Snorri Páll Haraldsson - All articles

Not gonna use it? Don't fucking make it! (rant)

2009-06-08T11:24:00Z

I’ve noticed a few things in my life. Well more than a few things actually. But I’ve been noticing a trend thru out the years which is just based on mere feeling and experience.

Stuff that is made by people that don’t use the stuff they are making, sucks.

It just sucks.

But when people make stuff they use them self they usually turn out quite good. Just look at Apple and the CEO Steve Jobs, who seems to me to be a guy that has a huge company to make stuff for him self (and sells it to others while he’s at it). You can also take 37 Signals as an example, they use their own products. Awesome products.

Here is one example of a product that is obviously not in use by it’s maker.

Ethernet Big Disk

Lacie the portable hard drive manufacturer made a disk called Ethernet Big Disk . They are pretty big in this market so they make products that sell, but unforutionatly they just don’t work so well. They sell it as a 1GB Ethernet disk with “1 x Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000 (for file-sharing)”. But there is one catch.

It’s morbidly slow!
It has a crappy and slow admin interface
You have to have a special program to find it on your network (no Lacie, the DHCP feature doen’t work)
The powersupply blew after 2 months, no replacements availible where I live.
The iTunes share is sketchy… works sometimes.
Oh and the USB plug is just an ethernet in disguise. Pops up as a network drive.. doesn’t mount at all.

Sorry, I lied, there were a few more catches.

Here are quotes from few reviews on Amazon

Junk. Class action waiting to happen
Lacie: the worst product and support quality I have experienced in ~30 yrs of computer use
Don’t Do It
Too big, too slow, terrible customer support

Conclusion: I doubt that the CEO of Lacie is using his Big Disk right now. If he is, he’s probably a ——or a 97 year old that just recently experienced the blindingly fast 9660 baud-rate modem that they obviously installed instead of a proper ethernet card.

Note to Lacie if you read this: Thanks for posting the source code to the operating system that is running on your Big Disk. I plan to learning C just to fix bugs. I just love when companies go for the “Hey man do it yourself, we’re to busy doing other stuff for the money you paid” approach. No really. Just love it.

A note to you, the reader

If you plan on buying stuff make sure the company is using their own product, if not it probably sucks.

Recovering data from Lacie Big Disk

2009-03-29T10:37:00Z

I’ve had a Lacie Big Disk Ethernet 1TB for some time now. I used it as a mediaserver but since it’s not built to handle so many files (20.000 + mp3) the boot disk got filled up and didnt have any space left leaving it unable to boot, leaving me fucked and unable to access 700GB of data and backups.

Since Lacie didn’t have a solution I decided to find my own to recover my data. And here it is.

How to recover your data

Few facts about the Lacie Big Disk Ethernet (1TB)

It is Using a custom built Linux to run
It uses JBOD (linear / span) to build a 1TB disk out of two 500GB.

You need Ubuntu for this since the Lacie Big Disk Ethernet runs on Linux. I’m running mine on VMware Fusion on Mac.

1. Get a dual SATA casing (I’m using NexStax MX)

2. Put your disk inside the casing. DO NOT SET IT TO JBOD MODE! Just standalone disks.

3. When you turn it on DO NOT INITIALIZE THE DISKS. You will damage your data.

4. Open Ubuntu and connect the disks.

5. Open up Terminal and Install mdadm => sudo apt-get -install mdadm

6. Connect your device.

7. Three drives should mount up

8. Open terminal and type => sudo fdisk -l <= You should get alist of devices.

9. Find the correct paths to your disks.

The first disk in my case was=> /dev/sdb2 487379970 (blocks)
The second one was a 500GB disk => /dev/sdc <= Note: This one returns a “doesn’t contain a valid partition table” error.

10. Open up /etc/mdadm.conf under the 130mb mount.

11. Open up Terminal and type => sudo nano /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

12. Copy the settings from the Lacie config in step 10 to the config file in step 11. Change the paths to match your current setup. The smaller mount goes first and the bigger one (without the partition ) second. Like so:

DEVICE /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc

ARRAY /dev/md0 level=linear num-devices=2 UUID=163218f3:299b9ccc:3c666c38:6053

13. Hit CTRL-X and press Y to save the changes.

14. Now in terminal type => sudo mdadm—assemble /dev/md0

15. Whualla! Your data, safe and ready to be copied to a nother drive!

Note that if your config has a different /dev/mdx path then mount that one up.

Hope this helps someone to get their data back!

Cat for lunch ?

2008-12-09T12:05:00Z

So I just came from the messhall at work and they had Burrito. Good for them.

But there was something odd about it all. They had this picture of a cat dressed in a Taco before people got to put stuff on their plate.

Followed by the meat from the grinder?

Jummeyh!

Does financial depression drive people to focus on personal health?

2008-11-05T20:39:00Z

I’ve been working out at the same gym for a long time now. They gym opened a new place in the beginning of this year and since then the traffic in the gym has been quite nice. Not so much people at rush hours.

Suddenly 3 weeks ago more people started showing up at the gym (about the same time Iceland was flushed down the toilet).

I mean like a shitload more, like 3x the usual amount of people.

Even tho there are more people now loosing their jobs I would have thought they would use the typical workhours to go to the gym.

Do people seek out for mental and physical health during financial depression? Maby because there is less money carrots to chase in “battle for the best” and people feel depraved and hopeless?

Just a thought.

Getting your ass to the gym

2008-10-17T23:15:00Z

Ever had problems getting your ass to the gym? Are you familiar with these?

I’ll go later because…

I don’t feel like it
It’s hard
I forgot my gym bag
I forgot to bring clean cloths
I’m tired
It’s boring
I saw a flying pig.

Ring any bells? All of these excuses are equally valid for not going to the gym. The last one as well.

We use excuses when we are covering up for our weaknesses. One of them might be that your not properly motivated towards the goal you are reaching for. Additionally you might need to change the habits that are in your way of reach your goal.

Changing habits is usually hard for most people. But it doesn’t have to be. You just have to do it in the “right way”.

Fixing those habits

I found a couple of obstacles when I started the gym early this year. When I started to look at why I forgot my gym bag, why I didnt have clean cloths and so on I figured out that my habits of…

cleaning my cloths
taking dirty cloths form the gym bag right away and switch in with fresh ones
leaving the gymbag at the doorstep so i didnt forget it the morning after
not reserving time for the gym in my schedule

...were all stopping me from going to the gym. They were out of sync or just not there at all! So instead of constantly seeing flying pigs all the time I decided to fix those habits and add those who were missing.

How? I used Steve Pavlina’s 30 day trial habits. It’s the easiest way to making a new habit / fixing an old one.

“I’ve done that but going to the gym is still boring and i don’t wanna go…”

Well then why are you going? Your obviously not motivated enough.

Here are a few advise that worked for me when I didn’t have that motivation.

Make a habit of going to the gym. Go there every single day for 30 days. You don’t have to do anything. Just go. Take a shower. Go to the tub. Talk to people. Got for a 10 minuet walk on the tread mill. Or even if your feeling like it, pump some weights.

Remember tho, the worst thing when working out is not knowing what your gonna do (or how to do it). So have a personal trainer create a program for you for then next 3 months and get some guidance.

Don’t forget to take those before and after photos, they work wonder for your ego in the long run. And keep track of your workout to see your positive results! After you start seeing results you keep wanting more. But don’t get to exited, it takes time.

Just one more thing…

You. Gym. NOW!