(Nancy) Lee Hixson of Danville, Ohio died at sunrise on June 30, 2009.

She was born Nancy Lee Wood in Cleveland on April 17, 1944, baptised at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Valley City Ohio, and confirmed at St. John's Lutheran Church, Independence Ohio.

In addition to being a teetotaling mother and an indifferent housekeeper, she was a board certified naturopath specializing in poisonous and medicinal plants; but she would like to point out, posthumously, that although it did occur to her, she never spiked anyone's tea. She often volunteered as an ombudsman to help disadvantaged teens find college funding and early opened her home to many children of poverty, raising several of them to successful, if unwilling, adulthood.

She also enjoyed a long life of unmentionable adventures and confessed she had been a rebellious teen-aged library clerk, an untalented college student on scholarship, a run-away Hippie, a stoic Sunday School teacher, a Brownie leader, a Grange lecturer, an expert rifleman, a waitress, a wife once or twice, a welder, an artist, and a writer.

She was in earlier years the president of Rainbow Systems Trucking Company, Peninsula Ohio, and she drove tractor-trailers over-the-road hauling freight commodities to startled customers from Minnesota to Florida. She was the CEO of the Cuyahoga Valley Center of Outdoor Leadership Training (COLT), where she lived in a remote and tiny one-room cabin in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Despite the lack of cabin space and dining table, she often served holiday dinners to friends and relatives and could seat twenty at the bed.

She lived the last twenty-three years at Winter Spring Farm near Danville where she built a private Stonehenge, and planted and helped save from extinction nearly 50 varieties of antique apple trees, many listed in A.J. Downing's famous orchard guide of 1859 – among them such delicacies as Summer Sweet Pearmain, Sops of Wine, Westfield Seek No Further, and Duchess of Oldenburg. Her homemade cider and wine were reputed to cause sudden stupor. She befriended countless stray dogs, cats, horses, and the occasional goat. She was a nemesis to hunters, and an activist of unpopular, but just, causes. In short, she did all things enthusiastically, but nothing well.

After moving to Danville, she bravely suffered with a severe and disabling disorder and a ten-year battle with lymphoma that ultimately took her life. She was often confined to the home where she continued to tirelessly volunteer and donate her limited resources to needy teens in the area, always cheered by their small and large achievements. Sympathy and big donations may be extended at this time.

She was preceded by her father Dwight Edward Wood of the Ohio pioneer Wood family of Byhalia, who died in the Columbus Jail having been accused of a dreadful crime, and by her second father Ted A. Cznadel of Danville who adopted her, loved her and raised her despite it all.

She is survived by her dearly beloved son, her heart and soul and every breath, Christopher Daniel Hixson of Akron, (a sterling citizen who rose above his murky childhood with a scandalous mother), and by his loving partner Mitchell Kahan. She is also survived by her mother, the opinionated and stubborn Ann Gall Cznadel; by her brother the Rev. Dr. Thomas R. Sluberski, a Lutheran minister and professor, most recently of Rio de Janeiro; by her gentle, ecological brother Gregory T. Cznadel, a quality manager of Cleveland; by her talented sister Linda R. Cznadel Hauck, a librarian from sea to shining sea, of San Luis Obispo; by her genius nephew and godson Matthew Hauck of Minneapolis; and the other half of her heart, her patient friend and backstairs lover of thirty years, David Paul Bleifus who resides at the farm.

Ms. Hixson traced her lineage directly through eleven generations to Governor William Bradford of the ship Mayflower and the Plimouth Colony, and was in the process of membership to The Mayflower Society. She was a long-time card carrying member of the ACLU, the Democratic Party, and of MENSA.

The family wishes to thank Dr. Gene Morris for his care, understanding and sense of humor through it all; Dr. Paul Masci of Cleveland Clinic Wooster; and Dr. Skip Radwany and the nursing staff of the Palliative Care Center at Summa for their compassion as Lee shuffled off this mortal coil.

Cremation has taken place. Immediate family and friends will gather at Stonehenge on a sunny summer day to celebrate her life. Interment is in the family plot at Brinkhaven Hilltop Cemetery in Brinkhaven, Ohio, where she will await an eventual and probable slide down the cliff to the Mohican River below. In lieu of flowers, please pray for the Constitution of the United States.

Now Voyager depart, (much, much for thee is yet in store) -Walt Whitman www.fischerfuneralhome.com

• This is the review from September 2008 sold me on the Intels.
• This review from March 2009 revisits the state of SSD's.
• This article addresses the fix Intel issued for the slowdown of the drives over time.
• Linus Torvalds on the Intel X25-M: "That thing absolutely rocks."

