I have a minor update to PicSlide that I’ll probably submit later this week. I’ve made a few refinements to the user interface, most notably moving the picture chooser to the main menu instead of the settings screen. I’ve also increased the difficulty levels by increasing the number of times it shuffles the pieces in all levels except easy. When version 1.2 is approved, the price will return to $1.99.

After I get my iPad, I will release another update that will take advantage of the larger screen.

John Gruber writes about his recent hard disk crash:

Hard drives are fragile. Read as much as you can bear to about how they work, how incredibly precisely they must operate in order to cram so many bits onto such small disks. It’s a miracle to me that they work at all. Every hard drive in the world will eventually fail. Assume that yours are all on the cusp of failure at all times. It’s good to be spooked about how long your hard drives will last.

Luckily he had good backups, which saved his butt.

Merlin Mann gives more hints on smart backup strategies:

Perform automated, redundant, and rotated backups as often as you can afford to lose every single bit of information that’s been changed or added since your last backup. Because it’s going to go away.

This is exactly why I prefer CrashPlan instead of Time Machine. CrashPlan will automatically backup to multiple destinations, which can include both a local drive and CrashPlan Central, which provides off-site backups for extra security. Unlike Time Machine, which doesn’t work well on network drives other than a Time Capsule, CrashPlan is perfectly happy backing up over the network, which is a big plus for laptops.

CrashPlan is only one part of my backup strategy. Although I use it to back up my MacBook continuously, I use Time Machine on my iMac with a FireWire drive since it stays on my desk. I also use DropBox to sync most of my critical folders between my iMac and MacBook. I also do regular full drive backups with SuperDuper.

I just submitted I Can Has Cheezburger 2.0.1 with the following changes:

• Uses featured content API instead of scraped feed
• “There, I fixed it” replaces “Once Upon a Win”, which isn’t available with the API
• Thumbnails are now displayed for movies
• Deployment target properly set to 3.0 so it won’t load on 2.x devices

By using the API it will no longer depend on this server, which often goes down under heavy use resulting in no photos loading. Like 2.0, this version is NOT compatible with any OS version older than 3.0. In 2.0 I didn’t set the deployment target to 3.0, so people with older systems were still able to install it, resulting in an immediate crash (which I got about 5 emails a day about).

The application will remain unavailable until the new version is approved, because I’m sick of dealing with all of the bitching because my server goes down or because they’re using OS 2.x.

I have removed I Can Has Cheezburger from the app store. Don’t count on it coming back. I’m tired of the bitching and I still haven’t received the pending contract from Cheezburger network for the use of the API.

The latest version is NOT compatible with OS 2.x devices, yet people were still somehow able to update or purchase it even with such devices and it doesn’t work for them. Also, the server goes down several times a day and I have to reboot it (the upcoming API-based version would have fixed this). I can’t deal with all of the bitching any more. It just isn’t worth the aggravation for me.

DSC_9646, originally uploaded by mike3k.

One of many I took at the Lauderdale-by-the-sea craft fair.

I’ve temporarily suspended work on the upcoming API-based release of ICHC awaiting a new agreement for use of the API. I will post another update when I have more information.

I pre-ordered a 32GB WiFi iPad, to be delivered on Apr. 3. I plan to make all of my apps take advantage of it in the next release.

• Masking with Channels | Planet Photoshop
  (tags: photoshop tutorial)

• Uncovering Toy Cameras and Polaroid Vintage Effects (With Photoshop Tutorials)
  (tags: photoshop tutorials vintage effects)

• The Ultimate iPhone Setup for Web Designers (40+ Apps) | iPhone.AppStorm
  iPhone apps that are useful for web developers.
  (tags: iphone apps useful)

Spencer Schoeben created a great new twitter utility, TwitterFavs, which lets you set up a second Twitter account that automatically retweets your favorites from your primary Twitter account.

You can follow my Twitter favorites at @mike3kfavs.

• Sean Teegarden Photography
  Amazing surrealistic HDR photography
  (tags: photography portfolio)