It lives!

System is fully operational. >D!!!


Last night I went to bed feeling incredibly annoyed at the fact that I couldn't boot up after cloning my defunct hard drive. It turns out the bios had switched from booting from hd0 to booting from hd1. I suppose this happened because of all the hard drive mess I made because I couldn't open the carrier, so I had to disconnect the cdrw drive, run knoppix from the dvd-rw drive, use the connectors from the former to make the old hard drive a secondary slave to the dvd thing... oh, well. I will type up all the stuff I did last night in a further entry.

The thing is, after last night I was wisely advised to go to bed, I was feeling very pissed off at the "no-booting" thing, and somewhere in the back of my head I suspected I needed to play with the bios.

Today I did just that and found out the switch in booting devices. I switched back to hd0 and... magic! It booted.

Now I am assessing damage and checking what is working and what is lost. Hopefully not much has been lost... HOPEFULLY.

Well, before I turn off the computer and do some hardware re-arrangement I am going to type this up since it's still fresh in my memory and I know if I wait for a couple of days, I will forget something.


About 20 days ago, I lost one of my hard drives.

Right now, if you ask me , I think there are many reasons why this hard drive could have been damaged.
Off the top of my head, I can think of the unstable electricity line in my previous residence (we like playing with electricity... heh); the sudden failure of my computer's power source about six months ago; the close proximity (almost promiscuity) in which I have placed my hard drives inside the computer case... the many months my computer stays on... the lack of a UPS unit until a couple of months ago... etc.

Whatever the reason, the truth is the hard drive started clicking and reading from it became impossible, to the point it would make the entire system either freeze or crash.

Now, in spite of cryo's hard feelings toward GNU/Linux (hahaha!), we all know Linux is sweet and lovely and it doesn't usually crash nor freeze. That's not Lin. It's its retarded neighbor Windoze.
So, this is a sure sign that the problem is major.

I've tried running knoppix without removing any of the hard drives and accessing data (for recovery) from there. It was pointless, as the bios would recognize there was an IDE drive connected to the motherboard, but could not access it.
Ultimately, I had to remove the hard drive and use knoppix to go online and do my basic pestering of everyone.

You see... the lost drive contained, among other things, the /home partition. An integral part of the GNU/Linux OS as far as regular users are concerned... and we all know you don't just log in as root because it may compromise your system badly. Logging in as superuser is for windoze users. They do it all the time. That's what Micro$oft teaches users of its products: "Be stupid. It makes us profit." Especially considering how people in richer countries would rather buy a new computer than be bothered to clean their system. =/

But let's not get political. Michelle, a third-worlder who is willing to starve herself for antiques and music but not for software, decided to:
a) Rescue her system
b) Rescue her data
c) Pay as little as possible for it.

Since the hard drive was, without a shadow of a doubt, comatose; it was evident a new hard drive was going to be needed. Here Michelle was faced with two options:
a) Steal a hard drive
b) Buy a hard drive.

Option a was tempting but all the planning was annoying and Michelle is lazy, so she decided to shell out the ONLY money she was ready to spend, and she bought a new hard drive.
Now... there are caveats to this.... Because nothing is simple when Michelle is involved.
My old hard drive was 120Gig large. Not too large if you consider the size of HD nowadays. I wanted a 200 or 250Gig one, but the price of them made me run out of the shops calling the National Guard.
I settled for a 160 Gig one. ._. But it's cute, yanno?

Since I was at it, I decided to change the old ide wires (flat gray wires that are used to connect IDE devices, like hard drives, CDRW drives, DVDRW drives, etc) for new, round, blue and pretty IDE wires. Why? Because they take up less room and they allow better circulation of air inside the computer case, that's why.
She also needed some screwless screws which sound like a paradox but they exist, I assure you they do.
(Note: Are screwless screws screws that have never screwed? If so, can we call them virgin screws?)

Now the job to do was, of course, connecting everything and recovering the data. Right? That is the trickiest part of the job.

