Nov 28 18:30:42 mbp kernel[0]: hfs: FindNextLeafNode: Error from hfs_swap_BTNode (node 9852)
Nov 28 18:30:42 mbp kernel[0]: hfs_swap_HFSPlusBTInternalNode: catalog key #54 too big
Nov 28 18:30:42 mbp kernel[0]: hfs: Runtime corruption detected on SSD, fsck will be forced on next mount.
Nov 28 18:30:42 mbp kernel[0]: hfs: FindNextLeafNode: Error from hfs_swap_BTNode (node 10370)
Nov 28 18:30:42 mbp kernel[0]: hfs_swap_HFSPlusBTInternalNode: catalog record #22 keyLength=32 expected=65568
Nov 28 18:30:42 mbp kernel[0]: hfs: node=10965 fileID=4 volume=SSD device=/dev/disk0s2
Nov 28 18:30:43 mbp kernel[0]: hfs: Runtime corruption detected on SSD, fsck will be forced on next mount.
Nov 28 18:30:43 mbp kernel[0]: hfs: FindNextLeafNode: Error from hfs_swap_BTNode (node 14503)
Nov 28 18:30:43 mbp kernel[0]: hfs_swap_BTNode: record #55 invalid offset (0x9B46)

It was getting slower and slower, reporting tons of errors in the Console.app. Then, it did not reboot anymore. Even in an external USB drive enclosure the drive did not mount anymore. Contacting OCZ about this issue, they sent me an RMA number right away and told me they will replace the drive. Does this mean our data is not safe in SSD? What can we learn from this?

First of all, it is a myth that SSDs are more reliable than hard drives. Secondly, they are not even fully supported on OSX yet (see Should I use Trim Enabler on Lion for the OCZ Vertex 3? No!) - at least if you install the drives yourself (which is also what I would suggest, since Apple does not offer any decent SATA 6GBPs drives yet).

So where is the proof, you ask?

Proof #1: The Hot/Crazy Solid State Drive Scale (via Coding Horror)

Super Talent 32 GB SSD, failed after 137 days
OCZ Vertex 1 250 GB SSD, failed after 512 days
G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 251 days
G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 276 days
Crucial 64 GB SSD, failed after 350 days
OCZ Agility 60 GB SSD, failed after 72 days
Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 15 days
Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 206 days

As a commenter put it: "Average life of SSD = 227.375 days (based on Wills' data)" - which is also what I can confirm.

SOLUTION: Backup early, backup often. Don't rely on the SSD and make two local backups plus one backup in the cloud.

Proof #2: long-term study of SSD failure rates (via Tomshardware)

SOLUTION: Buy drives that come with a very long warranty. Be prepared to let your drive replace for several times.

I am still waiting for my replacement OCZ Vertex and I will benchmark how fast it will die again. Since OCZ told me, it can take up to three weeks for my replacement to arrive, I bought myself a Seagate ST750LX003 750 GB SATA 600, Momentus XT, 8 GB SLC - it's a hybrid 750GB HDD with an 8GB SLC cache. The drive shifts data that is used often in the 8GB SLC SSD space automatically. While the SSD part of this hybrid drive can also fail, the data won't be lost and it will suffer just some minor speed loss (if it fails, since SLC is said to be more reliable than MLC chips). While this disk is now my main startup disk, i will go back to using the OCZ Vertex 3 again, once the replacement arrives. I just need to backup regularly - the speed gain is really worth the trouble.

This is an information from our Partner, 5uper.net:

In Autumn of 2011 the Festival Coded Cultures takes place for the 4th time, this year focusing on the topic "City as Interface". Ever since the foundation of the Festival in 2004 lay the general emphasis on creative practices of cultural development on the intersections of art, technology, science and design. It is our concern to decode de- velopments, concepts and projects in those “coded” structures of digital and (new) media production, which won’t open up easily to broader audiences. Over the years the alignment of Coded Cultures and its variations were orientated internation- ally with the focus on eastern Europe in 2004, Brasil in the following years and Japan in 2009. This year, Coded Cultures involves mainly participants from Europe with prominent attendees such as transmediale from Berlin, Media Lab Prado from Madrid, Amber Festival from Istanbul and the Enter Festival from Prague.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
CODED CULTURES was initiated by the group »5uper.net«: a network of producers, theorists, artists, designers, architects and programmers, which is active in the field of knowledge-work based on digital media related forms of art and culture. Recently, the Book "Coded Cultures: New Creative Practices Out of Diversity" published by Springer.

