The toy which erased $800,000 worth of data

Look at these small polished rocks. How much more innocent can something look? Yet they almost cost me $800,000 worth of data.

These things are magnetic, and when you throw them in the air close to each other, they will click together with a brrrrrrrrrr sounds, because they touch many times before they settle down. Just a small, silly toy.

Except the thing is, those things are very strongly magnetic. Therein lies a tale.

I run a web business for which I have data on my computer worth over $800,000. So of course I make an off-site back-up. I have a large external hard disk, which is stored at a friend's house. Today when I got the disk home to back up, these two thing were stuck to it. And when I plugged it in, there were no data on it. None, zip, nada, diddley-squat. The disk was named "volume" instead of what I had named it. When I checked the disk with DiskWarrior, the graph for the disk was one smooth gradient. Not one kilobyte of data on it to resque.

I don't know how the formatting data survived, I thought they were just data on the disk like the rest of it. But no matter, there's no doubt that these magnets had erased the disk. If I had actually needed the backup today, I'd have been frigged. Fortunately my data did not depend on this disk alone.

I called my friend, and he told me that it seems his little daughter must have placed the things on my disk. And before that, they had ruined two credit cards, a photographic light-meter, and a friend's CRT Television set. When his daughter placed them on the screen of the TV, they pulled in the rays to one spot, and burned out the screen!

I don't know how they stayed in the hands of the little girl after that, but I know that I'm not letting them near any of my electronics.

David Pogue once tested the story about not letting magnets near your disks. He found out that it is exaggerated, he did not succeed in erasing a single disk, no matter how hard he tried. It seems like he just did not have strong enough magnets!

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Update: here is a warning from a company which sells the "toy". The things can be harmful in all kinds of ways.

I got this email from them:

Thank you for your feedback.
It is the first time I hear that the chirping magnets have done some damage, as they are a lot weaker than all the other supermagnets we sell.

This is what we do in terms of warnings:

1) There is quite an extensive warning on our website concerning magnets in general.
2) There is a link to this warning-page from the footer of *every single* page from our website: It says: "Please read the important information regarding the handling of neodymium magnets!" and it links to the warning-page in 1)
3) Before a customer can complete the order with us he has to actively check the following check-box: "[ ] I have read and understand the important information regarding the handling of neodymium magnets.". In this sentence "important information" is again a link to 1). If you don't check that check-box you can't complete the order.
4) With each parcel we include the warnings *AGAIN* printed on *bright yellow paper*. The content of this leaflet can be seen here.
5) With each parcel comes a delivery sheet and/or an invoice. On this short letter we say in the third sentence: "Please note the enclosed leaflet with important information regarding the proper use of your new neodymium magnets."

I think we went to great length to ensure that each customer is reasonably informed. Please tell me, what we could do additionally to warn our customers? At some point the customer is in charge and has to take some responsibility too, I think.
BTW: We do not manufacture these magnets, we just sell them via our website. There are several hundred shops where you can buy these magnets and countless street-vendors as well.

Please feel free to publish above information on your blog - maybe some of your readers can suggest how we can improve our shop in this regard?

Kind regards
Matthias Ackermann
www.supermagnete.de

The Pusher trilogy

I am very impressed with how the Danish film industry has expanded in the past decade, both commercially/internationally and artistically.

It's no secret for instance that the "Dogma" film makers have had a big impact on the global film industry.

Different, but related, is the Pusher trilogy by Nicolas Winding Refn.

Basically I don't think there's been anything quite like it before. How often can you say that? The films are three loosely related stories about people stuck in the seedy underbelly of Copenhagen. They are highly realistic, often bloody, very seminal works of art.

They are not glamorous "gangster movies" by any measure. You can almost smell the fear and the sadness and the desperation that is seeped through these lives. And yet at the same time the films are captivating and interesting, and often funny. It's a monumental accomplishment.

I like the Hollywood blockbuster movie as much as anybody, but sometimes it's wonderful to see something groundbreaking, something different, something on the edge.

Noise and pictures

An Article by Mike Johnston about image noise and pictures and art.

Mike has some very good points. I think the grain in his Grimmy picture is irrelevant, or may even be enhancing it, making it more "documentary" looking.

I think noise can be distracting in two of my favorite areas: nudes and landscapes. In the first one I like smooth tones, and in the latter, I want detail.

And then on the other hand, Bill Brandt made wonderful nudes and landscapes with spectacularly grainy film. See:

Ed Wood and Tim Burton

"You should feel lucky. Eddie's the only fella in town who doesn't pass judgement on others." "That's right, if I did I wouldn't have any friends."

Funniest line I've heard all week. It's from the wonderfully quirky movie Ed Wood.

