Category: IT

Back-Up! Back-Up! Back-Up!

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Shock, horror, panic!!!! I was working on some new files in Adobe Lightroom today and after that, I happened to look in a directory of some very old folders of files dating back to 2006 when to my horror all I could see was an empty frame with no preview of the file. Long story, short, the files were missing from my hard drive! However, all the Lightroom info (metadata) etc. was still present.

I have a leftover habit from my many years of IT work and when I latterly worked as an independent IT consultant (with other people’s data) of always having backups of everything. Hence, how could this have happened?

I use the grandfather, father, son backup method where three large USB discs are rotated over a period (currently 14 months) of time. Along with the occasional extra back up to another 2 USB drives which I rotate and keep at a neighbour’s house – backups are no good if your house suddenly burns down/floods/broken into. When I was doing work with clients, it was a condition of the contracts that I also provided off-site secure backups as well. You could say that old habits die hard, so again how could this happen?

There is of course cloud storage in its abundance today and at reasonable prices, but one thing that lets this down is the very variable speed/time it takes to upload files to the various cloud storage options on offer, but that’s a subject for another post.

Suffice to say I have managed to track down the files on a backup disc of June 2024 and restored them, so there is now peace in the world!! I need to investigate why they suddenly disappeared and around what date, and why only some files – the backup software error logs offer no clues at the moment.

Good job that they were only my own files, even so; missing old photographs of memories is not a good thing!

It caught my eye… 4–2023

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I participate in a number of medical research projects at Reading University which I find interesting and if they can learn anything, all well and good.

Of course, this means that you give over various personal details to help them move forward on their projects. All covered by various UK data protection rules.

I also volunteered for similar projects with Biobank and again gave up personal details under UK data protection rules. Image my surprise to find that Biobank appears to have given access to that data to insurance companies!!

Seems that was not in the small print that I remember.

Just announce today that Palantir, the USA based Data Analytics company has just been awarded a £ 480m contract for the NHS.

Palantir will work with its UK partner Accenture to set up and operate a Federated Data Platform (FDP) (Link is to NHS explanation) for the NHS. For more information about FDP’s see Wikipedia‘s explanation.

This deal opens up all sorts of data privacy issues, which have already started some serious discussions.

In case you were wondering, how many data breaches — where private data is accidentally released due to errors, system failures or hacking etc.

Here’s a List of Data Breaches and Cyber Attacks in 2023 from the IT-Governance website.

Makes you think!

Wi-Fi — AI knows best? Not here!

Mike1 Comment

During a recent firmware upgrade to my Vodafone Broadband Fibre Router, changes were made to allow for the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to select the ‘best’ Wi-Fi channel to use. All well and good, you might say, but what about if the AI channel selected suddenly causes issues?

There must be a way of manually selecting another Wi-Fi Channel to overcome any issues. Well there was, that is until the same firmware upgrade also took away the ability to for the end-user to manually change to another Wi-Fi channel!

Currently, my Vodafone Broadband Fibre Router’s AI has selected Wi-Fi channel 11 as the best to use.

I have used a Wahoo Bike Computer for a number of years, which has worked fine with my previous ISP—BT’s Broadband Router and with the new Vodafone Broadband Fibre Router’s prior to the AI upgrade.

It turns out that the Wahoo Bike Computer is a USA developed product and only works with Wi-Fi channels 1–9! So how am I supposed to connect now for syncing and updates if I can’t set my Vodafone Broadband Fibre Router to another Wi-Fi channel?

I spoke to both Wahoo and Vodafone support, here are no plans at Wahoo to change their 1-9 Wi-Fi channel ability. At Vodafone, there seems no clear understanding of what impact this ‘AI’ implementation has caused me, one suggestion was that I should move my ‘device’ closer to the router! They did suggest that I do a full reboot of the router, which I did and now the router is using channel 13! Still no good to me.

In the meantime, I am using my neighbours (with their permission) to sync my Wahoo Bike Computer, they (the neighbours) use a different ISP using Wi-Fi Channel 6, it connects with no issues from over 5 meters away.

Watch this space!