Azuki Panda

Anyone that has talked to me in the last year or two knows that I have been on the fence about my future career plans. Doing a co-op at Philips didn’t help my decision as much as I thought it would. I would be equally happy working in a company as an engineer or being a doctor. I had the qualifications for both paths because my undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering prepared me for both medical and graduate school.

Many people consider various things when deciding what career path to take. While I would like to make money, I feel that I would be successful enough as an engineer to live comfortably. Doctors make even more so money was not really a deciding factor for me. I’m a hands on individual and frequently try to solve problems so that fits well with an engineering profession, but those traits can also be applied to being a surgeon.

I ended up choosing to give medical school a shot since I had already taken the necessary pre-medical classes, my MCAT was not too bad after taking it a second time, and I felt that my extracurriculars were strong enough to apply. While I would not be a top quartile applicant, I could be fairly competitive in the middle tier of medical schools.

Medical School

With two more interviews (University of Kentucky and University of Toledo) I’m starting to get worried about my chances of getting in. I interviewed at University of Cincinnati early February and just got put on the wait list earlier this week. The entire process has been fairly stressful and there are a lot of places on my application that are kind of weak.

What went wrong

A few things that I would have done differently if I could have done everything over:

1. Apply early - I heard some people say to do this but I didn’t realize the gravity of the situation until it was too late. Only after going through the process did I realize how much I jeopardized my chances of even getting a chance to interview by submitting my applications so close to the deadlines. Many people have their primaries in as soon as they can (around July) but I didn’t get those in until around early October. This meant that my secondary submissions were also pushed back until around November and December. Almost all schools will give out more spots earlier in the application cycle. My initial thinking was that since medical school applications are looked at in batches, the earlier people will most likely be the over achieving crowd that will have very exceptional applications. My application would probably be weak in comparison so I would have a better chance applying later with people who would not have as strong of an application. I’m not sure how I led myself to believe that but it was a pretty big mistake.
2. I really should have had a lot more clinical experience on my application. I do volunteering but it’s mostly through Alpha Phi Omega so it’s not really very clinical based. Another thing is shadowing - I only shadowed one physician. I shadowed a plastic surgeon for 5 days straight (10 hours a day) which I think is beneficial in that it allowed me to really see what an entire week would be like for a surgeon. The downside is that I only shadowed one surgeon so it could be seen that I don’t have a wide enough scope of the medical field.
3. Neither my MCAT nor my GPA was that high. I took the MCAT twice and improved a lot from the first to the second time, but even then my MCAT was only a 33. I’m a huge procrastinator by nature and my plan for MCAT studying was no different. I waited until very late to study and there is just too much material to go over. In order to properly prepare for the MCAT, many people spend several months. I only spent about 3 weeks. My GPA suffered from having a lot of science classes every semester. I never had a semester taking fewer than 17 credit hours and had 3 semesters with 19 or more hours. Not all the schools will give consideration to the difficulty of an engineering curriculum so the GPA probably hurt my chances at a few schools.
4. Ask for letters of recommendation earlier. I didn’t start asking for letters of recommendation until early August. Part of this was that I wasn’t sure if I was going to apply for medical school and wanted to wait for my MCAT score before I decided. I had already scored a very high score on the GRE when I took it back in May so I was pretty confident about my chances at grad school. I told myself that if I could get a decent score on the MCAT I would go ahead and give medical school a shot since I had already done much of the work in preparation for medical school. It was pretty stressful waiting for 2 or more months for the people I asked to get their letters of recommendation in. This also created the problem that I procrastinated further since I reasoned that it wouldn’t matter until they got their letter in. This is absolutely not true as you can submit primaries without the letters so I could have done that much sooner.

What went right

Some things that I think I did right:

1. I have quite a few extracurricular activities and the important thing is that I was dedicated to a few specific activities and even held leadership positions. My involvement in student government and my role in Kendo club hopefully helped bolster my application.
2. Strong research and work experience. I do some sort of research every summer and started as early as my Freshman year. I worked for two summers at the University of Kentucky at the Biomedical Engineering department working on polymers that would be used in orthopedic applications. I spent the summer and fall of my Senior year working at a co-op at Philips Healthcare. I was a verification and validation intern in the CT division but also got some experience working with PET machines. This was a really great experience and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. I learned a lot about how industry works as well as how imaging equipment works.

