I recently decided that I my half hearted backups to an external drive wasn’t really good enough, so I started to look at alternatives.

Note, this howto is for Mac and *nix system, if you need a windows version please try to google it.

I tried Crash plan, considered a extended dropbox plan but none of them seemed like the correct solution (still I love dropbox, its a great app). I ended up registering an Amazon S3 account.

After a quick google search I found this brilliant little blog post “Using Amazon S3 for personal backups” which describe how to use jetS3t to semi automate the synchronization of the iPhoto library on a Mac OSX.

I am not going to repeat the instructions found on the “Using Amazon S3 for personal backups” blog post, I did however have to do a few minor tweaks to get it to work, I also extended the functionality slightly, to enable a fully automated backup solution.

JetS3t has had a few releases since the “Using Amazon S3 for personal backups” article was written, I downloaded jets3t-0.8.1.zip. Adding the link of the jetS3t directory to the path in .profile didn’t work for me (I’m on Mac osX 10.6), so I added it to my .bash_profile file. You can find .bash_profile in /Users/YOUR-USERNAME/, you’ll have to replace YOUR-USERNAME with your proper username of course. Other than that I followed the examples in “Using Amazon S3 for personal backups”.

Once that was in place and worked properly I started to add some custom scripts.

1. Create a scripts directory in your home directory
2. Create a logs directory in the scripts directory

2. Navigate to your scripts directory and create a amazon-s3-backup.sh file.

3. Use your favourite text editor to add the following code to the script

Replace YOUR-IPHOTO-BUCKET with the amazon S3 bucket you want to use, and replace YOUR-USERNAME with your username on your mac or *nix system. We pipe the output from the sync process to files in the logs directory, one log file for the iphoto and one log file for the documents process.

4. Edit your crontab. The crontab is a file where you can add files that you want to automatically execute on a regular basis.

5. Add the script to your crontab, I’ve chosen to run it once a week at 20:00 every Sunday, which is expressed by (0 20 * * 0).

6. Save your cronjob

There you go, now you’ll backup your iPhoto library and Documents every Sunday at 20:00 as long as your computer is turned on and online. You can of course tweak when and how often you want to sync to Amazon S3, you can read more about scheduling cron jobs at wikipedia

Packt Publishing has asked me to review Michael Peacocks “PHP 5 Social Networking” something I’ve happily agreed to do. I am expecting to receive the book soon and look forward to read it. Social networks and PHP is something I’ve worked quite a bit with and I am interested to see Michaels take on this topic.

I’ll be posting the review as soon as I’ve finished the book.

Say hi to Lunde Development.

The 3rd of August 2010 was the first official day of my own company, Lunde Development. I had at that point already been working with the company ideas and proposals for a while and was able to hit the ground running with my first project already secured. Since then I’ve had several cool clients such as hoverState a high-end US based digital agency, the Newcastle based software company Band-X and Sharpe Recruitment a recruitment agency in Newcastle. You can read more about these projects on my portfolio page.

The future looks bright for Lunde Development and I enjoy every second of running my own business, it is challenging, I learn so much and most important of all, it is fun.

Please check out http://www.kristianlunde.com.

You know where to go if you need a new web site, a piece of software or consultancy

There is a lot of things going right now. We (@ramonahz, my daughter and myself) have decided to move back to Norway. We have thought about this for a while now and finally made the decision a few weeks ago. The main reason for moving back is that we want to be closer to our family, and not restrict our daughter to only see her grandparents a few times a year.

The move has affected my work slightly, I have resigned from my position at MySapient LTD and are now looking to do some freelance work from Norway. I also have a few other interesting things coming up, but I’ll leave that for a later blog post.

We have already started the process of moving back, and we’ll be leaving Newcastle and the UK on the 26th of July. We have spent almost 2 years in Newcastle, I have met some amazing people during these past two years, made some good friends and worked for two really cool companies. I am really going to miss living here, but hey, I’ll be back to visit soon.

Arrivederci Newcastle.

The other day I had a frenzy at amazon and ordered quite a few books I have had on my shopping list. The books are of course all computer and web related. The books I ordered was:

• Building Scalable Web Sites by Cal Henderson
• High Performance MySQL
• JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford
• Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
• Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass

I am halfway through the building scalable web sites and it is really good, even if you are a seasoned web developer I think you can learn quite a bit from it. I have also started to read the MySQL book and can’t wait to learn more about database replication, that is something I really want to find out more about. The “Don’t make me think” book will hopefully assist me on building more user friendly web sites, and hopefully the javascript book(still in the mail) will help me to brush up my js skills.

The Cocoa book was on sale, and you never know when you have to do a bit of programming for a mac

It has been a couple of weeks since my last update and a lot has happened since then. I was very much in doubt of what I should do in my last blog post. I had the choice of starting up my own company or to join a company. I chose to go for the latter one and join a company called mySapient, I have already spent a week with them and I am really looking forward to work with these guys. mySapient is a relatively new company, which are developing 3D online games, I am however not hired to do 3D development but rather to work with their web applications.  We are at the moment 4 game developers and me, doing the web stuff. It is great fun and it is really interesting to learn about online gaming and 3D games.

