More techniques for reviving dead hard disks: swap circuits

I thought I'd hear 'em all (my favorite is chilling a drive in the fridge), but this is new to me. I suspect drive recovery services have known this forever ...

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh

[Ken Spencer] My daughter had a lot of photographs, some of which were not backed up, stored on a LaCie D2. She plugged it in one day, saw smoke and was out of business... when the board in the drive enclosure went, it took out the board in the Hard Drive! It was a Maxtor. In desperation, I bought an identical Maxtor, and discovered that the controller board connects to the drive with spring loaded contacts under the board. Took out 5 screws, took the old board off the Maxtor, exchanged it with the board from the new drive, and was able to recover everything! She bought a WiebeTech drive enclosure, and they were very helpful in helping her try to solve her problem.

[Robert Burke] Regarding Ken Spencer's solution to the bad hard drive logic board, I too have done this. One of the users I support had his hard drive die in a newly purchased refurb PowerMac G5 some time ago. On a hunch, I swapped the board with a like unit from another PowerMac we had. The drive worked as normal and I was able to get all his data off so he could take it in for repair. Note, though, that I'd only do this with the exact same model of hard drive, and same version of board if possible...

Timeature 1.0.1 RC 1 has got the goods

Adam has addressed the biggest lack of the very first release of Timeature:

Timeature 1.0.1 RC 1 "Date Picker valid range is now beween 1902 and 2037"

I don't think I've got any images prior to 1902, though obviously it would be desirable to address this limit. After all, one might wish to date a picture of a fossil to 1 million BCE ...

I'll give it a few days to settle down, but if this version of Timeature is stable then I'll have Aperture on my G5. Then I can start whining about the performance ...

Embedded Media HTML Generator

I've been frustrated trying to figure out how to embed video into my personal web site. I could have used this tool (now I just upload to google video):

Embedded Media HTML Generator - Download Squad

... Our pal Russell Heimlich from DV Guru points us to Embedded Media HTML Generator, an easy-to-use web service that will generate the HTML needed to embed QuickTime, Real, Windows Media, and Flash files in your web site...

Abrupt failure of RF shielding in my Bose Quiet Comfort 2 headphones

This is kind of disappointing. The Bose QC 2 headphones are a fairly costly luxury item, of a sort I very rarely buy. Until now they seemed almost worth the cost, but yesterday the radiofrequency shielding system failed abruptly. They now pick up RF (radiofrequency) emissions when worn within about 3 feet of a laptop. Tech support says this is a passive system (metal shield), so presumably it worked loose somehow. There's no sign of trauma.

I suspect they're out of their one year warranty [1]. I'll have to see if my AMEX extended warranty will cover this; alas, I struggle with keeping warranty information around [1]. BOSE says they'll replace out of warranty headphones with new ones for $100.

I couldn't find many reports of this problem on the net, so perhaps it's simply bad luck. I'll add this report in case anyone comes looking.

Update 10/17/06: Odd. It's not doing this at home, even though it was a problem throughout the west end of our 4th floor. I've sent a plea to Dan's Data for help. Could my entire office have turned into an RF maelstrom?

Update 10/18/06: The noise is gone. So either this is an intermittent failure of the passive RF shielding (hard to believe) or there's something that can turn every workstation in an office into a massive RF generator. I need a real geek to sort this out. I hope Dan replies ...

Update 10/19/06: The noise is still gone. Clearly the simplest explanation is that there's a 10 million year old alien artifact buried five miles beneath my office. My headphones intercepted the transient transmission to its companion artifact orbiting Jupiter. The invasion will commence shortly ...

[1] One of the key values Amazon delivers is that they track purchase information for me, but I didn't buy these on Amazon. AMEX requires a several pieces of information that are difficult to assemble.

Bloglines Package Tracking

I remember playing with someone elses implementation of package tracking, now Bloglines has it. It makes sense to me!

Adaptive iPod for visually impaired person with limited manipulative ability

I developed this adaptive iPod solution for my mother, an adventurous soul with limited vision and limited manipulative abilities. The Shuffle works well for the visually impaired since it lacks a display. The biggest problem is that it's too small, so the velcro and large case were added to make it easier to find and manage. The new Shuffle is even smaller and would require a different approach.

Click on the picture below to see a visual map of how I did this.

My Mother's Shufffle

I wrote up an user's manual which I'll add to this post later. The main usability issue was the 'button lock' feature. It's very hard to explain (I'm not sure I quite understand it!); I taught my mother to use the on/off switch instead. I told her if the iPod ever stopped responding (either crashed or inadvertent button lock activation) she should simply turn it on and off. That has worked well.

In theory when she tires of the music selection she mails me the Shuffle and I reload it from her music collection. So far she hasn't done that, I think she prefers I just revise it when our family visits.

This has been a successful project. Surprisingly, the adapted shuffle is simpler to operate than any stereo, radio, CD player or tape player.

My map storage system

This ClosetMaid StackAShelf was the solution to a problem that had bothered me for years -- how to store all my maps:



Click for a full res image.

Works wonderfully. I organize my maps by state/province, city maps are filed in their state/province. I keep my country maps separate for now.