My MacBook is not my main computer. After loading up my MacBook with the OS and apps, I still have about 45GB remaining on the drive. For day-to-day use this is plenty of space. If I ever go on trips or need more space I will simply attach a 2.5" drive in a small external enclosure. I think this is workable even if you use the MB as your desktop. If you have a unibody Macbook you can also look into the Optibay for additional storage – http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

Once Leopard arrives we'll see an even small OS and probably get back a few GB of space to use for storage.

On the Mac Pro the SSD is attached to the SATA bus in the lower CD/DVD bay, which still leaves open the four drive bays in the computer for data storage. The drive is simply laying on the shelf where the DVD drive would go. I do leave my mail on the SSD drives since it only takes up a few GBs of space and makes mail very fast. Everything else goes on a regular hard drive.

Now that the 80GB X25-M can be had for under $300 it's a viable solution considering what it brings to your system in terms of speed and reliability.

I'm truly sold on the SSD's. They make the computer lightning fast compared to a traditional hard drive. If you are not sold yet on the speed, see the little video I made.

David Sirota interviews Lawrence E. Joseph about his book Apocalypse 2012: An Investigation Into Civilization's End.

This week, he came on my radio show and we discussed all the different apocalyptic possibilities, from Yellowstone's overdue super-volcano eruption to the possibility of a meteor collision with the Earth. Couple that stuff with the Mayan prophecy about 2012, and it makes for a disturbing – but truly interesting – topic. Via Nerdivore

Listen to the show

It's important to realize that RAID is not backup. But it does give me immediate redundancy. Should one of the RAID drives fail I still have the second drive. I actually have more versions of my photos and videos on two other drives. Theoretically I don't delete anything from these drives, just add to them. I also do not overwrite anything on these drives.

Well, the failure time has arrived. One of the RAID drives has failed so we'll see how much of a hassle Samsung puts me through to replace my drive. Samsung is not very clear on registering their drives. You used to be able to register drives online. My 500GB docs drive is also a Samsung and it's registered online. There is no way to register the newer drives online. They've stopped doing that. But they don't bother to tell anyone.

Instead, you go to this page and fill out a form if you need service. I've done that on 5/12/98 so we'll see how long it takes to get a response back.

When I spoke with a CSR he gave me the number of the hard drive repair unit. It's 201-935-0671. I will call them tomorrow if I have not heard back yet.

UPDATE

Smooth RMA with no hassles. I shipped off the hard drive after getting the authorization and a replacement hard drive arrived a few days later.

The OS X raid software duplicated the drive and I was back in business a few hours later.

Click to play

Just to see how it improved my MacBook (CoreDuo 1.83GHz with 2GB RAM), I put this SSD into it. It was like a different computer. I was amazed at how fast and responsive it became compared to running off a hard drive. I opened approximately twenty applications and was able to switch seamlessly between them, something that would have ground my MB to a halt if it was running with the HD.

80 GB is kind of small, but considering a notebook is not my main computer, I can get away with limited HD space. When needed I can also attached a portable hard drive. I've also contemplated adding an Optibay and the stock HD from the MacBook for more storage, but right now it's not an issue. For a couch surfing / road warrior machine I can make do with the >50GB remaining on the SSD.

…with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

We've been through this before:

Elizabeth Eisenstein’s magisterial treatment of Gutenberg’s invention, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, opens with a recounting of her research into the early history of the printing press. She was able to find many descriptions of life in the early 1400s, the era before movable type. Literacy was limited, the Catholic Church was the pan-European political force, Mass was in Latin, and the average book was the Bible. She was also able to find endless descriptions of life in the late 1500s, after Gutenberg’s invention had started to spread. Literacy was on the rise, as were books written in contemporary languages, Copernicus had published his epochal work on astronomy, and Martin Luther’s use of the press to reform the Church was upending both religious and political stability.

What Eisenstein focused on, though, was how many historians ignored the transition from one era to the other. To describe the world before or after the spread of print was child’s play; those dates were safely distanced from upheaval. But what was happening in 1500? The hard question Eisenstein’s book asks is “How did we get from the world before the printing press to the world after it? What was the revolution itself like?”

Chaotic, as it turns out.

Changing the focus:

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

Read the entire piece.

The definitive book on 'The Americans'

Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans

If you are a fan of Robert Frank, this book is a must-buy. Amazon no longer has it. Inexpensive copies are getting hard to find, so grab one now while it's still to be found under $100.

My copied arrived the other day and it's going to take a long time to get through this tome. And it's going to be a pleasure. Seeing Frank's contact sheets alone is worth the price of admission. Note that only the expanded hardback edition of the book has the contact sheets.

You can read two good reviews here, here and here.