To begin with, cases nowadays are a bitch and everything fits tightly, so if you need to take one thing out, chances are you are going to have to disconnect other stuff in order to remove it. >[ In addition you might bump into something delicate and fuck it up. >[
What I needed to do was connecting 3 hard drives, a CD drive and a DVD drive. >[ crappy considering I didn't have enough wires to do that. But I somehow managed to do it by disconnecting the CD drive and using those wires to connect the faulty drive, the putting the new drive in the old drive's old place and rebooting from the DVD drive with the KNOPPIX cd on.

IMPORTANT NOTE: EVEN IF YOU DON'T USE LINUX AND HAVE NEVER EVEN BEEN AT A RADIUS OF 10 KM OF A LINUX USER, DO DOWNLOAD KNOPPIX AND HAVE IT AT HAND FOR RESCUE PURPOSES. In case of emergency, it might be the only way to save your data.
And yes, you can use it with a portable computer too.

I booted from knoppix (you need to tell your bios to boot from CD in order to do this. It's probably the easiest bios configuration you can do, and it will spare you of lots of trouble) Prayed that it wouldn't crash upon detecting the faulty hard drive -it didn't- and once kde was loaded, I looked for GPARTED.

GPARTED is a free, open source utility that allows you to partition your hard drives and manage those partitions.
It works pretty much like Partition Magic, only it doesn't cost you a lot of money for something you will rarely use, and it's open source, which means it gives people the chance to learn and the chance to work on the project for improvements.

Making use of it, I partitioned the new hard drive and formatted these partitions in the same manner the partitions in the old hard drive were partitioned.

This took only a couple of minutes, but I had to set up a root password to use the gui. Usually you don't need a root password with knoppix, because you use sudo to gain root access, but in some cases, when using an application thoughtlessly might cause permanent loss of data (note: nothing is ever lost permanently, if you believe in computer forensics) you need to set up a root password to move on.
Generally speaking, knoppix won't ask you for root passwords because it uses sudo, (I will not explain sudo here. Just hold on to the idea that knoppix doesn't require root passwords) I went to the knoppix dialog (a chubby penguin by the KDE logo) and set a root password that was easy to remember: knoppix
XD
It was a break from my usual passwords. I think I haven't used a simple password since... uh... when was that? 1999? 2000? Anyway... once there it was just a matter of dragging and clicking.

After doing that, the next step was cloning the data from the faulty drive to the new one.
In order to do this, I used dd_rescue.

A word of warning about dd_rescue: There is dd_rescue and ddrescue. I got lost trying to understand why Debian (Knoppix is based on Debian) calls ddrescue dd_rescue. Apparently they aren't the same thing, but =/ There is just so much you can ask for me when I'm nervous about losing my JoyDi and Murnau stuff. ;o;

I opened the text console (aptly named "konsole" in KDE) and typed:

sudo dd_rescue -p /dev/hdd1 /dev/hdb1

Let's examine this command chunk by chunk:

sudo: I used it to gain root access.
dd_rescue: the command I'm using to clone the partition in question.
-p: I used the -p flag to keep permissions and ownership intact. Otherwise, I would have had lots of problems when returning to the computer's system.
I advise to use this flag.
/dev/hdd1: The first faulty partition
/dev/hdd2: The first target (new) partition

I will not explain the b and B blocksizes because it's... a long explanation. The default should work on average, but if you find yourself at odds with the process you might want to change these. typing dd_rescue -h offers some nice help about other flags you might make use of. The -r (reverse copying) can be a good option for badly ruined drives.

I did the same for the second partition, etc, until the process was finished.

Then, I did:
sudo fsck hdb1
and
sudo fsck hdb2

fsck is file system check, and it is STRONGLY ENCOURAGED that you run it if using an ext2 partition... which is unlikely cuz you don't use linux. =P

After that, I shut down the comp. Unplugged it. Removed the faulty hard drive, plugged the CD drive back in, and restarted it expecting it to boot from grub. (Grub is a Linux bootloader that can boot Linux as well as other Operating System -for example. windoze-)

... IT DIDN'T!! D=!!!!!
I only got a prompt when past the initial bios screens. D=!!!!

