This particular keyboard has one particular feature that I really like: The alternate characters (such as ®, ©, ‡, ¶, and others that aren’t accessed via regular keys) are printed right on the face of the keys, so it’s easy to find the particular one I’m looking for, and I can type them by simply hitting option-key or option-shift-key.

There were two keys that were problematic on this keyboard, though. The caps-lock key has been moved from its normal home on the far left of the keyboard, above the shift key, over to the right side of the bottom row, between the option and control keys. I found that I was frequently hitting caps-lock instead of option. The Mac’s System Preferences -> keyboard modification allowed me to change that mapping, and now my caps-lock key acts liks the option key. I virtually never use caps-lock, so this is a perfectly acceptable solution.

The other problem was, the help and delete keys are lower than I’m used to, and so I was frequently hitting help when I was reaching for delete. Which opens the help viewer, which I then have to close, and then I can delete whatever I trying to delete. The built-in keymapping options didn’t allow me to change that, but a little freeware program called Ukulele solved that problem handily. Now my help key acts like a second delete key, and it doesn’t matter which of those two keys I hit. I rarely use the help files, and when I do I usually access them from the menu using the mouse, so that also is a perfectly fine solution.

The Matias USB 2.0 Keyboard for Mac

Now that I’ve found a keyboard I like, I’m thinking I should order a lifetime supply. I’m quite sure they’ll stop making it.

For many years, I’ve been very good about backing up my computer. I learned that lesson back when I worked in a real office for a real company. Our graphic artist had been working on a very important Photoshop file for over a year. She wasn’t working on that file every day, but whenever she had some time in between other routine projects. The day was almost at hand when she would need to send that file to the printer, so she was stepping up the amount of time she was spending working on this file. The project this file was for was extremely important, and there was no wriggle room in the schedule or the production deadline. At the time, the best backup system available to us was a tape backup system, and she rotated her backups through 5 different tapes, one for each business day of the week. She religiously ran her backup every day to the appropriate tape.

One day, she went to work on the file and it wouldn’t open. Photoshop reported it was corrupted. She tried everything. She called our tech support. Nothing would open that file. Well, okay, she’s got five backups. Pop in the most recent backup tape. The file was corrupted. No problem, there are 4 more backups. She’ll lose a day or two of work, but it’s not a big deal. Pop in the second most recent backup. The file was corrupted. Still not a big deal, one of the remaining 3 backups will surely be good. The third most recent backup — the file was corrupted. Now she’s pretty concerned.

The fourth most recent backup — the file was corrupted. She’s on the verge of panic, and is about to slit her wrists or jump out the nearest window.

The fifth — and last — backup. The file was good! Phew! Okay, she lost 5 days worth of work, but a major disaster was averted.

It turned out that the spools on the tape drive were defective and were stretching the tape as it recorded her data. We were very lucky that the one tape contained her file intact.

The Take-Home Lesson

The take-home lesson from that little adventure is, never rely on one single backup method.

I have an almost-perfect backup system.

• I have several extra hard drives attached to my Mac. I use a great donation-ware utility called Carbon Copy Cloner to run scheduled clones daily, weekly, and bi-weekly. Two clones are “exact mirror” duplicates of my hard drive as it exists at the time of the backup, and two are “incremental” clones that copy over everything new and changed from my main hard drive, but leaves on the clone anything that no longer exists on my main hard drive. The mirrored clones are cloned every day on alternating days. In case of catastrophic failure of my main drive, I could boot from one of the mirrored clones and it would be just as if I had booted from my main drive, with absolutely everything intact and in exactly the same state it was in at the time of the clone. The two incremental clones serve as backups to my mirrored clones, and also allow me to easily retrieve older files that I’ve dumped from my main hard drive, by a simple drag-and-drop.
• Additionally, I use Retrospect to back up my user files to DVD. I rotate between two Retrospect schedules. One runs nightly, in the evening after I’m done working for the day. The other one runs weekly, and backs up my files to a different backup set. The first set maintains a daily archive of all my files, and the second set maintains a weekly archive of all my files.
• I also use Time Machine, Apple’s “Easy Button” backup solution. I didn’t think I would like Time Machine, but I do. I purchased an additional external hard drive to use as my Time Machine disk, and Time Machine runs in the background every hour, backing up whatever files I’ve changed in the past hour. The thing I like best about Time Machine is that it’s so easy to grab any recent version of a file. If I’m working on some particularly complex bit of php code, and I’ve completely bollixed it up, I can use Time Machine to go back to the version I had saved an hour ago, or two hours ago, or earlier. Time Machine wouldn’t be my first choice for a complete restore in case of hard drive failure, but it’s an additional option in case all of my other backups fail simultaneously.

