Last week me and M were in Strängnäs, just checking out the place. Later the first day we met up with Jens and Linda, who had taken their boat there the same day.
Good times!
Now that there are big problems at Helgon (the only community where I am currently a member) and it looks like it is going to get sold off, I am once again/still considering joining Facebook.
Please help me out and vote below, and feel free to leave comment with pros/cons as well:
Poll: Should I get a Facebook account?
Total Voters: 15
Loading ...At least I’m not getting an iPhone. 😉
Last weekend I was at my parents place, and on saturday we went to a big second-hand house. On this particular day, they had 50% off on everything, so I made a few bargains.
I like optics, I have a big photography and movie interest and I love old technological stuff. This was perfect.
First off, I found a west german camera from 1970: A Praktica LTL with a really fat lens (Panagor Auto Tele 200mm). The lens seem to have taken som minor hits, but the camera housing was in surprisingly good condition. Auto timer and everything seems to work fine. Cost: 60SEK.
Second, I found two old Super8 cameras, still functioning.
The first one was an Elmo Super 306 from 1976. Fantastic optics! This one still has film in it, although I’m not sure how to get it out. I didn’t have any fresh batteries, and when I inserted some with about 30% left, a red E was shown in the viewfinder. Cost including carrying case: 20SEK.
The second Super8 camera I found was a Chinon 753 from 1979. This one doesn’t have quite as good optics, but it works better on the bad batteries – Both the film spinning drive and the motorized zoom works as a charm! Plus, it is really easy to handle since it only has very few buttons and knobs to worry about. Cost including carrying case: 25SEK.
When I was basically done in the store, I found on the top shelf a dirty case that looked “antique and German”. And I was right. Having some problems getting it down, I fell in love as soon as I managed to get the case open. Inside was an old Leitz diapositive projector.
I am having trouble locating the model number as I have not seen it printed anywhere, but it might be a version of the Leitz Prado from the late 1950’s or early 1960’s.
It is in near-mint condition and works like a charm. I have now placed it on the shelf next to my other projector, 45-50 years newer. And I only paid 30SEK for it!
Now, what to do with all this stuff?
The Raid Radio Case Mod is done!
Actually, it was done about two weeks ago, I just hadn’t taken the time to give you the update.
It is now working fine, but I might replace the PSU with a full-sized ATX one due to unacceptable noise levels in the current FSP AC-DC 200W SFX12V PSU. Hiper HPU-4S425 looks promising. The problem is that a full sized ATX won’t fit in the case if located where the current PSU is. I am thinking about placing it above the drive cage which would also giving it better airflow and hopefully lower RPM. The problem is that I would have to build a second floor in the cage, and I’m uncertain how it would affect airflow and temperatures for the drives and motherboard (already actively cooled).
We’ll see.
Wanna see? Have a look:
Today I once again went to Nille at Salvation Tattoo to get some ink done.
I have always been fascinated by mechanics, robotics and mechatronics, and for the last few years I have been thinking about how to incorporate that into a tattoo. Early sketches covered basically the whole back, incorporating the biohazard sign I already have on my back into the design. Though I like biomechanical tattoos to a certain degree I now think an entire backpiece would be too much for this type of design (ask me again in five years though). The particular idea with a cogwheel using a heart as the hub first crossed my mind about a year ago, and shortly after I did the first design.
I have doodled on this design and changed quite a bit during the last year. The main problem lately has been that I have done too much details and thin lines. Since human skin is a living material it is extremely hard to make small details by pushing down ink between the skin layers (which is basically what you do). Even if you do, chances are that the details will be lost. Ink is a liquid, and liquids float and spreads out, making everything a bit fuzzy at close range. This is considerably more noticable on older tattoos, where it can be hard (or even impossible) to make out text that was clearly readable when the tattoo was first made. I have still kept a certain degree of details, mostly for thin light lines and shadows. We’ll see how they look like a few weeks from now. Also, it is quite a bit darker now (especially the lines) than it will be when healed.
I put in some symbolism in it as well, but will not go into details (let’s just say I’ve been hurt enough times). Also, can you find the Douglas Adams reference? 🙂
Tattooing your chest is a strange thing. It really hurts, but you don’t always feel the pain where you should. When Nille first started on the top right side, I felt it in the shoulder. Moving down, all of the sudden it felt like someone put a soldering iron to my nipple. This was not quite as bad as doing the elbow, but not far from it. Good thing I had my phone with me; Playing Solitaire and FreeCell partly took my mind from the pain – It helps to concentrate on something else.
So, what do you think?
New computer, new problems
After scrapping the Typewriter Project, I’ve been searching for a new case to house my new HTPC/NAS/Web server. I first bought a 50’s Centrum radio at the Tradera auction site. Unfortunately, when I got it the glass front was cracked and beyond salvation due to either bad packaging or bad handling by the delivery firm (or both).
