Announcing “The 9pm Excuses”

So you know how the other day I told you about the return of The 9pm Edict podcast and how the next episode would be posted on Sunday 4 May? Well it isn’t going to happen quite like that.

I did go to Sydney’s Sutherland Shire as planned yesterday. And I did record stuff. But for reasons explained in this mini-podcast, I didn’t get the material I needed to fulfil the plan. Sorry.

I’m heading back to Cronulla tomorrow. Stay tuned. I’m hoping to post the new episode on Tuesday 6 May or thereabouts.

Meanwhile you can listen to all of the episodes, now and in the future, if you subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe automatically in iTunes, or go to SoundCloud.

If you’d like to comment on this (non-)episode — or suggest people, places or things that I should check out — please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

You can also check out the progress videos I made on the YouTube playlist.

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission. The sound of the waves breaking on the beach was recorded at Cronulla yesterday and it’s mine, I tell you, all mine.]

Talking family data disaster planning on ABC 702 Sydney

ABC logoOn Tuesday last week, we feared that Wednesday would be a day of disastrous bushfires in NSW — certainly the risk was there — so what should people do to make sure their valuable personal and family data was safe?

I spoke about this with morning presenter Linda Mottram on ABC 702 Sydney, but not before we had a chat about what my impressions of how people were reacting to and preparing for the approaching fires — including my own emotions.

We ended up talking for 15 minutes. Here’s the full audio, minus the break for the news headlines at 1030.

The audio is of course ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, archived here because it’s not archived anywhere else.

Patch Monday: Backups for small business

ZDNet Australia logo: click for Patch Monday episode 38

Are your data backups up-to-date? Are you sure? Have you tested them lately? Could your business survive an equipment failure, flood, fire or theft?

In the Patch Monday podcast this week, I take a look at backup options for small and SOHO businesses. Is it time to move beyond sticking a tape drive in your Windows Small Business Server? After all, terabyte hard drives are under $200, and cloud storage options are available for just a few dollars a month.

We hear from Sally McIntosh of PR firm Condiment Communications with her lack-of-backup horror story, and my mate Garth Kidd who does storage and backup stuff for the big end of town. He reckons it’s worth bringing this enterprise computing attitude to small business backups.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

Links for 28 August 2009 through 09 September 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 28 August 2009 through 09 September 2009, gathered automatically and then forgotten until today:

Is the Victorian Government running without data backups?

Crikey logo

In Crikey yesterday, I wrote that we’d received information that all is not well at CenITex, the Victorian Government agency which provides IT services to six out of 10 state departments. Our tipster’s more serious allegation is that there hasn’t been a full data backup in more than a year, and that “everyone in CenITex is aware of this”.

“Some time ago, what was the Shared Services Centre realised they were unable to back up all the data they manage for the participating departments in the overnight time window,” they told Crikey.

“For over 12 months they have been taking only incremental backups… There is no disaster recovery in place. Everyone in CenITex is aware of this and are told to ‘shut up’.”

The article isn’t behind the paywall, so read it in full.