It was late, and morgane_le_fey was bidding me to GO TO BED ALREADY and telling me awful things about Debian. D=!! But in the end, she said maybe I needed to rest my overfried neurones and I would come up with an answer the next day.

So it was.
Appantely, with all the HD switching I did, and rewiring I did, the automatic settings in the BIOS had decided to try to boot from hd1 instead of hd0. >[
I switched it back to the following order, which is the one I think makes the most sense for my system:
Booting order:
1- floppy
2- CD0
3- CD1 (DVD)
4- hd0
5- other devices

Saved options and exited bios setup, and voilá, I saw my pretty grub screen asking me whether I wanted to boot from the latest kernel or an earlier one. *_*

*kisses screen*

Once in my system, I lit a cigarette and watched in pleasure how everything had been cloned correctly.
But alas... my joy was to be short-lived, as I watched how something I had considered but ultimately forgot, came back to bite me hard in the rear.... the size of the partitions is incorrect. ><
This means, I will -during this week- attempt to back-up everything that had not been previously backed-up, and re-write the partition table of hdb (Drive "D" for Windoze users).
Writing to the partition table of a hard drive might entail loss of data. Permanent loss of it.

In the meantime, I'm creating a grub disk, because I can't find my old one. ;o; I think it's probably lost among the many many many boxes of stuff that remain unopened 4 months after having moved.

Things I need to do now to feel at ease with myself and close the computer case:

a) Re-arrange the drives inside the case.
b) Get an additional wire to plug in a hard drive fan. (fan= cooling device. Not a frothing individual with high estrogen blood levels who screams "OMG!!!LULZ!!!" and faps at the images in his/her computer screen.)
c) Finding my grub disk and/or recreating it
d) backing up what wasn't backed-up.
e) Re-write partition table in hdb to make it "see" the real size of the partitions, or, if this is impossible, re-arrange partitions and create a new partition with the free disk space that is viewable and writable from the system.


Oh, btw, since I was at it, I upgraded to the latest testing branch of Debian -Lenny- leaving behind my etch days in the same way I left behind my sarge days when we moved from the latter to the former... and so on. Etch was good, it was really good. May it enjoy praise and love in its newly acquired "stable" form.

Computer fixing progress

Well, I have just replaced the flat ide wires for the round ones. They are blue because it matches the leds in my case's rear fan.


It seeeeeems I didn't mess it when connecting the wires, I put the 1st pin where it had to go, and the rest of the pins seem to have followed nicely. =D
This is uncomplicated when one is putting the comp together because everything is loose. It is complicated now because everything is fastened and I am TOO LAZY to unfasten it. =/ So, I couldn't see much.

What I have seen, though, is the amount of kitty hair inside the comp. o_o
I've taken the opportunity to clean the comp's intestines again.

I also bought these thumb-screws or screwless-screws (which sounds like a paradox) I bought 8 but the guy said he didn't feel like opening the bag and gave me a full bag of them. o_o But I only paid for 8. Well... I guess now I'm giving away thumb-screws to people, but it seems nobody appreciates my presents. ;_;
YOU'LL SEE WHAT PAIN IT IS WHEN NO PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER SPINS YOUR SCREWS!!! (That sounds funny...)


Well, now my problem is... I don't have any more ide connectors. Hahahaha... *headesk* >< So I'll see if I can use a usb carry case to clone the dead HD. ~_~
Another option would be to temporarily remove the CD-RW drive (slave), since I can still run knoppix from the DVDR one (master). ~_~ I wonder if that will work? I think it should work.

I have a spare IDE connector for the wire that goes from the MoBo to the 3 1/2 disk drive (a dinosaur, I know, but remember I love antiques. =P) But I don't think I can connect an IDE HD to that connector? Or can I (and it will work)?