So, why did I choose to go for mySapient? I spoke so warmly about freelancing and setting up my own company. Well, it was no easy choice to make, I had met a some really good freelancers which I could have had the chance to work with, they had this spark and enthusiasm, and I was really tempted to join forces with them. Still there are so many uncertainties running your own company or working freelance, and having a family to support I chose to go down the safe route with a set income.  It was however not just the safety of working in mySapient that lead me to them, all the employees I met had the energy and spark which I am looking for. I also find it very interesting to work with people in a very different sector of computing than myself. I learn so much, and look forward to learn about gaming and their development processes. We have already discovered several practices that are common both for the web world and the gaming world, interesting stuff.

I would like to thank all of you for your support and assistance, it has been highly appreciated.

I resigned from my position at Orange Bus this week as you probably already know, and I thought I would keep you updated on what I am up to now. This has been a very hectic week, I have had several interviews and talked to a lot of interesting people. I have pretty much been running in meetings, talking, sending and answering emails and using twitter. Twitter has proven to be a brilliant tool I am surprised by all the response I got through twitter when I posted the message about my resignation.

At the moment I am looking into two possible permanent jobs, both seem interesting but I am not at all sure that this is the way I want to go. What I have discovered the past few days is that there is a lot of good ideas out there, these ideas need to be developed, they need technical assistance and a lot of them need more than just the technical assistance. They need partnerships, they need to team up with someone and work together.

I have also seen that the freelancers in Newcastle are piled down in work, they have so much to do that they don’t know how to get it all done in time. These things have caught my attention, all the freelancers I have spoken to and all the people with the great ideas have this spark, glow and enthusiasm I have talked so much about. They love what they are doing and they really believe in their ideas or products. They are the kind of people I would like to work with, and I am at the moment looking into starting up my own company. I know there is enough work out there, and I believe that I can make a difference and help and assist some of these people.

Walking a path without knowing where it ends up is very interesting and I am sure this will lead me to the right place. I look forward to the coming weeks and I am loving every minute of this.

Yesterday (21 July 2009) I chose to resign from my position in Orange Bus. It was a very difficult decision to take, because I like the company and I like the people working there. I do however believe I took the right decision, it was something I had been thinking about for quite a while.

The most frequent question I have been asked the last 24 hours is:

Why did you resign from Orange Bus?…. I thought Orange Bus was a good place to work.

First of all I would like to say that YES!! Orange Bus is a good place to work. I have nothing bad to say about Orange Bus, they are a innovative and experienced web agency, have a brilliant team, and provide their customers with smart and solid web solutions.

My reason for resigning is much more personal, I have the last 4 months been seeing my enthusiasm and “spark” disappear bit by bit. This has scared me tremendously, because without my “spark” without that enthusiasm I am no longer a good developer and my creativity are not what it should be without it the “spark”. I spent a while trying to figure out why this was happening, and it took me some time before I found the problem.

I did not do what I am best at and likes to do the most, designing the architectural layout of software and develop in a way I enjoy. Drupal which is the main development platform in Orange Bus is a very good CMS (Content Management System) and I hugely respect it and the people behind it. I do however feel that this is not a platform I am very comfortable with. This is purely a personal preference.

To resign from a job without having a new job might seem idiotic in the current economical climate, but I honestly believe this was the best to do both for myself and for Orange Bus, neither of us would benefit from me staying. I am confident that I will find a new job and I look forward to talking it on. I have already had a few interviews and talked with some interesting people. I have a few ideas I would really like to see put to life, so I might set up my own company back in Norway. If and when that happens I will make sure to let you know. For now I will stay in Newcastle and see what happens.

There is no hard feelings between myself and Orange Bus, I have had a very good time there and I have learned a lot, I wish them all the best in the future.

I have experienced a revolution the last week. Last Wednesday I was provided with a new phone by my employer Orange Bus, it was an……. Iphone.

I never really understood the big thing with the Iphone, until now, my requirements and expectations from a phone so far has been calling, and sending and receiving text messages. So as you might imagine getting an Iphone was quite a revolution for me, and it have changed my entire understanding of a mobile device, and I am tempted to say that it actually have changed my life to some extent.

Now I am surfing with my (I)phone, I read my emails, I listen to podcasts, check the weather reports, I find directions and I watch youtube videos!?! I am also using it to the regular things like calling and text messaging of course.

I have had other phones before which had wlan, a decent browser and a couple of GB of memory but their user interface and screen size have not been appealing enough for real usage.

I have to hand it to Apple, that is one piece of craftsmanship they have created.

Thank you Apple for revolutionizing my mobile world.

Since I am moving to the UK, I do not need a car in Norway anymore, and I am therefore selling my car.

See the full ad in finn.no (in Norwegian):

http://www.finn.no/finn/car/object?finnkode=15172038