Category: Computers

Proprietary Plugs, Dead Drives and Irritating Interfaces, Part 1

Computers

My father-in-law and mother-in-law recently found themselves in need of a backup solution.  (The driver for this was an iPad which needed to be backed up and low hard drive space.  That full story will come another day.)  My preferred backup solution is an extra hard drive.  They are easy to store and work with and can be hooked up to any computer.  So we went out and helped my father-in-law buy a 1TB external hard drive.  We got back to his house, plugged it in, and I talked him through backing up his files.

At this point, I just want to step aside and say that I got a bad feeling about this drive from the moment we unboxed it.  No, it wasn’t banged up or anything.  Instead, I looked at the USB cord and saw this.

P1050935

Notice the indentation on the cord?  That’s not a standard cord.  With the external hard drives I have, if I lose the cord I could use any standard cord (of the same type) and access my data.  If my father-in-law lost this cord, or if it went bad, then he’d have to hope the hard drive manufacturer would sell him a new one.  And that it wouldn’t be too costly.  Otherwise, he’d be SOL.

Putting aside my concerns, though, we proceeded with the backup.  Everything was working fine until we got to a few of the last files.  Then the computer reported having trouble writing the files.  My Computer reported that the drive simply wasn’t there.  We checked all of the plugs, both in the computer and in the drive.  Nothing.  We tried plugging it into B’s computer.  Nada.  Less than two hours after opening the box and the drive was effectively dead.

Before the drive died, it copied files.  We didn’t want to simply return the drive, with my father-in-law’s files on it.  Neither, however, could we erase those files prior to returning it.  Had the cord been a non-proprietary one, I could have swapped out a different cord.  This would have at least narrowed down the problem to the drive or cord.  Instead, we’re at the mercy of the hard drive manufacturer’s support to figure out what’s wrong and figure out how we can delete our data prior to returning it.

Tomorrow, I’ll post Part 2 where I discuss the frustrations of retrieving data from an iPad.

Aloha Friday: Social Media Time Out

Aloha Friday, Computers, Holidays, Internet, Judaism, Social Media

As you read this, I’ll be offline celebrating the holiday of Sukkot.  It may be a more minor holiday than Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur, but I like celebrating these holidays.  Now, I’m not Orthodox.  I do things like take photos, watch TV and the like.  One thing I don’t do, though, is use my phone or computer.  I use the holiday as time off from anything work-related (which includes all computers as I program websites for a living and phones as I could otherwise take calls from work defeating the purpose of being “off”).  Instead, I spend the time with my family.  The forced time offline means that I interact with my family more.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Do you regularly take vacations from social media/computers?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha Friday by Kailani at An Island Life

Aloha #109

The Continuing Adventures of My Super-Boys

Computers, Geeky Pursuits, Internet, JSL, NHL, Superheroes

Last year, I sat my boys down on the HeroMachine website to let them make their own superheroes.  Since it’s been so long, I decided to let them back on to see how they would make their heroes this time.  As with the last time, I guided them through the setup.  I might have nudged them here or there but the general look and feel of the superheroes was up to them.  For example, I might push to make tops and bottoms match in color, but if they decided to change the color palette, I wouldn’t refuse their superheroic demands.

I also purposefully didn’t show them their superheroes from the previous year.  I didn’t want them to simply recreate their old heroes.  I wanted to see what more recent influences might being to their heroes.

Let’s start with JSL.  Last year, he made this hero:

  

He named his superhero “FireGuy.”  So what did he make this year?

Agent Super JSL Buzz Lightyear

Meet Super Agent JSL Buzz Lightyear.  Breaking down the name first, the “Super” part comes because, to JSL, a superhero must, obviously, be names super-something.  I’m not sure why he thinks that.  Most of the superheroes he knows don’t have names that begin with “Super.”  “Agent” comes from Agent P, from Phineas and Ferb.  We had recently watched the Phineas and Ferb movie so he wanted to be a secret agent.  Buzz Lightyear comes from his favorite Toy Story character.