I like Time Machine so much that I bought another hard drive for my husband to use, because he doesn’t back up nearly often enough. Just yesterday he commented to me that he plugs in his Time Machine disk to his laptop every couple of days at the office and lets it do its thing. A backup once every couple of days wouldn’t be nearly enough for me, but it’s a lot better than Tom’s previous backup schedule, which was once every month or two, at best.

I use some other backup approaches, as well. Since I use Parallels virtualization software, with 3 different very large virtual disk images of three different Windows operating systems, and since I use Entourage, with its stupendously stupid monolithic database, I exclude those from my Time Machine and Retrospect backups. I work with a lot of MySQL databases, and those don’t live in my user directory, nor are they easily accessible in the Finder. So I have a couple of cron scripts that generate a complete database dump and a copy of my Entourage database every morning. The computer turns itself on at 5am, and the cron scripts run shortly thereafter. The Windows virtual disk images I just don’t worry about — I don’t keep anything critical on those, so I would just re-install Windows if anything happened to those.

The Weakness in my System

The only weakness in my multilayered backup system is that I have no offsite backups, other than files that I’ve uploaded to the web server. If the house burned down with all my backups, I’d be in a bad way. I’ve been considering signing up for Mozy, or simply using the “poor man’s backup system” by having my husband carry one of my external clones back and forth to his office. The likelihood that his office and our house would both burn down at the same time is extremely low, so that should be pretty safe.

My backup strategy may seem like overkill, but it’s a beefed-up version of my previous backup system, which included a Retrospect backup to DVD and a clone to an extra internal hard drive. At the beginning of this year, both my main hard drive and my cloned hard drive failed at the same time. I ended up replacing the whole computer. Since I had my daily Retrospect backups on DVD, I was able to restore all my files — but it took days to reinstall all my programs, restore all my files, restore my databases, and re-configure all the configurations and settings to where my computer was in a usable state. I had to install php and MySQL, get all the customized Apache configurations back the way I wanted them, enter dozens of application license codes, and generally spend a lot of time messing with things before I was able to do a lick of work for any paying clients.

I was pleased that I didn’t lose any important files (or any files, for that matter), but I was terribly unhappy at the time I had to spend restoring my system. So I instituted additional backups to additional media. Everything runs automatically, so all I have to do is pop in the appropriate DVD regularly. I won’t rest easy until I’m doing regular off-site backups, though.

For years, I’ve used the iMediaKey from Macally. I liked that keyboard. It was almost as comfortable to use as the original Apple extended keyboard. For a long time, whenever I spilled coffee on it or needed a new one for any other reason, I ordered another identical keyboard. I wish now I had bought up a lifetime supply, because Macally has stopped making them.

I’ve tried Apple’s fancy new brushed-metal keyboard. I kept reading reviews by people who said it took them a while to get used to it, but once they did, they wouldn’t want to use anything else. Well, I tried for several months to get used to it, and I just couldn’t. There’s not enough tactile feel to the keys or sufficient tactile feedback on keypress. Too many typos, too slow, not comfortable to use. I’ve decided that any of the new “slim” style keyboards are just not for me. Which makes it difficult to find a good keyboard, because that’s what all the keyboard makers seem to be moving toward.

