I wanted to use a network share for my time machine backup. I setup a samba share, and thought I would be good to go until I got a message “the backup disk image … could not be created (error 45)”. So I went to google and did some research. The first site said to create an AFP share on your file server (in my case Debian). That looked like too much work, so I went to the next option, which was much simpler. Create a local image file, copy that to your Samba share, and then fire up Time Machine. This worked great.

1. hdiutil create -size 200g -fs HFS+J -type SPARSEBUNDLE -layout SPUD -volname “Backup of $MACHINENAME” $MACHINENAME_$ETHERNETID.sparsebundle

Get the machine name from Preferences -> Sharing.
Get the Ethernet ID (aka mac address, aka physical address) from Preferences -> Network -> Ethernet -> Advanced -> Ethernet

2. cp -r file-you-just-created /Volumes/BackupLocation

3. defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Then fire up Time machine select your network drive as the source drive, and you’re good to go. Works like a charm.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinlatter/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

“Detox” – Cleansing the body of poisons or toxins that may have accumulated through addictive habits

As I begin the year, and start to evaluate my life with renewed vigor, I realize I need a permanent information fast. I have simply become over run and unproductive with too many notifications, emails, rss feeds, articles, etc. I quite. I need out. I want simple, focused and effective instead. Here’s what I plan to do:

* Unsubscribe from all email subscriptions – I don’t need ‘em. If I want information I know where I can get it. Also using www.rescuetime.com I see that a far majority of my time is spent on email. I need to reduce this.

* Unfollow all the ‘robots’ on twitter. I’ve basically been accepting any follow requests, and somehow have ended up following a bunch of people I’m not sure how. Either way, I’m going to unfollow them, and ‘clean out’ my twitter list. Reduce it to only those people who I actually know, enjoy, or get influence by.

* Reduce my daily to-do list to two. Two items is all I need, and after some careful testing, this has proved very effect over the last few weeks. If I limit it to two: 1) I’m sure those things are very important and 2) I can focus on each of them fully without thinking, “I need to do two or three things at the same time if I ever want to finish this massive to-do list”


It’s an information detox and it’s critical in this era. During this huge information age, everything from local news to what people are doing at all times can be virtually shoved down my throat. No more. From now on when I see or feel an information encroachment, I’m cutting the rope. I choose to live simple, focus and effective.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/littlemonkeybutt/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

I’m going to limit my daily to-do list to two items – that’s it. I’ve been testing this since the new year, and it seems to really work. I ask my self (actually more often myself will tell me) what I want to do for that day – what I really, really, really want to do. I trust my intuition, and go with the first 2 things that come to mind. Usually they are right there, sometimes I have to think about it. The hard part can be limiting it to only two items. The essential questions to ask myself are: What if I could only do 2 things to day? At the end of the day, what will give me the most satisfaction knowing I have done? This seems to be going very well because they are sometimes relatively time consuming things (2-3 hours) which is fine, and if I know I only have 2 things on my list, I can fully focus on those two things. It’s been going very well, and I will continue with this system until something else sparks my interest (or proves more effective).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/flysi/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Want to copy *everything* from one drive to another, or make a complete backup of your stuff. Well, forget about using the age old drag and drop method, one might think using the cp would be sufficient, but again: no. The ultimate solution is robocopy.

Robocopy is a simple tool you can download from microsoft. At first glance it looks like something only for Windows Server 2003, but it works on XP just fine. Download the file there, and install it. Then fire up cmd, and type:

robocopy /?

You’ll see there are tons of options, more than I care to even think about. Here’s the only stuff that’s useful to me:

robocopy source destination /E /COPYALL /R:5

/E says to copy everything, going into subdirectories

/COPYALL says to copy everything, created date, last modified, etc.

/R:5 says to only try 5 times to copy something, if those don’t pan out, skip it and go to the next one. (You’ll get a full report of the copy at the end, so you’ll be able to see which ones were missed.) /R:5 is handy incase it finds a file that it doesn’t have access to. You don’t want it to keep trying and trying (the default is 1 million times), most likely you want it to try a couple times, and move on.

Download here

Tweaked the standard Aqua Blue Mac background, added a paper cut out of our son Noah. Enjoy.