Gone in 60 seconds

Yesterday, the 40GB hard disk in my dogsbody machine was fine. Booted it this evening to make sure everything I needed was on it to teach people PHP stuff later, and it said nasty things about “zero length partition” when trying to mount /home, /var etc.

Rebooted. Failed to mount /. Uh-ohhhh...

Rebooted. What hard disk?

Picture of dead Maxtor drive Gone in 60 seconds. I am seriously unimpressed. Less than 2 years old, less than 1000 run-hours under its belt. Rust in pieces, Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 40GB serial number E1FESHAE.

As with all hardware which lets me down badly, this one’s not getting tossed, it’s being carefully given to my 10yo nephew Christopher. What he does to them is... unpleasant. The plan is that when word gets back to the survivors, they won’t so much as blip for the next couple of decades.

Comments

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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