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I find it curious the number of rock stars that have suffered serious hand/arm injuries—several that play instruments. Here’s a quick list of those I’m aware of:

Toni Iommi (Black Sabbath) - Lost the tips of two fingers in a sheet metal factory accident. Continued to play (quite well) with prosthetic finger tips.

Rick Allen (Def Leppard) - Lost his arm in a car wreck. He continued to play with a special drum kit.

Dave Mustaine (Megadeth) - Suffered severe nerve damage to his arm from having it draped awkwardly over the backrest of a chair while he was passed out. This left him without the use of his arm for an extended period. He fully recovered after intensive therapy.

Mike Patton (Faith No More) - Accidentally severed nerves and tendons in his right hand with a broken bottle while on stage. His hand is permanently numb, but he can now move his fingers (doctors told him the opposite would happen, but Mike is weird like that).

James Hetfield (Metallica) - Missed his cue during an onstage performance and accidentally stepped into the range of a flame generator that severely burned his face, hand, and arm of one side of his body. A studio musician had to fill in for a month until he fully recovered, but he continued the tour in bandages doing lead vocals.

Neal Young - Severely sliced his fret hand index finger while making a ham sandwich, damaging a tendon. He had to cancel a tour, but fully recovered. No word on whether he ate the sandwich.

Pete Townshend (The Who) - While doing a “windmill” with his pick hand, Pete managed to impale said hand on the whammy bar. Ouch! Presumably, fully recovered.

Al Green - Poor Al has the dubious honor of having actually lived the “hot grits” myth. The legend is that boiling hot grits is the napalm of jilted lovers seeking revenge. Al suffered third degree burns on his arms and torso when an angry girlfriend poured a pot of hot grits on him while he was in the shower. He continued performing after a painful healing process, but switched to gospel (and preaching) for a few years.

I’m sure there are others!

I just got a new, larger hard drive for my work PC (thanks Ed!) and wanted to make it my primary drive. I didn’t want to have to reinstall Windows7 and all my apps so I looked around for some way to migrate the contents of the old drive to the new one. The “recommended” method appears to be that one should first create a full system image (a feature built into Windows7) and then restore that image to the new drive via a Windows7 Repair Disc. Although full system images can be stored to a net share, unfortunately the repair disc doesn’t allow net share access (at least not for Windows7 RC repair discs).

I didn’t have a spare third drive, all the external drives in my lab are already full, and file server couldn’t be used, so I simply couldn’t use the system image restore method at all. Instead, I looked around for a method of doing a disk-to-disk clone. My lab has an older copy Norton Ghost, but I wasn’t sure if it would be able to correctly copy the boot loader, and I didn’t want to bother with registering the software either.

Instead, I found an OpenSource project called Clonezilla (https://clonezilla.org/). This software does essentially the same thing as Norton Ghost, and there is also a version than can do distributed cloning (such as doing an install for a computer lab).

I gave it a shot and it worked great after a minor fix. Everything was copied successfully, including the boot loader. When I attempted boot, Windows detected an error with the boot loader though. I let Windows attempt a repair, and it told me no problems were found. The problem went away after that though. I suspect that the boot loader had a reference to the name or other characteristics of the drive and this got updated during the repair.

One other minor issue was that Clonezilla created a partition exactly the same size as my old, smaller drive on the new one. I bet that there are some advanced settings in Clonezilla that would have let me fix this, but Windows Disk Management lets you extend the size of NTFS-formatted partitions easily.

I still haven’t seen any Windows Activation errors either, so hopefully that will be a non-issue. I can definitely say Clonezilla is worth checking out if you face a similar problem as I did and don’t want to purchase Norton Ghost, etc. Just make sure you back up all your important stuff first.