http://codedcultures.net
http://5uper.net
http://www.facebook.com/codedcultures
http://twitter.com/codedcultures
Coded Cultures: New Creative Practices Out of Diversity

Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of the company effective immediately. Tim Cook will be the new CEO - but the question remains if Apple stocks as well as the general direction of the company will stay the same. To be honest: Apple's policy of moving towards the consumer market and leaving the pro sector, was criticized by lots of producers around the world - on the example of recent Final Cut Pro X debacle (many professional editors see Final Cut Pro X as an improved version of iMovie, not an improved version of Final Cut Pro) or the discontinuing of professional server products such as XSAN. I hope that Apple will not continue provoking the pro audience - but speaking from a pessimistic perspective, Logic Audio X could be the next Garage Band Pro.

Earlier this month, Apple became the largest publicly-traded company in the world, surpassing Exxon-Mobil for the position.

After days of trying to figure out what is really the issue, we found that most of the times device drivers or other third party apps are mostly causing the crashes - but also CPU-intensive apps such as games sometimes bring the system down. Solution? Yes, there is one: change your system to a 32bit Kernel.

1) The bootup way (temporary solution, great for testing)

If you just want to test if changing to 32bit changes anything, you can reboot your mac and hold down the "3" and "2" keys as soon as you hit the power button. This boots up your Apple in 32bit mode temporarily. If the system

2) The Terminal Way (see the Apple Support Document for more information)

sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture i386

if you need to change your system back to normal for any case, you can enter the following command into Terminal.app:

sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture x86_64

Just to make it clear: your applications will still run in 64bit mode, you can make sure this is the case by hitting cmd+i on the application icon and see if "Open in 32-bit mode" is checked. See this article from simplehelp with details and images on 32-bit mode. So why should I care then, you might ask: since drivers and 3rd party apps and extensions that are loaded on startup are most of the time the issue with system freezes and hangs, changing to a 32bit kernel did the trick for us and now we have a stable 2011 MBP quad-core system.

[UPDATE] 10.6.8 seems to work with 64bit kernel much more stable than 10.6.7. Still, to be on the safe side we are using the 32bit kernel and had no freezes yet.

CODED CULTURES. Creative Practice out of Diversity

MO 4. April  2011, 19.00 Uhr

KUNSTHALLE WIEN - project space karlsplatz http://esel.io/termin/50759

Zur Präsentation sprechen: Christian Reder (Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien), Georg Russegger (Coded Cultures), Matthias Tarasiewicz und Michal Wlodkowski (5uper.net)

Eine Veranstaltung im Rahmen der Kooperation zwischen der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien und der Kunsthalle Wien angewandte@project space mittwochs (www.dieangewandte.at)

http://j.mp/codedbook
http://codedcultures.org

A fresh book, discussing creative practices of the fields of media arts ("art with media" and "art through media") in europe and asia (mostly japan). To quote the official press statement: "International Authors from Europe and Asia explain the impact of codes and cultures on society". The book is available on Amazon EUROPE and the US Amazon site.

The short information is as follows:

"Through the transformations of creative cultures, enabled by digital media and global communication networks, new practices and ability profiles of artistic delineations and explorations are gaining grounds. New global codes and cultures are emerging out of diverse, intercultural abstractions and inventions, connected through new ways of exchanging ideas and sharing knowledge. At the present day it is difficult to predict which catalysts and draft programs can be put into effect for the development of near future playgrounds in this domain. By offering several perspective shifts on developments in digital realm and mediated reality, exemplary theories and projects on the intersection of different codes and cultures have been collected for this book. Presenting essays, reviews and interviews from international artists, theorists, researchers and curators, gives the reader an overview on new vectors of creative and artistic projects departed from digital media related art and cultures. It introduces new and critical models of observations on the intersection of disciplines like art, science, technology and design."

