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Nabuhay ako muli

Been a while since I last blogged. My Macbook Pro died on me – specifically, the hard drive failed without any warning. I didn’t want to blog when not using Ecto, which supports previewing of all my custom functions (ie footnotes, markdown, etc.)

Incidentally, SpinRite was of no use since it wouldn’t work on the MacBook Pro; it would only load to a certain point then not respond to any keyboard input – hence couldn’t get to the actual testing/maintenance/recovery operations. Fortunately, Data Rescue II saved my ass – again. So I was able to recover all my data from the dying drive.

I ended up getting a 3.5″ 120GB IDE drive with external enclosure for about 3k bucks, which I installed and ran OS X from. It’s such a pain in the ass to not be able to move around when you have your laptop booting and running off a 3.5″ drive as you need it powered from a wall-wart. But the price of a similarly sized 2.5″ version is just too much.

In any case, the service center where I usually have my stuff repaired pre-ordered a replacement drive without me having to show or leave the laptop with them for a few days (the benefits of being a trustworthy customer). They let me keep and use my laptop until the new drive came and I only had to visit once – having the drive replaced within the hour.

So I’m back, and will now use the 3.5″ drive as a dedicated clone of my laptop drive – in case something like this happens a third time (or any succeeding time for that matter).

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Obsessive compulsive(ness)

I got some nice looking external hard disk enclosures last year, and have been struggling with them since then. Ultimately it was a chipset problem.

They were using the infamous Prolific chipset which often resulted to inconsistencies in performance. One day they’d be working fine. The next, they wouldn’t mount. Sometimes you’d have to power-cycle them to get them working again. Other times, you’d have to take them apart and massage the cables a little (I have no idea why this would work, but I was out of options and tried it – and it worked) Sometimes if it wouldn’t load on USB, switching to IEEE1394 would solve it.

They were more reliable in Windows than they were in the Mac. If your machine goes to sleep with them connected, don’t expect them to wake up along with it.

A few days ago, I decided to replace them with these babies:

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Details of past posts

I’m just testing out the new Lumix, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m just used to my 20D, but the pics are too noisy for my taste. I have to try to borrow other point and shoot cameras to double check if it simply is an issue of point-and-shoots in general. In any case, it doesn’t matter since it ain’t mine.

Since my 20D isn’t back yet, I thought I should just use the new cam for my new stuff. The canalphones really needed live pictures because it’s so hard to describe in text my particular concerns without sounding too complicated – so I thought it would be better to have pictures for the benefit of the people who actually are interested in whatever the hell I put in my blog.

You can click on the thumbnails in this post for a larger view

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