This trick will save at least five otherwise wasted minutes of your life if used religiously. This is intended as a joke, but yeah, I actually do this. :)

When pressing buttons on a microwave, “a lot” of time is wasted moving your finger around (as predicted by Fitt’s Law). You can regain these precious lost fractions of a second by modifying your button pressing behavior just slightly to minimize “costly” movements. The trick is to never press 0 (zero) on the microwave. Simply pick a number string of all the same number that is closest to your target time.

For instance if microwaving for 1 minute, which is normally 1-0-0, instead press 5-5 (55 seconds). You’ll be off a little bit but variations in microwave power make this negligible (when following directions on microwavable food for instance). Also, many microwaves allow input of seconds beyond 60sec (e.g. 00:88). So, in the above example 6-6 would work as well.

Given that cooking instructions are almost always in whole minutes, it’s generally pretty easy to translate to a same number sequence. Imagine all the time you’ll be saving now!

This table shows the sequence of 2- and 3-digit Fitt’s

μλ

-Numbers:

I just read Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and have now found out a movie is currently in the works. Hopefully it will be good, but the book seems to be “unfilmable” without considerable changes. I’ll definitely be keeping a eye out for it regardless, as I “dig” the book. :)

I was able to successfully resurrect my wife’s iPod 4G (20 GB) that suffered from a hard drive death recently. I used the opportunity to convert the iPod to use CompactFlash memory as well as replacing the old battery with a fresh one. The flash memory should make the iPod more reliable since there are no moving parts. Lower power consumption (and therefore longer battery life) is also a benefit. I dropped down to 16 GB from the original 20 GB hard drive, but that is still plenty enough to hold my wife’s music library. Many folks would probably just buy a more recent iPod, but I was compelled to fix the 4G because we have MusicLink 1.0 in our Honda, which can only charge 4G (and some earlier) iPods. We have a similar issue with a kitchen radio/iPod dock. All told, I spent around $80 on parts.

I used the following guide, but also referred to several other sites in selecting the components:

Instructables Article on iPod CompactFlash Conversion

The trickiest part appears to be selecting an appropriate CompactFlash card. You must use a card that supports IDE mode. Many cards only support a different mode used by cameras. Unfortunately, most CF cards don’t specify IDE compatibility and those that do are generally quite expensive (targeting embedded computer markets for system critical applications). Apparently, many brands will use whatever memory and controller chips are cheapest at any given time, which may or may not include the IDE capability. It initially appeared that any consumer-grade CompactFlash card I purchased would be a crapshoot for IDE compatibility. After lots of reading, I finally found that Transcend was a good brand and their official documentation even seemed to indicate IDE as officially supported. I ended up purchasing the following for around $50: Transcend 16GB Compact Flash (CF) Flash Card Model TS16GCF133 (dead link removed, see below)

As for a CompactFlash to IDE adapter, I purchased the following:

DealExtreme CF-to-IDE

This adapter was far cheaper than any other option I could find, but took ages to ship due to backorder and even then took a while to get to me from Hong Kong. Given the roughly $5 cost, it was still worth it though. When it arrived, I found a few pins bent and very sloppy soldering. Also, the slave/master jumper needed to be bent parallel to the board because it sticks up too high (this is discussed on various forums). After fixing these problems, the iPod repair was otherwise very straightforward.

I purchased the battery from here:

iPod Battery (dead link removed, see below)

Once I connected everything, doing an iPod restore via iTunes and then a synch to download the music brought the iPod back to life.

Editor’s note: Original link no longer resolves; updated to an archived copy from the Wayback Machine.

Dead links

• http_//www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208337
• http_//eshop.macsales.com/shop/ipod/batteryreplacement/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/5511619/14-year-old-hit-by-30000-mph-space-meteorite.html

This reminds me of an event back when I lived in Home Park near GaTech. One day, Jeff C. and I found a hole in his room’s wall (2nd floor) that went all the way through the vinyl siding to outside. The drywall was pushed inwards like a projectile came from outside. We found a little bit of rock in the space in the wall. I believe we considered it being a meteorite but dismissed it, thinking a bullet was much more likely and that the rock was from house construction debris. However, the hole wasn’t bullet-shaped and we didn’t find a bullet either. We probably should have investigated further since a meteorite would be very valuable…

My favorite coffee is the Moka Java Blend from World Market (dead link removed, see below). $6 for 12 ounces (whole bean). My wife actually discovered this for me a while back, even though she doesn’t drink coffee. :) I’ve tried several different types of coffee and brands, but keep coming back to this one. Even compared to some coffees that are supposed to be better according to coffee aficionados (e.g. roasted within a week or two), I still prefer the Moka Java.

