Neat folder backup script

I wrote this script to provide incremental backups to a work in progress folder on my mac. It copies this foler to an external hard drive, then appends the date to the folder name. This means that every day you get a new backup (and when you get too many, you can just delete the older ones). Replace the file paths with your own:

-- This script will copy a folder of your choice to a destination of your choice, and then append today's date to the newly backed up folder. This means that you'll have a daily incremental backup of you're 'work in progress' folder, for example. --

-- If you save this as a run only application on your hard drive, then use iCal to open it at, say, 5.30 every weekday, it'll backup all your work in progress. You can then schedule your machine then to shut down at, say, 6pm using the 'Energy Saver settings in System Preferences. Obviously, if these backups build up you'll eventually run out of disk space, so you'll need to regularly 'clean out' the backup folder --


tell application "Finder"
activate
make new Finder window to startup disk
set target of Finder window 1 to folder "Hard_Drive:Users:Home:Documents:Workshop:" -- this should be the path to your work in progress folder --

ignoring application responses

-- duplicate your folder to your backup location --

duplicate folder "Workshop" of folder "Documents" of folder "Home" of folder "Users" of startup disk to "Backup_location:Backup_location folder"

-- Note: if you're backing up to a networked drive, you must make sure that you've connected to the drive before the script is run --

end ignoring

delay 120 -- set this to an appropriate number of seconds to ensure the backup is completed --

-- this next bit appends today's date to the newly backed up folder --

set theDate to current date
set todaysDate to ((the month of theDate & " " & the day of theDate & ", " & the year of theDate) as string)
if name of folder "Backup_location:Backup_location folder:Workshop" is not "" then
set name of folder "Workshop" of folder "Backup_location folder" of folder "Backup_location" to "Workshop" & " " & todaysDate
end if
end tell


cheers,

Kev

Fix to QF 1.3

A reader on Macupdate pointed out a problem with QuickFind 1.3. Basically, the Yahoo.com button was returning results from Yell.com. Sorry about that, a silly mistake on my part. It's now fixed, and you can download the repaired version (didn't think it warranted a 'new' version) from my website: http://www.themacguy.co.uk.

Cheers,

Kev.

QuickFind 1.3

Just released QuickFind 1.3. Now includes the ability to set the window transparency.

Cheers,

Kev.

The VT lives again ...

I got my VT500 back from the bike shop (Tilleys in Weymouth) today. They'd had it for a fortnight and hadn't solved the problem. Basically, the bike had suddenly started running really badly, wouldn't idle and died when I opened the throttle. It had been going like that for a couple of days. Before I took it to the bike shop I checked the oil – the crankcase was completely full of petrol! The guys in the bike shop changed the oil and filters, put in new plugs, checked the carbs, faffed about with the petrol tap, and eventually gave up on the problem yesterday.

I managed to get it home today (at an average speed of about 5 miles an hour) £250 lighter. Gutted. I thought I'd have to put the bike on ebay for parts, mabey get about £50.

As a last resort, I decided to try cleaning up the ignition components, to see it they were the problem. Half an hour with some contact cleaner on the leads to the coils and the major loom connectors, and wow! It's running fine!

Wish I'd tried that in the first place ...

Cheers,

Kev.

10.4.10 problems

Like a lot of people, I have experienced some problems after installing this update. Although the installation went OK on my imac G5, on my ibook G4 things were not so straightforward. Immediately after the update, I experienced a kernel panic (grey screen, with a window in the centre instructing me to restart my machine). I booted from the OSX installation disk and ran Disk Utility, which reported that everything was fine with my drive. When I restarted, the ibook seemed OK. However, when I restarted again later, there was another kernel panic. Ran Disk Utility again, all fine, restarted again, all fine, then when I'd restarted another time, kernel panic. This seemed to be a pattern.

I decided at this point to install the combo update, but as this had no effect, I decided to do an archive and install. However, I immediately ran into a problem with this in that the installer coudn't 'see' my drive! Eeeeek!

Anyway, to cut a long (nearly 2 hours messing around with this) story short, Disc Warrior sorted things out.

If you have similar problems with this update I'd recommend having a look at these articles (particularly the second one which has a good set of guidelines for installing updates generally):

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070628105254900
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1014792&tstart=0

All the best,

Kev.