what the other stats look like. change channels if necessary.

you can also check other area wifi networks by pressing option and clicking your airport icon in the menu bar. mouse over the other network names and see if one near you is on the same channel. could be causing the trouble.

i already tried everything

only thing that seems to be working is occasionally changing the channel. must just be crazy interference around here

gah my airport express network has gotten so shitty this weekend. DO NOT UNDERSTAND. i have literally tried everything :(

― candid gamera (s1ocki), Monday, November 1, 2010 4:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

omg mine did too, i think its back on ok but maybe there was a "virus" going around--get it

I used to love Apple products when I was a teenager but since converting to the more universal Windows OS in 2003 or so I feel as if I've grown out of them. They're too easy to use, so the OS gets boring. I like to tinker on my hardware so bringing my gadgets to the Apple Store and paying for Apple Care isn't something that thrills me. There are also cooler phones and music players out there if you're willing to look hard enough(Creative Labs, where is my Zen Touch Phone? GET ON IT!).
Apple is cool if you're into ease of use for various reasons, but I don't think it's convenient for the rest of us that are constantly surrounded by Microsoft-based operating systems in our everyday lives and need to move our data across platforms. Windows is still the dominant OS in public and I think Apple fanboys rag on it because the dominance of Windows inconveniences them and makes them butthurt.
Thankfully file conversion is getting easier due to the internet and open source applications, I think eventually Win and Mac are going to be able to work hand-in-hand and it won't make a damn difference because it will all be the same crap, just a different OS skin. Actually, we're getting to that point already.

mine eyes have seen the glory

MintIce, are you from 2001 on a tech forum?

lol

Don't be mean, I for one am pleased to discover that the internet is making file conversion easier. I've had all these mp3 things and I don't know what they are supposed to transform into.

jpgs

that looks dangerous.
http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-81155-mp3-files-got-converted-to-jpg

There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to convert mp3s into an image file with suitably high resolution. Then print image file. Then take picture of said image file and convert back to music.

Future of music distribution.

that rings a bell -- wasn't there some Linux backup system that involved printing files out as images?

omg, i converted "Stairway to Heaven" to a jpg!

http://www.hennessy.id.au/quentingeorge/archives/satan.jpg

Been using carbon copy cloner this week which seemed pretty good, but today it hung and wouldn't let me quit or force quit - tried to kill it from the command line but it wasn't feeling that either. Then it started hanging all my other applications, prevented me from logging out or shutting down. I think superduper might be more suitable for me

When I first heard of them they were discussed as being basically the same thing, but by now I've read many more people talking about Super Duper, and I've used it with no problem, so I'd say it comes out tops.

never had any problems with CCC myself, and it's free, so *shrugs*

I use SuperDuper, never tried CCC, but i've only had good results with SuperDuper.

I didn't mean to complain about CCC (it cloned my disk just fine) - was just wondering whether super duper might be a better fit for me