BACKUPS ARE GOOD

By Josh Highland in hardware, software

I should have posted this last thursday, but in the Christmas rush, I havent found time until now…

Last week, I was at home working on my computer (creating a new version of notPopular.com actually) when my system froze. It was a bad kind of freeze. The kind of freeze where you know something major just went wrong.

I hit the power button to reboot. The bios posted with no problem. Then my raid controller came online…


CRITICAL ERROR: ONE OR MORE OF THE DISKS IN THE ARRAY HAS FAILED

Press esc to continue booting

HOLY CRAP! One of my drives died! THANK GOD for RAID


Side note on RAID:

RAID stands for: redundant array of inexpensive/independent disks

RAID is a data storage scheme using several hard drives to gain increased data integrity, fault-tolerance, throughput or capacity compared to single drives.

There are many configurations of RAID to achieve different tasks. For me the best solution was "RAID 1" which is mirroring. Simply, one drive mirrors another. I had two identical drives in my computer but the computer would only see one, but any data stored, would be saved onto both drives. This allows my data to be redundant and fault tolerant in case oh say…. one of my drives fails; I have an exact copy of the data, and no down time.

ok ok ok, back to my story… OH CRAP! One of my drives died!

I was stunned, but I wasnt worried, that why I have backups and use RAID 1, for a situation just like this. In the last 13 years, I havent had drive just stop working. I always heard about it happening to people, but never me.

I booted into windows, and everything seemed the same, and it should, to windows I only had one drive, it didnt know about the hardware raid controller. Awesome, I didnt lose a single file. I immediately started to back up my files onto DVD and onto a larger external hard drive.

Long story short. If you build your own computer or are serious about securing your data get a raid controller and an extra hard drive. You can buy a really good RAID controller card for under $100. My high end motherboards now offer integrated RAID controllers.

I also have an external drive and use syncback, as recommended from lifehacker.com

BACKUPS ARE GOOD

Revver vs. YouTube

By Josh Highland in internet, video, web 2.0

I like YouTube a lot. Recently I have started to record bands at shows and posting them on YoutTube.com. My plan was to build a collection of videos that I dont have to host, and can eventually incorporate into notPopular.com as content.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I read a lot of blogs. I came across a Chris Parillo posting about revver.com, so I checked it out.

revver.com is a site like YouTube.com, you upload your videos and they host them, but with a twist… revver pays you! Cash, clams, scrills, monies, dollars… anyway you want to call it, it boils down to a bigger bank account for you!

You get paid when someone watches your video to the end, and then clicks on the advertisement that gets displayed when the clip finishes.

Sure revver isnt as big as youTube… yet, and not everyone is going to click the advertisements, but if you are going to upload videos to a website, why not get paid for it?

I support revver.com over youTube.com. Competition is good for us all.

Nintendo Wii WiFi problem FIXED

By Josh Highland in hacks, video games

Last Saturday, Massive mat and I stood inline with a bunch of other geeks to get Nintendo Wiis. I will write a blog post about that, and about how fun the Wii is to play, but for now, im going to bitch about it for a minute…

One of the big reasons that I wanted to get a Wii was the fact that you are able to play EVERY nintendo game format on it. NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, and now Wii games! To play the old games you have to join their version of XBox Live, and buy them.

The Wii is so futuristic, that it doesnt have an ethernet port on it, no no, wifi is the way nintendo wii rolls!

I wanted to buy some of these old games and play them, but you have to connect to a wifi connection first. Not a problem, I have a Linksys WRT54GL router upstairs serving out some 802.11g love.

The Wii would see the access point, I would enter the WPA password, then the Wii would think about connecting then spit back and error, "ERROR 52230 contact support.nintendo.com". SUCK!

Ok, so I go to the nintendo site, search forever and then find a place to enter my error code. It returns something stupid about trying changing the channel that the router broadcasts on. Weird, but I try it… no LUCK.

I searched up and down the web seeing people with similar problems to mine. I couldnt figure it out for the life of me. All my other wifi gear worked fine.

I did a little research on what was actually inside the Wii as far as a wireless card. Thats when I found this site,
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=677908&seqNum=2&rl=1 where they actually took a Wii apart.
I found my answer there in the form of a simple statement "The 802.11 card only operates in the 2412-2462GHz range. In 802.11b mode"

802.11b MODE! WTF!

I dont own any 802.11b equipment, only 802.11g. 802.11b is shitty and slow compared to G. NO WHERE IN THE NINTENDO MANUALS OR ON THE NINTENTDO SITE DOES IT SAY THAT IT ONLY OPERATES AT 802.11b.

Why would nintendo do such a stupid thing? B is 5 times slower then G! Who the hell rund 802.11b equipment? My Damn cell phone has 802.11G support in it! Im more pissed that they didnt print it anywhere in the manual. They talk about WEP and WPA, but not the fucking protocol they use for the connection!

So I logged into my router and put it on Mixed (B/G) Mode, and what do you know, the Wii was able to connect to the nintendo server and get the updates that I needed to connect to their store.

So if you are having problems connecting your Wii to some WiFi. make sure that the router is set to mixed mode.

Nintendo, thank you for a great machine. Screw you for putting in a slow wifi card and not telling people more details about it.

I hope someone else can finally get their Wii online after reading this post.

IE7 with ClearType

By Josh Highland in internet, software

I installed IE7 with ClearType.
ClearType is a technique to smooth out text and make it look softer to the eye.

It sounded like a good idea, then I relaized that it didnt just effect IE, but windows explorer, my computer, control panel, and basically all the other internal windows areas.

It wouldnt be so bad if it didnt make all the text on the screen look like it had a slight blur to it, It was annoying and hurt my head after a while.

I tracked down the way to turn it off in windows XP:

  1. Open IE7
  2. Open Tool Menu
  3. Click Internet Options
  4. Click Advanced Tabs
  5. Under Multimedia, clear the Use ClearType checkbox
  6. Click OK X 2

White and Nerdy

By Josh Highland in video

Weird Al hit the nail on the head with this one… White and Nerdy

Lyrics to this song that are factual statements about me:

  • M.C. Escher, that's my favorite M.C.
  • I ain't got a gat, but I got a soldering gun
  • I'll ace any trivia quiz you bring on
  • I'm fluent in JavaScript
  • My ergonomic keyboard never leaves me bored
  • I edit Wikipedia
  • I got a business doing websites
  • When my friends need some code, who do they call? I do HTML for 'em all
  • Even made a homepage for my dog
  • I'm nerdy in the extreme and Whiter than sour cream

Based on that I would agree that I am white and nerdy.