Audio: Bob Edwards Weekend: National Gallery of Art curator of photography Sarah Greenough; photographer Robert Frank – Direct link

I've been using the MacBook over the weekend before I return it on Monday so I can move things off. A new wrinkle has appeared — the MacBook now wants to turn on after being put to sleep or even shut down.

Two nights in a row I shut the MacBook down, only to awake the next morning to discover it had turned itself back on shortly thereafter. "Wake from Bluetooth event" is not enabled. I tried resetting the SMU again and checked power settings to make sure a wake command was not in play.

One guy found that a missing file lead to some instances of MacBook waking from sleep when it's not suppose to. My MacBook was missing this file but his fix did not work for my MacBook.

This MacBook has some serious issues. Luckily I got in under the 14-day return period. Props to Apple Genius Rex for his help.

Now back to the original post from March 1st:

I can't figure out the fans on my MacBook Pro. The lowest normal speed for the fans in 2,000 rpm. They will spin up at times for no apparent reason to 5,000 or 6,200 rpm with nothing really taxing the CPU while it's also pretty cool, usually around the high 30's or low 40's celsius.

The other night I was converting a movie with Visual Hub, with the process taking 80% of the CPU and the temp reaching 75 c with the fans staying at 2,000 RPM until about half way through the eight minute conversion. This is a time I would have expected the fans to kick in much earlier than they did.

I have reset the SMC previously with no effect. Coming from a Polycarbonate MacBook this machine is much nosier, but also much cooler running.

Check out the videos I made showing iStat and Activity Monitor during these episodes. Thanks for any feedback. I'm coming to the end of my 14-day return period and wanted to verify if my MBP is operating like others.

Thanks for any feedback.

Long Clip (14mins showing fans running full speed for a long period with low CPU and low temps)

Fans running at low speed with high cpu load and high CPU temp

Fans ramp up to high rpm, low temp, low CPU usage

Fans running at high speed with 25% cpu load and low CPU temp

Fans running at high speed after waking from sleep, CPU temp 104F, 98% idle

88% CPU Idle, temp 41c, fans at 6,200rpm

Charlie Rose:
All right. Let me talk about where this — this whole thing in the world is going in terms of Facebook. Newspapers.

Marc Andreessen:
Yep.
I’ve heard of them.

Charlie Rose:
What is it between you and the New York Times?

Marc Andreessen:
You want to know what really pushed me over the edge?

Charlie Rose:
What?

Marc Andreessen:
Judy Miller.

Charlie Rose:
Really?

Marc Andreessen:
Just —

Charlie Rose:
Explain who Judy Miller is.

Marc Andreessen:
Technology. She’s the national security reporter who covered the run up to the Iraq war and the WMD topic. And I just — I took —

Charlie Rose:
She was wrong on the question of WMD and people thought her sources —

Marc Andreessen:
Completely, completely incorrect. And I would normally cut somebody slack for something like that, but then the folks at Knight Ridder at the time, Knight Ridder, now McClatchy got it completely correct.

Charlie Rose:
Right, they did.

Marc Andreessen:
So I actually got to know a couple of those folks, and I asked them like what was the difference, how did you get it right? They said, oh, we talked to the colonels. The Times had access to all the generals and all the politicians. We talked to the colonels. We talked to the guys that were actually in the field doing the work. They said, we don’t see any of this. We don’t understand what these guys are talking about in Washington. We don’t see any of it. So they said to us was totally obvious. So like at that point –

Charlie Rose:
At that point what?

Marc Andreessen:
At that point, I didn’t know this at the time, like a lot of people, so I read the Times, and I said, hey, you know, war with Iraq, great idea. Right? Existential threat, weapons of mass destruction. He wants to kill us. We have to go kill him first. So, okay. I’ll give somebody one shot at that but not two.

Charlie Rose:
And then?

Marc Andreessen:
And then –

Charlie Rose:
That happening turned you against the New York Times because you created a thing called New York Times death watch.

Marc Andreessen:
In fairness, I’ve actually totally dropped that. I think at this point it’s become unfair.

Charlie Rose:
To the New York Times?

Marc Andreessen:
Well, because –

Charlie Rose:
Your sense of fairness overwhelms me.

Marc Andreessen:
I know. Things — events are playing out.

Charlie Rose:
So you’ve got the New York Times death watch is no longer there.

Marc Andreessen:
That was a blog post that I did. A blog post that I did that I was kind of — it was a little bit tongue in cheek and a little bit serious. But with an underlying point.

Charlie Rose:
Here is where you go — what’s the under underlying point?

Marc Andreessen:
Well, the underlying point is fundamentally, there is a structural change happening in that business, so –

Charlie Rose:
In the newspaper business.

