It’s inevitable… hard drives fail.  But when?  Recently, I had a hard drive that was acting strange and I needed a way to test its reliability.  The drive wasn’t making clicking noises yet (a sure sign that your drive is dying).  I needed a freeware program to test my hard drives and tell me if any were at risk of failing.  I found a utility called SeaTools for Windows.  It’s from Seagate, but the software will work with most any modern hard drive.  It doesn’t work with usb connected drives however.  I was able to run a couple tests on my suspect drive and determine with certainty that it was failing.

Another interesting feature of SeaTools was its ability to read the S.M.A.R.T. attributes of the hard drive.  The most interesting SMART attributes were the “hard drive temperature” and the “power on hours”.  My failing maxtor drive had 36509 hours on it.  That’s about 4.2 years of continuous use.  My Western Digital drive has 47802 hours (5.5 years continuous), but it passed all tests and is still working fine.   Another interesting fact according to wikipedia “Disk failures and their metrics” is that there is a higher failure rate for hard drives in cool conditions versus hot conditions.  I had always assumed that heat was the enemy, but the opposite is actually true.

You can also use the freeware utility Speedfan to read hard drive SMART data. Speedfan may not be able to thoroughly test your hard drives like SeaTools, but it also provides a wealth of other technical data about ALL of your computer hardware.

Wikipedia also states that 60 days following the first scan error on a drive, the drive is, on average, 39 times more likely to fail.  The lesson here… maintain backups of your precious data and be S.M.A.R.T.

What is the best wax for black paint?  I did tons of web research and concluded that (for the money) Blitz Carnuaba Wax and 3M Hand Glaze were the best choice.  You can get both in a kit with applicators and towels for about $36 from Car Care Specialties.  There are solutions out there that are touted to be better (like p21), but they cost much more.

The shine is so perfect that you can see the imperfections in the original manufacturer paint job.  You can just see some ripples in the reflection of my house just to the left of the gas cap.

First, I thoroughly washed my 2007 triumph thruxton with proper car soap and water and a soft mitt.  Then I used my air compressor to speed drying.  Especially around the nooks and crannies of my engine and gauges.  Then I hand applied the 3M glaze in a swirling motion and waited 5-10 minutes to dry.  Wipe off with a very soft cloth.  Now, I hand applied the blitz car wax.  It is benefitial to use your hands because your body heat will melt the wax and you can also feel the surface and avoid rubbing any grit into the paint.  Finally, after 15 minutes of drying, I used a fresh soft cloth to buff out the wax.  WOW, it was super slippery and shiny.  I am very happy with the results and I highly recommend using 3M Hand Glaze and Blitz Wax, especially on black paint.

Light sensitive tracking device.  This was a really fun college project.
Here is a video clip that clearly demostrates the functionality of the device.

This is an excerpt from my project log book.  

Download pdf of project log book.

I put the circuitry on 2 seperate boards with a connecting data ribbon.  1 board was the computer processor and the other was the I/O board.  That way, I could re-use the processor board for future projects.

The potentiometer adjusts the photosensor sensitivity.

The project was based on the 8085 microprocessor.

I used a stepper motor to control rotation of the parabolic reflector.  The reflector was actually a solar cigarette lighter from radio shack.  I attached 2 photosensors side by side on the reflector focal point.

More wire-wrapping technique, same as the digital oscilloscope project.

The electric motor is a 1.8 degree/step 12v stepper motor.

I entered this project into the 1987 DeVry Career Expo (Irving, TX) and won second place.  I didn’t sleep the last 48 hours before the competition and finally got it working just 10 minutes before the expo opened.

On september 16 of 2007, I took a ride on my 1982 yamaha seca 400 … I had just synced the carbs and the bike was runnin good… so good.. it caught me by surprise.  As I went through an s turn, the bike accelerated better than expected.  It was dark and my headlight was angled too low, which gave me little time to see the back side of the s-curve.  I hit the brakes and skidded into the curb which dumped me into the grassy median.  I would guess I was going 35 mph when I hit.  As I fell, my left hand instinctively tried to catch my fall.  Bad idea, because I heard my forearm shatter like a tree branch snapping, then I rolled 1 time onto my right shoulder (fracturing it).  I’ve been riding since 82 and this is my first accident.

This is the result of a CT Scan done on my arm in preparation for surgery to improve movement of my tendons that are being held by excess scar tissue.

The CT Scan video didn’t visualize the data very well, so I vectorized each image and extrapolated a 3d model of my bones.  Now I can see exactly how my break is healing.