I can’t look back on this year without grimacing at the lesson hardest learned: data management. Since the first time I accidentally deleted project content (oops, forgot the “Where” on an SQL Update… heh.) I have always been a hardcore backup guy. My backups are so frequent that when my computer died in February I lost no data. The real problem was that my laptop HDD 80 gig capacity was too small. I only pulled what I needed off of my external drives, so my weekly backups started to become a mess. I have since rethought my entire backup system to keep things as organized as possible.

1. RAID – My first line of defence is a SATA Raid for my data drive on my computer (the OS is on a third hdd). This mirroring makes sure that my data is safe even if a hard drive dies.

2. Sync Back Pro Daily – Every day my system does a backup sync of emails and work files to an external drive using a program called Sync Back Pro. I highly recommend this product that easily allows scheduled backups and syncs of files to HDD, DVD or even FTP. There is a very nice free version as well with a couple less features. http://www.2brightsparks.com/

3. Closed Jobs drive – Since I do a lot of freelance work for a marketing agency a lot of jobs pass through my computer. To prevent redundancy I keep a drive of closed jobs as my only repository for files if the job suddenly re-opens.

4. Off Site Storage - Should the unthinkable happen I do have an external at a friend’s house with a collection of files I update a couple times a year.

5. Google Docs – For those important lists and billing / client information I have started to use Google’s services. I will never have hardware as reliable as this giant.

6. Fire Proof – What paranoid backup system would be complete without considering fire proofness? I recently got a safe for storing data on DVD and external HDDs. Can you really put a price on your data? The answer is yes. http://www.sentrysafe.com/

Too often I find a web project comes with such a tight deadline that there is no time for experimentation. This is one of the troubles when the web dev becomes the last rung on the ladder to a launch.

Last week I wrote about CSS Grids. This is for a rather large project that I look forward to talking about in depth in a couple months. As a key member of the team I have a lot more say – and I get a fair bit of say in the deadline. As such, I have been doing a fair bit of experimentation with some technologies and scripts I’ve had my eye on for a while.

Nice Forms 2.0 Nice Forms is a js / css package that allows for some very tasty styling of forms. One thing that has always bugged me is that form elements are usually controlled by OS and browser. Buttons in particular have drastically different looks from Mac to PC. Nice Forms finally takes back control.

jQuery I’ll be the first to admit I should have been playing with this js library sooner! jQuery is one of the more popular libraries on the market today, and it allows for some very nice effects and functionality on websites. For programmers it’s probably a dream, and for designers and developers there are so many resources for easy to add scripts. It’s delicious.

Web Developers Advent Calendar It’s December, which means the 24 Days Advent Calendar has begun. Everyday from now until Christmas well known rock-stars of the web world are sharing great tutorials and tips for web nerds. There are some great archives as well.

And of course, another great resource is a decent vocabulary. You’re never too old to learn new words.