Marc Andreessen:
In the newspaper business. Well, in the entire media business. In all branches of the media industry, but the newspapers are sort of front and center topical. And the reason I bring up Judy Miller is because the typical — there are exceptions to this. There are friends of mine who are trying very hard to grapple with this. But the typical sort of newspaper industry response is, you know, we just got to figure out a way to kind of gut through it, like if we can — if we can get through the advertising recession, if we can downsize the paper, if we can downsize the news room –

Charlie Rose:
I don’t think that’s what their idea is, but go ahead.
[NE] .

Marc Andreessen:
Start returning ads on the front page, if we can just figure out some kind of combination of things, then we can keep printing the paper and delivering it as a physical medium, and this Internet thing will kind off stay off to the side.

Charlie Rose:
No, I think that’s not true. I think they’re trying to survive until the Internet thing pays off. That’s how they’re doing it.

Marc Andreessen:
But this is — this is playing offense versus playing defense. Their revenue today is still, in most cases, 90 percent print.

Charlie Rose:
Right.

Marc Andreessen:
10% online.

Charlie Rose:
Right.

Marc Andreessen:
That means they spend 90 — I can tell you. I have been involved with a lot of companies, right? Ninety percent — if 90 percent of your revenue is coming from something, 90 percent of your time is being spent on that. So they’re spending 90 percent of their time –

Charlie Rose:
And the future 10 percent –

Marc Andreessen:
Future 10 percent, and spending very little time playing offense. For the most part, they’re Internet divisions have been off to the side, often with different news rooms. I mean just like bizarre separation.

Charlie Rose:
So to play offense for a newspaper for you means what?

Marc Andreessen:
Oh, you got to kill the print edition.

Charlie Rose:
You would stop the presses tomorrow?

Marc Andreessen:
You have to kill it.

Charlie Rose:
Stop the presses tomorrow.

Marc Andreessen:
You have to kill it.

Charlie Rose:
Stop the presses tomorrow.

Marc Andreessen:
Stop the presses tomorrow. I’ll tell you what. The stocks would go up. Look at what’s happened to the stocks. This investors are through this. The investors are through the transition. You talk to any smart investor who controls any amount of money, he will tell you that the game is up. Like it’s completely over. And so the investors have completely written off the print operations. There is no value in these stock prices attributable to print anymore at all. It’s gone.

Charlie Rose:
So you would recommend to the owners of the New York Times, stop printing papers.

Marc Andreessen:
Yeah, absolutely. You have to. You have to –

Charlie Rose:
And take your losses –

Marc Andreessen:
Yeah. You have to.

Charlie Rose:
Like a courageous person.

Marc Andreessen:
Chronic pain? Acute pain. How many years — music industry, same thing. How many years of chronic pain do you want to take to avoid taking a year of acute pain?

Charlie Rose:
Right.

Marc Andreessen:
And by the way, the acute pain would be acute. Like this is a big deal. I’m not saying that this –

Charlie Rose:
[talking simultaneously] revenues have gone away, then you’ve got a problem.

Marc Andreessen:
You’ve got a problem. But you have to build for the future. I mean if you’re — if you’re the guy delivering ice to people’s ice boxes, at a certain point, you better go into the refrigerator repair business or you’re going to have an issue. If you’re the village blacksmith and a model T comes along, you better become a mechanic. People’s lives are better when they get news online versus having to wait for the morning paper. It’s a lot more efficient, a lot more real time, a lot less waste. It’s actually — like everything about the airline experience is better. And at some point, you have to — I believe, as a responsible manager, reorient –

Charlie Rose:
Do you read anything on paper?

Marc Andreessen:
Well –

Charlie Rose:
Anything.

Marc Andreessen:
I’m weird. I read everything. So I subscribe — I’m a huge consumer of media.

Charlie Rose:
You’re just like me. I go online. I get it — I touch it, I want this, I want this.

Marc Andreessen:
I tell my friends, I own 6,000 CD’s, like music CD’s. Like I buy CD’s all the time. I love CD’s.

Charlie Rose:
I do too, yes.

Marc Andreessen:
All they need are another million people like me.

Charlie Rose:
I know. I know.

Marc Andreessen:
And there aren’t enough of me. And, you know, DVD’s –

Charlie Rose:
I buy DVD’s, too. I thought I was the only one. I kept beating myself up because I thought there is no one like me, an how stupid. I’m just stupid.

Marc Andreessen:
Exactly. I have a huge collection of DVD’s, and it’s essentially –

Charlie Rose:
Exactly.

Marc Andreessen:
I got on [talking simultaneously]

Charlie Rose:
This is no reason to buy DVD’s?

Marc Andreessen:
So DVD sales are collapsing. DVD sales are caving in. So yeah. We need more of me and you.

Charlie Rose:
All right. Exactly.

Marc Andreessen:
We’re all set.

