Another week, time for another pick! I came across a video with some dub-stepping pigeons, and i just loved it! So here's my "Pick of the week" for week nr. 4:
Let's just hope they don't crap on your car. 
Back in 2008, I bought a Western Digital MyBook "World" 500GB NAS. It was a decent NAS, but mine had some cooling issues which were probably related to where I kept it. It was on top of a closet, where it was pretty dusty and warm, which isn't very beneficial for hard disks. So after a while it started developing issues: it would randomly give time-outs and become unresponsive. After a reboot it would work for a while, but after a week or so it would give timeouts again.
I quickly moved all essential data to my computer's hard disk, and powered down the NAS until I had found a replacement and would copy the rest of the data as well. But I made a cardinal sin when I powered down the NAS: I made an assumption. 
As we all know, assumption is the mother of all fuckups and Finagle's law will apply. I assumed that by turning off the NAS via the big button on the front, it would completely shut down the NAS. Unfortunately, I found out that this was not the case when I had a new storage device a while back and was ready to migrate all my data. The NAS felt quite warm, which surprised me to say the least. Apparently when you push the big "on/off" button at the front, it only powers down the little main board; but it keeps the hard disks spinning. To power down the hard disks, you have to unplug the power supply or flip a small switch on the back of the device. When I tried to boot up the NAS, it didn't do anything at all.
Crap! now what ? Did I just lose a large portion of my data ? I wasn't ready to give up just yet. My geek-credibility would be at stake. Since the NAS was essentially dead, I carefully dismantled it and took the Hard drive out. Because i didn't know what the state of the hard drive would be, I didn't want to plug it directly onto my computer's main board; after all, Finagle's law was in effect and I didn't want to blow up my main board just yet. I went online and bought a SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter. Since it was a Linux based NAS, I installed Ubuntu Linux on a USB stick and booted up my laptop.
First order of business was to determine if the Hard drive would be salvage-able. As soon as I plugged in the power to the hard drive I could hear a soft whirl indicating that it was still spinning up. Since it would be the third SATA device (the first being my laptop's internal hard drive, and the DVD-ROM the second) connected to my laptop, it would have to be /dev/sdc that I was looking for. A quick peek in the boot log confirmed that the system had indeed detected the hard drive. Next up was to see if the hard drive would still operate, and which part I had to restore:
root@ubuntu:/# sfdisk -l /dev/sdc Disk /dev/sdc: 60801 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0 Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 3 368 366 2939895 fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sdc2 369 381 13 104422+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sdc3 382 504 123 987997+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sdc4 505 60800 60296 484327620 fd Linux raid autodetect
Well, well... this is interesting. Even though the NAS only had one hard drive, Western Digital still made all the partitions part of a raid set. My best guess is that Western Digital did that because the MyBook line also featured larger models with two hard drives in it; and they would be able to use the same configuration for those. In my opinion a sloppy solution, but more about that in a moment. In any case, the device showed four partitions, of which one was roughly 480GB. This was clearly my target. Since you can't just mount a raid partition, I first had to find a way to recover the raid set:
root@ubuntu:/# mdadm --examine --scan /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdc3 /dev/sdc4 ARRAY /dev/md4 UUID=dee2de1f:eec30950:726acf0d:54e86bff ARRAY /dev/md3 UUID=e1e3ad6e:0753b0ae:86339bf0:ca6e9d49 ARRAY /dev/md2 UUID=51a4640a:c27e3a2e:4b454248:eeac819a ARRAY /dev/md1 UUID=6afd8edb:48c319d6:c6d492e3:868da876
Good news so far, Linux recognized the arrays. Now we could attempt to reassemble the raid sets:
root@ubuntu:~# mdadm --assemble --scan mdadm: /dev/md1 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2). mdadm: /dev/md3 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2). mdadm: /dev/md4 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
Of course, with a raid1 array the system would expect two drives. But since the NAS only had one hard drive, it would mean that the array would always be in a "degraded" state. This won't stop the array from working, but to me it seems rather sloppy. It also seemed strange to me that it wouldn't reassemble /dev/md2, but since /dev/md4 was my main concern and the hard drive would be scrapped anyway, I couldn't be bothered to investigate it further. Fortunately, /dev/md4 was reassembled properly and I was able to mount it and access my files:
root@ubuntu:~# mount /dev/md4 /media/nas_backup root@ubuntu:~# cd /media/nas_backup root@ubuntu:/media/nas_backup# ls -l total 24 drwxr-xr-x 2 root www-data 4096 2009-04-25 18:10 backup drwx------ 2 root root 16384 2002-02-28 12:30 lost+found drwxr-xr-x 3 www-data www-data 4096 2010-05-07 05:31 PUBLIC
Copying the data took quite a bit longer than I thought. It was only 93GB, but it took well over 3 hours to copy it from the hard drive to my new storage system. A possible cause for the lack of speed was the fact that it was an USB adapter, and I'm not sure if I actually hooked it up to a USB 2.0 port on my laptop. On the other hand, the hard drive wasn't in the best state either, so that could also have been a bottleneck. It was totally worth the wait though; my data was secured.
