Replace windows 8 disk, episode 2


So, I replaced the disk that was ruining my system and got everything back to where I started. but…

… the new disk has the exact same symptoms… lots of data errors and seek errors, no bad sectors and 5 to 10 second average access times.

Now I need to do more sleuthing to find out if I’m just unlucky and got two drives with the same problem (which sounds really unlikely) or there’s some other problem going. The troubleshooting tool from the PC’s manufacturer didn’t find any problems which is a problem in itself. It’s really fishy.

I dusted off my Linux box that I hadn’t used for 5+ years. The goal with the Linux box is to not need to tackle Windows malware at the same time.

There’s some Linux bit rot going on because the display is stuck at 640 x 480. I’m fighting with the X configuration file but am not making a lot of headway. The auto-config dumps on me.

I’m finding clues that the Linux box had vmware installed on it. I can’t get it to launch. (It might be because of the screen resolution?) The old virtual machines I have scattered on backup discs are incompatible with modern vmware.

It would be awesome if I got vmware to work because I have antique versions of Windows (98 and Millennium edition) and antique versions of Microsoft Office (2000 and XP) that would be fun to play with again. I have a matching vmware install disk, but that’s for another day.

Repair windows 8 main disk


I needed to upgrade the main disk on my Windows 8 computer. I was fortunate that the old disk allowed me to make a system image. (Monty Python: “I’m not dead.”)

I followed the instructions on a very helpful blog post “Simple steps for replacing your Windows 8.1 system disk with a bigger drive”

Everything went as directed until I got to the error message “The system image restore failed. Windows cannot restore a system image to a computer that has different firmware. The system image was created on a computer using EFI and the computer is using BIOS.”

I did an investigation of the error message using my current research workflow. (Just started using that workflow, so I have to mention it. One of its greatest attributes is that it prevents me from jumping down rabbit holes when I’m trying to learn something specific.)

The short answer:

Recent PCs can boot in two ways. One uses the old technique from a BIOS and another uses a different method called UEFI. (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) The solution was to boot the prepared USB drive the same way that the original hard drive boot used.

I found the keypress I needed to go into the boot menu, (For my computer it was F12. Other computers might use other keys.) I picked the option to boot my USB drive with EFI instead of BIOS and now the data is being restored successfully.

….It’s easy to find a long answer to solve the problem.

The firehose… what a Genius!


The Firehose feature of genius.com is cool. It is a (figurative) firehose spewing out all of the activity on the site. It reminds me of Tweetdeck. To sample the firehose, you need to be logged in.

I see that some of the user names are (more than a little) sketchy. (Other sites I visit would ban them day zero.) I find the site pretty light-hearted—‘bad’ people get put in a penalty box (à la hockey) and people who are banned often get a chance to leave a parting message (which is just goofy).

Commenting in the forums requires more IQ than I have right now. Right now my project (quest) is to get all of the metadata for the group Saga corrected. Right now everything Saga is listed under the rapper Saïga. The real Saga from Canada is nowhere to be found. I guess I’m passionate about Saga…. having over 30 discs on my shelf.

There are plenty of lyrics websites. The closest one to Genius that I’ve found is Song Meanings. Both Genius and Song Meanings are crowd-sourced. But, Genius is hands down the winner.

The artists are part of the Genius community and often contribute textually or with song breakdown videos. Linkin Park Breaks Down “Good Goodbye” On Genius’ Video Series ‘Verified’ was one of the first I saw, before Chester Bennington’s suicide.

My vote of confidence for Genius is that I prefer to add site:genius.com when I’m using a search engine.

site:google.com surprise

Excited Talk
In searches on google.com and duckduckgo.com, you can add a clause “site:some-domain” to your search.

For example, a duckduckgo search “site:wikipedia.org end-of-life” will offer many articles that the native Wikipedia search can’t find. Some of those titles include Product lifecycle and End of Life Vehicles Directive

I wanted to be a clever and ask the search engines to look at itself to give me an answer. I quickly discovered that asking Google “site:google.com” is incredibly useful.