Charlie Rose:
We’d have a –
[talking simultaneously]

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/20/andreessen-on-charlie-rose-i-am-creating-a-fund-full-video/

In terminal

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true

Simply turning on DVD or CD sharing won't work without the above commands.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=455975

After filming and photographing the cat for a while I tried to talk to the owner. He didn't speak English and I don't speak Italian, but I was able to find out the cat was 2-years-old. I didn't think to ask the cat's name.

I have no idea how long they stayed, we left after about 10 minutes of watching the crowds react to seeing the cat. Some people went up and petted the cat, which I also did before I left. He was not timid at all and merely seemed to tolerate my intrusion. He was too cool to care about my need for his affection. One girl tried to introduce her small dog to the cat, which did not go well. A hiss and swipe solved that meeting, with the dog coming out the loser.

You have to love/hate the tackiness of the guys outside the Colosseum and Pantheon dressed as Gladiators. Their purpose is to make a buck having their pictures made with tourists.

The top photo was made down the street from the Colosseum.

While the LX3 doesn't offer a true "pinhole" look I do like the images that result. A friend wanted to know why I don't just take a regular photo and use a "pinhole" Photoshop filter? Where is the fun it that? I like the gamble of it either working or not, like you would be forced to live with while shooting with a film Holga. Besides, if I started to futz with a Photoshop filter it would open a door best left closed.

Another fun mode to experiment with on the LX3 is "pinhole" mode. Below are two images from the Pantheon shot in "pinole" mode.

This is my favorite image of the day, spent wandering alone clocking just over eleven miles on the pedometer. Click the image for a slightly larger version.

My MacBook, an original white 1.83GHz Duo Core, was upgraded to 2GB of RAM from the stock 512MB. It ran pretty well until I upgraded to Leopard. Soon after I was having frequent kernel panics. Eventually DiskWarrior was needed to bring my MB back to life after some serious corruption.

I put the original 512MB of RAM back into the MacBook. It ran kernel panic free for several days. I had run Memtest in the past and it never found any problems.

This was enough to try new RAM. I looked up the receipt for the RAM. It was no longer under warranty. I paid $176 for it almost three years ago. Today that same 2GB cost $30.

Several days after installing new Crucial RAM (the original 2GB was some other brand purchased at NewEgg) I have not a single kernel panic. There is no way I could have gone this long without a KP on the old RAM.

It's still a wonder to me that the RAM simply went bad. Trying to remember way back I think my MacBook did have kernel panics from the start, but they were pretty infrequent.

Update

It has been more than two weeks since installing the new RAM and not a single kernel panic. I was in Italy for eight days with the MacBook where it got quite a bit of use. I have regained the confidence I lost in my MacBook.

The eternal quest for the perfect camera bag may have come to an end for me.

Having carried a Domke bag for many years on assignments, I gave up the traditional camera bag years ago. They were too hard on my back.

Most of my gear needs were modest, even when I was shooting with Leica M's. Once I started with digital capture my carry needs were still modest. First it was an Olympus E-1 with a 14-54, then a Pentax K10D with a 21 and 40mm lens. A small fanny pack was often all that was needed. With the Pentax gear I also toyed with a Maxpedition Versipack. It's a nice bag that is constructed really well but it was too small for my Canon 5D kit, my current DSLR system. On long days I wasn't happy with the weight distribution to one side with the Versipack.

Here's the scenario: A trip where both the cameras and computer comes with you. Currently that is the Canon 5D, 50/1.4, 35/2 and the 24-105. A Panasonic LX3 is the latest addition for video and snapshots. Depending on the trip and length, I may add a wireless router, hard drives for backing up images and a spare laptop battery when flights are involved. Than add in all the cables and charges to power everything. That means a bag to get all this from point "A" to point "B."

Once I arrive at a destination I need a bag for the day — mainly cameras, lenses, iPod, possibly the GPS, wallet, snacks and phone. I tried a LowePro SlingShot 100 AW but came up with the same problem as the Maxpedition — the weight distribution. There was too much weight on just the right shoulder to be comfortable for long days.

Enter the Kata Sensitivity V. It may be the perfect bag for my needs. I am about to take it on a trip to put it to the test.

Below is a video I shot showing the bag and what you can cram into it. After filming the video I realized I forget to mention the water bottle holder on one side of the bag and the two little pockets, one each on the straps. They are suppose to told your cell phone and iPod. They are too small for that and too hard to get things into and out of those pockets.

Click to play

Field Update

Wrapping up a trip to Rome, where my Kata got its first trial run, and overall I am very happy with this pack. Before we left on the trip I also purchased a Kata Format Q Waist Pack, which is made from the same material as the Sensitivity V. These two bags make a nice travel combo. There are times I only want or need a waist pack.