Backup Plan?

As a backup option I also applied to a few graduate schools for a masters degree in Biomedical Engineering. I applied to University of Pittsburgh, Duke University, and Case Western Reserve University. I just got my acceptance to the program at Duke University which is great news since they’re consistently ranked in the top 5 by US News. I need to give my response by April 15th. I’m not sure whether I will go there if I don’t get into medical school. My fear is that I will become complacent once I start graduate school. There is a high chance that once I start graduate school I will give up on hopes of going to medical school since I would already be at least one year into the graduate program. I also wouldn’t want to waste the money that I spend during that first year of relocation, tuition, etc. so I would most likely just finish my degree and go into industry.

I guess I can’t do much more than try my best at these next two interviews and then see where I am come early April. I won’t hear back from the wait list status of schools until May 15th so I will need to decide on what to do about graduate school before then. It will be a pretty big gamble if I just depend on getting in off of wait lists, but it could be well worth it.

This is only my second convention so I can only speak from limited experience. Overall it was pretty enjoyable and it was quite fun to cosplay for the first time even if not very many people knew who Strider was. It was pretty funny to have the random Subway guy yell “Strider!” when I walked by on Friday morning.

As far as panels, I would say that none of them were that spectacular. The props workshop run by …And Sewing is Half the Battle was full of useful information on a variety of different materials. The AMV Contest was interesting and had a lot of good entries, but also had at least a few that were not so great. I was disappointed with how the Gunpla Building panel was run and am seriously considering running my own panel for Colossalcon in the summer.

The attendance for Ohayocon was really great and I got to see a lot of really well done cosplays. I’ve only been to Colossalcon before so this was a much bigger convention in comparison. It seemed like the organization of the convention was a bit lacking and I’m not sure if it’s due to the larger size.

I participated in the masquerade in the craftsmanship competition and it ended up being kind of a headache for me. It was really great to get my work judged so I can at least get feedback, but while I was waiting for the actual walking across the stage, my belt fell apart again and it would not hold with the white tape that I had with me. I ended up having to hold it on the left side as I walked across the stage and I ended up having the side that’s facing the stage come apart. I saw a picture after and I felt really embarrassed.

Well, on to a list of some of the pros and cons of the convention:

PROS

Staff
Thanks to all the staff who donated all their time to ensure that the convention is able to function. The security staff who inspected my sword even complimented me on the construction. It was nice to see the staff actually interact and not be robots about doing their jobs. I have read a lot about people complaining about certain gophers/staff who were less than pleasant but fortunately I did not run into any such people.

Organization
Overall the event was fairly well organized with plenty of staff/gophers everywhere. While the printed schedule was not always accurate, the staff did their best to keep an updated schedule on the projector.

Panels
There was a large selection of panels to choose from so I feel that everyone should be able to find at least one or two panels that they wanted to attend. There were a lot of activities and panels spread out throughout the day so I had very few times where I felt lost about what do to.

Cosplay
There was a large amount of cosplay and I was really impressed with a lot of the costumes. I really enjoy talking to cosplayers who make their own costumes because they are usually a lot more enthusiastic about explaining how they made certain parts of it.

CONS

Staff
I was getting on to the elevator when one security staff asked to see my sword (which was already tagged with a zip-tie on the handle) and made sure to inspect it even though there was already a zip-tie on it. All that needed to be done was to ask if it had already been checked and if had not been checked to inform me about where to get it inspected. There is no need to ask for the actual weapon AS I’m stepping into the elevator with my hands full of other things as well.

Rave
I’m listing this down here just because so many people have complained about it. I’m not much of a rave person, but went and checked it out with a few friends. The line was long, but as it has already been addressed it is because of fire code, which falls under legal rules. If you don’t like it complain to the government and safety board, not to the con staff. Second, I also felt that the DJ was spending a lot of time talking. The music wasn’t exactly for me, but that’s my personal preference (meaning I don’t want to argue about the music choice).

Panels
I would like to echo previous comments I’ve heard regarding disorganization of a lot of the panels. I was there for the one group that took over the room for a “singles dating” panel because they couldn’t find the people for the panel that was originally there (I believe it was some type of late-night comedy thing). They seemed very unprofessional and after people realized they were not joking about the original panel being canceled it cleared out about 80% of the room.

