thereifixedit

We had a 3 point hitch "grading blade" break it's left side pin for the second time last night.

It had been already welded once and a NOS pin unit was over $100.
I commented on FB and some folks asked to see it. Here it is..

So, I took a long upper link style pin and bolted it in place using some heavy metal plate stock as clamp blocks. The brutally fugly hack seems to be holding.  First picture is the undamaged right side, second is the bolted plates fix. It only needs to last till we either get a NOS replacement or fabricate a proper one.  Do notice that part of the whole "reason" for the massive block OEM part is as  corner structural bracing. So this hackery is NOT going to be used for long.  But? It's a thereifixedit in action. Oh- the reason for the tie wire at pin's end is so if it comes apart- we hopefully won't lose the pin in the gravel we're moving around on our roads.

www.campdownunder.com

Is where this example of battle damage repair lives. Wife owns a campground and the above is how we keep it alive since gasoline has been lowered to $ 3.29 again.. Billions of profits for the oil companies and we let them control us. The Ford Jubilee that blade is attached to "could" easily run on Ethanol and may do so sooner rather than later too. Or digester gas. Or wood gas. OPEC Delenda Est?

I'm sort of unconcerned by anyone not wanting me to work for them after reading an anti-OPEC comment! As any American who is promoting OPEC's interests over America's is guilty of Treason.

I had a rain of tragedies this past few months.

My Father and my Grandson died weeks apart. Unrelated deaths of course. I will post details someday soon but not now.

Happy Holidays to all.

We of the technical class are "at risk" of forgetting that It's all about people. And all the holidays "should" be reminding us of that. Whatever faith you personally have and are celebrating today, never forget that everyone behind a phone call or IM or email is a PERSON. And a growing awareness, to me at least.. that we likely DO have at least one electronic sentience in our shared world.

Be that as it may, Above all else, let's be kind to all.

Hackerspace and Ethics.

To pre-empt any drama. Yes- I associate both online and IRL with Hackerdom and it's members.

No- I do not condone ethics violations in the workplace or in any way entangled with work.

Same with politics. My 9-5 is firewalled from my personal life and that's an impermeable barrier- no exceptions.

Outside of work? My personal guide line is starkly simple- If it has to be questioned about right or wrong- that's a warning in and of itself.

All the above says what it means and means what it says. Ethics are inherently a Zero tolerance pass/fail test in life. The degrees of fail are based on witting or unwitting fail and if it's malice or a lack of information. Ignorantia Nihil et all has some real world fails of it's own though. I recently saw a situation with near zero documentation of work rules. Which inherently makes for Very Bad Things of the " had no way to know" orbits.

Hence this post.

Think about why might be a good question?

Backups and Accessibility Vs Security

I had a reminder of how easy it is to take for granted we've backed our digital lives up properly. It's been a background recovery 2 days running now.. IT was a potentially Oops avoided by long time practices made habitual. We're too dependent on our devices to ignore these issues!

My Android Cliq is arguably a "Brain Prosthetic" for me. I'd safely wager that many folks reading this have varying degrees of co-dependency going on with their handhelds or laptops etc. Seeing the little triangle with Exclamation point graphic as an electronic Tombstone to my MicroSd that was only 18 months old. The poor memory wafer led a hard life being used to back up files so I'd have them in hand. Being mindful of having client data in a handheld unless it's VERY securely encrypted has been part of my job a long time. Going back to TRG with CF slots.. Back to the "Why" for this post in a bit.

IF you're Ethernetted as with a desktop- NAS and proper backup practices lower the risks. It's automatic or only a few clicks/dragNdrops to offload onto a physically separate spindle. That backs up to Cloud if safe/applicable etc.

But our Handhelds and Laptops often get overlooked. Come home from a hard day in the field- plug the phone in but forget to mount as USB drive to dragNdrop safely? No worries- it's backed up by remote backup. Is it? Nope- Photos on MicroSd often are *NOT* backed up. Contacts etc - yeah.

PhotoRec can indeed drag pictures back from incredibly abused flash media. But are you willing to bet everything on it? Mercifully, I did not have to test that bet. I recently found out that my faithfully followed routine of copy DCIM>desktop_DCIM>USBin the fire safe was "Good Enough" for my needs.

EXT3 and Linux running from CD with data only -no OS on my HD's has often granted me much hassle reduction. A two drive failure in the same desktop machine= barring power event or fire etc? unlikely absent many warnings. Treat that FIRST warning properly or risk Very Bad Things.

There's NO sane reason to have the OS and "only copy" of your Data on the ONLY drive in a desktop! We can get paranoid and encrypt all our working copies- or is encrypting only backups "Good Enough" for your risk factors? That's a case by case risk evaluation. Choose wisely. Yes- you "Can" keep third copies of data in the unused space of that "OS" drive if you are bothered by wasting potential space. But if you're using- a $10 ballpark 8 gig flash drive for your OS? Let's be honest here- keep our gaming etc machines separate from our work machines if we can afford to ok? How much are the consequences worth if we don't? My T series IBM laptop with a second HD in the Ultrabay is one answer.

Back to the "Reminder" lesson 2 days ago.

That MicroSd in my primary Android phone had died the death of constant use. RIP faithful Filedroid?

