Backups: Don’t Forget Your Blog!...

The 1st of the month is BACKUP DAY. That’s what we get taught. Backup all your genealogy files. Back up all of your photos and scans. And anything else that you wish to backup as well. But how many of you remember (or even thing to) backup your blog? I must say that it wasn’t until about a year ago when I realised that I could (and should) be backing up my blog. Just think of all the effort All the effort you put into writing those posts. And what happens if something happens, and they get lost or corrupted? Would you simply start again? If you have an export of your blog, all you need to do is simply import that file, and all of your posts, comments, and pages are there. And trust me it’s dead easy, so every blogger (geneabloggers included) should be doing this. I will say that I am a WordPress user, not a Blogger user, so I can’t say that doing this for Blogger will be exactly the same, but I imagine it would be similar. So it really is a case of three easy steps. Step 1 click on TOOLS on the sidebar, then on Export under that. Step 2 make sure that the “All Content” option is checked. Mine does it automatically, but not sure if all do. Step 3 is the click on the “Download Export File” button. Mine is blue, but I guess that varies between versions and templates too. The file will then download to your computer, which will save in the usual “Downloads” folder. From there you can move it to a place where you’ll know where to find it. I have a folder titled Lonetester Blog,...

A Reality Check

Have you ever been in a situation that makes you really, and I mean REALLY, REALLY, REALLY think about things? Well this happened to me last week, and made me realise a lot of things. Firstly let me explain a few things. I live in the Adelaide Hills. I have for most of my life (I say ‘most’ as there was a short stint of metro living at one stage), and living in the hills brings with it the danger of bushfires. I was in primary school when when one of Australia’s worst bushfires ‘Ash Wednesday‘ hit, and I still have very vivid memories of that. Anyone who has been through a disaster (fire, flood, earthquake etc) will agree, that it is something you NEVER forget. Anyway last week was a week to go down in history. Adelaide’s history anyway. And hopefully one that won’t be repeated anytime soon (or hopefully ever). Adelaide almost broke their all-time maximum temperature of 46.1C. We didn’t quite, only making it to 45.1C. However apart from that, we did have 5 consecutive days of over 40C temperatures, which together with the hot nights making a decent sleep impossible, has been simply exhausting. By Thursday and Friday with the ground completely dried out from whatever little moisture might have been in it, together with high winds, the fire danger rating was sky-high (“catastrophic” is the technical term). And for the first time since Ash Wednesday I actually packed up some things and moved them out of my house. I decided to do that rather than face the regret of losing precious items later. Sure I had a “surely it won’t happen to me” feeling, but I also know that it only takes one spark,...

Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: D is for Dropbox...

The “Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge” continues, and D had me wondering just what to write about. Descendants? Diaries? my Desk? Each of them I’m sure is worthy of a post, but for D I have chosen to write about Dropbox. D is for Dropbox I know Dropbox has a lot of users (or should I say devotees) already, but some of you may not know about it, so I’ll tell you a little about it. Though I am really a newbie, I’m a total convert to Dropbox, and I wanted to share it with you. In the few months I’ve been using it, it has proved itself to be so useful, I’m not sure what I’d do without it now. The definition … Let’s start with the term “cloud computing”. This was something that was always sounded scary to me – but it simply means that it saves a copy of your data off of your computer and out “in the clouds” online. Dropbox is one of the “cloud computing” companies. The definition in Wikipedia states that “Cloud computing entrusts services with a user’s data, software and computation over a network. End users access cloud based applications through a web browser or a light weight desktop or mobile app.” So you simply log on, and can access your files. The use … My job has me working at three separate locations, and in the process I use a number of different computers. Having the ability to drag and drop folders or files into Dropbox, to then be able to access from another computer has proved invaluable, and so much easier than remembering to copy on to a flash drive, use it, and then remembering  to recopy the...