So somewhere or other on the interwebs I found a link to Crystal Disk Info and downloaded it. Ran it at work on my work laptop and everything was A-OK. I thought to myself, neat little utility, need to remember that for the home computers.

So I brought it home and ran it on my Dell. This is what it told me:

So I wonder how bad this is, and if Dell will send me a new laptop. I dumped it all to an external drive thanks to SyncBack, but just to be safe I think I should call it in.

It says I have 100 reallocated sectors. According to this website a reallocated sector is when the hard drive finds a bad spot on the drive and moves everything off of it to another “reserved” sector. It seems like the other 2 attributes (”Current Pending Sector Count” and “Uncorrectable Sector Count”) are related to it. Just not sure how bad it is. I’m used to server hardware, not consumer stuff. I’m fairly certain that Dell will say it’s ‘within limits’ - I’ll find out. I’m used to server level 3rd tier support - if I felt something looked at me funny I could tell them to send me a new one. I get a feeling it doesn’t work this way for run of the mill consumers

Anyway, to lighten the mood some here’s a picture I ran across. The “Friends with Benefits” benefit summar prospectus. Click to see it full size.

So since I’ve decided to keep the ‘Woo instead of upgrading to a sexy CX-7, I’ve decided why not go the next step and actually upgrade it.

My Leganza is an “SE” model. Not the absolute bottom line, but not the top end “CDX” version. But, what I have going for me is the fact that most of the stuff the makes an SE a CDX is already there. All of the internals are there - wiring harnesses, sensors, and the what not. And to be honest, for being a ‘bargain’ car maker, Daewoo did do a lot to the hardware side of things¹ - it gets over 30mpg, the 2.2 liter engine is surprisingly peppy, 4 wheel anti-lock disc brakes², power windows, locks, mirrors, etc. So it’s definately worth keeping around for awhile.

The best part is since they sold it all to Chevy, the Daewoo branded stuff is getting dirt cheap - I bought the service manuals and wiring schematics for over 80% off their normal price! Hell, I can buy the Daewoo allow rims for only $50 a piece, when they originally went for almost $250 each! Not to mention, the Daewoo website is amazingly helpful. I can buy, literally, any part that the car has - right there online.

But even better, and back to my original point - eBay has many of those same parts, and even cheaper. So since we’ll be moving to a place with a garage and multiple rooms soon, I might as well get started!

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Taking away from the comfort side of things to do it [↩]
2. And it’s a 2001 mind you - there’s a lot of 2008 cars that don’t have 4 wheel disc brakes [↩]

The 2008 Bent Festival will be making it’s final stop here in Minneapolis from May 1st - 3rd at Intermedia Arts¹. This is it’s 5th year, and it’s 2nd in Minneapolis - let’s show ‘em some love!

What is it? The Bent Festival is an annual art and music festival celebrating DIY electronics, hardware hacking, and circuit bending. Each year they invite artists from across the country and around the globe to perform music with their home-made or circuit bent instruments, teach workshops to adults and children alike, create beautiful art installations and to generally come together, face to face, and showcase the state of the art in DIY electronics and circuit bending culture.

If you’re the type that took your toys apart growing up, then this event is definitely for you! Like to learn more? Check out the Bent Festival on Flickr or YouTube, add them to your MySpace or Facebook, look at the workshops or check out the complete schedule. The 3 concerts are $10 each, and some of the workshops have a small charge for parts. Buy individual tickets, or a 3 day pass for only $25.

Local artists performing this year are: Datura 1.0, Caly McMorrow, Beatrix*JAR and Memory Selector.

1. Google Map to Intermedia Arts [↩]

Haven’t been posting much lately and I’m sorry about that - but when you’re rocking a pair of $40 coupons for a Digital TV Converter Box of your choice, it takes awhile to choose!

 In my post yesterday, I incorrectly assumed that the hotfix ID being used to query for the installation of PowerShell was wrong, probably due to an earlier release. The truth is there is a couple of hotfix IDs, depending on which operating system you’re on. If you’re on Windows XP, 2000 or 2003 you have one ID, if you’re on Vista or (presumably) 2008 it’s a completely different ID. I’ve since banged together a quick script to look for the OS version first, then to query for the proper fix. Hopefully you’ll find it useful!

Also, yesterday I got my Arduino starter kit! I haven’t gotten to play with it much at all, except for the hardware equivalent of “Hello World”, the blinking LED. I’m looking forward to using it when I get better and done with some work, especially since I have a few ideas kicking around.  And I love this starter kit, it contains everything I need to get through LadyAda’s first set of tutorials - no rummaging for an hour in the parts bin, then going to RadioShack to find out they don’t stock it instore¹

1. Yes, this happens to me, a lot. [↩]

I’ve always been a PIC¹ kinda guy. PIC² is a microcontroller made by Microchip. It’s fairly popular in the hobbyist market because they’re so widely available and so very cheap. They can do a lot, but they can be a pain to develop with unless you know all the parts you need to accomplish your goals, tough for a newbie. I use the PICKit 1 development kit because it has a lot of the extra basic bits you need to do anything useful, less hunting == more fun.

Over the past year or so³ I’ve been hearing more about more about the Arduino⁴ The Arduino is a physical computing platform based on a simple I/O board and a development environment that implements the Processing/Wiring language. It looks like a lot of fun, and it seems like overnight a mountain of interesting tips, tricks and projects have popped up revolving around this little guy. It’s design is also open and you can download both the hardware design reference documents as well as the source code for the IDE and on-board library. So I’m temporarily jumping over the fence and just ordered one online from Adafruit.com. At $65, it’s a bit more then the PICKit, but the wealth of information out there makes it promising - especially simple how-tos and projects, dwarfs the information you can find on the PIC, even though the PIC does have “123 PIC Microcontroller Experiments for the Evil Genius” on it’s side.

The Arduino really seems more aimed at the hobbyist market - which makes sense as that is what it was designed to for. You can create programs that will run stand alone or connect it to your computer to allow the virtual world to interact with the physical world. People have built a lot of interesting things with their Arduinos from clocks, POV machines, theremins to even a hitcounter that rings a bell when someone visits their site. They do make it look quite sexy, no?

So I’ve got a few simple projects I’d like to make⁵ , and I think they would be an excellent way to test out what that ATmega168 can do. I’ll make a little write up about it in a few months. Wish me luck!

1. Programmable Interface Computer [↩]
2. More about PIC: Official Site, Mailing List, Tools [↩]
3. Ever since I started reading MAKE magazine - you should subscribe too [↩]
4. More about the Arduino: Official Site, Wiki, Photos, Tutorial, Introduction To [↩]
5. Projects: External iPod display/control, Canvas project, Proximity Clock, My grandiose living clock, etc etc - I’ve talked about some of these back in the day, time to get ‘er done! [↩]