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Article | Jan 2009 | M.McKennedy

The old family PC decided to call it quits!  It started with two dead fans…and ended with a blown motherboard.  Hoping the hard drives weren’t affected – I purchased a RocketFish hard drive enclosure and guess what…neither hard drive was recognized by Windows Vista – at first…

RocketFish - click for larger view

It’s something we all dread….the old computer starts making funny noises, the scent of overheating electric parts becomes a regular part of your day and finally the damn thing just won’t turn on!  Years and years of data – family photos, financial data, work related documents, custom settings are at risk (unless of course you are one of those strange people that keep maticulous backups – which I am not) – hoping the hard drive(s) aren’t dead you purchase an external hard drive enclosure (allows you to pull a hard drive from the old computer, insert it into a case and connect to another computer via USB or some other connection type).  I purchased a RocketFish with hopes of being able to transfer six years worth of data from two hard drives (one hard drive had the Windows XP operating system on it, the other was used strictly for backing up) to a new HP laptop running Windows Vista.

Inserting the actual drive into the enclosure was simple.  A few screws, a couple of connectors and the hard drive was in place.  The instructions said that the external drive must be set as the ‘master’ (this is set using ‘jumpers’ on the drive itself) as opposed to ‘slave’ in order for a system to recognize it.  I got the kit together, powered the RocketFish up and connected the USB cable to the laptop and the hard drive enclosure.  After several minutes of Windows Vista’s attempts at installing the necessary drives I see the error that says – installation failed!  I open the RocketFish instruction manual again and see that it says, if the installation fails, you should reformat the drive!  This was not an option….the damn thing had to work!  I had some backed up files but not nearly enough.

Jumper - click for larger view

I began browsing online forums, doing Google searches etc…you know, the standard when you don’t know what the hell is wrong with a computer.  I found that many others had the same sort of issue but could not find a concrete fix for my particular problem.  That’s when my built-in troubleshooting mechanism kicked in…I thought to myself…what part of this process can I manipulate?  There was really only one choice..the jumpers!  I took the hard drive that was used for backing up, pulled the jumper off completely (in otherwords it was no longer the ‘master’), put the case back together and plugged it back into the laptop – and within a minute or two I was browsing the external drive, none of my data had been lost!

Now it was time for the second drive, this is the one that had the operating system on it.  This is the drive that held the rest of my family’s files (which I didn’t backup too often, and neither did they).  I followed the same logic, just pull the jumper off completely and all would be well!  I pulled the other drive out, inserted the new, reconnected everything and powered the external drive up.  I watched optimistically as Windows Vista installed the drivers.  I couldn’t believe how easy the entire process was.  Then an alert popped up…installation failed!  Crap!  I thought to myself!  Sure I could live without the files on that drive but why should I have to?  I removed the drive from the enclosure, put the jumper back in place (as the master), reconnected into the same UBS port, started everything again but no luck – failed!  I wasn’t giving up though…I disconnected the drive yet again and plugged it into a different USB port, turned everything back on and….SUCCESS!!!  All of my files were accessible!

The lesson here is…don’t always follow the instruction manual.  If I did, I would have reformatted both drives which would have erased everything!  Step back and look at which variables can be affected by you.  In this case the variables for me were the jumpers.  Now that I think about it the whole thing makes perfect sense.  The drive used for backups did not have to be set as the ‘master’ because it wasn’t the master.  The drive that needed to be set as the master was the master in the previous configuration!  Logic…I really do love logic!

Summary: If your hard drive was not the master in the original configuration – don’t set it as the master when it becomes an external drive using the RocketFish hard drive enclosure.  If the hard drive was the master in the previous configuration – set it as the master when it becomes the external drive.

Video / Photography | Jan 2009 | M.McKennedy

Click The Image To See The Video

From January 7, 2008 until January 7, 2009 a gallery of photographs was created. This gallery is called the Things I Saw Photo Galleries. Most of these photographs were taken in Vermont, specifically around the Burlington, West Bolton, Richmond, Jericho, areas. There are also a few Maine photographs, as well as some images of Massachusetts.

From January 7, 2008 to January 7, 2009 a total of 13772 photographs had been shot and 368 photographs made it into the “Things I Saw” photo galleries.

This video is enhanced by Radiohead’s songs MK1, Weird Fishes / Arpeggi, MK2 and from the album “In Rainbows”.

Check out Things I Saw : January 7, 2008 – January 7, 2009

HTML – JavaScript – CSS | Jan 2009 | M.McKennedy

I stumbled upon this lightweight (1kb) horizontal sliding JavaScript menu highlighter yesterday – simple to implement, cross-browser compatible and free!  This morning I replaced the existing navigation on McKennedy.org with this sweet-looking version from www.leigeber.com.

McKennedy.org got a make-over this morning which bumped up the site version from 2.0 to 3.0.  I replaced the navigation with a nifty sliding JavaScript menu highlighter.  The old navigation was a bit boring.  The coding was fine and lightweight and relied on CSS using background images but really there wasn’t any flare – at all!  Now that I look back at it I am wondering, “what the hell was I thinking?”

2008 Navigation on McKennedy.org

The new sliding JavaScript menu highlighter is pretty slick. On mouseover the highlighting “slides” over the where the mouse pointer was and then slides back to it’s original place. It’s very cool!

2009 Navigation on McKennedy.org

The original sliding JavaScript menu highlighter script can be found here.  To implement the new navigation was really simple.

<div class="menu">
    <ul id="menu">
        <li><a href="some-web-page.html" title="Some Web Page">Web Page 1</a></li>
        <li><a href="some-web-page-2.html" title="Some Web Page">Web Page 2</a></li>
        <li><a href="some-web-page-3.html" title="Some Web Page">Web Page 3</a></li>
        <li value="1"><a href="some-web-page-4.html" title="Some Web Page">Web Page 3</a></li>
    </ul>
    <div id="slide"></div>
</div>

To set the default menu item use this sytax value=”1″ (as seen above).