I also tried the white keyboard that Apple was shipping with its Macs for a while. It’s not a “slim” style, and it has better tactile feedback, but still too many typos and not very comfortable. The biggest problem is that the keyboard has virtually no bezel or frame around the outside. Whenever I rest my elbow on the desk while reading over something, my arm presses against the space bar and I end up entering hundreds of space characters in whatever document I’m working on, until I notice it.

I had been wanting to try the Matias Tactile Pro keyboard. Everyone says it’s the closest thing ever to the original Apple extended keyboard. But they apparently don’t make it anymore. I’ve read up on the keyboards from DiNovo & Logitech — none of them appeal to me. I’ve rejected out of hand any PC keyboards. My husband uses a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard with his laptop, and he loves it. But the labeling of the alt, control and “windows” keys always throws me off — I want to use the Command key, goshdernit, not the control key!

Yesterday I ordered the USB 2.0 keyboard from Matias. It looks promising. I’ll post an update after it arrives and I’ve had a chance to try it out.

First up: A new regional service provider for an association of professionals. I have nearly a dozen clients whose websites depend on a datafeed, which was provided by the previous service provider for this association. The old datafeed was excellent — clear and concise, comprehensive, and easy to use. The new provider first hemmed and hawed and offered vague responses to direct questions….. Somewhat important questions such as, “Will you still provide us with a datafeed?” If this service provider was not going to provide a datafeed, I would have to rewrite all the programming on my clients’ sites to use a different datafeed from a secondary source, which wasn’t as good as the one we were currently getting, but at least it was something. If the new provider would be providing a datafeed, I needed the schema for it as soon as possible, because the old datafeed was going to cease on a particular date, and any new datafeed would likely require rewriting my programming.

The new provider, though, simply couldn’t seem to tell us if they would be providing a datafeed or not. First the answer was “yes,” then it was “no,” then it was “maybe,” then it was “yes, and it will be compliant with the national standard,” then it was “if you pay us for the custom programming we will.” I was just about at the point where I would have to use the other available datafeed in order to get my clients’ sites updated by the deadline, when this new provider made a datafeed available.

And when I finally got a look at it: Oh boy, does it suck. First of all, and I’m actually very glad of this, the datafeed omits some of the crucial information that my clients need. I couldn’t believe that a large professional service provider such as this one would omit such critical information from the datafeed they provide to their members. Keep in mind, the members, including my clients, provide the data in the first place, and pay the service provider handsomely to maintain it for them. This isn’t some free service where you get what you pay for.

As I said, I was glad they omitted this information, because it allowed me to recommend to my clients that we use the secondary datafeed from a different provider. My clients wouldn’t have understood, or cared, about my other objections to the datafeed, but the missing information they understood and cared about.

And what are my other objections to this new feed? Well, first, it completely ignores the flexibility of relational databases, and has never even been in the same room with the concept of normalization. As an example, for a particular feature, the datafeed has 5 fields for characteristics of that feature. What will happen when 6 characteristics are needed? The datafeed will have to be restructured to add a 6th field, and my database that uses the datafeed will have to be restructured, and the programming code that selects the data and displays it in a web browser would have to be re-written (again) to accommodate the 6th characteristic. And then a 7th characteristic will appear at some point, and I’d have to go through that pointless exercise all over again. The datafeed is structured this way for about 9 different features — and it’s almost certain that these will need to be changed on a regular basis.

It also means that for a feature, say, “surface,” a particular characteristic, say “fuzzy,” might appear in field #10, or field #11, or field #12, or field #13, or field #14…. Well, you probably get the idea. There’s no consistency at all with respect to what goes where in the database. So that if I wanted to search the database for items that have a fuzzy surface, I have to write the code to search multiple different fields. This is both stupid, and highly inefficient.

The previous service provider understood relational databases and had structured their datafeed so that they could add a 6th characteristic, and a 7th, and even an 8th, 9th, and 10th, and it would continue working with my database “as is,” with no re-programming required. It’s not that I’m lazy — when re-programming is required, I do it. But I have better things to do with my time than waste it re-writing code that shouldn’t need to be rewritten, and my clients have better things to do with their money than pay me for that time.

