Apple To Dominate Tablet Market Through 2012, iSuppli Says
How to recover data from an formatted HFS Drive
Last week my Time Machine Backup Hard disk suddenly died! Everytime I plugged the hard disk, my mac did not recognise the file system (it was a HFS+ partition) and asked my to format it. I did format it, only to realise that I had lost some precious data.
How do you recover data from a formatted hard disk? Enter Data Rescue from PROSoft Engineering. I used Data Rescue II (only to realise afterwards that a new version was available). It took more than 2 days to scan the hard disk (1 TB hard disk, sector by sector analysis) and afterwards it recreated the files it found.
Recreation of the files, was also a lengthy process, and took nearly 10 hrs. After it recovers the files it presents a list of the kinds of files you might be interested in restoring. I selected the files I was interested in, research papers and my iPhoto Collection.
Recovery of the selected files (around 55.6GB) took around 3 hrs.
All in all I'm really grateful for such fantastic software. For all the windows users out there.... My NTFS hard disk has failed as well 
(bad start to the year! 
). Currently I'm using ParetoLogic's Data Recovery Pro. The data recovery process is currently on going (since 5 days).
Is Data Science emerging as a New Domain in Computer Science?
I've just completed reading Chapter 5 of Beautiful Data. I planned to write a 
blog post about this book, however this chapter contained some new insights for me which I thought were valuable to share. This book has some excellent chapters covering significant developments in the domain of data storage, retrieval and analysis. Chapter 5 is titled "Information Platforms and the Rise of the Data Scientist" written by Jeff Hammerbacher.
The chapter explores the challenges Facebook faced in analysing the data it is collecting and how existing RDMS solutions (MySQL and Oracle) were not up to the task of collecting and enabling analysis of highly fluid data such as clickstreams from millions of users (Currently 2.5 Petabytes is stored and new data is collected at 14 TB/day). The author goes on to discuss the solution they developed internally at Facebook (based on Cloud technologies such as Hadoop and unstructured data).
Analysis of large scale data is becoming a common problem in a large number of domains. Web companies such as Facebook, Google are not the only ones in the World that analyse huge amounts of data. Several scientific experiments such as the CERN LHC produce gigantic amounts of data that needs to be analysed (The recent book Fourth Paradigm by Microsoft Research explores data intensive scientific initiatives).
So many new skills are required to manage this data: designing storage architectures, high speed retrieval architectures, authoring data analysis workflows and finally communicating the results of the analysis. All these tasks are multi-disciplinary. Some tasks are related to Computer Science (design of data storage and retrieval systems), some to Business Analysis (authoring data analysis), some tasks belong to statisticians (the actual algorithms performing the analysis) and some to engineers (the underlying infrastructure for storing and processing the data).
Can this multi-discplinary approach to data management be termed as "Data Science". This is a term which I believe is increasingly gaining traction.
Making the move to Cloud backup
My Time Machine Hard disk failed 2 days ago. I lost all my backups! Unfortunately I had reinstalled my system just last week and had not yet fully restored from the latest time machine backup. Fortunately I have recovered everything other than my pictures.
I don't want to experience such loss again, so I'm moving towards Cloud based backup. I gain a few things, but loose some as well. The service I selected is Mozy. They provide unlimited storage at an economical rate. However their backup/restore tool for the Mac does not support Proxies (their windows one apparently does). Moreover, Mozy's tool also does not allow me to browse my backups in a fine-grained fashion as Time Machine does. In Time Machine I can restore individual folders and files and browse my backup history over weeks and months. The Mozy tool does not provide such fine-grained history browsing.
Finally, uploading is such a hassle! It took me more than a day to upload a limited subset of data from my laptop (~60GB). Downloading fortunately is faster.
What do I gain from a cloud based backup solution? Hopefully I will not loose my data again.
However because there are certain advantages to local backups as well, I plan to do daily Time machine backups, on a new 1TB HD and weekly cloud backups. As for my pictures, I have a MobileMe subscription and those albums I shared there with friends and family I still have them. So in future I plan to upload all my new pictures to MobileMe.
