August 24, 2008
The Linux server in the basement crashed Saturday, and after some diagnosis, it turned out to be a failed 500 GB internal hard disk. The drive was the “backup” disk for the two 250 GB data disks in the Linux server, our two MacBooks, my desktop Mac, as well as for a variety of content I have hosted elsewhere, such as mfischer.com (at techno’s co-lo), lrr.org (at bluehost.com), etc. I had rsnapshot set up to make incremental backups of all these other disks every 4 hours to the 500 GB disk. So, losing it wasn’t the end of the world, since it was just backups of the original data. I went onto NewEgg.com on Saturday and ordered a new 1 TB disk for $139 including 3-day delivery.
A few minutes later, Kathie returned from Scott and Sue’s, and announced that the hard disk in Scott’s MacBook had just died. Interestingly, the hard disk in my MacBook (purchased the same day as Scott’s) failed about two months ago, a couple weeks before the 1-year warranty ended.
So, while anxiously waiting for my new 1 TB disk to ship so I could start keeping backups again, today another disk in the Linux server failed. This time it was one of the two 250 GB disks. Now, I have no backups, so the data is gone. I did get lucky though, since it was the disk containing my music archive, which means all I have to do is re-rip 600 CDs into FLAC format. Not fun, but also not very urgent. The other 250 GB disk has all the important stuff… years of documents, photos, software I’ve developed, etc. If that disk had failed instead of the music disk, I’d be in sad shape right now.
So, I spent the evening frantically backing up everything I could from the “important” disk to various other places in the house (spare space on the desktop Mac, laptops, etc.). That’s done, so I’m at least going to sleep knowing I have a backup of the important stuff “just in case”. I also ordered a second 1 TB disk which I’ll be putting in Scott’s house as an off-site backup. Considering the cost of hard disks these days, it doesn’t hurt to be overly cautious.
Posted in computing 
4 Comments »
August 22, 2008
I don’t intend for my blog to turn into a review of other blogs, but this one I just have to mention. I recently came across the Smashing Magazine “blog” while looking for some help with web design. The site has an incredible depth of information on web site design — an area where I feel woefully inadequate, but desperately wish I was better at. However, it also has lots of other interesting articles that set it apart. Here’s a smattering of ones I’ve found interesting so far, but there are hundreds of similar articles on the site:
Enjoy!
Posted in computing, misc, photography Leave a comment »
August 7, 2008
For the past few weeks I’ve been teaching myself how to program in Ruby and Rails. Given that it’s hyped as “web development that doesn’t hurt” and is supposed to be easy to learn, I’ve been having more trouble than I expected. Two years ago I learned PHP in a week or so, and last year Javascript in a few weeks. The Ruby language itself isn’t the problem, as it’s similar enough to many other languages I’ve used in the past. Rails however is a dramatic departure from anything I’ve used in the past. It’s a programming framework for rapidly developing easily maintainable web applications, and is “opinionated” software — that is, it has a specific way it wants you (and often forces you) to program, including variable names, filenames, breaking a project into a set of models, controllers, and views, etc.
There are hundreds of Rails tutorials all over the web, but they’re all very similar to each other, and just cover the basics. I’ve come to the conclusion that at least part of my problem is that I don’t have a good learning and reference book. Agile Web Development with Rails is the definitive work, but the currently available edition only covers an old version of Rails, and the updated edition won’t be printed until October. So, until then I’ll continue stumbling through my first project, learning a little bit at a time.
On the bright side, I’ve seen enough to be confident that once I do become proficient, I’ll be able to use Rails to develop web applications more easily (and with less errors) than I did in the past with PHP.
Posted in computing 2 Comments »
August 6, 2008
Finished another quarterly PET scan last week, and saw my doctor today for the results, and as expected, all is still good. Now that over a year’s gone by since finishing chemo, he’s changing my scan schedule to three times a year instead of four. Look for another update in December…
Posted in cancer 4 Comments »
June 21, 2008
My brother Bob and his friend Jason started their two-handed sailboat race from Rhode Island to Bermuda yesterday. The race should take about five days, with them sleeping in shifts and racing the whole time. There are many classes of boats in the race, from yachts with large crews of people to small two-handed boats like the 34-foot Paladin that Bob is sailing. Good luck Bob and Jason!
Each boat has a GPS transponder so we can watch the race from home. The orange line in the bottom pictures below shows the path of the Paladin.
Posted in Friends, misc 3 Comments »
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New picture in the house... I have come to realize that whatever picture I have, it is twice as cool as when you try and wear the same one... so don't even try. Give up now! In gaming related news... My power supply almost exploded! 
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