Patrick Hansen.com

Okay, I can’t resist the stupid puns. Anyways, I dug into the Timecapsule and removed the drive.

If you need a quick video to go over most f the steps, here is one from YouTube:

It was a fairly easy process, where the hardest thing was removing the rubber cover from the base.

After that, there are 10 screws to remove. I used a jewelry #1 Phillips screw driver. There are 4 others near the center, which have an adhesive coating over them, they do not require removal.

After removing the screws, you will want to rotate the TimeCapsule where the plugs and ports face you and the top on the bottom. Lift the metal bottom panel towards the right, because there is a fan attached to the corner.

If you would like to remove the hard drive, the bay is not screwed in. Al you have to do is lift itfrom the opposite end, towards you.
3 items to be aware of here:
1) The power plugged into the drive on the left side
2) The data interface plugged in to the left side just near the power.
3) a small wire on the top ( I think this may be a ground), it is stuck to the top of the hard drive with adhesive foam tape. Be careful removing this, as it can tear the tape easily.

The drive in mine was a Seagate Barricuda 500GB. I’m going o replace it with a Western Digital caviar probably.

There you have it.

Let’s hope I can get a disc recovery application to save my music.

You could replace it with another 500GB or even upgrade to 1TB.

I have a small Spathiphyllum plant on my desk in the office. It doesn’t require much light nor care. I did however, manage to neglect its low maintenance needs over the past weekend. I was gone for over four days, and even though I did water it on Thursday, the hot weekend and really low light conditions really took its toll. It’s actually not the first time I have done that actually.

The awesome thing is that this plant is so resilient, it has perked back up a couple times now. I was pretty impressed on how quickly it will recoup from the damage once I provide some more light and water.

I took some photos with my iPhone over the course of a work day, and I did not have a tripod to obtain a really nice time lapse, but it did the trick.

So, this is the plant revival in less than 9 hours.

My Apple Timecapsule drive went out in less than 3 months!

Well, as I was in the middle of backing up my music library to another external drive from the Apple Timecapsule, I received an error. There was an issue with the drive. I rebooted, and then I even did a new set up on the Timecapsule, with no luck.

It recognized that the drive had failed and required repair. The only thing is, if the drive is down, you cannot connect to the drive. The network will work fine, so I have a $300 wireless router now. But, you cannot access the drive to even run disc utilities on it.

I have lost my only source of a 94GB 24k+ library of music. I have about 27GB on my iPod. I have an appointment with the Genius bar today to see what they have to say. Most others online have noted that Apple will replace the device, but not attempt to retrieve your data. I understand that. The thing I do not understand is how a so called “server grade” HD goes out in less than 3 months!

I’m thinking about pulling the drive and attempting to get an enclosure and recover the data. Even if the data is recovered in a numerical file structure (0001.mp3, 0002.p3), which most recoveries do, at least music has meta data and iTunes will create and organize the new file structure. The other stuff I lost, I do have backed up on another system.

I just finished a design for The March of Dimes Mudd Volleyball 25th Anniversary shirts for this year’s event.

I had to use 2 colors only (orange & brown), since this was a non-profit and they’re on a strict budget. I used some negative space (white – T-shirt color) and lighter percentage of the two colors to give the appearance that there are a few more colors going on here. The lighter shades print through as dithered patterns (small dots) and came out fine. Small text or detailed graphics with a dithered pattern can come out messy and unreadable, so I tried to keep that to a minimum. I used Adobe Illustrator CS3 to create the design and still lovin’ that application. even though I do most of my interface design in Fireworks, AI is still the clear choice for graphics and illustrating.

I must provide a shout out to Vecteezy and their contributing artists, for some of the splatters, as I was on a time crunch and this was volunteer work. Vecteezy is an awesome site to go to for creative and inspiring vector art, design info, and if you’re an artist/designer, you can share your work up there as well. (splatter art pulled from: Grungy vector objects & Gun Series – by Vectoroom.com) I have created my own splatters before, but it was very time consuming, especially prior to Live Trace. So, this time around, I had to grab something quick and there are many talented artists & designers out there who are generous enough to share their talent and skills. THANK YOU!

It’s awesome that there is a community of designers who understand the needs of others, have the passion to create, and get their work out there for others to see and use. It’s similar to an open source community of developers, which has proven to be a huge benefit for all. As I do not consider myself a developer, I’m currently learning Flex, and the examples, tutorials and other tools out there are amazing and extremely helpful. Now it is great to see designers following suit.

This is a great event which helps benefit The March of Dimes continuing fight towards birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality.