Johnny Depp is amazing. The range of mannerisms and personalities he can adapt. Awesome.

Here's another funny line. A very pompous announcer in a trailer for one of Ed's movies says: "We are all interested in the future, for that is where we will spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends: future events such as these will affect you in the future."

Ed Wood was made by Tim Burton, the man who gave us the best two of the Batman movies. In the second one (with Michelle Pfeiffer as the ssssexy Catwoman), when the Penguin walks in a grave yard, a head stone moves, obviously fake. I heard people making fun of it because of this, and understandably so, but I sensed it was an homage to Ed Wood, who was "not bothered by details". And I was right, in Ed Wood, a fake headstone moves in the making of Plan Nine From Outer Space, and Wood is not bothered, unlike the backers. I must say it's rather crazy and gutsy to sacrifice the believability of such a big movie for an homage that only a very tiny percentage of the audience would get. I'm surprised the studio let him get away with it.

By the way, I find it amazing that, apparently, a B/W movie will attract a much smaller audience than a color one. For me it's no issue. As a matter of fact I had seen ten minutes of Ed Wood before I noticed, "hey, this is a black and white movie".

Talking about Batman II, isn't it odd how Dany Devito as the Penguin just didn't work? He's a good actor, the make-up was cool, I can't put my finger on what was wrong, but it just didn't work.

One might say it is because they had made the Penguin a scary character instead of camp and silly one like he was in the comics. And that's true, but that's no reason it couldn't have worked in its own right. I don't know.

Girl with a Leica

1934, Alexander Rodchenko: 'Girl with a Leica'.


New Yorker Article about the Leica mystique. A bit breathless, but perhaps interesting.

I am not at all sure if the Leica is still really justified. The main reason for its original development was to create a super-compact camera. This succeeded admirably, but since the seventies the world has been awash with even more compact cameras, and many in fine quality.

Another reason was the quietness of the Leica. But according to reports, the new Leica M8 is actually noisier than some DSLR cameras.

Then there is the viewfinder, which in the seventies was much, much bigger and brighter than SLR finders. But times have changed, and SLR finders are very big and bright now. SLR viewfinders don't, sadly, show the world beyond the picture frame. But on the other hand they show just what you get, even with a zoom lens, and the picture is equally big even with a tele lens.

Then there's the excellent rangefinder system with a wide base. All well and good, but not only are SLR finders improved, they also have autofocus now. Admittedly reports are mixed as to whether this is faster than good autofocus for all people and situations.

Then there are the amazing (and very expensive) lenses... This is ironic, because the original Leica was a huge compromise in image quality, compared to large-format cameras which ruled 80 years ago. So now it has become the high-end alternative. And yet most people will not be able to tell the difference between a Leica M8 picture and one from a DSLR at half the price.

It's a weird world.

Waste not, want not

Always get married early in the morning. That way, if it doesn't work out, you haven't wasted a whole day.
-- Mickey Rooney

Ctein

Ctein (pronounced ka-tein) discusses image quality. What do we mean by "35mm quality"? And how much is enough?

Karloff

Boris Karloff in The Mummy. What a face that man had.
Plus of course the inspired work by the make-up artist, Jack Pierce (who also did Frankenstein's creature).

Providers...

Gotta love Motley Fool. I just found out I can save over £600 ($1200) on my powerbill per year by changing provider. That's not trivial.

OK, this is insane, though: with gas and electric and telephone, you can have different providers with hugely different rates. How can this be? They all use the same resources and the same pipes. Clearly the other companies must be renting use of the pipes from the original company which put up the pipes.

So after they buy the minutes or kilowatts, they can sell it to me, and do it way cheaper, and still make a profit??

In some instance, like international phone bills, the bill can be cut by 95%! What kind of insane profit is the first company making?

Somebody is getting futtbucked here, and and I suspect I know who.

Peace Pilgrim

The interesting Peace Pilgrim and her excellent speech.
Her talk about inner peace and the two inner forces is so wise.

"... Then came a wonderful morning when I woke up and knew that I would never have to descend again into the valley. I knew that for me the struggle was over, that finally I had succeeded in giving my life, or finding inner peace."

Like I expected, there's a book about her. I'm getting it.

I am wondering, since she walked in the US, how did she get from city to city? Isn't there often hundreds of kilometers of empty landscape (often desert) between cities in the US?

Pascal blog

Frequent commentator Pascal, MD from Lebanon, has a blog now.

"Inside Man"

Quick note: the Spike Lee film Inside Man is excellent. I am usually bored by "thrillers", because I'm hypersensitive to cliches and superficiality. But this one is fresh all the way, and gorgeously filmed too.