Most of the results come from feedproxy.google.com. In other words, this style of query searches Google’s vast collection of blogs and news feeds.

It’s an awesome tool!!! It narrows my searches in a very useful manner.

And I’ve only scratched the surface. For example, in an advanced search query “Last update” does what it should. Google will find blog posts from the past year, month, week or 24 hours.

Uncanny world – the grocery store


Last week I did a test to see whether I still needed to eat gluten free. So far I’m ok eating not gluten free.

However the experiment veered quite expensive Sunday. I was pulling up to a gas station for a donut and hit the curb on the way in and hard! My car made odd noises as I left.

I went to the shop a couple days later, fearing the worst—that I’d did some extensive damage. Fortunately, not, but I needed a front end alignment. So, the donut ended up costing $85.69. $0.69 for the pastry and $85 to align the suspension. I hope the donut was worth it.

Today, I went to two local grocery stores without restricting my shopping list. It was weird not knowing what to buy, since for so long, most of the store was off limits.

I ended up buying Wheat Chex, whole wheat flour and didn’t need to question the other things I got.

It was a very uncanny experience….

Cooking experiments: cook: 1; cooking disasters: 1

upsidedown red bowl
Today’s experiment: use Skyr (icelandic yogurt) instead of water to cook instant oatmeal. Not good at all. I didn’t even try to eat it. After the fact, I see that wikipedia suggests there’s a dish “hræringur” that might be similar to what I was hoping to make although it appears that for hræringur the Skyr is added after cooking the oatmeal, not before.

My first mistake was not stirring it before microwaving it. With water, the boiling action does good enough at mixing with the oatmeal. Skyr is pretty viscous and there was dry oatmeal at the bottom when it was supposed to be done. I tried to recover by stirring and using more time in the microwave. However, there was no hope of success.

I tasted like unpleasant sour pasty mush.

Hopefully it hasn’t hardened in the sink. Gotta do dishes tonight anyway so I’ll clean it up one way or another.

The lesson is, don’t substitue sour dairy products for water with something that you normally add sugar too.

Running score to date is: cook 1, cooking disasters 1. (The first win was documented at Mac n Cheese)

… let’s hot wire the chip


My dad worked at IBM in Essex Junction, Vermont in the late sixties/early 70s. He was developing a dynamic RAM chip which was a new technology. He says that university researchers weren’t working on a dynamic RAM chip at the time so it was cutting edge hardware. The chip that he designed had a whopping 32kbits of memory–32,768 bits. His patent is US Patent 3,811,076.

The process they were using was originally called SAMOS for self-aligned metal oxide semiconductor, but I understand that later the acronym had a different meaning.

I just learned a new story about the project that I think is pretty astounding.

The first silicon that they were testing had a power trace that didn’t go to everywhere that it was needed. My dad had left out a power connection in the layout. Rather than go back to the drawing board and make a new wafer, they simply put a jumper connecting the two sides of the power network together with a couple of probes. It was good enough for them to complete the testing.

That is so clever to me. I’m sure there are very few stories of a chip design flaw that was worked around by hot wiring the chip.

It was possible because the dimensions of circuit components were much, much bigger than they are now. Also, the chip layout didn’t have as many layers as current circuits.

What an awesome engineering stunt!

Original image: 64-bit Chip. By Steve Jurvetson [Image license]

Review: Collins Dictionary online

A green thought bubbleThere are many online dictionary sites. Some that come up near the top of search results include Dictionary.com http://www.dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster http://www.merriam-webster.com, The Free Dictionary http://www.thefreedictionary.com, Wiktionary http://en.wiktionary.com, Your Dictionary http://www.yourdictionary.com,
Definitions.net http://www.definitions.net.

One that is not so easy to find is Collins http://www.collinsdictionary.com.