Several other panels I attended had panelists that were not prepared to run the panel. I understand hectic schedules, but poor time management is no excuse to run a bad panel. Part of the reason I have been wanting to continue attending conventions is the panels and I was sorely disappointed with quite a few panels.

Another issue I would like to touch on is panelists who are drinking. I know that drinking is allowed as long as you are over 21, but it detracts from the professionalism of the panelist. I didn’t respect what the panelists had to say as much because I felt that they were not taking the panel seriously and were just there drinking and having some laughs even though it was supposed to be an informational panel.

Photoshoots
It would have been nice to have a listing of the photoshoots on the schedule or in the program. I wanted to take some pictures of some of the photoshoots but wasn’t sure where all of them were being held.

Map
It would have helped to have a better map of the areas. It does not help me much for it to just list all the rooms as “gaming” or “panel” when I have never been to the convention before. I spent some time initially trying to orient myself and had to ask for directions several times.

So it’s been a while since I posted any update on the cosplay progress, but I have in fact been diligently working on it. Since last time I have been mostly working on adding many many layers of papier mache to the belt as well as making everything else such as the grappling hook with accompanying sheath. I also adjusted (had to resew it) the shoulder straps so the horizontal part across the back would be up higher.

Cypher Sword

I was not completely happy with how the cypher sword turned out from before since I could still see some of the wood grain on the blade near the hilt. I put on a few layers of gesso on the entire sword including the large block-like hilt. After layers of gesso I then proceeded to sand the entire thing using a nail block (yes, the ones found in the cosmetic aisle of the store) and then wet sand with 400 grit sandpaper. The gesso actually becomes easier to sand when using water; I just needed to constantly wipe down all the surfaces. After this I primed the entire thing using gray Automotive primer and then coated it with about 3 layers of the metallic paint again.

My biggest mistake was at this step. During the third coat I thought the paint coming from the can wasn’t going to be flat enough when dry so I sprayed a bit more on in hopes that it would self-level. At this point I noticed that I had put so much paint on there that it was starting to run down the thin edge of the blade. I ended up having to sand down one entire side of the blade, re-gesso it and do the whole painting of that side again. The second time I learned to just spray one layer and walk away no matter what I thought about it. This resulted in a nice smooth finish without any problems.

[View with PicLens]

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Belt

The belt had about 7-10 layers of papier mache painstakingly applied to it. I had said before that I wanted to use magnets for the belt so I ended up cutting the belt in two places and used a pin vise to drill out holes for magnets. I used neodymium magnets from K&J Magnetics (Grade N50, 5.4mm x 4.5mm disc magnets). These magnets are very strong and will not hold with just duct tape so I had to add two layers of papier mache on top of that to make sure they would stay. I’ve left off a lot of detail about the trial and error into constructing the area where the two parts of the belt attach and even now it’s not completely perfect. The entire thing was covered in gesso which is where it stands right now.

[View with PicLens]

Grappling Hook + Sheath

The grappling hook was made to be a static object, not like the one in the game that is constructed of three pieces to extend. The compressed version looks like a dagger with a curved hand guard. I made the dagger using 4 layers of cardboard duct taped together with a piece that extended into a piece of 3/4″ PVC pipe. The hilt was made using pieces of cardboard in the shape of a box.

The hand guard was made using a piece of aluminum foil since it would be able to hold its shape fairly well. The entire thing (grappling hook + hand guard) was covered with a few layers of papier mache. This was then covered in gesso, primed, and painted using metallic paint.

The end of the handle for both the grappling hook and the cypher were made using a cap for 3/4″ PVC pipe that was cut and placed on. The open end was covered with a piece of cardboard and then coated with gesso. The handles were wrapped with brown ribbon from Michael’s. They are currently secured using scotch tape looped to crate double sided tape. I just simply wrapped the handle in one direction with a constant diagonal motion.

The sheath was made using cardboard using the dagger as a template for size reference. This was also covered in papier mache and gesso.

[View with PicLens]

Wrappings

I initially had some white cloth from the discount bin at the fabric store, but it will be hard for it to stay in place when I use it to wrap my forearms, legs, and feet. I will be getting some gauze from the store that will stick to itself instead.