The CSS side of it consists of a mere 6 lines which I adjusted below for formatting reasons:

 {
margin:0; padding:0;
}

.menuSlide {
position:relative;
background-color:#000000;
height:35px;
width:100%;
}

.menuSlide ul {
list-style:none;
z-index:10;
position:absolute;
z-index:100;
padding:9px 5px;
}

.menuSlide li {
float:left;
}

.menuSlide a, .menuSlide a:active, .menuSlide a:visited, .menuSlide a:hover {
text-decoration:none;
color:#FFF; padding:10px;
}

#slide {
position:absolute;
top:6px;
height:24px;
background:#ffcc33;
z-index:10;
}

The JavaScript (which is a bit advanced for me) side of things is also somewhat compact. I made a few formatting changes below so the code will fit on this page.

var menuSlider=function(){
	var m,e,g,s,q,i; e=[]; q=8; i=8;
	return{
		init:function(j,k){
			m=document.getElementById(j);
                        e=m.getElementsByTagName('li');
			var i,l,w,p; i=0; l=e.length;
			for(i;i<l;i++){
				var c,v; c=e[i];
                                v=c.value;
if(v==1){s=c; w=c.offsetWidth; p=c.offsetLeft}
				c.onmouseover=function(){menuSlider.mo(this)};
                                c.onmouseout=function(){menuSlider.mo(s)};
			}
			g=document.getElementById(k);
                        g.style.width=w+'px';
                        g.style.left=p+'px';
		},
		mo:function(d){
			clearInterval(m.tm);
			var el,ew;
                        el=parseInt(d.offsetLeft);
                        ew=parseInt(d.offsetWidth);
			m.tm=setInterval(function(){menuSlider.mv(el,ew)},i);
		},
		mv:function(el,ew){
			var l,w; l=parseInt(g.offsetLeft);
                        w=parseInt(g.offsetWidth);
			if(l!=el||w!=ew){
				if(l!=el){var ld,lr,li; ld=(l>el)?-1:1;
                                lr=Math.abs(el-l); li=(lr<q)?ld*lr:ld*q;
                                g.style.left=(l+li)+'px'}
				if(w!=ew){var wd,wr,wi; wd=(w>ew)?-1:1;
wr=Math.abs(ew-w); wi=(wr<q)?wd*wr:wd*q; g.style.width=(w+wi)+'px'}
			}else{clearInterval(m.tm)}
}};}();

To initialize the script simply call the function:

menuSlider.init('menu','slide')

For example:

<body onload="menuSlider.init('menuSlide','slide')">

To see this in action go to McKennedy.org.

To download the script from the original source and to check out more of what Mr. Leigeber has to offer (free for both personal and commercial use) go here.

I have personally tested this in the follow web browsers and did not find any issues:

• Firefox – v 3.0.5
• Google Chrome – v 1.0.154.36
• Internet Explorer – v 7.0
• Safari (for Windows) – v 3.2.1
• Opera – v 9.51

Thanks Mr. Leigeber!

Photography | Nov 2008 | M.McKennedy

Since January 7th, 2008 I have been taking one photograph for every day of the week and creating a gallery of them.  I call this series of galleries Things I Saw.  The December gallery has been posted.

Most of these photos were shot in Vermont but towards the end of the month there were a few taken in Massachusetts.  This month I shot a total of 1,185 and 31 of them made it to this gallery.

Click The Image To Go To The Gallery

Here are the titles of this months photos:

1. Signs :: 7:54am | December 01, 2008
2. Vine On White Brick :: 2:31pm | December 02, 2008
3. Lake Champlain :: 4:14pm | December 03, 2008
4. Golden Tower :: 4:33pm | December 04, 2008
5. Sunrise Traffic Lights :: 7:33am | December 05, 2008
6. Legos :: 3:19pm | December 06, 2008
7. Snow Storm :: 4:41pm | December 07, 2008
8. Ari Ghost :: 6:38pm | December 08, 2008
9. Teeth :: 6:54pm | December 09, 2008
10. DVD Experiment :: 5:19pm | December 10, 2008
11. Blue Highway :: 4:35pm | December 11, 2008
12. Church Street Mashup :: 5:21,5:28,5:30pm | December 12, 2008
13. Burrs And Snow :: 4:01pm | December 13, 2008
14. That Freaky Nutcracker :: 4:17pm | December 14, 2008
15. Crayons :: 4:01pm | December 15, 2008
16. Camel’s Hump and Traffic Lights :: 7:37am | December 16, 2008
17. Snowy Commute :: 7:29am | December 17, 2008
18. Open :: 7:39pm | December 18, 2008
19. Slow Drive Home :: 5:00pm | December 19, 2008
20. Hand Prints :: 2:20pm | December 20, 2008
21. The Orchard :: 4:53pm | December 21, 2008
22. Today Mashup :: 7:48am,7:51am,4:13pm | December 22, 2008
23. Cement Truck :: 5:10pm | December 23, 2008
24. Going Beardless :: 5:51am-6:12am | December 24, 2008
25. Grammy’s Tree :: 2:26pm | December 25, 2008
26. Fishing :: 3:08pm | December 26, 2008
27. Room Service :: 6:24am | December 27, 2008
28. Mud Season? It’s December! :: 4:54pm | December 28, 2008
29. Puzzle :: 8:01pm | December 29, 2008
30. Clouds | Sunset :: 4:11pm | December 30, 2008
31. DDC Early Morning :: 7:54am | December 31, 2008