One day I loaded up the backpack with my Canon 5D, 35/2, 24-105 and and 50/1.4.

On item I want to mention is the detachable bag that is secured via Velcro to the top inside of the bag's top storage area. This little bag is brilliant. Inside of it went tons of little knick-knacks, like extra batteries, earphones, a film canister with change, hand sanitizer, cash, etc. When everything is being moved from location "A" to "B" this little pouch holds an amazing cache of items that otherwise would be free-floating inside your pack.

Back to my original thought, the day trip with my full load. I walked a little more than eleven miles that day. Most times I had the 5D out with a lens, but at times when it rained everything was inside. There is no way I would have been as comfortable carrying this amount of gear that long and that far with a traditional should bag. It's a very comfortable backpack to carry.

The temperatures where in the mid-50's Fahrenheit, but the bag did get my back warm a few times when I was exerting myself. When the rain got strong I could take off my shell jacket, put the pack over top my fleece jacket, and put the shell on over top the pack. This works because the pack is slim in terms of depth.

Zipper Slider Failure

One of the zippers on the bottom compartment did fail at some point on our way to Rome. I was able to work around this and still use the pack. I'll have to contact Kata to have this fixed. We'll see if Kata lives up to their reputation, but I have high hopes they will come through. Below are a few images of the zipper failure:

It's been more than two weeks since I first contacted Kata and still no word from them. I also opened a help desk ticket on February 17th, a week after my first message to them. It has not received a response either, as of February 27th. I sent them another plea for help for their contact form on the 23rd of February.

This is pathetic customer service, especially considering there is no way to contact them other than through forms on their site.

Service Update

The "site map" page on the Kata site links to a "where to buy" page. Under the United States that links to Bogen Imaging, who apparently is the distributor in the U.S.

I don't know if it's them who are responsible for answering queries from the Kata site, but somebody is dropping the ball big time. I called Bogen and they told me to send the bag to them for repair.

Sorry for going off on this, but bad customer service really gets under my skin. I'll send the bag off and see what happens. I'll update this post when I have more to share. This is a pity since I do really like the bag.

Resolution

Finally I was contacted by someone at Kata. I get the sense they are a very small company. There is only one person who answers feedback. They explained they were having serious IT problems with their help desk software over the last few months. My earlier queries were nowhere to be found.

The woman at Kata arranged for a replacement bag, along with a small gift (a small Kata belt pouch). Nice touch.

What I thought was bad customer service was really a failure of software. You think technology is your friend, and it's not. Once Kata DID get my information they bent over backwards to make it right. Kudos. Now I need more excuses to use this pack! But just in case I have another problem in the future, I now have a contact name, phone and email.

Fitting a MacBook Pro 15" (Unibody) in the Kata

I can't see how this is going to happen without a lot of struggling. My 13" White MacBook fit perfectly. I was able to jam an older version of the pre-Unibody 15" MPB into the pack. But I just upgraded to the new MBP and it's simply too big to fit. At least too big for me wanting to risk damage to the bag or laptop. Just FYI, YMMV….

More Kata Sensitivity V videos and links

I originally read about this bag at TWIPPHOTO where Ron Brinkmann did a video review of his Kata bag.

See more Kata bags in action at the Flickr Kata pool photos page.

Here's another video from CodePoet showing what his Kata backpack holds for a trip to Africa:

The below video is 30 minutes and is part six of a seven-part interview with Carlin by the Archive of American Television.

Hat tip to 43 Folders for this Carlin find, which also featured another favorite of mine, Louis C.K., who talks about starting over by throwing out his current act and rebuilt new tour from the ground up.

Louis C.K. on Conan:
"We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it's wasted on the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots."

Watch the video below to learn what software you need to download and how to configure your ipod Touch. This is only going to work on the second gen version.

You are going to need a microphone. Target to the rescue. They have an adapter with a built-in microphone for $10. Unfortunately you cannot order it online. You are looking for the Philips iPhone Microphone Adapter. The model number is SHH1610.

You can even assign a phone number to your Touch. See the video below for details.

A photo that never made it to the blog since we talking politics in this post.

This is something I've pondered for a long time.

One reader summarized what I've come to conclude:

"What makes you think you I'll have any grandchildren with the time and inclination to sit through more than a few minutes of your home videos?

"The movies an uncle shot of me and my siblings a few decades ago were projected for about 30 minutes a decade ago, and have not been looked at again by anybody.

"Home movies require a captive audience, for long periods. How many hours could you bestow on your children right now? How many hours would you expect them to sit still for them? And unlike photographs, home movies can't really be dipped into, flipped through.

"I'm not against home movies. I just question whether the people amassing them at great length have much idea of what they require of the people in them, or who inherit them.

"Kind regards, good luck. I respect your affection for your family."