To Do

• Paint the sheath for the grappling belt
• Paint the belt
• Make zori sandals
• Buy some gauze

Some pictures of the painted shirt from last time:

[View with PicLens]

I constructed the base for the belt last night using cardboard and duct tape. I ordered some neodymium (rare earth) magnets to be used for various parts of my props.

Belt

I took a look at all the reference pictures along with what other people have done for their cosplays. From what I can tell it seems like the belt is a series of connected boxes, the purpose I’m guessing is to store things. I decided to do a total of 14 segments to the belt. I also plan on making two functional compartments to carry around my cell phone and stuff from my wallet. My waist is 28 inches so this construction will not work for everyone. Based on my waist size, I made the boxes to be 2.5 inches square on the face and a depth of 1.5 inches.

I cut out all of the necessary pieces out of corrugated cardboard to make sure it’s strong enough (corrugated is significantly thicker and stronger than the stuff for cereal boxes). I cut out a total of 28 2.5 inch squares and 56 1.5 x 2.5 inch side pieces. While watching various TV shows I assembled all 14 boxes using duct tape. Since I wanted to have 2 functional compartments and each of the boxes are fairly small, I will be combining two boxes for each of the functional compartments. Initial testing shows my cell phone can fit, but my wallet is too large. I should still be able to put the stuff from my wallet in there, just the actual wallet is slightly too large. I connected the remaining 10 boxes into two sets of 5 and then temporarily connected everything together into one chain to do a test fit. It ended up being just enough to fit around my waist, but in all the pictures it is actually lower on one side. I ended up constructing one more box to add on.

The hard part was getting the shape of the entire belt to be set and not have it flop around. I put the belt around my wait and placed strips of duct tape around the outside to secure the shape. Then I layered duct tape on the top and bottom and then covered the entire thing in one more layer of duct tape. At this point I realized that I would have trouble making the lid for the compartment hinged since it’s a curved section (pretty much all the sections are curved so there’s no way around this). I debated for a while whether or not to use magnets to attach the lid and have the entire piece be able to come off, but my main concern was whether it would destroy the magnetic strip of credit cards and similar cards. I found some neodymium (rare earth) magnets online from K&J Magnetics that would be small enough such that they are strong at small distances, but would have a small magnetic field at even an inch away (magnetic fields drop with respect to distance squared). The price of the magnets was holding me up since I didn’t want to spend too much more, but I decided I would have to have at least some magnets since the belt is rigid and I will not be able to put it on if it doesn’t come apart in two halves.

Fabric Paint

Spent about an hour painting the 飛 character onto the shirt, which took about 6 coats since it’s red paint onto blue fabric. I used Scribbles 3D paint from Michaels which cost me about $1 for an 1 oz bottle. Hand brushing it yields much smoother results than squeezing it from the bottle in my opinion. I first traced the design and then cut it out of paper. I pinned the design to the fabric along with a piece of cardboard under it to prevent the paint from bleeding to the back of the shirt. I then used the fabric paint straight from the bottle but brushed it on instead of using the applicator bottle. After drawing in the outline using the pinned cutout, I removed the cutout and painted within the lines. The first layer or two looks crappy since it doesn’t cover well enough. After 3-4 layers it actually looked a lot more like a true red. The trick is to paint in thin layers. By the time I finished the entire design for one coat the first part was ready for a second coat. By going in the same order every time I ensured that it was dry before the next coat.

Full drying time is listed as 24 hours so I’m leaving it overnight before I attempt to do anything to the fabric.

To Do

• Make the grappling hook/dagger thing along with the holster for it
• Finish the construction of the belt
• Gesso and paint everything
• Probably will redo the sword even though it’s already painted (not completely happy with how it turned out so I might try to gesso it since I didn’t do that the first time)
• Make the sandals

Still quite a few things left to do so I hope I can get it all done in time.

In progress pictures of the belt:

[View with PicLens]

This is a shorter update as I didn’t do as much.

Arm Straps

I got the arm straps done with the help of my mom. We used premade bias tape from Hancock Fabric (like Joann). The specific information is that it was 1″ wide brown bias tape for quilting. This means that it is a bit thicker than some of the other bias tape there. The width of the bias tape was pretty much spot on and at a cost of under $2 for 3 yards that’s not too bad. We ended up having to get a second package to finish it.

