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Maxtor Central Axis Egg Storage

I’ve always been fairly paranoid about my data storage,  so I don’t know why I felt so inclined to trust Maxtor’s Central Axis Data Server with all my files.   Maybe it was because I was impressed with the notion that that tiny cute little box held a Terabyte of storage and a Linux server, and would be replacing a huge rackmount server and a RAID array of disk drives that I’d been using without a hitch for years.  It was fairly inexpensive, fairly easy to set up, didn’t cost much, and for the past 6 months seemed to be fairly reliable.  It even has a USB port that you can plug another Terabyte drive into and schedule automatic backups or even mirroring, but (ahem) I never quite got around to that.  So I should first take full responsibility for knowingly putting all my eggs in one basket.

As you might imagine, everything was fine until the thing’s Ethernet port quit working.  The unit powers up and boots and gives healthy status indications, but the ethernet port is dead, deaf, and dumb.   And I can’t get to any of my precious data eggs!

Not much you can do about that.   It was beyond its warranty, and besides, near as I can tell if you want to try to get some satisfaction from Maxtor - um, they sold out to Seagate, didn’t they?

Of course when you find yourself in this situation and go googling for dead Maxtor Central Axis you find out that you’re Not Alone.  But never fear, the blogosphere has the answer, right?

Sure, just remove the drive and stick it in a Linux box and voila, there’s your data!  Right!?

Well, I’m here to tell you, it ain’t that easy!

Its amazing what modern manufacturing can accomplish these days - molded plastic pieces that fit together so seamlessly you can’t figure out how they ever put it together, much less how to get it apart!  But I finally did it.   And early on I realized there were so Continue reading "Getting Back Your Eggs" →

I swear these all used to be "black"

With the likes of Jesse Ventura publishing his theory that Nearly Everything is a Conspiracy, I’ve about decided there is a huge one hidden within my dryer.  I suspect the apparel-appliance-industrial complex is behind it, or maybe even Google, who knows what those folks are up to these days!    The thing is: I only buy black mens’ socks.  Just basic black, not dark blue, not gray, not charcoal, not brown, just black.  And yet everytime I go to sort and pair my socks fresh from the dryer, I can only find mates for about half of them!

I’m not colorblind.  I don’t use bleach.  I’m pretty sure nobody else is sneaking into my house and using my laundry facilities, or swapping out my all-black socks for some grayish or brownish ones.  But now I have all these single socks.  Some more blue or gray or brown than any of the others, one with red threads at the toe,  one with gold, one with none, and none of them matching any of the others!  What else could it  be but a conspiracy?

“Gives us the nice bright colors,  Gives us the greens of summers, Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day.” -Paul Simon from the song Kodachrome

Unfortunately, when I started scanning my Dad’s Kodachrome slides from our trip to California in 1967,  I discovered Kodachrome’s dirty little secret.  At first I thought the slides had been kept in a filthy environment, but no, it turns out that when Kodak processed them, they put  a final coating of shellac on the slides to protect them, and that over the past 40 years, that thin layer has shrunk into clumps that look like dirt.

Clumps of shellac on Kodachrome slides look like dirt

The Minolta Quick-Scan 35 slide scanner I used does a pretty good job, but it turns out that the newer slide scanners have a special Infrared detector that can help automatically get rid of the clumpy shellac, dirt, scratches, etc.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to a fancier scanner, so I ended up using PhotoShop’s “heal” brush waaaay more than I ever expected to.   Nevertheless, 300 slides later, I ended up with a pretty good little slide show of our family vacation.  As you can see above and below, the results were worth it!

The color-corrected clump-removed final image

Recently while catching up on the MoonViews LOIRP (mentioned previously here I noticed that project head Dennis Wingo had given a presentation to the Mountain View Hacker Dojo.

Freeduino class at Hacker Dojo

If you’ve not heard of a Dojo before, it is a Japanese word meaning literally “Place of the Way”.  The term is usually associated with places where young people learn the martial arts, but it can be any place where “The Way” to do something can be learned if you’re willing to spend some time there.

Several years ago I was following the progress of a group of engineers who set up TechShop, a membership-based workshop in Mountain View. I am envious of that too! But now that I see how easy it would be to set up a Hacker Dojo I think it would be an outstanding idea for the Tri-Cities! I wish there had been a place like that available when I was a kid! What a perfect way to help kids channel some of their creative energies into useful projects that teach them positive things about technology! Anybody else interested?