The event allows for friendly volleyball competitions in a few inches of soaking, dirty mud, so you can help a great cause and have some real messy fun. This year’s event is currently sold out, but you can get on the waiting list and hope that a spot opens up. If you can’t make it this year, please plan on it next year and help the fight and get dirty!

Mad props to The March of Dimes and those who organize this event. The 25th year of Mudd Volleyball is bound to be a HIT! Wow, 25 years… that’s almost as old as me.

I have been working with Degrafa in my spare time… all of that spare time that I have.

I am quite impressed. Not only by the framework and how scalable, flexible, and powerful it is, but also by its ease of use for even a designer such as myself. It does have some complicated aspects, but for the most part, it is fairy easy to grasp once you get your feet wet.

My first implementation was some additive work to Juan Sanchez’s scrollBar track to Discovery Live Earth that he helped me out with. That wasn’t much, as I just looked at what Juan had written and made some slight adjustments and color changes.

Now, I’m attempting to create a whole Flex theme using Degrafa. It has been challenging, but it is a great way to gain insight about Degrafa and skinning for Flex.

I highly recommend creating a complete theme for Flex to learn some of the basics and advance aspects of skinning. If you have the ability to, then you should also build a test application in Flex to test the skins and most importantly, to review the states of the components. I will post the code for a test application soon, as I made one for my own use.

You do not have to use Degrafa, you can use one of the many forms of skinning, from vector swfs in Flash or Illustrator, to bitmaps in Photoshop or Fireworks, and if you want, you can make a simple CSS based one rather quickly using one of the Flex Style Explorer.
Click Here is the Flex 3 Style Explorer
(please note that Adobe still hasn’t updated the title in the html page from Flex 2)
An easy way to get into skinning for Flex, is to download the Flex Skinning Extensions. You will need an Adobe account, which is FREE.
Click Here to get Extensions!

Keep in mind, that there are a couple techniques which are slightly more optimal and what I favor. I prefer to use stateful skins using Flash. By using stateful skins, you can create all of the states of your skin within one symbol (MovieClip), so it is self contained and easier to manage. You can even add animations and transitions to give it a little more flavor.

Not only are stateful skins great to work with for those reasons, but since it is in Flash, you can make them vector. Very optimal for performance, and scaling with scale9 enabled on your symbols. One other minor detail to keep in mind, which could pose problems, nested MovieClips will NOT scale 9 properly. This means you will not be able to use filters such as drop shadows, glows within a MovieClip that may require scale 9 like rounded rectangles.
(you must create a MovieClip in order to apply a filter in Flash)

To accomplish those effects on a scale 9 symbol, you can mock the shadows and filters with vector art, or you can apply the filter/effect in Flex. Based on some rumors, CS4 should fix this issue, as it is a problem within Flash and not Flex. Also, you can apply the scale 9 grid within the CSS for some skins like Bitmaps.
Here is a post for Flex 2 and scale 9 grid in CSS
Adobe DevNet

The Epilogues just released their first album:
The Beautiful, the Terrifying.

Nathanial Hammond, the keyboard player, is one of my good friends, and although this post could be biased based on that, I assure you that it is not. I have friends in the music industry and art world, where subjectivity reigns high, yet I will not throw pity-based criticism just because I’m a friend. I am a little passive about it, but I will not praise the non-deserving.

Back to the post. These guys have been recording for about a year now, they were fairly a new group when they started the album. I have seen and heard them grow tremendously in the past couple of years. We (Kollage) just opened for their CD release party Saturday at the Marquis. It was an amazing show featuring a mosaic of talent from Antagonist and Addverse from S.T.O.I.C., Vices I Admire, and Aloft in the Sundry. A mix of Hip Hop and rock, the show went off quit well.

The Epilogues did their release justice, with a very energetic show, including their own lighting, and smoke, and amazing power from an arsenal of talented musicians. They bombarded eardrums with a very unique Indie, raw rock. As many do create similes of existing band mash-ups that they might sound like, it is clear that they do not sound like any one particular cliché.

Some would say, “aren’t you all about hip hop?” Well, I do love Hip Hop, but I am also a person, a musician. I love ALL great music, be it some classical Chopin, to some Led Zeppelin, the slow hand styles of Clapton, raw edgy sounds of Hendrix, to soothing deviation of Depeche Mode. And now, The Epilogues have a place on my musical playlist.

You should check them out and hear for yourself. I’m not here to tell you what to listen to, but just a suggestion from a person who simply likes music.

Click Below to visit their MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/epiloguemusic

Thanks guys!