Hmm... if anyone has any hints, they will be much appreciated. ^_^♥

Hardware failure happens

My hard drive died last night.

If I was supposed to do something for you (I remember a translation I promised and an upload I promised to two different people), please bear with me for a couple of days until I manage to sort things out.

Sorry.

Have fun in the meantime.


Edit: BTW, this is not an April's fools joke. It's real. I know the timing is awful.

No love for hotmail

From Boing-boing:

Hotmail users deemed too dumb for employment at firm

Pete says:

    A guy, who works in the department of a Human Resources consultancy company, says they made a selection process in which, among other things, they asked for a person with ample experience in using the internet (navigation, searches, formats...).

    They received 50 candidacies, from which 30 came from Hotmail-directions, all of them erased as they entered.

    The reason: You can't pretend being an internet expert and use a Hotmail account at the same time.

Link.


I just simply hate hotmail, so I guess this is amusing for me.

Virtual Stickies!

Lately I'm all about productivity.
I know it won't last, though, because I'm lazy at heart.
But for now, I want to fancy myself a very productive person that GTD (gets things done).  Ph33r me.

And in my quest to GTD while struggling through very busy times at work, I found a very interesting website that might very well help one boost one's productivity (or at least combat early signs of Alzheimer's     O_O  ).
Stikkit.

This is, basically, virtual stick-it notes.  Ones that talk to your PDA, your cellphone or your e-mail. =D

You need to create an account (it's free), and then you can start typing "stick-it" notes.  You don't need to download anything at all.  This works like... hmm... getting an e-mail account at yahoo or gmail.  The service is web2 powered, and it seems to work quite well, from what I've been seeing.

What can it do for me?  Well, for example, for lists of to-do things, you can ask it to remind you of whatever it is you have to do by e-mailing you when the task is due.
You can also keep a portable list of contacts, be reminded of due bills, birthdays, anniversaries, keep bookmarks, or just jot down notes.

It can be synced to your calendar software -if you use one- or contacts software -if you use one-.

Be reminded of TV shows, release dates, events, meetings, etc.  It's like a life cron job. =P (yes, that was nerdy)

I think for now I'm gonna be using it to be reminded of birthdays. =D So, I'm gonna be harrassing your userinfo pages for this purpose. Hehehe.  ^_^

I need to set this to work with my cellphone.

The site is very intuitive and very very very easy to use.  It will take you only a few minutes to start building your own stickits.  However, if anyone thinks a tutorial might be needed, they have very helpful forums with tons of them.

Computer parts paradise

OK.  I'm spazzing out and drooling a little

iTunes alternatives

Alternatives to iTunes:

Songbird:  Pretty much looks like iTunes, only it's black. =P

Audion: I haven't tried it, but it gets very good reviews.

Winamp has a plugin to manage the iPod library as well, and foobar has foo_pod.  I haven't checked these either, though.

CD Swapping!

I don't know about you, guys, for me music files are fine but nothing replaces the actual media.  Be it a CD or its analog parents (LP's for example); I really love those and cherish them greatly.

I am not going to even start touching the somewhat itchy topic of "I don't have money to buy CDs! OMG! I have bought a new cellphone/color contacts/etc!" here because that always makes my eye twitch.

I'm simply going to talk to those of you who appreciate CD's (LP's, cassettes, etc.) more than mere streams of intangible bytes.

I think the growing trend in this aspect last year have been sites that facilitate CD-swapping.  Real CD's, not copies.

Among those, perhaps lala.com has taken most of the credit.  I think I blogged about it about six months ago, when it was still in "beta" and you could only join by getting an invitation code.
Right now, the invitation system has been dropped and everyone can join.
Basically, the site works as middle-man, getting people in touch so that they can exchange CD's that they no longer want for CD's they do want.
Lala.com is only available to users in the US ( =/) and it charges you 1.75 per swap, but facilitates the envelopes to send the CD's.

