DropPages.com:

I launched DropPages in March 2011 as a side project. I wanted an easy way to create and manage websites quickly and effortlessly. I designed DropPages so that content and presentation are loosly coupled, pages render fast, and templates are easy to manage.

I love this idea. Share a folder in your DropBox with the folks at DropPages.com, and that folder instantly (once approved) becomes a website. Edit your site locally (using Markdown, yay!) and your changes are reflected at DropPages immediately. It’s not magic, nor especially complex, but what a clever idea.

I created one at jackbaty.droppages.com using the demo template site. I don’t even have a real use for it yet, but there’s no question that it’s darn nifty.

Just another reason DropBox rules the Internet.

Once I decided to reel things in and continue posting primarily to this site, I started looking at backup options. Of course I can always back everything up manually, but who wants to deal with that? Instead I thought I’d try VaultPress by Automattic, the folks who make WordPress.

VaultPress is a paid service at $15/month for the Basic plan and still in beta. Setting up VaultPress could not have been easier. A simple plugin install, authenticate with Wordpress.com and it was off an running. Everything is backed up continuously - database, uploads, plugins, everything.

Certainly worth considering if your site’s content is important to you. For my little site it’s overkill, but it sure works well and that feels good.

See? Here’s a snapshot of the VaultPress activity log immediately after first posting this…

Tumblr, Twitter, Posterous, Facebook, Flickr. So many places to post, share, like, and generally carry on about anything and everything. I try them all. I like using them, each for different reasons. But I’ve stopped. Or at least I’ve slowed down.

Instead, I’m blogging here at jackbaty.com again. You know, boring old RSS-driven reverse-dated blogging. I’ve had a personal blog since the late 90s. The earliest stuff was lost due to carelessness, but everything since 2000 is preserved right here. It got me thinking. In 10 years, where will all my Facebook posts be? How about Tumblr? The answer is that I have no idea. That’s my stuff, and it’s “out there” somewhere. I don’t trust any of them with my stuff.

On the other hand, I know exactly where this (Wordpress) blog’s posts and files and data are, and between manual backups and Vaultpress, I have no fear of losing it all, ever.

This blog has become a very valuable resource. Not for you maybe, but for me. I look things up here all the time. There is a decade of my life–interests, trends, and thoughts–all searchable and nicely organized. It kind of snuck up on me, but once I realized how cool and important that was, I made the decision to pull my scattered resources back together and keep my focus here.

Nobody really “follows” me anyway. There was a time I thought this site might become something of value outside of just being a personal journal. I write about software, productivity, photography, etc. Surely I could develop an “audience.” Of course that never happened, because I’m not interested in an audience. I’m only interested in writing down what I’m interested in, so that’s what I’m going to continue doing.

It’s not about the iPad:

The next time you watch a child use an iPad, think about what your knowledge-based toys looked like when you were their age.

Is he referring to the Magic 8 Ball or the Slinky?

Archer cracks me up. Here’s a short clip that I laugh at every time I see it.

A few years ago, when I tired of maintaining a Postfix mail server, I moved Fusionary’s mail to Google Apps and life became much easier. No complaints, and we’ve been there ever since. Most Gmail users I know are happy with the web app and consider it an improvement all around. Not me, I’m a desktop app guy and I prefer Apple’s Mail.app (“Mail” from now on.)

Using Mail with Gmail while keeping things synced between multiple Macs is possible, thanks to IMAP, so that’s what I’ve always done. Or at least that’s what I did until recently. Gmail’s IMAP implementation is a bit non-standard and can be flakey, and getting Mail to act right always seemed to take a bit too much tweaking.

Gmail’s insistence on tags vs folders requires clients to jump through hoops so that tags act like folders. I like tags and folders, which is why I love MailTags so much. The problem is that MailTags can’t sync tags when using Gmail’s version IMAP.

My solution is to copy all of my mail from Gmail to MobileMe.

Two weeks ago I configured Gmail to forward all of my mail to a MobileMe account and I set up Mail to use MobileMe’s IMAP instead. I can think of a few benefits right off.

1. I now have all my mail being stored in two separate locations. This means that if I ever end up being one of those unfortunate Gmail users who wakes up one day with all of my email missing, I’ll have some redundancy.
2. Mail works flawlessly with MobileMe. No more pseudo folders or “[All Mail]” nonsense.
3. MailTags tags and other settings sync nicely between all of my Macs, yay!

There doesn’t seem to be a downside to this. MobileMe offers something like 20GB of storage, and I don’t use it for photos or anything so that should be plenty. I hold out hope that Apple will some day turn MobileMe into something great, and when that happens, I’ll be ready.

I still use Gmail as my email search engine, because it’s much better at search than either Mail or MobileMe.

After two weeks I can say that this experiment has been a success. Besides, there’s almost no friction in changing my mind later. I just simply re-activate my Gmail account in Mail and stop forwarding everything. Don’t see that happening though.

[UPDATE Monday Mar 3 2011 at 5:28 PM] Macworld posted an article on how to make Gmail and Mail work better together, in case you don’t like the idea I presented above.

Remember when Sammy Hagar was awesome? Montrose is one of those albums that is just great all the way through.

[audio /images/RockCandy.mp3]

Went to the gym this morning.

Discovered this in my bag.

Did not eat.

Battle: Los Angeles :: rogerebert.com:

“‘Battle: Los Angeles’ is noisy, violent, ugly and stupid. Its manufacture is a reflection of appalling cynicism on the part of its makers, who don’t even try to make it more than senseless chaos. Here’s a science-fiction film that’s an insult to the words ‘science’ and ‘fiction,’ and the hyphen in between them. You want to cut it up to clean under your fingernails.”

I sometimes wish studios would make even more movies like Battle: Los Angeles, just so Ebert can write about them.

Mini Review: Keyboard Maestro — The Brooks Review:

I always wished that I could do more just by pressing the keyboard, kind of like how in just about every TV show the IT guy can zoom and enhance a picture with just a few key strokes. That is when I remembered Keyboard Maestro; I decided it was time to give it a fair shake down.

It is easy to wander down some long hallways while playing with Keyboard Maestro, but it can be totally worth it.