iMac Hard Drive Failure

Well, it finally happened. The hard drive in my iMac died last night. The iMac was acting slow and flakey, so I rebooted it. When it came back on, there was a strange clicking noise and I got the Missing System Folder image on the screen. I wouldn't be so worried about the drive (AppleCare should replace it free) if it weren't for the fact that I was hosting most of my websites on an Ubuntu Linux VMware image running on the iMac. The good news is that my system was backed up via Time Machine to an external firewire hard drive. The bad news is that, to stop my system from slowing to a crawl every time Time Machine ran, I stupidly excluded the VMware image from the regular backups. The most current VM image backup I have is from September 14th, nearly a month ago. Mostly that means a bunch of images are missing from my photolog and from my photo gallery. The original photos are safe on my MacBook so I can repost them. I can probably get recover the post titles and descriptions from Google's cache. I did have a bootable backup of my iMac on a second partition of my Time Machine external drive, so at the moment, the iMac is booted from the backup drive. I should make a backup of my backup drive soon in case it fails too. It feels like I'm flying with one engine at the moment. In the meantime, I'm running the VM image on the Mac Mini I have hooked up to my TV and use as a home media center. Since its usually idle most of the day, this should work fine, although its 1GB of RAM will be a little tight. I don't know how performance will be if I try to watch TV on it. I have no backups running on the Mini, so I need to dig up another external drive for that as well. I haven't found WiFi to be very reliable, so I ran an ethernet cable from my home office down the stairs to the Mini. It's ugly, but works for the moment. Eventually I want to run a cable from the office to the basement, where I could then run it to the Mini or anything else. I had previously purchased parts to build a cheap, plain Linux box that would then run the WM image of my websites but had problems with Ubuntu and the video card (Video card support has always been a problem with Linux for me). The box is noisy and probably eats a lot of power, so I might leave the sites on the Mini permanently once I upgrade the RAM. I've heard tales of failed drives coming back to life one last time by thumping them, or cooling them, or smearing them with goat blood. I'm hoping if I try restarting the iMac several times that I can get the drive to come up long enough to copy over the 8GB Linux VM image. So far no luck.

King of Prussia Lego Store Grand Opening

Last Saturday I went to the Grand Opening of the new Lego Store in the King of Prussia Mall, although the store itself had already opened last month. I didn't expect it to be as busy as an Apple Store Grand Opening, so I got there about a half-hour after opening. Oops. The line already stretched down part of the mall and around a corner. I think I was the only lone adult I saw in line (everyone else around me were families). Luckily I had my iPhone with me and the 90 minute wait went by quickly. The store was giving away free commemorative Lego Liberty Bell sets to the first 300 customers who spent over $35. At first I was afraid they had ran out, but they had plenty left by the time I got into the store. I filled up two cups with bricks (I saved 50 cents by reusing cups I had previously filled at another Lego store) and picked up the Cement Mixer set.

Afterwards I headed over to a section of tables where you could help build pieces of a giant Lego Yoda. I assembled a small brick, got a $5 coupon and a certificate signed by Master Builder Dan. I talked briefly with some volunteers who were members of local PA Lego clubs. I'll have to check them out.

The coupon expires at the end of the month, so I'll probably be make another trip in the next week or two. Hopefully the giant Yoda will still be there. More photos from Grand Opening are up on my photo gallery.

Willowbrook Mall Apple Store Opening

Last weekend I took the train out to north NJ to visit my brother. We went to the opening of the new Apple Store in the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, NJ (not to be confused with the Apple Store in the Willowbrook Mall in Texas). We got there about an hour before opening. The line wasn't too bad, but I couldn't see how far it went.

I took video of the actual opening complete with loud, cheering Apple employees. Maybe I'll get around to cleaning up the video and posting it online soon.

I didn't actually buy anything at the store, but I got my free T-shirt, which brings the size of my Apple Store T-Shirt collection up to, well, two. More photos from the opening are up on my photo gallery. My previous Apple Store opening was Ardmore, PA.

Thrift Store Roomba

I found an original model Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner at a local thrift store for $6. It was full of dust and hair and missing the AC adapter, but I figured for $6, it was worth a shot. I noticed that the Roomba has a weird power connector consisting of two inputs. iRobot has their Roomba manuals available as free PDF downloads and the manual shows the special adapter that originally came with the Roomba. They sell replacement AC adapters but they don't come with the double-barrel adapter. I posted to the official Roomba forum, and the best suggestion I got is to look for someone selling one with a broken Roomba on eBay. Given that I don't know if this Roomba even works, I'm not sure if I want to spend much money for a replacement AC adapter. Since I do have some basic electronics and soldering skills, perhaps I can build an adapter myself? Even if I do get the Roomba working, the programming options unfortunately aren't available for original Roomba models. That's no big deal. With the way that cat hair and dust form little tumbleweeds on my (fake) hard woods floors, an automated vacuum would be great. At worst, I can always sell the Roomba on eBay for spare parts.

Art of the Brick

Last Sunday I went with my friend Nicole to see Nathan Sawayan's "Art of the Brick" exhibit at the American Swedish Historical Museum (not to be confused with the Ikea) here in Philadelphia. Although I'm more interested in building cityscapes with Lego, Nathan's work is really amazing. I took along my compact camera t take photos, but now I wish I had taken my DSLR instead. I put the photos up on Flickr. After checking out the exhibit and the rest of the museum, Nicole and I headed over to the kids section where they had buckets and buckets of bricks to play with. At first, I wanted to just try building a sphere, but I couldn't get the geometry right and it started to look more like a pyramid. After finding some interesting brown and green pieces, I started building a pair of trees while Nicole made a (peeing) dog, a stream and bridge. I added a waterfall and lamppost to finish off the park and put it on a shelf with other visitors' creations.

I might go back in a few weeks with a camera and tripod to take better photos of the exhibit. I'm curious to see if my park will still be there. (Note: This post is my first test at using MarsEdit.)

Hello World

Hi, I'm Rob, a web developer and software architect living in Philadelphia, PA.

Back in early 2000 I had started a weblog that I authored for a few years. Like many weblogs, it was a mix of personal experiences, links, commentary, political rants, photography, etc. I eventually neglected it and the site disappeared when the free hosting service went away. I started a dedicated photolog a couple years back and have been doing a decent job keeping it updated.

Lately I've found myself wanting to write about technology, programming and projects I've been working on (or planning to work on) so I'm giving regular blogging (God, I hate that word!) another shot. I'm going to avoid writing about personal stuff, which gets weird when you find out family and coworkers are reading it. I'm also going to try to avoid politics, since there's a million political blogs out there already, and, frankly, current American politics just makes me want to emit a steady stream of expletives anyways. I was originally planning to make this only about projects I'm working on, but I could use an outlet for my thoughts on computers and technology as well.