I decided to replace it with plexiglass in front of a custom background printed on photo paper.
After having gutted the radio, cut and filed the plexiglass, measuring everything to a precise fit and ordering the parts, I browsed in to Tradera again. And almost fell in love. By that time there was 2 hours left with only one bidder for the auction of a Bakelite-cast Philips radio with room enough to fit everything I need for it. I won the auction paid 315 SEK for it, plus shipping.
Now I have received all parts for the computer except the radio itself and a slot-in DVD-drive that I ordered from eBay.
If you are not interested in technical mumbo jumbo, you can stop reading now.
Okay, you are still with me. 🙂
The parts
The Problems
First I tried to install Windows XP (Professional N Edition). Since I am using the drives in a RAID-1 configuration, I pressed F6 when asked to provide the needed drivers.
If you didn’t already know, SCSI and RAID configurations in XP requires that you before installing insert a floppy with the needed drivers. The problem is that the motherboard (where the RAID controller is located) doesn’t have a floppy connector. To get around that, I prepared a USB stick using HP Drive Key Boot Utility, making the USB stick appear like a floppy (and only holding 1.44MB). Unfortunately, XP’s installation procedure refused to recognize the USB stick as a floppy and would not read the drivers from it. This ment there was no way for XP to find the drives where the installation should take place.
I then decided to slipstream the drivers onto a custom installation CD using nLite. This worked fine and the installation went fine. However, upon starting windows for the very first time, I got a short bluescreen followed by a reboot. This happened again and again and Windows simply wouldn’t start. What I didn’t know at the time was that since the RAID drivers wasn’t signed, Windows diecided to replace them with it’s own default drivers during the final stages of installation. These did of course not work with the RAID controller, resulting in the repeating crash.
After much frustration I decided to give up and try Windows 7 RC, which had been released some day before. I had used the WIndows 7 public beta on my Eee 1000H previously, but switched back to Xp after about a month. I convinced myself that the RC would be better and I would feel more comfortable with it. So after some hunting down, I found a good ISO, burned it and installed Windows 7 on the machine. No hassle with drivers were needed, Windows found the RAID array all by itself. However, some time after installing Windows I started to get messages about the RAID array dropping out. Removing and rebuilding the array helped for a while, but the error returned. By this time (around a full day) I was also getting sick of Window 7’s I-will-not-let-you-decide-anything-on-your-own-because-humans-can’t-be-trusted attitude. Since this will be both a web server and a NAS, I want full control of it. Most of all, I want to feel that I am in full control of it. So buh-bye Windows 7!
During this time, I had learned about the fault in my first slipstreamed XP CD and re-did it. Only this time, I instead of only adding my new RAID drivers I also removed XP’s default RAID drivers – Success! Installation went smooth, XP started as it should and no RAID error messages. For a while. Happy that everything was working as it should, I started to transfer files from the existing computers in the home network to the new computer (as this should now serve as file server). Copying some data, moving some. Stupid, stupid Frank. After a few hours, I rebooted the computer for some reason and noticed that the RAID controller during POST blinked red, stating that the array was degraded! I removed and re-added the drives from the array, but for some reason it refused to be rebuilt. What was worse, Windows now refused to start, giving bluescreens and rebooted every single time. I disconnected the drives from the motherboard computer and hooked them up to my other computer. During bootup, Windows wanted to check for consistency on the drives. Fine, I thought. Perhaps this will solve the problem. I went away from the computer and came back a while later, still doing the consistency check. Only the screen said “Deleting index $blablabla from blablabla” or something like that. I got some bad vibes but didn’t want to turn off the computer in the middle of that process. Windows then started, and the drives were almost empty.
Personal data I always keep backed up, so no worries there. What was really sour was that I lost about 250GB of movies and shows that I hadn’t watched yet. Many of them really hard to get, like Green Hornet (a TV show from 1966 starring among others Bruce Lee) or HD versions of various good movies. Plus all programs, games and other goodies. Well, what are you going to do – it’s not going to do anything good moping.
The real problem
After much searching and many, many forum threads later, I learned about TLER.
Apparently, it is quite common that a disk gets a read or write error under disk operations. When this happens on a normal desktop disk, the drive will enter a recovery cycle, attempting to repair, recover and reallocate the data. This cycle can take anywhere from less than a second to up to a couple of minutes. Since RAID controllers are designed to handle these errors by themselves, RAID-specific disks (often costing twice as much) have a feature called TLER, or Time Limited Error Recovery (name may vary with vendor), which prevents the hard drive from entering into a recovery cycle longer than 7 seconds. Without this feature, both the hard disk itself and the RAID controller will try to fix the problem at the same time.