Going along the lines of planning it out first, we happened to have a piece of ribbon from a gift that someone gave us for Christmas that just happened to be the right length to measure everything. The straps consist of one long piece across the entire back, two loops from that straight piece over the shoulder, and then two loops that go around the outside of the arms.

The actual sewing was pretty straightforward since we just had to stitch the sides of the bias tape together. We were able to use the entire 3 yard length for everything excluding the loops around the outside of the arms. The forward loops and the straight back were stitched together with the tape folded over at a 45 degree angle.

In the reference images you can see two buckles in the front where the outside loops attach to the forward loop. We decided to make this an actual functional loop that would allow for adjustment of the outside loop. The buckles were bought at Hancock for about $3 and it was put together much like a shoulder bag strap.

I think the straps came out pretty nice and from a distance it actually looks a bit like leather.

Colossalcon this past summer was my first anime convention and I had a lot of fun so I am planning on attending Ohayocon 10 at the end of Jan, 2010. One of the largest aspects of anime conventions is cosplay. For those who do not know, cosplay is dressing up as some character from a show, game, movie, or anything else. Basically people pick characters they like and dress up like them.

My planned cosplay is Strider Hiryu from Marvel vs. Capcom, an arcade fighting game a friend introduced me to back in high school. I only played the first one so I will be basing the cosplay on the character design from the first one.

The bulk of the clothing has been completed since that’s what I worked on when I went home for break. My mom helped out a lot since she has a sewing machine and a good amount of experience with it. The woodworking was done by myself with a few tips from my stepfather. This is my first time doing any sort of cosplay so there is certainly a lot that I can improve, but I see this mostly as a learning opportunity. Hopefully it will allow me to pick up a lot more skills like sewing, woodworking, and painting.

Pants

The pants were probably the easiest part of the clothing. We first watched a video on Youtube to get an idea of how other people made the pattern. Then we took a pair of pajamas, turned it inside out and took a look at the shape of the front and back piece of cloth. We decided the best way to approach it would be to cut four pieces of fabric, one for each leg front and back. The hardest part about it was to put curvature at the top for it to conform better to the body as well as account for a few inches extra when sitting down.

As far as stitching everything together, the two halves of the front were joined as well as the two parts for the back. After that, the front and back were joined and then all the edges were hemmed to make it look better cosmetically as well as prevent the edge from fraying. An elastic band was put in to serve as a waistband.

Shirt/Vest

The shirt looks like it is similar to the Japanese “gi” except that there are no sleeves. Unfortunately I did not bring my kendo gi and hakama home so there was no really good template to have on hand. We ended up using a T-shirt as the base template and constructing it out of a total of 3 pieces - one for the back and one for each side of the front. The right half will fold over to the left first and then the left flap will fold over to the right. The left side will be the one that will be most visible when completed.

One of the tough parts was finding the right curvature for the two halves to make the V-cut in the front look right. We first used newspaper to make the pattern and to get an idea of what the finished product will look like.

The sewing of the three parts was relatively straightforward. The one additional detail is the addition of approximately one inch bias tape on the collar and around the edge of the two halves of the front. Bias tape needs to be cut at a 45 degree diagonal in relation to the fibers of the cloth. The other tricky part was the sleeve since it shouldn’t be too short or too long.

Cypher Sword

Strider’s signature weapon is his cypher called the Falchion. The cypher is triangular in shape but fairly long, about the length of the legs. There are two handles, much like a tonfa. I had great difficulty in getting any good reference pictures for this and spent a lot of time deliberating over how to make it. I sketched up a rough design in Solidworks but when it finally came time to make it I decided to redraw it by hand. I settled on using the sprite sheet from the original Marvel vs. Capcom as my base reference.

I am using some leftover wood we have (I believe it’s from when we finished our basement). The wood is 3/4″ thick whitewood, which comes from spruce and is similar to pine but a little less dense and is also softer. The handles are constructed from PVC pipe and I am using a T shape connector at the center. There are pictures with the shorter handle (the one perpendicular to the handle in line with the blade) both in the same plane as the edge of the blade as well as on the plane of the flat of the blade. I will be going with the handle in the plane of the edge of the blade as it is the logical way for him to execute the attacks shown in the game.