It’s probably the slightly chocolate-y aftertaste that most appeals to me, which is typical of Mocha. It’s not often that I find Mocha Java blends for sale at other stores, but I imagine there might be a better one out there somewhere. However of the Mocha Java I have tried, World Market still wins. If I did find a better one, it would probably cost a good bit more than WM. (BTW, the Moka Java is just coffee beans. No artificial flavors or other additives.)

I usually make mine with an Aerobie AeroPress and ground very fine so that it takes nearly all my bodyweight to press it. I otherwise follow AeroPress’s Americano instructions, then add a little milk.

Dead links

• http_//www.worldmarket.com/Eat—Drink/Drink/Coffee/lev/2/Ne/1100001/sectionId/3201/N/1100418/categoryId/1100418/pCategoryId/0/gpCategoryId/0/Ns/TOP_SELLER_INDEX|1||CATEGORY_SEQ_3213|0/index.cat

I am surprised to find that “biscuit” is acceptable for the plural of one biscuit (according to Merriam-Webster). For instance, “I’m going to cook up some biscuit to go with the country ham and red-eye gravy.” I think I’ll switch to that form. :)

Wow, I hadn’t heard of the Pandora Handheld Open Source Linux Computer before. It’s an ARM-based, game-centric clamshell handheld computer. It looks really cool. Maybe I’ll grab one in the second production run.

In addition to being able to run emulators for various classic gaming systems, it is also a fully functioning computer and will be able to run FireFox and other apps. It has WiFi and should also be able to be tethered to a cell phone. Pretty sweet!

I wish it had built-in cameras. Then it might be useful for some research projects at GaTech. I guess USB cameras might still be doable…

I just found out some new Monkey Island games are coming out. Yay!

https://games.slashdot.org/story/09/06/02/0642248/emMonkey-Islandem-To-Return

The Penultimate Cookie Mirage occurs when one thinks they have just eaten the next to last cookie in a bag of cookies, but have in fact eaten the last one. Once this fact is discovered, the affected individual will suffer from significant emotional distress. Typically, an individual must mentally prepare themselves for exhausting all the cookies by properly savoring the last one. Failure to do so results in the perception that the last cookie was “wasted.”

The Penultimate Cookie Mirage almost always occurs when one’s attention is divided, such as watching TV or reading a book. In this scenario, the individual is blindly reaching for cookies and therefore prone to Cookie Counting Errors (CCEs). The penultimate cookie mirage is not limited to cookies, but can also be observed with other treats such as M&Ms.

Expert snackers have been observed setting aside the last cookie in advance of when the Penultimate Cookie Mirage is likely to occur.

Chik-fil-a is one of my favorite fast food restaurants. When I go, I always get the fried chicken sandwich (I think the “official” name is Chik-fil-a Sandwich). I’d say the sandwich is consistently good, but every once in a while I run into a problem. I call it the “Chik-fil-a Skunk Bite.”

The Skunk Bite is one little part of the chicken breast that tastes just awful, while the rest of the breast tastes fine. The best I can describe it is that it’s like the essence of chicken flavor hyper-concentrated into one bite with maybe a hint of freezer burn flavor. It’s usually on the edge of the breast and appears to coincide with chicken skin or fat. It also tends to be the last bite of the sandwich, which is kind of a buzz kill.

Whatever it is, it’s gross! I don’t think I’ve ever noticed the skunk bite at any other restaurant that serves chicken.