And they did silly things like break up a single 1,200-character text field into 5 separate text fields, breaking up the text between words in a sentence, if needed, to fit them into the shorter text fields. That’s easy enough to handle in my code — I would simply concatenate all 5 fields into 1 in my database query. But it shouldn’t be necessary

The complete lack of normalization, and the moronic handling of the large text field, are indicative of a programmer who doesn’t know jack shit about databases. And that was my biggest concern of all. Even if I were to use the database as provided, what would they do with it down the road? They might decide to remove or add fields without telling anyone, or make other changes that would totally break the sites that depend on the datafeed.

We ended up using the secondary provider’s datafeed. It’s not as good as the previous one we were getting, but it’s infinitely better than the datafeed from the new provider.

Second: eBay, of all people! You would think a company the size of eBay would have highly competent programmers who know what they’re doing.

News flash: They don’t.

I have a number of sites that earn affiliate commissions from eBay’s Partner Network program. I can view reports on my earnings within eBay’s ePN website. I can also download those reports, for importing into a spreadsheet or database.

I want to be able to view and manipulate these reports in different ways than the ePN interface allows, so I’ve been working on a program that will import the downloaded reports into a database and allow me to search, sort, and analyze in a variety of ways. I think it’s a very cool program, and I may develop it further in order to release it publicly.

But the transaction reports that I get from eBay made my shake me head. One day, the report might contain 9 fields, and the next day it might have 11, and on another day it might have 13. I think there are some other possible permutations possible, too, but until I get such a report in my account I won’t know exactly how many fields it will have or in what order.

This makes it much more difficult to import the data into my database. I can’t just “LOAD DATA INFILE,” nor can I simply parse the files and do a standard INSERT query. Instead, I have to parse the files and check for the number of fields, and check to see what headings the fields have, and write several different MySQL queries to use, depending on the results of the parsing.

These are basic tab-delimited files. eBay’s programmers should know enough to just put a zero or a null value, along with the tab, for the fields that aren’t needed for a given report — such that all downloaded reports would have exactly 13 fields, always, and they would all have the same fields, in the same order, always.

I sometimes feel overwhelmed and outclassed on the programming forums where I hang out. There are so many extremely competent, highly skilled programmers who can toss off a complex INNER JOIN of 5 different tables as easily as I can type my name.

These programmers would laugh their asses off if they were to see these datafeeds and reports that I’m dealing with.

The answer is, put this in your style sheet:

a img {   border: 0;}

For Christmas, my in-laws gave me a automotive GPS for my car. I’ve used a number of different marine GPS chartplotters on boats — and I just love them — but I had never even thought about getting one for my car.

It turns out this was a very cool, and very thoughtful, gift. This handy little unit easily attaches to my windshield with a little suction cup, and automatically locates where I am and displays the map, the road I’m on, the direction I’m traveling, and shows upcoming crossroads.

Even better, I can use it to plot a route to a particular location. I just punch in the street address and the GPS automatically determines the route and gives me turn-by-turn instructions for getting there. It has a handy little “detour” button, so that if I come upon a bad wreck on the highway or something, it gives me an alternate route.

It comes pre-programmed with a multitude of service stations, restaurants, motels, and such, so that if I want to go to the nearest Chevron station, for example, I can use the touchscreen controls to select “Fuel,” scroll through the list of Shells, Citgos, Chevrons, etc., select the one I want, and automagically the unit tells me how to get there.

The display is excellent. Even in bright sunlight, the map is bright and clearly readable. There are several default settings that can be customized for the user’s preference, such as having the map show north up or route up, and whether I want the unit to default to the shortest route or the fastest route. I can save favorite locations, which will be very handy when we visit my brother-in-law in Tennessee, whose home we always have trouble finding.

There are fancier GPS streetmap units on the market, which cost a lot more money. I wouldn’t mind having one that would let me scroll the map around at will, save waypoints with the press of a single button (like the MOB buttons on the marine chartplotters), make telephone calls, and get traffic reports. But all those features add a lot of expense, and this handy little unit serves its purpose well.