So, after the ‘Back-up Scare’ of 2012….and once my heart got back in a regular rhythm…and my blood preassure was back to normal… it was time for another trip to interview Sifu George Hajnasr in Kingston, MA.  I was invited out to visit his dojo, The Jeet Kune Do Academy of Martial Arts and sit down to talk about his experience in finding the speed bag, his addiction to it and how he has used it in his day-to-day Jeet Kune Do trainning.

It was another great day for a roadtrip and once I punched the address into the GPS, it was a quick 3.5 hour drive. The academy is a beautiful place. It’s full of some of the nicest gear I’ve ever seen and there are walls full of very interesting history, trophies and pictures of Sifu George over the years. Sifu George is a great guy and I was welcomed with open arms and given a tour of the facilities…. then it was time to set-up my gear and get to work.

The interview went great and Sifu George added a little different perspective of the speed bag and it’s uses….but it still boils down to his addiction to hitting the bag!

After lunch it was time to pack-up (but not before spending a little time under the boards hitting and comparing notes on various swivel and platform combinations…after all….we ARE speed bag addicts!) and hit the road. Another great interview in the can and only a few more to go in my quest to get to the root of this addiction!

This is just a reminder to anyone reading this that you can never back-up important projects enough. I got up this morning and fired up the computer & drives (I have a bunch because of the size of the HD video files) only to find that only one folder showed up. Now, sometimes there’s just a glitch on startup so I shut down and restarted….and again, on my main work drive, only one folder showed up (and it wasn’t anything I needed…why does That always happen?).

I just sat there…shocked and horrified…could I have really lost all of my latest work on the film? Hours & hours of viewing, cutting, renaming and organizing clips? I was frozen, just staring at the screen like a zombie. I couldn’t think…I even forgot to breathe for a bit. This is a nightmare to anybody who uses a computer…you never think it will happen to you, until it does!

Now, I knew I had all my raw footage backed-up on two different drives to keep it safe, but realized that I hadn’t backed-up all the logged and organized footage for this project…or all the NLE projects, title tests, super slomo tests, etc. I now realize that back-up should be EVERYTHING pertaining to the project. So, for this project that’s about 350Gb.

After a cup of coffee (and a lot of pacing & thinking), I decided to run the error-checking tool and see if I could find everything on that drive….with a little luck and about 6 hours later, there it was. All the data had been found and everything seems to be in order. Thank God.

The rest of the day (and even as I type this post), I’ve been backing-up ALL data from the 2Tb drive and “eating my crow”. I can’t remember how many times I’ve helped others rescue data and preach to them about back-up, back-up, back-up.

With 5 minutes to go, I’ve now backed-up 1.8Tb and I think I can sleep tonight. Having wasted a Saturday doing this is well worth the effort & piece of mind. So I leave you with these words of wisdom….

Back-up, back-up…and back-up again!

Last week was a good one, but a LONG one. Thursday I packed up the gear and headed down to Stamford, CT to shoot an interview with Brian Tichy. Brian is not only drumming with Foreigner but is a true speed bag addict! What a great time I had and I think I got a lot of good insight from Brian…and some good ‘out takes’ too!

Friday, it was back down to the Newburgh/Poughkeepsie area to interview G-Town and JUXT for the afternoon. Again, great guys, both with some good stories to tell. We’re already planning a baggin’ get-together soon.

After all that travel, I was looking forward to being able to sleep in on Saturday…but my expecting daughter had other plan and gave birth to a beautiful girl at 4:30am (so much for the sleeping in). So as my personal family grows….so does my speed bag addicted family!

Stay tuned as the journey continues to get to the “Art of the Bag”…