My visit to the Vintage Computer Festival SoCal

Vintage Computer Festival SoCal Logo

There were so many incredible computers from the 70s, 80s, and 90s!  Beautiful computers that might have just been taken out of the box.  I got to play with an Amiga 4000 with a Video Toaster! (My dream box from the 90s)  I used a Commodore Pet that is older than i am. Some of my favorite stuff is modern boards that work with the vintage computers like micro SD floppy drives and Wi-Fi modems.

Vintage Computer Festival SoCal - Amiga 4000 ToasterVintage Computer Festival SoCal - Amiga 500 DemoVintage Computer Festival SoCal - Commodore PetVintage Computer Festival SoCal - iBook Rainbow
Vintage Computer Festival SoCal - Analog TV Demo

Visit to Disneyland after a decade!

Disneyland Adventure - be3n

I was once an annual passholder to Disneyland. Before that, my family made regular visits.  From the stroller to my own legs, Disneyland is present in a large proportion of my memories and memorabilia.  It has changed and yet it has stayed the same.  Here are some of the things i noticed on my last visit.

Disneyland Adventure - Single RiderI started in California Adventure alone.  Out of habit, i started early, i was meeting friends later.  It turns out that being alone has its advantages.  The single rider program is an awesome way to zip through many of the lines.  In truth, Disneyland has made many innovations to waiting in line since the original FastPass.

California Adventure’s changes went mostly unnoticed by me.  I am less familiar with the park and as a much newer park there is less to remove. I did noticed the Pixar rebranding and enjoyed some of the additions to the coaster.  The new lighting elements were very impressive.  The World of Color show was something I’d never seen.  I remember watching the building of it, but my pass expired before the debut and life distracted me for a while.  That was going to change.

it was in California Adventure where i saw some of the famous Disneyland cats.  that was exciting. (helps to show up early). Disney was celebrating the Chinese year of the mouse.  Funny, I’ve always heard it referred to as the year of the rat, but that doesn’t match up with branding.


Disneyland Adventure - View From the TopDisneyland Adventure - Chinese New Year (year of the mouse)Disneyland Adventure - Disneyland CatsDisneyland Adventure - Monster Inc PayphoneDisneyland Adventure - be3n on Guardians of the Galaxy RideDisneyland Adventure - be3n on Incredicoaster
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Happy Birthday GIF!

On this day in 1987 Steve Wilhite while working at CompuServe developed the GIF format.  Thanks to the internet and the fact that internet speeds continue to accelerate they have become the defacto animation format.  Hooray!  It is importent to point out that although the GIF is 30 years old today, the animated version that we are so familiar with did not become available until 1989.  Don’t tell me how to pronounce it. Enjoy my collection.

be3n bangs a gong

Incredibly impassioned performance from The Mountain Goats!

The Mountain Goats at Mayan Theatre  - May 31, 2017

John and the gang performed a pile of new work intermingled with classics and a few unrecorded tracks.  It was an awesome show full of precious moments and supposition about drug enforcement or a legendary heavy metal club in Long Beach.   We met some great people and had a wonderful evening.  Thank you Carlos!

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And then there were four!

Drobo 5c StatusI have been experiencing an excess of failures with my own equipment this week.  Mostly aged drives who’s working lifespan is winding down.  Often the preverbal cobbler with no shoes, I rarely have time to maintain my own equipment. My usual quick fix is to throw more drives at the problem. Although that would certainly get me running again, it was more of a stop gap then a real solution.  I have a number of aged drives and i wanted a solution not just for today, but something to make a difference moving forward.  Enter the Drobo 5c.  I have been a fan of Drobo for years.  I have an 8 bay that holds my media library in it’s warm RAID-6 embrace.  I had been eyeing the Drobo 5d for years waiting for the price to sink or my need to raise.  Turns out the 5c is incredibly priced with only minor disadvantages over the 5d.  One reason i love Drobo and the reason it was perfect for this project is the Drobo’s ability to expand in the future while operating at diminished capacity.  I bought this enclosure with only 2 drives.  Started up with mearly one 4TB drive and another 3TB.  This got me started with about 2.7TB of usable space.  Then i got to the task of offloading data from my healthy external drives. As each drive emptied into the Drobo’s volume, it was then fed into the Drobo enclosure to continue to expand the capacity.  Now i have over 8TB of usable storage with both failover protection (a single drive can fail and I loose nothing) and expandability.  It’s one big volume makes organizing and tidying a snap.  That last bay will get a 4TB eventually and it’s doubtful the most recent 3TB i installed will be working this time next year.

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Got my first MRI today. . .

The purpose of the scan today was investigating back pain, nothing serious.  In keeping with my tradition of publishing too much information, enjoy this animation of a flight through my spine.

The experience was actually much easier then I anticipated.  The machine did not move me as much as they show on medical television shows.  Not as loud either.  30 minutes in the tube was a bit much, by the end, i was ready to get out.