Insert picture with dimensions.

After drawing the design of the blade onto the surface of the wood, I cut a scrap piece of wood first that had the same angle as the angle that the blade is shaped. This will allow me to still use the guide rail on the table saw I’m using. The problem is that the angle is very shallow so even with the piece of wood and the guide rail it was still difficult to get the cut accurate. I more or less free-handed the second side and ended up going in about 1/16 of an inch about halfway down. It’s not too noticeable but when I compare the two sides I can see where it’s at. The faces were also cut at an angle to make it more like an actual blade, but I kept about 1/4″ thickness even at the edge to  make sure it would be structurally sound.

The handle was cut partway with the table saw and finished off with a hand saw and chisel. This is becuase the table saw cuts more of the wood at the bottom as opposed to the surface which is only important when not making a complete through cut. The handle was cut to fit inside 3/4″ PVC pipe (inside diameter) so I had to file down the corners of the handle to make it rounder (basic trigonometry in action). The PVC size was chosen because of the maximum thickness of the wood.

The next step was to cover the handle in Gorilla Glue and then let it sit for about 10 minutes. The glue will expand some during this time. During that time I secured the PVC handle to the T connector using PVC primer and cement. If you use that be sure to act quickly since it sets in about 30 seconds. After inserting the Gorilla Glue coated handle into the PVC+connector, I let it sit overnight. The next morning the glue had expanded to fill the inside of the pipe, ensuring a secure bond.

I had a lot of difficulty with building up the trapezoidal part covering the connector on the weapon. I first cut out the shape I wanted using ceral box cardboard and attached about 3 layers on each side with some Bondo to help fill the space since the connector sits at a larger thickness compared to the actual blade. This was then covered up using papier mache with a mixture of flour and water as the glue. I applied about 10 layers of papier mache using a hair dryer to speed up the process and allowing me to do more than just one layer a day. After getting the rough shape I tried to use some plastic wood (a type of wood putty) to cover the outside and provide a smooth surface to paint on. The wood putty did not go on as well as I had hoped and it didn’t bond very well since it would just break off when I tried to sand the edges. After getting it as smooth as I could I covered it with an additional layer of the papier mache glue, which actually self leveled some. The entire thing was then primed using Rust-Oleum Automotive Primer (same stuff I use for my models) and then sanded using 100 and 400 grit sandpaper. Then the whole thing was primed again and wet sanded using 400 grit sandpaper. Finally I covered it using Rust-Oleum metallic spray paint in a silver color. It’s shiny, but not quite a mirror finish like chrome or polished silver. I’m not completely satisfied with how it turned out and might have to repaint it later but for now I need to work on all the other props.

To Do

• Paint red kanji onto shirt
• Make grappling hook and holder on back
• Make the brown straps for his arms
• Make the white belt
• Tabi socks
• Sandals
• White bandages for arms, ankles, and feet
• Red cloth for wrapping waist and for the face mask + scarf

All of the in progress shots of the sword:

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So in my previous post I talked about how sometime during my Windows 7 install my Samsung 1 TB drive failed. What happened is one of the times Windows 7 was starting up all of a sudden my drive became inaccessible and Windows was claiming that it needed to be formatted to be used. Closer inspection of the drive showed that it was 33 MB and was apparently using the RAW file system. I know that the file system was previously NTFS and the drive size is obviously incorrect.

I’ve dealt with my fair share of hard drive problems so I started with what I usually do - check and try to repair partition tables and the Master Boot Record (MBR). I usually use Partition Table Doctor, Paragon Partition Manager and others. None of them were able to rectify the problem, which for me was becoming problematic. The data that I have on that drive is very valuable since it has all my school stuff. I really regretted not having a separate external backup drive and also for having my “backup” drive connected to the desktop while doing the install. It was too late to regret my mistakes - I desperately needed to find a way to fix this hard drive and get the data off of it.

Some of the programs allowed me to see the partition table in a partially restored state (some of it was still missing) so at this point I was considering taking as many files as I could off of the drive and just reformatting the drive. Bobby suggested that I boot it up using a Linux LiveCD to see if I could actually see the files. Using Ubuntu 9.04, I was able to see all the files. I was overjoyed that all my data was still there in perfect condition. So that eliminated the possibility of the data being corrupt. Since the partition table tools didn’t work either, I felt that this must be something different.