Turing (A Novel about Computation) Review
I just completed reading Turing (A Novel about Computation). Its a post-modern novel around a computer programme named "Turing". It has a captivating story line that guides the reader through centuries of human ingenuity and intellectual achievement. The book also presents a successful fusion of history, economics, mathematics, computer science that is brilliant and original. I would definitely recommend it to people who know little about computing, because the book explains a lot about the core principles behind computer science in a down to earth fashion. However sometimes the explanations are so rudimentary and superficial that they are rendered inaccurate. Nevertheless its a good book and is definitely worth a read.
Buy Cheap Storage from Google and use it for Online Backup
Today, Google has dramatically decreased prices for the extra storage you can purchase for Google Services like Gmail and Picasa. The current prices:
Apple also provides upgrade options for iDisk and MobileMe Mail, however their prices are significantly more expensive an extra 60GB from Apple will set you back for an additional £59 (~ $100), while Google for 80GB charges only $20!.
So you might think that Apple's iDisk is atleast accessible from everywhere, while Google Storage can't be accessed as a drive? Think again, this is how:
For Mac Users:
Install gDisk. gDisk provides an accessible application for mounting your gmail drive on your mac.
For Linux Users:
The most popular way for Linux users to mount Gmail storage locally is to use FUSE. If your on ubuntu, this is how to do it
sudo apt-get install gmailfs cp /etc/gmailfs/gmailfs.conf ~/.gmailfs.conf chmod 600 ~/.gmailfs.conf
Now specify your gmail account credentials in ~/.gmailfs.conf and to finally mount the drive, just type:
mkdir gmail mount.gmailfs none gmail
For Windows Users:
Just like for the Mac there are applications available like gDrive Shell Extension
How to mount your MobileMe iDisk in Linux
I tried mounting my iDisk about 3 years ago in a Linux system and I had to use Cadaver for it. It was not easy to configure. Fortunately now things have changed. You just need 1 command (or two if you have to install davfs2) to mount a Webdav share (iDisk uses webdav).
1. First install the WebDAV Linux File System (davfs2). If you are using Ubuntu (as many people seem to be doing nowadays), you can install davfs2 by typing.
~# sudo apt-get install davfs2
2. To mount a dav share then, simply create a folder for it
sudo mkdir /mnt/idisk
and mount your idisk
sudo mount -t davfs https://idisk.me.com/$MOBILEMEUSERNAME /mnt/idisk/
Replace $MOBILEMEUSERNAME with your Mobile Me username. Davfs2 will ask for your password, and then you can start using your idisk.
Why Working Harder is not the solution for enhanced productivity
I just came across this truly fantastic post on productivity. The cited article, talks from a startup owner's point of view, and his advice can be summarised as:
"“Working harder” is a poor strategy which your competitors can trivially replicate. Instead, spend some time measuring what tasks add value to your business and at what imputed wages. Outsource those tasks which are below your desired imputed wage, automate any task where appropriate, and simply don’t do things which don’t add value."
We often yearn for more productivity and the answer usually is "work harder". But working harder is not the answer! Working harder implies that you spend more time on doing what you already do on a frequent basis. We all work on several things at once, and not all activities add real value. For instance if I analyse my day, I do in a sense try to "work hard", that is work at least 8-9 hours but I don't get much done in that time frame because all the various activities I do blur my real targets.
Faced with this predicament its always a good idea to sit back and analyse your day to day activities. You need to judge which truly add value to pursuits you deem valuable rather than waste your time under the illusion of getting work done. These are two ideas that have truly made me more productive and one idea that can:
1. Cluster related tasks
I go to the Gym regularly, but often if I have some groceries to purchase I purchase them while going to or form the gym. Similarly, if I go to the University I try to accomplish most of the tasks which I cannot do at home. On the contrary, if I did not cluster tasks doing some task again in the future might cost me more time than doing it along with some related task.
This idea works in unison with "contextual todos". When you define a todo item, define the context in which it can be carried out. Some tasks may be carried out at home, some while at the computer etc..
2. Automate trivial tasks
I try to automate as much as possible. Checking mails repeatedly when new ones arrive costs a lot of time in terms of lost focus and diverted attention. I've written an AppleScript that notifies me if a new mail has come that specifically mentions me in the TO or CC fields. If I don't get this notification I just don't check my mail.
3. Outsource as much as possible
I'm not in the position of outsourcing some of my tasks, but this can potentially be very useful for someone. Often while doing some task, I say to myself someone could be doing this and I could be working on something a lot more valuable. Indeed the author of the cited article outsourced numerous tasks that did not require his involvement.
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