*phew*
One of my resolutions for 2012 is to generate more content for this site. This plan also includes sharing a bit more of my musical taste in the form of a "Pick of the week" section. Every Thursday I will post a new found music video with what I consider good/cool music. This will feature music videos of all kinds of genres and flavors.
So without further delay, let me present to you my "Pick of the week" for week nr. 3:
Enjoy 
Let me put one thing straight, I love my Victorinox Workchamp. It's an absolutely fantastic knife. It's loaded with features, superb locking blade and very solid built... but it also weighs a ton (205 gram), which makes it somewhat less suitable for "every day carry" on a belt. I decided to move my Victorinox Workchamp to the front pocket of my Maxpedition Jumbo Versipack, where it will serve me just as fine. But that leaves an empty spot on my belt, so I searched for a decent sized, knife that is lighter, has a sturdy locking blade and a price-tag of no more than € 50,-
So, as I was browsing through my favorite knife-store, I saw it... and I just fell in love immediately. This was the perfect knife... it was under € 50,- with a sturdy locking blade: the "tactical pink" KA-BAR "Dozier" Folding Hunter knife.
This knife is very light: with 45 grams you hardly notice it when you're carrying it. I'm keeping the knife on my belt in the nylon sheath of my old Buck 450T, which seems to fit quite decently. The knife has a 7,5 cm (or 3 inch) locking blade of AUS-8 steel with a hollow grind. By default it came with a reasonably sharp flat bevel, but I don't want reasonably sharp knives... I want ridiculously sharp knives, so I re-sharpened it with my own polished convex cutting edge. The handles are made of Zytel (the same material that the sheath for my Fällkniven F1 fixed-blade knife is made of), which is lightweight yet extremely sturdy. My first impressions of the knife are very good.
So why did I go for a pink knife, when it's also available in black, od-green and other more "manly" colors ? In part because it's just easier to locate your knife in the dark or out in the woods; but also because I just like to provoke... and a pink knife is certainly a conversation piece
Friday the 13th; A perfect day to go see ReVamp and Epica, two of the best Dutch gothic metal bands, live in concert!
The video has got a fair bit of noise and some focus issues, but still... I'm very impressed with how well my little Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W350 pocket camera performed in these low light conditions.
While driving home from a little hike out in the woods, I came across this road sign.
I guess someone didn't agree with the traffic rules 
While randomly browsing videos on YouTube, you occasionally come across a video that initially makes you go "Euh.. wtf? ".
Then, after watching it a few times, you come to realize that the whole video is actually pretty awesome!
In my opinion, this is definitely one of those videos
A few months ago, I bought a Helle Fjellkniven to be my bushcrafting/outdoor knife. Over the past few months, however, I found out that the scandi grind on the knife isn't really my thing, which results in me pushing the knife harder than it is supposed to. Because it is a very pretty knife, I don't want to abuse it too much, so I decided to look for another knife for outdoor use, and keep the Helle for special occasions.
My criteria were simple... the knife had to have a convex grind, a full-tang construction and about the same size as the Helle. Browsing the web showed me many wonderful knives that matched the criteria, but they were all way over my budget. After some searching I finally found a good knife that, with its € 100,- price tag, fits decently within my budget and matches all my criteria: The Fällkniven F1
Fällkniven is a Swedish company, but the steel for their knives is manufactured in Japan by a company called Takefu Special Steel. Just like the Helle, this knife also has a laminated steel. The majority of the knife is made from 420J2, which is a relatively soft but very tough steel, and the cutting portion of the knife is made from a very hard, but relatively brittle, steel called VG10. So by combining the VG10 and 420J2, the knife is very durable and keeps an edge very well.