You can go to the site, or you can read a very nice and extensive review here.

Another good option might be SwapaCD, which -again- is only available to users in the US (so, half my flist has stopped reading by now. ._.)  I think this is because of the different laws ruling in every country, and the owners of these sites not wanting to risk being issued a cease & desist order or facing a lawsuit.
You earn SwapaCD credits by sending out CDs, and receive CDs by spending earned credits.

On the other hand you have chancexchange, which allows users from every country to swap CD's.  Where's the catch? You wonder.  Well, you can only exchange CD's with people in your same country.

I am only listing the sites that do not seem to require paying a fee to join, and basically work as a peer-to-peer network where you don't have to "buy" a CD, but rather you simply exchange them for another CD.
There are numerous vendors that "buy" your old CD's and re-sell them; or even allow users to sell their stuff through their interface for a small (or not) fee.  Amazon comes to mind.

=]

Well, I hope this is useful for someone.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I won't be around during the holidays, so I want to quickly, and without taking much of your time, wish you all a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I really don't care whether you celebrate this or that, I believe wishing happiness to people shouldn't be such a terrible thing. So, here... take my wish for happiness if you will, and if not, well... you are allowed to not be happy, nobody will blame you for it.

Have fun!

Oh, Debian. How I love thee.

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.

- Matt Groening

So, yup, it looks like Debian will rename Firefox to Iceweasel in their next release, and it looks it's a final decision.  =/  I'm not sure I like the name, though.


BTW, where's the upgrade promised for December 4th?
http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/


OK, I'm being biased.  It wasn't actually "promised", it was speculative.

The RIAA lies

The RIAA, who claims to defend musicians, is now asking that composers and songwriters are paid less royalties, so that record companies can earn more.

If you needed something else to believe that they are hypocrites, there ya go.

Record industry executives said there was nothing strange about seeking a rate change that would pay less to the people who write the music.

Yup, nothing strange.  I'm not surprised at all.

Phobos

Fear and Terror.  Phobos and Deimos.

That's the name of Mars's two tiny moons.
When I was around 8 years old, my grand-uncle explained this to me as he walked me back home from school.

Today, watching APOD (Astronomy Picture Of the Day) a picture of Phobos caught my attention and reminded me of uncle Jos.

When I was a child, I imagined Mars and its moons to be scary places.

Right now, I think the Earth (and some of its inhabitants) is by far a lot more scary.

Kiwi!

How much are you ready to sacrifice in order to follow your dreams?

Kiwi!

Local wikis

Wikipad. A very interesting wiki-like application that I think is ideal for those of you in college that need to do papers and research. I think it's very helpful when it comes to organizing ideas. I'm linking the windoze version of it, but there are versions of it for linux and mac. Python-coded, which is really nice.
I think it's very nice and helpful if you are acquainted with the wiki way of organizing information. It might also help at work for some of you, and even at story-telling. =]
If you know of other locally-run wikis (that run on linux, hehe) let me know. =]

The robe of a ghost

The ghostly tail of comet swan.  I loved this picture and I want to share it with you.
A comet traveling endlessly through the universe, the ghostly rims of its gossamer gown gently sweeping the dark emptiness among a myriad of twinkling stars.

It evokes thoughts of unreachable and silent beauty. 

The other day I was talking to Mauhaut about gazing at the stars.  I think I've always been a star-gazer.  Although living in a noisy and crowded city sometimes opaques your view of the sky, you always know the stars are there... even if the tumult doesn't let you see them, or the busy life you lead hides them away from you and keeps your gaze pinned to the monotonous ground.

Sooner or later, we raise our heads, and our eyes go to the skies looking for peace, for that overwhelming feeling of immenseness and smallness.

Thanks to all the twinkling stars that wink at me from above when my stare is pinned to the ground, because you guys make me lift my chin and hope for a piece of eternity.