Coded Cultures. New Creative Practices out of Diversity (Georg Russegger)
Projects ... Project Worlds ... Project Cultures (Christian Reder)
Co-Evolutionary Anthropology of the Medial / CAM (Manfred Faßler)
Art is about the Future; Otherwise, Nothing (Hiroshi Yoshioka)
A Political Intervention in the Digital Realm (Marina Grzinić)
Assembling Art, Design, Technology and Media Culture: The Challenge of Japanese Device Art (Machiko Kusahara)
The Future of Creative Commodities in the Coded Cultures (Dominick Chen)
Coded Cultures Between New Media Art and Production Cultures (Matthias Tarasiewicz)
The Balance of my Wildness and my Intelligence was Way Off (David d’Heilly/Ujino Muneteru)
Mouseology—Ludic Interfaces—Zero Interfaces (Mathias Fuchs/exonemo)
Imaginary Agents—Flowers and the Common (Verina Gfader/BCL)
Ludic Chindogus as Erotic Toys— Pleasure, Play, and Politics Beyond Materialism (Margarete Jahrmann)
Urban Playgrounds, Alternate Games—on Urban Play, ARGs, and Psychogeography (Verena Kuni)
From Somebody’s Desire to Everyone’s Responsibility (Yukiko Shikata/UBERMORGEN.COM)

"Vague Terrain is a web based digital arts publication that showcases the creative practice of a variety of artists, musicians and scholars. The project aspires to apply the focus and methodologies of academic and art journals and the tenacity and specificity of independent record labels to examine contemporary digital culture in an immediate and accessible manner. Content consists of curated visual, audio and written works, and now a companion blog. For better and worse this project is neither peer reviewed nor funded."

The current issue of the journal, #15, focusses on the .microsound community and especially on "sub-atomic" musical aesthetics and a window into this globally distributed community of electronic musicians.

"The promise of technology had failed us, leaving us to choose between two paths: the ivory tower of sterile academia or the seizure-inducing din of the dance club. Both paths, with a few exceptions, had become formulaic and resistant to innovation.
As a result, the musical malcontents among us began to look for ways to disrupt, subvert, and deconstruct digital audio in hopes of finding new ideas and sounds within."

Announcing Vague Terrain 15: .microsound

The latest of edition of Vague Terrain is dedicated to celebrating the tenth anniversary of the .microsound community. Guest curated by the American composer Kim Cascone, the issue provides a range of commentary and context on "sub-atomic" musical aesthetics and a window into this globally distributed community of electronic musicians. In Cascone's own words .microsound is a fertile middle ground between "the ivory tower of sterile academia" and "the seizure-inducing din of the dance club". For those unacquainted with this zone of musical production, this collection of work provides a perfect introduction.

Featuring text & video contributions by Ben Neill, Charles Turner, Dextro, Joanna Demers, Pere Villez, Thanos Chrysakis, Thomas Bey William Bailey and William L. Ashline.

Feature audio contributions from Mike Rooke, Lubrication, Ronnie Cramer, [ruidobello], Richard Lainhart, sound art, TomDjll, Brett Ian Balogh, Scant Intone, Yota Morimoto, Jorge Castro, Joaquin Gutierrez Hadid, Francesco Rosati, Asferico, Water Falls, Yann Novak, John Hanes, Epoch_Collapse, Jhenner Gayap Benadrilled, Skjølbrot, Markus Jones, Jon Hawken, Adern X Fades 4:38, Julien Ottavi, Vanessa Rossetto, Kim Cascone, Larnie Fox, eddie135, Di.J Crisis, shg, Cheryl E. Leonard, Noe Cuellar, Gary R. Weisberg, Osvaldo Cibils, Kotra, Gintas K, John Kannenberg, Ricky Pannowitz, ocp, TheSAD, Margaret Schedel, Pereshaped, so/on, Eric Miller, Nux Vomica, v4w.enko, UmanoidSomeday, Epoch Collapse, Umanoid and Noe Cuellar.