Last week due to hard drive failure and some very bad luck I lost all of my photography from the last 6 years. I felt like I lost my life. I was only weeks away from launching my website. Bloody heartbreaking.

Thousands of photos that can never be reproduced. Gone. Not to mention hundreds of hours sitting at my computer editing. All I have left are the low res sets I’ve uploaded to this site and to Flickr.

Both my main and backup drives failed within hours of each other. It was a combination of firmware corruption, physical drive failure and human error.

My main drive was a Drobo unit. For those of you thinking about getting one of these, do your research first. The system uses its own propriety RAID-like array that makes it near impossible for data recovery. If the device itself fails, like mine, you’re screwed.

Drobo support told me to use Disk Warrior to repair the problem. It failed half way through the process and ended up causing more damage corrupting the HFS+ directory structure. Thanks! My backup was a Seagate 7200.11 drive. Apparently these are dropping like flies. If you have one of these, backup now and download a firmware patch from Seagate. If you’re ever in this position I recommend you stop everything and call a professional. It may save your arse.

The drives are now with a data recovery service, searching for my lost photography files. There is a good chance they can recover the data from my backup drive, however I need to raise a staggering $5000 to cover the costs.

What you can do to help

Reach for your wallet and buy me a beer (or a case!). Your donation will really help. You’ll receive a gift for any donation amount, a set of images for your mobile wallpaper, or vouchers to redeem on prints once I recover my files, or for shoots in the future.

Click one of the Donate buttons below and follow the prompts. All online donations are processed securely by PayPal.

If you don’t have PayPal or a credit card and would still like to donate feel free to mail me a cheque. Remember to include your email so I can get in touch re: your gift.

You can help out by making a donation on his website or by reposting or retweeting the news. Thanks for reading.

By the way, here are some of his Dillinger photos:

To help you wait until the album is released, a free remix E.P. (limited to 500 hand-numbered CD’s) will be included with the next limited edition DILLINGER shirt. It will include remixes and interpretations of DILLINGER songs from artists such as THE FLASHBULB, IGOR CAVALERA, ATTICUS ROSS, NANOS OPERETTA, and THE CASSETTES. Check out www.myspace.com/dillingerescapeplan for info on the t-shirt / remix EP package.

Personally, I’m probably most excited to hear the Atticus Ross remix. Ross is well known for his work as a producer and programmer for several different Nince Inch Nails records as well as his work with his band Error (Greg Puciato supplied vocals for their debut CD).

No news on a release date for this CD as of yet.

Thanks to Aaron for the tip!

Recently, our friends at MetalSucks.net asked folks to participate in an exercise and choose the ‘21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century… So Far.’ The glitch was that the records had to be released after January 1, 2000. That presented quite a quandary for this writer/participant. Dillinger Escape Plan’s ‘Calculating Infinity’ came out in late 1999 and exerted influence on many albums that came after it, but given the rules and regulations, I couldn’t include it on my list. Foiled!

When I mentioned this to DEP guitarist and sole remaining founding member Ben Weinman, who is still bros with all the former members, he said, “It’s weird to hear that 10 years later. A lot of bands who were our peers aren’t bands, or active, anymore. We’ve survived when there was no hope of being on TV or Ozzfest or Warped Tour. There were no possibilities of coming home with a profit after tour. Doing a band under those circumstances was tough. Now, it’s social networking, computers and all these things that create a whole other atmosphere, for better or worse.”

Read the full article here.

EM interviews guitarist Ben Weinman of the The Dillinger Escape Plan at the recent Reason Producers Conference. He talks about how he incorporates electronic elements from Reason into his band’s “mathcore” music, and he plays recorded examples for the crowd at the conference.

Check it out here.

Limited-edition Nong Eye Gong shirts are available now from Dillinger’s MySpace page. Here’s what they had to say about them:

We are only selling 200, and because we put this up last night before we actually blogged about it, we’re already short 30 of ‘em. So don’t sleep on this.  Did you guys ever see the “Moonwalker” Michael Jackson movie with Joe Pesci? Remember that Joe Pesci was trying to kill Michael Jackson by riding around in some giant robot or something? Or MJ was a robot? Or he turned into one? Something. I dunno. Something about a robot. It’s fuzzy now. Either way, when you look at this shirt I want you to imagine the main robot has Michael Jackson in it like one of the Voltron lions, and all of the other robots are doing some sort of creepy Thriller-esque choreography. Cause, you know, Michael Jackson died and stuff, and it was on my mind while we were trying to get this shirt up. Actually, come to think of it, I can imagine few things more horrifying than looking at the horizon and seeing massive robots marching toward your town doing jerky zombie dance moves, while that long middle instrumental part of Thriller plays at ear splitting decibels.

Go HERE to pick it up, and as soon as you put it on you are hereby commanded to do a spin and a moonwalk. Or hug a random child you don’t really know that well. Or put as many pills in your hand as you can and hungry hippo dem shits.

All jokes aside, people who grew up in the eighties know how insanely badass Michael Jackson was before shit started getting weiiiiiird, so RIP MJ, I hope when the dead rises at the end of time you lead us all in some weird fucked up zombie dance army.

OH!!! Go check out a new remix Ben put up on his page of a song from that band  IWrestledABearOnce. Check it out HERE.

Have a great weekend….

-Greg

Get them while they’re hot.

Shelby Cinca from Frodus did a remix of Black Bubblegum as Triobelisk (a while back, I believe). You can grab the MP3 here. There’s a strong possibility that this, along with The Cassette’s cover of 43% Burnt will end up on the forthcoming remix EP.

For more info on the remix, go to Discobelle.

Someone else posted a link to the following video, which is (probably) a new song on the forthcoming Option Paralysis record:

Apparently they’re playing it as the intro-song for their sets. If you’re seeing them at some point on this tour, you might want to check this thread, where someone’s posted a set-list of their Philly show.

Ben Weinman posted a tweet stating that his remix of iwresetledabearonce’s “Tastes Like Kevin Bacon” is currently up on his MySpace page. Check it out.

This year’s Bonnaroo boasted variety and diversity, especially with DEP on the bill. “We told Trent we were coming out the day before, since they performed on Saturday night and we were scheduled for Sunday. Trent has been supportive of us and gives us advice. We are fans of his. NIN, to me, is like my favorite. What Metallica is to Greg (Puciato, singer), Nine Inch Nails is to me,” Weinman said. For “Wish,” all of DEP performed with all of NIN.

Read the full article here.