♥



Oh, well. I need to clean stuff here and go home. =]

Viruses, wikipedia and geniuses

Once again, virus authors use wikipedia to spread malware.  Not the first time it happens, but I think it's worth mentioning.

I also found this article today: How to think like a genius.
I don't think I'll ever get to think like a genius, but I'd appreciate getting a little upgrade

Zune not compatible with Microsoft's DRM?

Microsoft's Zune Music Player Incompatible with Microsoft's own DRM Ecosystem.  LOL.  Microsoft never ceases to amaze me (at their craptasticness).

In more interesting and beautiful news, I want to share with you this link to gorgeous wildlife pictures.  ^_^

Size matters

I've found a very interesting article about sharing big-sized files.
There are lots of sites that provide this service, unfortunately the seemingly most popular ones are quite crappy at getting the job done.
For example:
Megaupload is very disappointing, as it won't let you download unless you either pay them (so much for their claim to being "completely free") or you live in a rich country.  YouSendit has moved to a paid service, requiring people to create an account to either upload or download.
Rapidshare can be a pain in the ass, SendFile is becoming a pain in the ass; and I could go on forever.

I know many people don't really care about this, because of psychological quirks that I will not discuss now (I might do so later) and I will be contented with just tagging as the "It looks like I'm sharing but I'm actually just making you covet" syndrome.

For the rest of us, here's a list of big-sized-file upload sites. ^_^

MediaFire:  Allows uploading an unlimited number of files up to 2.5Gig; multiple simultaneous uploads and downloads, supports most download managers (something I personally use a lot and is very useful if you need to resume a large download).  No login or signup required.  Ad-supported.  The Mail feature has its quirks.

GigaSize: You can sign up for a free account and upload files up to 1.5Gig in size for free, they will store it for a minimun of 90 days.  If you choose to not sign up, you can upload up to 300 M large file and they will be stored for 45 days. I don't think it supports resuming of downloads or download managers though.  No ads. 

Other services worth mentioning:

Sharebig: Free uploading and downloading of up to 1.5 Gig.  No sign-up required.
TransferBIGfiles: Reminds me of yousendit.  File size must be less than 1G and it will be stored for 5 days or 20 downloads.

For Windows or MacOS users, there's also pando; an application that lets you send files up to 1 Gig to anyone with an e-mail address.

MediaMax is what streamload used to be.  I have been using their service for years for personal reasons (mostly backups, personal and work-related stuff) and it also allows me to share files with others if I choose to do so.  It's a paid service though.  You can send files to other streamload users and receive files from them almost instantly and without any "cost" to your monthly allotted bandwidth.  Their current price is US$37.95 per year, it gives you up to 1Gig of downloads, and doesn't put a limit to how much you can upload or to file-size.
Sending files between streamload users is unlimited in size.
You can download their upload/download client for free at their site, (even if you don't have an account with them) and you can upload files to any user's account too. (I know, that's a feature that screams "spaaaaam!")

4Shared: Similar to streamload but with limitations, you need to sign up for a free 1Gig account. You can upload files up to 50M in size. Rumored to give free unlimited downloads.


Do you know of any other good XXL-sized file upload/download service?  Please, let me know!  ^-^

I mentioned download managers ut supra and I want to make a special mention to one firefox extension that I really, really enjoy:  It's DownThemAll!  and it's very useful when you are downloading a large number of files (scans, picture galleries, batch of files, etc.)  I used to use it a lot to download scans, otherwise my right-clicking finger would have died in spastic horror. ^_~
It's easy to configure and install (just click on the install link).

Oh, talking about firefox! Firefox 2.0 has been released today. =D  It looks very, very pretty and has some very cool new features.

In images

I've found this:  111 free photoshop plugins.  =]  For Mac and Windows.  I think some of them work with Paint Shop Pro too, and I am still to try them out with the Gimp.

Rumors

There's a rumor about Google wanting to buy youtube.  The article offers some interesting "behind the scenes" points about this "rumored" buyout.