Who really cares about the work we produce? Nobody. And why should we care? In the end the only reason I can justify for spending my time on photos and videos is to nourish a little bit of creativity and to have fun.

Just the other night I was leafing through copies of Henri Cartier- Bresson's "Photographer" and Garry Winogrand's "Figments from the Real World." I was struck, yet again, by the sheer joy of seeing.

That will have to be enough.

The last image was taken in Akron, Ohio.

Let's take a look at pfSense, a FreeBSD-based project for our firewall, and learn how to set it up.

pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution. pfSense includes most all the features in expensive commercial firewalls, and more in many cases.

Several years ago I was heavily into running FreeBSD as a desktop and server. I found an old 233 MHz Packard Bell computer that someone in my neighborhood was throwing away. I put an Adaptec SCSI card into it, an old 250MB SCSI hard drive from a defunct Macintosh and loaded FreeBSD. I turned this machine into my Firewall/Router. It ran flawlessly for several years.

A power outage killed the power supply in the box. Being a Packard Bell it had a power supply that I could not replace. The hard drive booted on another PC but the FreeBSD kernel was not configured to run on the AMD chip-based computers I had sitting around.

Even though I had documented my firewall settings I could not get a spare box already running FreeBSD to work. After Googling for answers I came across M0n0wall and pfSense.

M0n0wall is meant for embedded devices and runs on an older version of FreeBSD. pfSense is meant for regular PC's, though it will work on embedded devices. It require mores horsepower to run.

Before we get to the nitty gritty, I am assuming you have an old PC with PCI slots, and a working CD-ROM. You will also need two network cards.

First step is to download an ISO image of pfSense. Next we need to burn a copy to a CD.

On your Mac open a terminal window and type this command:

hdiutil burn image.iso

Below is how this looked on my Mac:

G5 11:40 AM ~>hdiutil burn ~/Downloads/pfSense-1.2-LiveCD-Installer.iso
Preparing data for burn
Opening session
Opening track
Writing track
……………………………………
Closing track
………………………………..
Closing session
……………………………..
Finishing burn
Verifying burn…
Verifying
………………………………………
Burn completed successfully
……………………………………..
hdiutil: burn: completed

Make certain the bios in your PC is set to boot from CD's. When set correctly your PC will boot from the disc and load the system into RAM.

Once that is loaded you will have the option to write everything to a hard drive or even a compactflash memory card. More on that later.

When you write the system to a hard drive you will be prompted to format the disk. Basically the defaults are fine, except you will want to delete the swap partition and install only a root file system. We are going to make the an "embedded" system in the end and a lack of a swap partition will cause the log files to be written to a memory-based file system.

This is a good tutorial on installing pfSense with screen shots.

Ditch that hard drive!

Once pfSense was working with a hard drive I decided that running this system off a compactflash card would be pretty interesting. It would eliminate one source of weakness in any system, the hard drive, and reduce the power needed to run the box.

This IDE to Compact Flash adapter is going to set you back around $7 shipped.

I had a 1GB SanDisk Ultra II CF card that worked perfectly. An old 512MB Viking CF card would not work. Once you plug this adapter into the motherboard the system will see it as regular hard drive. One GB is more than enough. My system takes up a whopping 118MB of the 1GB card.

In my dmesg I was seeing something about ACPI being disabled. It didn't seem to cause any problems but adding this:

hint.acpi.0.disabled="1"

to /boot/device.hints made the message go away.

Switching to "Embedded"

Edit /etc/platform and change pfSense to embedded. Reboot the computer. Once you are in embedded mode your system will be a read-only. Since we don't have a swap partition your logs will be written to memory. The goal here is to avoid writes to the CF card which could, theoretically, wear it out over a period of time.

My new, improved firewall is a 333MHz Intel processor with 256MB of RAM, an Intel 82559 Pro/100 Ethernet card (fxp0) for the WAN and an Intel(R) PRO/1000 card (em0) for the LAN. My Kill A Watt meter reports that the box takes 26 watts of power to run. That translates to four cents a day, $1.30 a month or $15.65 a year to power this computer running 24×365.

This setup is running in my basement. If I had this running in another part of the house I would use an embedded device like this unit from Netgate. They are low power and quiet.

With pfSense you have many tools on your hands to configure and control your network. It's easy to open ports for Bittorrent or configure a captive portal, for example.

Upgrading pfSense

This is my step-by-step method of upgrading the system. Back up the settings before you upgrade the system!!!

1. run /etc/rc.conf_mount_rw

2. edit /etc/platform and replace "embedded" with "pfSense"

3. reboot the firewall.

4. Upgrade via web interface or via shell and URL download option. The last time I used the shell option. The web interface option has also worked in the past.