The knife has a full-tang construction, which basically means that the metal of the knife retains its full thickness through the whole length of the handle, which makes the knife very tough. The knife has a convex grind with a secondary micro-bevel with a V-edge. If you don't know what it all means, don't worry; it means that the knife is very sharp and will cut very smoothly.
The blade is about 97mm (or 3,8") long and the steel is 4mm thick; so it's nice and beefy, but not too beefy. It weighs about 150 grams, which is actually a good bit lighter than my Victorinox Workchamp. The handle is made from some kind of synthetic material. It feels a bit rubbery, but it's very solid and appears very durable too. The knife comes with a simple, slim and functional sheath which is made from a synthetic material called "Zytel", and fits absolutely perfectly in my EDC bag.
In conclusion, the Fällkniven F1 seems to be a very nice knife and gets very good reviews; and I can't wait to use it outdoor 
My "Every Day Carry" bag, a Maxpedition Jumbo Versipack S-type, has a nice spacious bottle holder on the side. I always used to carry some small plastic bottles with various drinks in there: Cola, Aloe-vera drinks, fruit drinks and sometimes even a bottle of water. This worked perfectly, but it was a bit costly.
Sure, a bottle of water costs "only" € 0,25 or so, but a bottle of Aloe-vera drink is € 1,- to € 1,50 (depending on where you buy them). It doesn't take a whole lot of time or effort to empty one of those 0.5L bottles, and the stuff is usually loaded with sugars. It was time for a change of pace. I was looking for a water bottle, but something decent... something that will last a long time, has a decent size and won't "adopt" flavor from the liquids inside.
After a bit of browsing and comparing, I read about Klean Kanteen. They are a USA-based company that manufactures 100% stainless steel water bottles in an environmentally-friendly way. Regardless of my opinion on the whole "sustainability" mumbo-jumbo, their bottles fit my criteria perfectly. I went online to see if there was maybe a dealer in The Netherlands, which there was; good news! So after browsing their selection of bottles a little bit, I decided to go for the 40 fluid ounce, or 1182ml "wide mouth" bottle, which arrived today.
Now then, it is by no means a cheap (€ 29,95) or small ( about 23.5cm tall and 9cm wide) water bottle; but it is a very, very nice bottle. It fits the bottle holder of my bag perfectly, and because the bag is so dark and the bottle is stainless steel; it keeps the beverage inside nice and cool. It holds 1182ml, which is more than plenty to get through the day, and because it is made of stainless steel, it won't adopt any flavors from the contents. Also, because it is stainless steel and has no coatings or whatever on the inside, you could technically speaking use the bottle as a cooking pot as well; but I don't plan on using it for that.
So what do I use it for then ? Well... one of my goals for 2012 is losing a bit of weight (Yes, I know... it sounds very cliché ), so I will be drinking less Cola, fruit drinks and other drinks that hold a lot of sugar. I will be drinking a lot of water and sugar-free beverages. One beverage in particular seems very interesting, and that is Bolero.
Bolero makes sugar-free, low-calorie instant drink mixes in 22 different flavors. A packet of instant drink mix costs € 0,35 at the local Asian supermarket , and combined with some plain tap water it will fill that 1182ml bottle with a very cheap and tasty beverage; which is very suitable for dieting too, because it has only 176kcal for the whole 1182ml. I've tested the apple, white-grape and almond ones, and they were absolutely delicious; so I will definitely be drinking more of them in the future.
I didn't feel like cooking today, so I decided to try something new...
The Germany brand Erasco sells canned "Ready to go" meals. One of them is this spaghetti with tomato sauce; Though I personally think that "Spaghetti in tomato soup" would be a more appropriate term
The flavor is good, it's Bolognese sauce without doubt... But it's just a bit thinner than I'm used to. I've also got a can of Erasco's "Ready to go" Chili con carne in my pantry... suddenly I am very curious about that one