Entries from January 2008 ↓

The winners of DCist Exposed 2008 will be announced some time tomorrow. Wish me luck.

UPDATE1: None of my entries were chosen.  You can check out the winner’s gallery (which contains some wonderful shots) here.

Several months ago, I posted a list of questions that my wife and I used to ensure that we were getting useful information out of our interviews with child care providers. Of course, interviews are only part of the screening process. Parents will also want to verify provider licensing information, and ensure that the provider is compliant with applicable state (and local, but primarily state) laws.

Following are a few useful resources for Virginia parents:

• Search for licensed child care providers by provider name, county or zip code via the Virginia Department of Social Services - Provides licensing information, unannounced visit reports, and contact information for a given provider’s past inspector(s). You can also search for unlicensed providers via this system.
• Choosing Qualiy Child Care - A Resource Guide (PDF) - An overview of state-recognized child care options, and a number of very helpful forms, checklists, and reference documents.
• Child Day-Care Council code sections - The portion of the Virginia Administrative Code (state law) that applies to child day care providers, facility managers, etc. This is a great resource for determining whether a given provider meets the minimum requirements for staffing, space, equipment and safety.

Ran into a minor problem with a Compact Flash card that was loaned out (along with my Canon point-and-shoot). I assumed that the borrower had copied off all of his photos prior to returning it to me. Turns out that this wasn’t the case. And to complicate matters slightly, the card had been used since it was returned to me (not filled to capacity, but I’d taken around thirty pictures). How to recover these images (keeping in mind that this solution is not specific to Compact Flash–it should work just the same for SD, MiniSD, etc.).

I paid a quick visit to the Forensics Wiki’s page on data recovery tools and found two utilities right away: PhotoRescue and PhotoRec. Options. Swell.

I’m familiar with DataRescue (makers of the IDA Pro disassembly suite), and PhotoRescue allows you to view the results of the recovery pass(es) prior to purchasing the software, so I figured I’d give it a shot. As promised, it presented me with previews of a number of images (ninety-six, to be exact) available for recovery, then asked for $29. Not a lot of money, but not free (as in beer). On to PhotoRec.

I downloaded PhotoRec, only to find that the downloaded package name was actually testdisk-6.8.darwin.tar.bz2. Funny thing about that: I already have testdisk installed from MacPorts. And sure enough, a quick path check confirmed that the binary for photorec has been with me all along.

A recovery attempt with PhotoRec was as simple as:

photorec /d my_output_path /dev/disk1

This sets the output directory and device from which PhotoRec should recover data, then spawns a terminal-based wizard. From there I chose:

1. Disk /dev/disk1 - 512 MB / 488 MiB (RO)

2. Intel/PC partition

3. FAT16 >32M

4. Other

5. Extract files from whole partition

And that was it! Ninety-six images successfully recovered in less than two minutes, at no cost.

UPDATE1: Formatting the card via the camera menu appears to have no effect on PhotoRec’s (and presumably PhotoRescue’s) ability to extract old images.

UPDATE2: NYT article on photo recovery tools and services. Mentions PhotoRescue, among others.

As I was going through some old Google Reader items that I’d saved (starred, whatever), I came across Jim Goldstein’s article on the U.S. Copyright Office’s Electronic Copyright Office (eCO) beta. I saved this article because I’d intended to sign up, but had heard that there was a significant approval backlog.

I submitted my beta application on 8 Jan, and less than 24 hours later, I am the proud owner of an eCO account!

If you were waiting to enroll, this might just be a good time. Request your very own eCO account here.