The popular dictionaries are really wannabe encyclopedias. They have detailed explanations of each word. Rather than defining the term in succinct form, they attempt to be general and all-inclusive. For example, searching the noun form of the word “blog”, these dictionaries can use 20 – 40 or more words to define blog. In addition” their definitions have lengthy “or” and “and” clauses so that they cover all the bases and then some.

Although most have a sample sentence, the ones they offer don’t have any context. For example, Merriam Webster uses the sentences “She writes a blog about travel. I enjoy reading her blog.” From this I know “you can read a blog” and “a blog has a subject.” Collins dictionary gives “When Barbieux started his blog, his aspirations were small; he simply hoped to communicate with a few people.” This lets me understand it better, it gives me an example of the why and who that Merriam-Webster’s example doesn’t reveal.

Collins Dictionary has many other useful features such as definitions in both British English and American English. Along with the conventional definitions, parts of speech and derived forms of word, this dictionary has audio pronunciations of the different forms of English. For the language nerd, it provides a graph of word-use frequency over time.

There are full dictionaries of Portuguese, German, Italian, and Chinese. It appears to be missing a dictionary of French, Arabic, Hebrew and other world languages.

One unique feature that it has is a Learner’s English section that include each definition with a less complicated sentence using the word.

Frequently, when I search for words in a search engine, I add “site:collinsdictionary.com” to limit my search to this source.

Check http://www.collinsdictionary.com out. I believe you will be appreciate it as much as I do.

[Edit 2018-03-02] I discovered that my comment about missing dictionaries is not correct. Collins contains dictionaries for Hindi, French, Spanish, English, German, Italian and Chinese. However, I have not found Arabic and Hebrew dictionaries.

An additional feature is access to audio pronunciations for dozens of languages.

The reasonable person assumption principle

Thought bubbleHow would I respond when my sister is really grumpy and snaps at me for dropping the silverware? Am I going to tell myself that she’s a horrible sister and it would be better to stay away? Or would  I guess that she  had had a tough day at work and a horrible headache?

Naturally I would take the charitable route and realize that there was probably a good explanation when she seemed a little unreasonable.

If a friend at work was gruff and short with me I might try to find it what’s up…  it was not his normal self.

The same attitude is deserved by a stranger. What is different between someone you don’t know and that friend at work? They may just be the neighbor you haven’t met yet.

The Reasonable Person Assumption Principle asserts that people are in general reasonable. Seemingly unreasonable behavior reasonably could have an explanation that isn’t evident but understandable.

The distracted call with the insurance company might have reached someone in the process of adopting two children in a very difficult situation. Another driver was rude because they were on the way to a wedding in an unfamiliar town.

“It isn’t personal.” “How would you like to be treated.” “You’ll have your turn.”

I don’t know what the next person is facing. When I am having a rough time, I hope my failures will not lead to scorn from those who are looking in without seeing my better days.

A civil discourse with people of a different faith, political side, race or national origin can begin when I realize that they are reasonable in the the same way that my sister and co-worker are.

I believe people in general are reasonable. Howevern it’s hard for me to see that when I am sick or angry,  tired or hungry. If I want to help things build up instead off fall apart I need to look beyond my own weaknesses to look for the strength and hope, whenever it may sit.

Zip code ciphers: I Love You

I was talking to a friend. I noticed that his zip code is really close to 32K (32768). I wondered what powers of two have a zipcode.

I found 3:

  • 02048 – Mansfield, MA
  • 04096 – Yarmouth, ME
  • 65536 – Lebanon, MO

It’s amusing that all three are in states that begin with “M”

Next, my mind wandered to representing ASCII strings as zip codes. There aren’t enough zip codes to make this easy. However, I came up with this code for “I love you”

Wilkes Barre, PA; Womelsdorf, PA; Sharpsburg, GA; Deerfield St., Bridgeton, NJ; Cherry Point, NC.

In hex that is 49 0D 4C 4F 76 45 20 79 6F 75.

Heart © THOR (image license)