5. Let the system auto reboot after upgrade

6. See if you need to upload your old settings.

7. edit /etc/platform and replace "pfSense" with "embedded"

8. reboot the firewall for embedded changes to take effect.

Until now.

Installing Leopard on the MacBook has been a mixed bag. While I appreciate the user improvements of Leopard, especially Spaces, my MacBook has been far less stable on Leopard. I've had many, many kernel panics under Leopard. Under Tiger my MacBook was very stable. In contrast, my main computer, a dual 1.8 GHz G5, has been rock solid for its entire life running Panther, Tiger and Leopard, with freezes and kernel panics being very rare.

It's likely those kernel panics on the MacBook finally caught up with me. AppleMail has been flaky on my MacBook for a long time. Mail finally refused to load and quit responding. Several force quits later I decided to restart the MacBook. It would try to load and reboot automatically. It was caught in this loop.

A boot into single user mode was my next step, hoping that an fsck on the file system would fix the problem. fsck could not repair the problem. I had read that three times in a row did the trick for others, but not for me. The message "keys out of order" was the glaring error message.

Disk Utility was of no help either.

I did have a fairly recent Carbon Copy Clone of the system but I thought it was worth trying to copy off some recent stuff first using target disk mode in case I had to reformat the disk. I got a warning message when trying to mount this volume, but it did mount. Next I tried to run fsck from the desktop. That failed too.

Carbon Copy Cloner also failed several times on this volume.

Time to bite the bullet and download DiskWarrior. I somehow eluded needing this program up until now. A few weeks earlier my work PowerBook could only be brought back to life with the help of DiskWarrior. It was a $100 gamble but seemingly worth the risk.

With the MacBook in target disk mode on my G5 I ran DiskWarrior. It found a bunch of errors and corrected them. My MacBook booted just fine after that.

Happy endings!

It will be interesting to see if the MacBook continues to have kernel panics now I have my filesystem in good working order.

Every six to eight months the Roadrunner cable modem service becomes unusable in our neighborhood. Three times in the last few weeks I've lost service that lasted more than eight hours. Calls are made, again and again by me and my neighbors. Eventually we convince Roadrunner there is a problem and get someone to come out and the problem gets solved.

A few years ago I had the phone number of the head technical guy for Roadrunner in Northeast Ohio. Then I lost his number! I was able to cut through all the nonsense and get immediate results. I should have tattooed that number on my body like Leonard in the movie "Memento."

The second guy who came out during this current outage provided some helpful information I could have used in the past to troubleshoot my problems.

He replaced all the cable connectors on the coax cables. The Dialetric Insulator in some of my cables were no longer round at the connector ends. Coaxial cables require an internal structure of an insulating (dielectric) material to maintain the spacing between the center conductor and shield. This was leading to a loss of signal strength. The he split off the wires in a different configuration to the TVs and the cable modem to boost signal strength.

The real problem, however, was out on the street.

Then he had me go to this web page to check the power levels of my service. Talk about burying the lead! Why didn't anyone at Roadrunner tell me about this page before? Maybe they don't want the average person to know about this?

The above page is only if your cable modem is a General Instrument, now Motorola, Surfboard 3100 or 4100.

Let's take a look at how to make sense of these readings. I've included two screen captures of my service levels taken about 10 hours apart. Here's the first capture:

Let's break these numbers apart to better understand how to interpret them.

The two important items in the download portion are Signal to Noise Ratio and Power Level. The numbers I list below are when my service was being worked on right after he showed me this page.

My Signal to Noise Ratio was 37 dB on 10-6-08 – That's about as high as I can expect and this is a good number according to the tech. RR considers anything over 30 as okay.

My Power Level was 6 dBmV on 10-6-08. The level range is -10 to +10 with zero being perfect. Virtually nobody gets a perfect 0.

Now lets look at the important upstream value, the power level.

My Power Level was 55 dBmV on 10-6-08 – the lower the number the better. Their range is 30-54 and the tech said my target number is 47. Below is another screen capture:

To learn more about this in depth see http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/signal.html

The upstream power level of 42 is the lowest I've seen since I started watching this page. It's bounces around pretty regularly. It's at 52 as I type this post, but was at 54 a short time before that. My download power lever dropped to a three at one point, which is good since zero (0) as good as it gets for this reading.

Thanks to this page for pointing the way.

The images above were taken during a weekend trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to attend a wedding. The images also live in the 2008 Gallery if you care to see any notes on an individual photograph.

This is the longest roadtrip yet in the Toyota Prius. From Akron we went through Charleston, West Virginia on the way down. On the way back we visited a friend of Ann's in Celina, Tennessee and came back via Cincinnati. That's 1,210 miles and we averaged 51.3MPG according to the MFD.