Last night, I did the final tweaks to a new web site I built for my friend Larry Gaian, the master BBQ’r. You can see his delicious efforts at TheBBQGrail web site (which I also do the programming for) at http://www.thebbqgrail.com . It’s a great site for all things BBQ.

The new site is a place to find all things BBQ, from rubs and sauces to blogs and message forums. It’s called “BBQ Grails List”, and can be found at http://www.grailslist.com .

I kind of like the design of the place. The letters in the logo are built to evoke the burning coals of a BBQ. The boxes for each category are built with a “masonry” add-in I found. I like how the boxes flow together like a rock fireplace automatically. If you refresh the page, the category boxes are displayed in a different order each time, but the masonry effect keeps them together.

The site has some advertising, using scripts from Amazon and Google Adsense. The ad content is supposed to be mostly BBQ-related items. So the site is ‘live’ and you will find some good items in most of the categories, along with links to the item’s web sites.

There’s been a bit of tweaking to some of the other sites, including putting some historical family pictures on the family web site. I found a great PHP-based program that automatically displays pictures in a folder. The style of the gallery pages is somewhat customizable, but the code is nice because it is all one file, so easy to implement in a web site. If you are interested, you will find the web site for that code here Single File PHP Gallery 4.1.1 .

I’ve also been working on the new version of CellarWeb Ads , which is a program I built to easily display ads on a web site. It’s been around for over a year, and I have had almost-daily downloads of the code, but nobody has bothered to use the “Donate” button. That’s OK, I suppose, since I learned a lot about PHP programming as I wrote it.

In fact, most of my web sites are learning experiences. There is very minimal revenue received as a result of my efforts, but they are interesting to create.

As for the weekend, the weather is starting to get nice here in the high desert of Utah. So some lawnmowing, and perhaps a bit of vegetable planting in my small garden. The grandkids like to pick peas, so those are on the list. And the strawberry plants are starting to blossom.

An important part of information security is making your data available, and keeping that data available. Loss of data can be a minor inconvenience, or it can kill your business. And it is not just businesses that need to worry about data loss.

Think of your personal data. All of those pictures on your camera, your phone, your laptop, or your computer. Or even the non-electronic data like printed pictures, slides, important papers, journals — the list is almost endless. Protecting that data from different kinds of loss is important to a business, and to individuals.

And there are lots of ways to back up that data, no matter what it is. On a personal level, you can copy files to CD/DVDs, or to an external hard drive (USB thumb drive, external hard disk). Those are valid solutions. But only if you remember to do them. And then there is the storage issue. Where do you keep these backup copies? Keeping them in the same physical location protects the data — until there is a flood, or a fire, or tornado, or a theft, or … well, the possibilities for data loss have not been fully mitigated.

One of the solutions I have used for a couple of years is an on-line backup service. The service I use is from Carbonite (www.carbonite.com), and costs $59/year for unlimited, automatic on-line backup. Tree important words in that statement. Unlimited backup takes care of all of my files at the same basic cost. Automatic means that I don’t have to worry about doing it. And the third important part is “on-line” — the data is stored off-site in ‘the cloud’.

With Carbonite, everything is automatic. I install the software on one computer at home (they have a multiple-computer plan also). I designate the folders to back up. The Carbonite software automatically copies my files to their servers, over my Interwebs connection, and does it with a minimal impact on my other on-line activities. If I make a change to a file, that changed file is added to the backup list.

And it is all done automatically. It meets the requirements for keeping my backups current; the files are available if I need them; and I don’t have to remember to do anything.

But what about the multiple computers around your house? You may have a couple of laptops or  desktops at your house. How do you keep all of your computers backed up?

With Carbonite,  you have to pay for one yearly subscription ($59) for every computer you back up. If you have multiple computers at home, that can start getting expensive. A bit of adjustment on your end will fix that.

In my case, the desktop computer downstairs is Carbonited. That computer, plus our two laptops, are all networked together. So a process of copying data from laptops to desktop gets our laptop files as part of the Carbonite backup. That’s done with the free Microsoft SyncToy, which syncs the files from laptop to desktop.  It’s pretty fast (much faster than a straight copy command), since it only works on files that have changed.

So my important personal data is backed up with Carbonite. There are other services that perform similar functions; some have better pricing for multiple computers. But my data is safe from a local (home) disaster, and it is mostly hands-free.

Reports in a couple places about some really sneaky attacks if you do on-line banking. The attacks will steal your credit card info (with your help), make unauthorized charges, then remove those charges from your on-line statements. Pretty clever, actually.

Here’s a couple of links about this: http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/06/9986119-new-virus-raids-your-bank-account-but-you-wont-notice and http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/01/05/spyeye-bank-trojan-hides-its-fraud-footprint/ .

Your defense? Those four things we mentioned here http://cellarweb.com/securitydawg/?p=56 : Windows updates, application updates, anti-virus updates, not browsing as an administrator. Those would be a great start.