I made a post to Tech Support Forums:

I have a 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint drive as my media drive in my desktop. I was doing a install of windows 7 on my computer over the weekend (onto the primary 300 GB Seagate drive), but somewhere during the install my Samsung drive stopped being recognized. This is important as I made my backups of important documents to this Samsung drive. I know it was dumb of me to have it be a connected drive that I have my data backed up onto, but in the future I will definitely invest in having an external backup method.

I have tried TestDisk, Paragon Partition Manager and both of them state that the drive is being recognized as 31.8 MB (in TeskDisk the CHD is 32 32 63), but after looking around on the internet I found that it should be 121601 255 63 for the CHD. Even with that being changed in TestDisk I could not see anything more than just one folder when I go to “List”, but from other data recovery programs such as Zero Assumption Recovery I could see more of the partition table since it lists other folders (not all, but a lot more than just one). I looked through the guide posted on this forum about using TestDisk, but I was worried that since I couldn’t see anything even under “List”, writing that partition table wouldn’t work.

I have a friend who suggested that I boot from a Linux live CD to see if I can see the data, but what other options do I have?

That describes in more detail some more information about the failure including the TestDisk output. This is the original text of the post, but I actually made a typo - CHD should actually be CHS (cylinder, head, sector - physical information about the hard drive).

The response from the forum was to copy the data in Linux and reformat the drive. Along with that response there was the suggestion to look into this tool that would restore hard drive capacity. I used the tool but it didn’t work and gave the following error:

Hard drive is not accessible or damage in some way. Therefore factory capacity cannot be recovered. Please try to run this program on another platform.

This was disheartening since I thought this tool would for sure solve the problem. After reading the comments section of that article, I found out that a lot of people were having problems with the Samsung Spinpoint 1 TB, specifically Samsung HD103UJ, and many people were having it be recognized as somewhere around 32 MB. The fact that everyone had the same problem meant that someone else was probably able to fix it meaning that I would be able to fix it. Some people said that the tool worked but there were many other people who had it fail (like me) and they were able to fix it through other means.

Samsung came out with a tool where you could change a setting which would change the hard drive size, but people claimed that it was a non-reversible process. The setting is turning off 48-bit LBA mode. At the very least, the same tool couldn’t change it back, but the Atola tool could fix this.

[Information about the 1 TB issue from the Seagate forum]

The one that finally worked is something that I would never have thought of - updating the BIOS on my motherboard. Apparently the Gigabyte motherboard (and possibly other Taiwanese ones) had some problem with this and they had a BIOS update to fix this problem sometime late 2007. My motherboard BIOS was from July 2007 and was before this update. After updating the BIOS and rebooting my hard drive was recognized and everything was in perfect shape!

So it’s been a long time since I’ve made any posts on here. I’ve been pretty busy over the summer with around 50 hours of work in the lab per week. I’m also taking 20 credit hours this semester to pick up a math minor and combined with all the medical school stuff it really wears down on my spare time.

This weekend was fall break so I decided to take this time to install Windows 7 (I know I’m a bit late on installing it since it got leaked all the way back in July). I’ve been running the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) on my laptop since about May so I thought it was about time I transitioned to Windows 7 on my desktop as well. Windows 7 is scheduled to be released on October 22, so this isn’t that much in advance. Besides, my desktop has been having trouble shutting down sometimes - not sure what’s going on but sometimes it’ll freeze on the screen that says that Windows is shutting down. I didn’t have Vista on either system and even though XP ran fine on my desktop I felt satisfied enough with Windows 7 to make the switch.

Last time I installed Windows 7 I did it using an external drive. I didn’t have a large enough USB so I had a 4 GB partition on one of my external drives for the purpose of installing Windows. I used that same partition and copied all the files for the Retail Ultimate copy onto that partition after deleting the RC files. I plugged it in via USB and went about the install. The USB external enclosure was not cooperating so I just hooked it up inside the desktop. Another thing that I want to mention at this point is that my desktop has 2 SATA drives, a Seagate 300 GB for system files and games, and a Samsung Spinpoint 1 TB drive for media files (movies, TV shows, music, etc.). I had backed up all of my files including school stuff onto the 1 TB drive since I don’t have a dedicated external drive for backups.

