a long time ago, perhaps shortly after my laptop drive failure disaster of february 2006, i was looking into various ways to backup my hard drive like i should have been all along. i came across a great blog entry on automated backups with transmit, that is, using the ftp program to upload your files to your server. i bookmarked the page and meant to do physical backups as well as uploading a few crucial files online just in case the backup drive failed or if i was traveling and didn't have the backup drive with me.

what's great about the method explained is that it uses automator and i have never found a use for automator before, though i desperately want to unharness the full power of mac os x by utilizing tools such as automator. knowing nothing about how automator works or getting into the mode of working around the quirks is what prevents me from using automator. everytime i open it, i cannot find any actions useful to me. my inclination to backup the address book would to look for in automator or create some sort of script that runs the backup feature within the address book program, then ftp that to a server. that's not what the article is about at all. instead, use automator to ftp the entire contents of the address book folder where the crucial files are stored. save that action as an application. then create an event in ical, set the alarm to not send a message or play a sound but to open a file (the application you created). it's simple, brilliant, and gets the job done.

i did exactly what was described and it worked quite well. i created a 'scheduled tasks' calendar in ical of all the backups i was going to do. from there i created more automated backups such as backing up ical, my documents, and my precious photoshop brushes and actions. losing the photoshop actions i had created is what really upset me when my hard drive failed last year. true i didn't create them completely on my own, i had read tutorials online, but it was a bitch and a half to remember what the tutorial was called and from which tutorial site was it listed on. each of these backups will happen every week at a time when i know my laptop will be online. when the backup events run, they run 5 minutes apart to allow time to upload all the files. plus, like the tutorial says, only updated files will uploaded. therefore the first time you run the backup will take the longest.

however, with these automated backups i am only able to upload the entire contents of folders, not individual files only. so i still have to do manual backups of particular files. i created another event in ical to remind me of this and took notes as to their paths so i would not forget. these individual files would be my mail preferences, mail rules, safari bookmarks, and stickies database. i'm sure i'll think of more essentials to backup later but for now i'm quite happy that i finally did this and it's working. you do have to pay for the ftp program transmit though and that's a small price to pay for such a great program. i had bought an earlier version before but never purchased the upgrade or rebought it after everything went haywire. (i can't quite recall which computer i purchased it on!) so the first thing i had to do was download the latest version and pay for it. i'm really happy i did because now features i wanted to use are unlocked, such as favorites and the automator actions!

doing all this has really helped me to clean up the clutter of my desktop. i used to have a very clean desktop but my computing habits have been really bad for the past year or two. i put all the files i'm working on on a regular basis on the desktop. i only file away the files i'm not actively using. i moved all those document files into the documents folder so now they will be backed up on a weekly basis. should anything every happen to those files, at least i'll have a copy that's within 1 week old so the version of it should be very close to what i last used. i'm going to make shortcuts to all the files i use on a regular basis and put them in my favorites folder. i believe that's what i did when i first started using os x and it was a great method. this way i can find my files quickly but at the same time have everything backed up.

perhaps later on i'll think of other things that ical can do for me on an automated basis!