The shield is based on the one that his favorite superhero, Captain America, has.  The color scheme incorporates his favorite colors.  I’m not sure if there was a particular rhyme or reason behind the rest of the outfit, though.

Next up, was NHL.  Last year, he made Disco Man, so named because he had “disco eyes.”

 

This year, NHL made Toolguy/Mathman/Cordman.  Yes, you read that right.  This superhero has three names.  I tried to get NHL to shorten it, but he was adamant that it needed to be all three and include the slashes.

Toolguy_Mathman_Cordman

The name is based off his love of building things, his love of math, and the fact that his superhero has a whip.  The head was based loosely on Hulk.  For the body, NHL insisted that his superhero was part-robot and so it needed to be grey.  In retrospect, I wonder if this comes from Perry the Platyborg from the Phineas and Ferb movie.  It was interesting that NHL picked out the same tail that he chose last year.  He also chose the same eyes at first, but then changed his mind.

Have your kids used HeroMachine?  If so, what kinds of superheroes have they made?

Aloha Friday: Backup Early, Backup Often

Aloha Friday, Computers

It is now the first of the month.  As such, it is time for me to back up our PCs.  Awhile back, our desktop PC’s hard drive died.  On that drive would have been all of our photos of us, NHL, JSL, etc.  We could easily have lost everything with no way of replacing it.  Luckily, I had long before implemented a backup routine.

My first backup plan was burning CD’s with the data.  Unfortunately, as the amount of data that we needed to back up grew, the backups became more and more of a pain to do.  First, I had to locate all of the files.  Then, I had to figure out how best to fit them on CDs.  Finally, I had to man the CD burner to take out the old CDs, put in the new ones and check for errors.  Eventually, we got a DVD burner but this just temporarily lightened the load.  Soon we needed to back up multiple DVDs every month.

After researching various solutions, I hit upon a cure.  We bought two external hard drives, each 1TB in size.  All of our data was backed up to one of the drives.  The data on that drive was then backed up to the second drive.  While the first drive would remain at home (for easy data access), the second drive would be moved to an “undisclosed offsite location.”  This way if our house were burgled or burned to the ground, our data would survive.  In addition, we’re protected against a single drive just up and dying.

Recently, a few companies began offering “cloud” backup services.  You pay a monthly (or yearly) fee and get a certain amount of space to store your files.  This might work nicely for a few important documents (and, in fact, I’ve been known to import important documents into Google Docs for quick access and guaranteed backups), but try backing up 10GB of new files to the cloud.  Worse yet, try restoring 200GB of files from the cloud to your PC.  Besides, while Amazon Cloud Drive (to pick a service at semi-random) costs $200 per year for 200GB of space, two 1TB external hard drives cost about $120.  A $120 one-time cost beats a $200 recurring fee any day of the year.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: How do you backup your important files?  Also, how often do you back up?

Don’t forget to enter my Outback Steakhouse $45 gift certificate giveaway!

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha Friday by Kailani at An Island Life

Aloha #94

Math Rider: An NHL Video Review

Computers, NHL, Review, Videos

When I reviewed Math Rider, I planned on getting NHL to review it as well.  After all, he’s the one who played the game.  I can say it’s great and wonderful and all but if your child doesn’t really like it or want to play it, then there’s not much point, is there?  So I sat down with NHL last night, loaded up Math Rider and let him play while doing a video review.  Here’s the result:

 

So there you have it.  NHL’s thoughts are “I think everybody should have this game.”  I’m pretty sure that would be a two thumbs up if his thumbs (and the rest of his fingers) weren’t typing out math answers.

Disclaimer: Math Rider provided me with a complimentary copy of the game for review in conjunction with the Family Review Network.  This video post, however, was my own idea.  All of the opinions expressed above (both in the text and video) are mine and NHL’s.

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