When I restarted the computer and selected the install drive from the boot menu everything seemed to go pretty smoothly. It was when it got to restarting the computer to finish the install that it started to go downhill. The first time it got stuck on a black screen. No good. I restarted the computer and this time it was even worse - as the computer was booting up I was greeted with the following message:

BOOTMGR is missing

Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

I thought to myself that it was just a minor issue and that I could just repair the install. That didn’t work. I was able to finally get it to boot if I went to the boot menu and selected the install drive to boot from. So at this point I realized that Windows must have written part of the boot files on the install drive while the system files were on the Seagate SATA drive. Great. That just means I’m going to have to reinstall the system. I was relieved to find a DVD-RW sitting in a pile of stuff so it would be perfect to use to install the OS. The DVD burner on my desktop wasn’t being recognized since it was treating the install drive with higher priority for the same hardware location. It wasn’t a big deal to fix it right then since my laptop could also burn DVDs and I can just transfer the file over the home network. Some time between finding the DVD-RW and burning the image on my laptop my 1 TB drive failed. Also, I had burned the wrong thing since I just burned the files from the image and not the actual image itself so the DVD wasn’t bootable. I could reburn the install image, but that was on the failed hard drive.

I’ll detail the rest of the hard drive problems in a following post.

I re-downloaded the image for the install disk and burned that to the DVD-RW and reinstalled the system. This time everything went smoothly since I disconnected all other drives to ensure that it would be installed correctly.

So far Windows 7 has been pretty good, nothing out of the ordinary. Install time was about an hour. Boot up and shut down times are fast, which is to be expected of any new OS install.

I’ll try to get some pictures of the install process up whenever I have some time to get around to it.

I have Professor Blackwell for EMAC 351 this semester. I’ve actually had him before for EMAC 276, but it seems like this time around he’s gotten even more hilarious. He’s this quirky English professor with white hair who’s probably in his late 50s. He graduated from Leeds University in England many decades ago.

Sometimes he will go on tangents and start telling stories about things from back when he was a student or something else unrelated to Physical Chemistry but still very interesting (often a lot more interesting than Physical Chemistry). At the end of the story he realizes that he’s been talking for almost 5 minutes and then proceeds to say “….but I digress….” He gets really into his stories and it’s funny to see him get all worked up and excited. One story that he told was about how back when he was a student he had the opportunity to use the computer they had at Leeds, which was set up in a church next to the campus (apparently Leeds had bought some of the local churches as well as other property). He said that he remembers how the light coming in through the stained glass windows made the computer seem all that much more glorious. The story actually started when he mentioned that he had used that computer to calculate in 30 minutes what it took scientists in India weeks to compute by hand.

Some of his stories are really funny I should start documenting them. This post was written a bit late so I can’t remember that much more right now.

So I went to go do some laundry at the school dorms just now (I don’t actually live at the dorms anymore, but the laundry machines are nice and it’s pretty cheap) and my school card got declined. It has a magnetic stripe that allows it to be used for access to buildings as well as used as a means of payment. The only problem with magnetic stripes is that apparently they get worn down over time. I’ve had mine for four years and it seems like there’s an area of it that’s a bit scuffed so that might be the problem.

The school has actually been making the move toward using the card’s RFID chip for proximity RFID readers for building access instead of having to swipe the magnetic stripe. This makes it easier since you don’t have to actually take the card out but it also leads to some humorous sights such as people with the card in their backpack swinging around and jumping to get it to read the card.

So the worst part about the card is that I was now left without a means of paying for the laundry machines since I did not forsee this issue. I saw the vending machines and thought I could use them to get some quarters. After putting in a dollar and pressing the coin return button I was rewarded by the sound of change dropping down. One, two, three, four coins….five coins, six…. at this point I was wondering if I was getting more than a dollar back. Much to my dismay, when I opened the coin slot they were all dimes. This was of no help since the machines only took quarters. I managed to find 5 quarters but I needed to do two loads of laundry at $1 each and also use the drier which is 75 cents. Luckily there was another guy there who had just gotten $10 worth of quarters and let me get $2 worth of quarters from him in exchange for cash.

Is it that much to ask that the vending machines next to the laundry machines give quarters in change?