Some stuff
Because engineering is not just a profession, it's a life philosophy!-
Imitating badblocks for large drives
Recently my backup verifications started to fail consistently even after redoing the entire backup. After checking the usual data and power cable connections I started doing analysis on the drive itself. Unfortunately the usual way of of using
badblocksdoes not work on large drives so I had to figure out a substitute solution to diagnose how bad the situation is.
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S.M.A.R.T. log entry timestamp overflow
While doing some regular maintenance on my boxes, I’ve noticed an odd peculiarity when examining the hard drive’s S.M.A.R.T. report. Apparently some counters lack bits and can overflow if the drive is old enough.
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VIOFO dash cam USB-C parking signal
2024-07-20Author: Zoltan PuskasI’d like to add a VIOFO A229 Plus dashboard camera into my recently acquired EV, however I’m not quite sure whether I want to power it by tapping the fuse box, from the 12V socket, attaching to the OBD port, or perhaps even some powerbank. What is important though that regardless of how it’s powered it still has the parking mode recording functioning (i.e. the dashcam keeps recording even after the car is turned off). Only the fuse box tapping hardwire kit supports parking mode out of the box, unless some adapter is built for the other powering methods. While weighing my options I had the chance to experiment with a borrowed kit to figure out how the parking signal is sent to the camera, should the need arise for an adapter.
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Aurora Borealis in Washington
A rare severe solar storm resulted in northern lights appearing at way lower latitudes than usual. The greater Seattle area got lucky with clear skies so I could observe this probably once in a lifetime event with my own eyes, which was especially exciting as I’ve never seen any auroras before. I’ve even managed to snap some photos from the river trail in Sammamish Valley. I have to say the camera managed to capture more vivid colors than my eyes, however it was not able to record the mesmerizing dance of them in the sky. It was worth staying up late into the night!
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Inception
