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As a freelance developer I have multiple projects on my laptop, along with site backups, older versions, etc. If this stuff disappears it could mean weeks to months of lost time and will lead me to curling into the fetal position in a corner and crying over and over again.

I currently have four backups, yes four, and three different methods for each:

  • Time Machine backing up to a NAS with two mirrored disks.
  • Carbon Copy Cloner backup up to the same NAS.
  • Time Machine backup up to a WD MyBook.
  • Backblaze cloud backup.

As far as I can tell, none are 100% reliable, and thus enter my frustrated post.

For the past couple of days TM has been telling me it cannot backup to the MyBook and to check it with Disk Utility. Now, you see, I did this about two months ago so I know what it means. It means that somehow the TM file is corrupt and it’s going to format the drive and start again. I run Disk Utility anyway, and sure enough, the drive is now being formatted.

One backup down.

Since this happened, I started thinking, what happened to Carbon Copy Cloner, I haven’t heard from that app in awhile. So I check, I find it’s been running daily, and it’s been failing daily for the past three months. Thanks for the notification.

I decided to manually run CCC, it starts, then fails and says the destination drive is full. I guess it must be backing up more that 300gb, because that’s how much is free. Again, thanks for nothing.

Two backups down.

Back to TM and the NAS. This thing fails about every two months like clockwork. I’ve Googled this one, search numerous Mac/OSX/Apple forums about it and it just seems to be that TM has issues with backing up over wifi and will eventually fail. I actually just started a new backup about 3 weeks ago on this one. *two thumbs up*

Three backups down.

Backblaze. It seems to work, but because it’s a cloud service, it only goes back 30 days for deleted files and revisions. I have this for worst case scenario reasons like fire, theft, rabid raccoons, etc. My problem with this one isn’t the 30 day thing, it’s that I can make changes to or add files, tell it to backup and it immediately will tell me that it’s up to date without backing up files. Maybe I’m being picky, but I think it should backup things if I tell it to, not when it decides to find them.

Fourth backup not down, but I’m disappointed in you.

Now to finish wasting my time making sure that my backups are all working.

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The more poor designs and writing skills hurt my head. Seriously, who puts 3000+ words into a single paragraph to describe a designer’s responsibilities? Half of the time you read the responsibilities and you, being the web educated person you are, know that the person writing the job description has absolutely no clue what they are talking about.

Do professionals use Dreamweaver? Do they even teach it in school? I personally haven’t touched it since DW4, which was before Adobe pulled a Highlander move on Macromedia and absorbed its powers.

Anyway, on to some other news. I decided to create another website that says simply what I am and what I can offer for you. Ready? It’s http://ocalawebdesigner.com. I figured it couldn’t be any more simple than that, Ocala Web Designer. Now I am off to create the design for that, as well as, some signs and business cards for my brother and I.

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7 Reasons Why I Choose Fireworks Over PhotoshopI just read an article about how a web designer uses Fireworks for his main design tool rather than Photoshop, the title alone is what drew me in, “7 Reasons Why I Choose Fireworks Over Photoshop.” The article can be found here: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/08/7-reasons-why-i-choose-fireworks-over-photoshop/

In summary, he states that there is better pixel and gradient control, you’re able to control created objects used in multiple instances from one location (edit one, they all change), it’s easier to learn, has better vector and web output, and last of all…it’s cheaper. I think some of it is a matter of opinion, and the rest is true. From what I see, the gradient control is pretty nice, and the ability to update created objects or symbols all at once is equally as nice. The price tag would be something that would attract anyone that is needing a editor, but doesn’t have the coin to hand out at the moment.

Personally, some of the tools in Fireworks just never clicked in my head, but I think that may be due to the first big editor I ever used was Paint Shop Pro. Years ago, PSP was the generic version of Photoshop, so it was easy to step from one to the next and grasp it fairly easily. Fw just works on a different level, like the Macromedia tools did before Adobe took over, with different tools, looks and user interfaces.

I have a friend who swears by Fw, and will even create designs and send them to me in native .png formats, which I then have to convert to .psd to work on. To calm his banter, I’ve tried to use it several times, but felt I was getting no where. It was like trying to screw two boards together with a hammer, sure I could probably get the job done, but it wouldn’t be as fast, nor would it be the quality it should be.

With all of that said, I think I will stick to Photoshop as my main design tool…but, if I ever get the time, I will look into playing around in Fireworks to see what I can pull out of my hat.