Most RAID controllers will deactivate a disk in an array if it doesn’t respond in 8 to 15 seconds. Since my drives didn’t have TLER enabled, whenever they encountered a problem taking more time to fix than allowed by the controller, it would get thrown out of the RAID array. The remaining disk would keep on working as usual, and I would not be aware of the problem until the disks were completely unsynchronized. When rebuilding the RAID array without being able to synchronize, errors would occur and Windows would not boot.
The solution
Luckily, there is a small tool from Western Digital [Google] that enables you to turn on TLER their disks that normally has this disabled. I used the tool, and presto – no more problems! Too bad I didn’t know that before losing all that data and having to reinstall Windows yet another time.
Next
I will hopefully get my radio some time this week so that I can put everything in it (right now the motherboard is mounted on a piece of plexi glass with distances in between. I would like to cut a slot in the top of the radio for feeding discs to the DVD reader, but I am a bit afraid of cutting in bakelite. Anyone have any experience? I don’t want to ruin it completely so I might be mounting the DVD drive under the radio instead, adding bigger rubber feet to it if needed.
M’s birthday is coming up, and instead of having a party at home we decided to go out to Östgötakällaren, one of our favorite bars in Stockholm.
Joining us were Carina, Fredde, Pirate-Johan and Caisa-Stina. Around ten o’ clock we decided to move on and ended up at Söderkällaren where we were joined by Simon & Erika.
Good times!
I got another tattoo yesterday by Nille at Salvation Tattoo, a serotonin molecule.
Serotonin is both a classical neurotransmitter and a signaling molecule. To simplify things, it is a brain chemical that also can be found throughout the body (primarily in the digestive system). Its functions are among other things to help control happiness, sleep, aggression, impulsiveness, appetite, sexual lust, body temperature and metabolism. Due to a condition of mine, I have lower serotonin levels than most people. To fix that, I decided to add some of my own. 😉
I have stylized the molecule by replacing the letters HO, HN and NH2 with rings. Aside from that, I have thickened the lines and changed the angles on the inner parts slightly. If this should be entirely correct, I should replace the corners with rings as well, as they in this case represent carbon. But I chose style over substance, everything is still explainable and it looks much better this way. Big thanks to Micke Lind for the input on the molecule design!
Tattooing the elbow is probably the most painful ink I’ve done so far. The hearts on my inner upper arms did hurt a lot (and longer), but there were more twitching involved when doing the elbow.
Yesterday we went to Mercat Del Encants, a huge marketplace with many hundred (maybe thousand) of stands where absolutely everything was sold. From young men selling brand new furniture to old ladies selling used adult magazines. Lots and lots of plain junk, and often the seller had just poured everything out on the ground. It was very crowded and stressed, and we didn’t really find anything of interest.
After a few hours we took the metro and decided to jump of at Arc de Triomf, built for the 1888 world fair. Therewe first encountered musicians that we at a distance thought were protesters for something (lots of banging drums and whistles), but when coming closer we realized they were kids from a local school or something.
On the other side of the arc there was another marketplace. The contrast to Mercat Del Encants was however huge. Here everything was extremely calm, not at all crowded and the loudspeakers played soothing music. The market seemed to focus more on handcrafted items and there were also plenty of food (like an entire sausage stand) to be seen. We stopped for a while and had delicious falafel pita while sitting in the grass. About halfway through, the marketplace changed direction and started to focus on animal rights, new age, help organizations and such.
After stopping by for a while at our apartment, we did some more alley-walking in old town. Since it was Saturday, a lot more street performers was there, taking advantage of the extra crowd of people coming in over the weekend. We also crashed another wedding, saw some ancient roman pillars, had some food and later some dessert and did some final shopping.
Today we are going home, and I better finish packing now. We will wait in Frankfurt for about 3½ hours. Good thing I have plenty of movies on my Eee. 🙂
Today we started the day by visiting the 60 meter high obelisk/statue of Christopher Columbus. We paid the 2.50 € fee and took the elevator up to the top, where we got a good view of the heart of Barcelona, the old town. After that, I tamed a giant metallic lion and rode it. 😉
The rest of the day we spent alley-walking in the old town (where we live). We walked for hours and still didn’t covered half of it. Some fun shopping and surprisingly good and cheap meals were also included in the day. When the cold hit and we were both tired and with aching legs, we retired to the apartment for some relaxing.
When getting hungry again we went out for dinner and found an Italian restaurant where you could get a three-course dinner for 6.95 €. The female bouncer was very nice but the male waiter was very unengaged and almost rude. Dessert consisted of an apple.
On the way back we bought some snacks, and now we are going to watch a movie. 🙂
