Inside Joe's Head » How to’s/DIY

Recovering Data – A Brief Review of Different Software and Personal Experience

Joe Philipson — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:36:12 +0000

I have tons of hard drives. Right now, on my desk I have (2) 250GB Drives (1) 500GB Drive and a 160GB Drive. Roughly two months ago I plugged in my hard drive. Probably my most important hard drive because this was the hard drive that I backed up and relocated all my master photos too. I had wedding photos, birthdays, photos I cherished and loved. When I plugged in this hard drive I was shocked to find that all the data had vanished! It was all gone except for some abstract file. I thought the external Hard Drive enclosure had failed. (BTW NEVER! Buy Compusa’s homebrand External Hard Drive enclosures, I’ve gone through about 3 in a year and keep getting them replaced via warranty)

I realized that the hard drive was spinning up, it showed that the entire hard drive had free space. So it wasn’t broken, just that ALL my files had mysteriously deleted themselves.

I now have been trying to 2 months to recover the data off this hard drive. I’ve tried several programs both for mac and PC. The hard drive wasn’t broken the files were just gone. I original had the hard drive formatted FAT32 so it could work on both mac and pc which I didn’t realize until later that made the hard drive incredibly unstable.

Here are some programs that I tried:

Disk Warrior (Mac) – Probably a great program but will not help you recover deleted files

PC Inspector File Recovery (PC) – This free application probably works well with small hard drives or flash drives but was frustrating to work with with my hard drive. After leaving the program on for a week straight I only got to 32% recovery before it would crash. I tried several times but it kept crashing.

PC Inspector Smart Recovery (PC) – Same issues as above. Very unstable took what seemed an eternity.

Free Undelete (PC) -Ã‚Â Probably works well with small devices but couldn’t handle major tasks.

Data Rescue II (Mac) – I am so happy with this program that I’m writing this blog article so you can understand my frustration and relief. This program is amazingly fast compared to the ones listed above and totally reliable! My problem with the software above is that when my hard drive would stop responding, which I have yet to figure out, the program would crash. However, with Data Rescue II I can save where I left off, reboot the hard drive and resume from where I left off…

As of this moment I have retrieved 45/250GB but am doing it so much faster that I have no worries

Tie a Tie in 10 seconds

Joe Philipson — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 01:04:41 +0000

I wish I knew about this before I went into college. Having to wear a tie everyday! This could also come in handy if you work a retail job.

Ã‚Â Enjoy!

Fastest Way To Tie A Tie – A New Genus Record – Click here for the funniest movie of the week

How to: Vignette a Photo Joe Style

Joe Philipson — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 23:47:47 +0000

I get people asking me how I vignette photos easily in photoshop. Why would you want to vignette in the first place? Well, artist and painters have been doing it for hundreds of years to bring the eyes to certain parts/subjects of the paintings. This effect is also helpful in photography in bringing a person’s eyes to a certain part of the photograph. Most times this is a subtle effect but other times it isn’t meant to be. Just depends on the photo and your style. The following is going to be a quick and easy way to add vignettes to your photo. I’m not saying it’s the best or fastest or whatever. It’s just the way I do it.

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1. First open your picture. I picked possibly the worst example for this but here we go:

2. Create a new layer

3. Choose your Gradient tool. Make sure your colors are default black and white:

4. Make sure you’re set Transparent to Black:

5. Select Radial:

6. Click the center of the photo and drag all the way out:

7. That’s pretty much it. If you want to decrease the amount of your vignette you can lower it’s opacity. You can do that by selecting the layer you want to change, then reducing it’s opacity:

Hope that helps. It was my first tutorial ever… Hope this helps you make your very own vignettes.

—-

Oh yeah, I forgot Before and After images. Click to enlarge:

Before:

After:

Instructables DIY: Laser Flashlight Hack!

Joe Philipson — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:56:10 +0000

Laser Flashlight Hack! – video powered by Metacafe

DIY: Egg Canon

Joe Philipson — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 20:16:56 +0000

Egg Gun Revealed – video powered by Metacafe

Papercraft – Gizmodo

Joe Philipson — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 23:43:18 +0000

Papercraft – Gizmodo
Now you can bamboozle everybody in the iPhone line with this new and improved iPhone papercraft model. Just print it on some thick paper, cut it out and discreetly tape it together, and everybody will think you’ve already gotten your iPhone like Mossy and Pogue.

Fix You Eye Glasses with Nail Polish

Joe Philipson — Wed, 09 May 2007 02:10:16 +0000

After tightening, dab polish across the top for a longer-lasting fix [and] escape from the Revenge of the Nerds look that a masking-tape fix would give you.

11 Tips for Better Candid Photography

Joe Philipson — Fri, 04 May 2007 02:33:15 +0000

11 Tips for Better Candid Photography

Some really good basic rules to follow…

How to Climb Palm Trees.

Joe Philipson — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 07:55:43 +0000

Really easy:
1) Climb on the arch of your foot, this will give you the most traction. To do this turn your feet like the Flinstones.
2) Pull yourself with your hands against the tree
3) Mimic the sloth
4) Do not be scared or look down, you may lose your balance and that will hurt. Which brings me to my last tip -
5) Do not fall

Here is a little video of how I do it:

Hang around until I post some tips on how to get down.

Creating Smoke in Photoshop

Joe Philipson — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 00:15:36 +0000

Creating Smoke | Abduzeedo by design
This:

To This: