October 2016

Backing up

The best backup software I’ve found for Windows is Acronis True Image.

Unfortunately, the software really sucks.

Let me illustrate the problem. I told Acronis (on their Facebook wall) that I want a simple “set and forget” backup that doesn’t require a lot of configuration and maintenance, and I asked what the latest version of their product can do for me. Their reply:

An incremental backup stores changes to the data against the latest backup. So you need access to previous backups from the same chain to recover data from an incremental backup. To clean up an older backup chain (Full backup + dependent incremental backups) you’ll need to create a new full backup as a base for next incremental backups. Here you can find different clean up schemes available in the custom backup scheme: http://www.acronis.com/…/document…/ATI2017/index.html… For your scenario I’d suggest using an option “Keep size of the backup no more than [defined size]” – to limit maximum size of the backup. After creating a new backup version, the program checks whether the total backup size exceeds the specified value. If it’s true, the oldest backup version will be deleted.

This is the year 2016. I shouldn’t have to deal with “full” versus “incremental” backups. I shouldn’t have to worry about what will happen when my backup disk fills up. I should just be able to plug in a backup disk, hit a button, and have the backup software take care of the rest.

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Floyd Norman, Disney Legend

Floyd NormanA few months ago, I attended an interview with Floyd Norman. Floyd is a Disney Legend – “the first African-American at Disney,” he says. He got his start in animation, but his career really took off when Walt himself asked him to help with the story on The Jungle Book.

During the interview, he said a lot about the creative process. I took notes. (My notes weren’t exact, so most quotes below are paraphrased.)

Creative people are more willing to take a risk, he explained. “Creativity is not being afraid to be different, and to be a little bit nuts.” He talked about his job being a collaboration between art, creativity, and technology. “Walt and his colleagues were just making stuff up. The painters, the cameramen, et cetera – they learned and made it up as they went along.” His career has spanned from Sleeping Beauty all the way to Monsters Inc.; he explained that Pixar is very much like the Hyperion studio in the 1930s. Because no one had done it before, there was nothing telling them they couldn’t do it.

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