Mourn not- the DATA is still Nearly Immortal on 3 other drives. Paranoia is under rated in backups? My access delay by being away from my home backups may have annoyed a client. But the enhanced data safety by restricting access is just good practices. Safer Vs inconvenience?

The ugly gotcha is SECURITY. What of our backups is a potential risk? Client data? Or just blowing a surprise party by the invite list being in a family shared folder?

Truecrypt may be "Good Enough" for most folks as I have been retrodeploying it on my older media retirement schedules:

http://www.truecrypt.org/

Those old CD's in the freezer are a potential Information Grenade ticktick..with your past on them. And customer data risks too. Yeah Encryption's a hassle. But as I clean up all my stacks of retired HD's used for data buckets- DBAN is another perhaps "Good Enough" tool.

http://www.dban.org/

But is the risk assessment for NOT using such tools in your favor?

That's your bet. Bet wisely, OK?

Signal boosting for our future- STEM and our children.

I have Grandchildren. Their education is of major importance to me, so everything educational is looked at carefully whenever possible. This morning I found a Blogpost that is spot on target for what America and our children- YOUR children- Desperately need to be involved in. There were links in the post that need some more exposure to raise awareness.

STEM is the term for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. I can safely state that my personal observation of what most schools offer today in STEM is criminally deficient. So deficient that I feel it properly should invoke Glenn Seaborg's comment about it being Cause for War had our educational system beeninflicted upon us by a foreign power. And perhaps it has been so inflicted if you study the economy?

Snipping political discourse for the sake of our children's future, Are we doing everything possible to have our children's education in STEM be the best we can offer? The post below and links in it may be real eye openers if we spread their messages and programs.

Thanks in advance for reading them. And for forwarding the link to everyone who cares about children.

The post speaks for itself on anything farther involved.

http://nearsys.blogspot.com/2011/08/changes-in-american-economy.html

Open or Closed Source in my life- and yours. What percentages?

What percentages of our lives are we using Open or Closed Source code?

I began thinking about the concept. Are there any ethical/legal methods to have a tool which would feed a counter of Open or Closed Source. Both the machines in front of us, and the Web Servers? I just think it would be so ubergeek to have a proud badge /counter showing "which side we're on" so to speak. It may become a project to get myself back up to speed on coding things myself. Or at least with minimal mentoring. Seeing a counter of one world or another appear in daily visibility may be a literal worldview changer. As in seeing with even semi-confidence the percentages.


Even 60-40? 50-50? Or? Sadly, there's not yet that "counter" to score our usage of the Closed or Open worlds. But? This began more about a shout-out for F/OSS itself.. I've made Puppy Linux my primary "main use" OS.

http://puppylinux.org

Which accounts for my offline use as edging on 100% F/OSS as there's very little in Puppy as I use it that's NOT F/OSS that I know of- excepting some drivers etc. Online use gets covered next.
I do also use Android. And am facing the learning curve of that environment as a willing challenge. One of my winter projects. Learning the code my- and our- world runs on is part of technical literacy to me.

And it's possibly the part that separates appliance operators from ubergeek techies or just folks with an interest. I'm married to an appliance operator and am trying to migrate her to "our world" of code we can have full awareness of. Or at least that which is allowable for us to. Permission is mandatory folks! I have to be 100% White Hat as it's an employment requirement for what I do- Ok?

Back to the Iceberg in our lives. The parts of our lives we've little to no visibility into for many reasons- some good- some not, others just from social inertia. We're taught that we have no "need to know" or even care. We're supposed to press the button and become Zombies or Eloi. Some of us are Morlocks that keep the world turning in our own small efforts. Others are the appliance operators like my wife that have zero interest in what's under the hood.

We usually know what's under the hood of our personal machines or at least could find out if we want to. It is all about the being able to know. Closed Source essentially is saying for whatever "reasons" that the userbase has no right to see the code. Going further on exploring that would be out of scope- so back to my thesis/project thoughts. About how much of our daily lives run on Open or Closed code.

It's a simple concept at core. With that deceptive Iceberg of sorts. Server Side. I'd think that some of us might know what the servers we interact with are running -if that's not carefully firewalled from us. And to make this a prime directive level rule- anything even the slightest whiff gray hat is forbidden for my uses.

Everything has to be no risk of ToS violates etc. And if knowing such things IS a ToS violate? That says a lot about the ToS involved.

Saddest still is being unable to do all our business with folks that have a clue about rational ToS. That's a separate "whatever" still being polished.

Back to my reason for this today. Why I care how much of my life is using F/OSS or not. And why you should too.

The "reasons" to even care are often part of why we're Hackerspace members or list participants. And yes, there's a segment of our lists and similar memberships that are appliance operators where computers are concerned, using them as a painter does brushes or a dressmaker a sewing machine.

I've been trying to keep track of my personal use home and work- Best guessing- about 70-30 in favor of Non Closed averaged over the week in "my side" and a "don't know" on the servers. Well, that's nearing today's end point. Setting a sort of challenge to mysef and anyone else caring to participate. Creating tools to track the usage of Open or Closed code in our daily lives. But- wait- there's more.

If we look at the number of ASIC, FPGA, other Microcode dependent devices we interact with that are inherently Closed Code absent lab level probing? RFID?

The percentages get whack-a mole tilted in favor of Closed..For now.