that would be nice

history misc politics technology

cheap solar panels?

That would indeed be nice.

word installation

art misc

Adib Frickes latestword installation is showing at Realace GmbH in Berlin right now. It is hard to judge the work of a friend. I like this room. There was relatively little time between opening day and commision. And it seems, that the work is great, as it always has been. There is a certain directness. Other works, that in the making for months or even years are perfect. But by missing perfection amplifies the initial impact of the work. It might become easier approachable by the unintiated. And, with Adibs work, we all are just that.

3ware 16 port RAID-5 with 300GB Western Digital

misc technology

I am running a 9505 16 port 3ware card with 12 Western Digital 300 GB drives. In /var/log/messages I found

Nov 4 10:48:53 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x23268EDA.
Nov 4 10:50:19 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x21D88B0F.
Nov 4 10:51:27 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x1E71DB4A.
Nov 4 10:51:33 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x23289645.
Nov 4 11:02:03 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x2111C31E.
Nov 4 11:06:00 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x2219A8F3.
Nov 4 11:08:52 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x1437A499.
Nov 4 11:09:05 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x23455701.
Nov 4 11:09:10 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x23455749.
Nov 4 11:10:02 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x241F28D3.
Nov 4 11:11:54 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x20B6CCC9.
Nov 4 11:12:13 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x22277DFD.
Nov 4 11:12:13 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: WARNING (0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed:port=11, LBA=0x22277D80.
Nov 4 11:12:13 her2 kernel: 3w-9xxx: scsi0: AEN: ERROR (0x04:0x0002): Degraded unit:unit=0, port=11.

in tw_cli the drive on port 11 got reported as failed:

p11 DEVICE-ERROR u0 298.09 GB 625142448 WD-WCAPD3118453

I tried to test the drive via

/usr/sbin/smartctl -t long -d 3ware,11 /dev/twa0
/usr/sbin/smartctl -t offline -d 3ware,11 /dev/twa0
/usr/sbin/smartctl -t conveyance -d 3ware,11 /dev/twa0
/usr/sbin/smartctl -t short -d 3ware,11 /dev/twa0

But

/usr/sbin/smartctl -a -d 3ware,11 /dev/twa0

did not show many good signs:

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 6702 396331771
# 2 Conveyance offline Completed: read failure 90% 6702 396331771
# 3 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 6695 396331771
# 4 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 6695 396331771
# 5 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 6694 396331773
# 6 Extended offline Completed: read failure 70% 6684 99434677

Values like Multi_Zone_Error_Rate and Offline_Uncorrectable as well as Current_Pending_Sector promised nothing good.

In tw_cli I then removed the drive in question from the unit:

maint remove c0 p11

The smarctl tests still failed right away. I rescaned the drives in tw_cli:

maint rescan c0

The failed drive was found, and soon after the 3ware controller grabbed it automatically and started the rebuild.

It did so sucessfully. The Current_Pending_Sector value decreased back to 0, and the drive array seems to be functioning
normal right now.

During one of those pesky spurious rebuilds happening on both 9550SX-16ML controllers that I am aware
of the drive failed again. This time with an ECC-ERROR . Not enough of a failure it seems that the rebuild would have
failed. A

maint rescan c0

in tw_cli after the rebuild had finished cleared this error. It’s noteworthy that the spurious rebuild performance came to a grinding
slowdown after the ECC-ERROR.

When I replaced the failed drive things went back to normal and the system has been fine ever since.

in the right hands

history misc technology

Call me crazy, but I think that the story of JH Schön could make a great movie. In the right hands. But I am so much out of touch that it might have come out last spring and friends of mine have worked on it.

callwave and EVDO

confessions of a pixel pusher marketing misc technology

Callwave and EVDO are certainly my best technological friends: Getting of a plane, in the hotel room, there would be an ethernet, but why bother? EVDO works. Even here. Then there is a voicemail from somebody that called while I was on the plane. The automatic transrcipt gives me an idea, the company that called shows up, and best of all, all those call back numbers are transrcibed right there. If the iPhone could maybe read a phone number with it’s camera and then dial it, we would be in good shape.

the worst thing I have seen in a while

art confessions of a pixel pusher history misc

Lot’s of blog rave about thiscomputer animation right now.

I think it is horrible. Smetana is easy to abuse and misunderstand. Dragging Fallingwater into this is just horrible. The first couple of seconds of this Quicktime from hell are nice enough. Although the font choice and especially the animated glow should have been a clear sign of trouble. Fallingwater is one of the more important things that have been made in the last century. Seing it disolved to death is pure horror. The tasteless low point was certainly the eschereseque pan away from that mirror ball.

Not much more to say than this

monkey business

misc

read
or
watch

The advantage with reading is, that you can do it without stuttering. What a shame that one of the better virals (a bad word in itself most of the time) has such a poor delivery and encoding. Flash still sucks. I hate that stupid stuttering effect. Quicktime used to do that as well. 1999.

maxtor sucks?

confessions of a pixel pusher internet misc technology

“Storage Mojo” is usually pretty scientific, this ‘analysis’ about consumer hard drives is a bit more creative. Counting google hits with BRANDNAME sucks is a bit of a short cut. However, the results seem to come up with a winner. And the margins are definite enough to have some meaning. And with this kind of result I like a creative way of using google.

misc

Nintendo’s market cap is higher than Sony’s by now.

eleven years after ID4
27TB is an impressive number for 1994.

Learned today that a dollar bill has an aspect ratio of 1 to 2.35
In case you shoot scope, or want to know if a crop is really 2.35 or something else.

area code non sense

misc

While I am still waiting for AT&T to activate my 1-800 number that I have ordered 2 weeks ago, others have
other problems

The area code stupity shows what happens when you shoehorn a new concept (cell phones) into an existing system that has conflicting features (area codes). Area codes are for an area. A location. Mobile phones are call mobile, because, well, they can be in different places. This multi billion dollar industry somehow overlooked this basic fact. It was only in 1951 that the current system is in service. Around twenty years ago it became clear that area codes don’t work that well: splits and overlays are hacks to overcome a built in premise. And locality does not matter anymore due to technology. It used to be a big deal if you called somebody ‘long distance’ or not. Not anymore.