All posts by Paul Cipywnyk

Photography, Technology

Cannibalizing Old Computers

I spent a few hours today cannibalizing old computers for usable parts, and doing an archaeological dig beneath my computer desk.

old tower computers
Two old tower computers being disassembled

collection of old hard drivesThe old towers produced four hard drives of 750 GB, 1 TB, 1.5 TB, and 2 TB capacities. I’m reformatting all of them and will put them to use as secondary or tertiary backup.

SCSI Zip driveZounds, as I tunneled over a decade into the timeline beneath my computer desk I unearthed a SCSI interface ZIP drive. I can’t remember the last time I used a ZIP drive, and I don’t have any computers with a SCSI card in them.

I think I’ll resurrect the second-to-oldest tower as a Linux box. It’s got a 4-core AMD processor, 6 GB of RAM, and a 512 MB video card, which should be zippy with Ubuntu.

Business, Photography, Technology

Backing Up – You Do Regularly Back Up, Don’t You?

Backing up computers is one of those tasks that nobody likes, but everyone should do. Questions about backing up arise often. Here’s how I do it.

I find it impractical to use automated Internet offsite backup services. With around 1.5TB of photos/videos, and 185GB of documents, it would take well over a month running 24/7 to initially back everything up online, and would incur substantial data overage charges from my cable ISP.

So I continue to use multiple hard drives with a combo of in-office storage, and offsite storage in a safety deposit box at my bank.

For immediate, short-to-mid-term backup on my main Windows PC, I have two NAS (network attached storage) devices with multiple hard drives in each. For my Mac I have Time Machine automagically backing up to an external USB HD.

I also have a couple of “toasters” that you can hot-swap hard drives in and out of. I clone my entire Windows HD to an external drive every month or two, and rotate with the one(s) in the safety deposit box.

I am looking into adding a Blu-ray drive to my arsenal. Once burned, write-once discs cannot be overwritten, and archival-grade Blu-ray M-discs appear to be about the most permanent affordable means of long-term backup.

Books, Business, Editing, Photography

Enjoyed 2015 Editors’ Association of Canada Conference

I attended Editing Goes Global, the 2015 annual conference of the Editors’ Association of Canada, held in conjunction with the Professional Writers Association of Canada. The conference was in Toronto on June 12-14.

I was a volunteer photographer for the event, and you can see 498 of my photos on the EAC Flickr feed here. You can also look for the 2015 conference album on the site.

It was an excellent conference with six streams of workshops and sessions. As a photog, I got to run around and check on all of them, attending longer at a few that matched my interests here and there as time allowed.


CN Tower Toronto

Nature, Photography, Streamkeeping, Sustainability

Presenting ‘Beautiful Byrne Creek’ at Burnaby Library June 4

Back by popular demand! 🙂

As part of the City of Burnaby’s Environment Week celebrations, I’ll be presenting a slide show on “Beautiful Byrne Creek” at the Tommy Douglas Library in SE Burnaby on June 4, at 7:00 pm.

Paul bug streamkeepers
Yes, you too, can become a streamkeeper just like me! 😉

Similar to last year’s presentation, I will give an overview of Burnaby watersheds, and then focus on Byrne Creek and what sorts of activities volunteer streamkeepers do to help protect and restore natural habitat in the urban environment.

I’ll have lovely nature shots of the creek and ravine park, posters, streamkeeper handbooks and equipment, etc.

Suitable for all ages!

Hope to see you there.