I’ve been busy scraping stuff from open directories and dumping them onto this RAID array. Some of this week’s finds:
- The complete run of Omni magazine, in CBR format. I wasn’t familiar with CBR files, because I don’t read comics, but they are essentially a collection of lossless images in a compressed container, along with some metadata so you can get all of the page flips optimized. Reading PDFs on the iPad can be a pain, because each time you page flip, the zoom gets all thrown off, and it’s made for scrolling more than reading. The CBR format, along with a copy of ComicFlow, make for a decent reading experience. Old Omni is a lot of fun to read, because the ads are so goofy and the predictions are all off. It was a big influence for The Memory Hunter, so it’s nice for me to have them all in one place.
- I’ve been trying to hunt down old Howard Stern audio for various people. I started by trying to find all of Gilbert Gottfried’s appearances, and then it spiraled from there.
- My UFO PDF file continues to grow. I’ve been scraping FOIA requests from the Air Force and FBI, and I already have too much to read, but I continue scraping.
- I found this colossal archive of scanned computer manuals, from mainframes and other big iron of the 60s/70s/80s. It has an insane amount of DEC, Burroughs, Prime, CDC, and other manuals. I haven’t finished grabbing all of this, because there’s too much. But if you ever need to get a Prime 9955 running again, I can hook you up with docs.
- I’ve also been trying to rip more of my DVDs. I don’t have my DVDs out anymore, because most of our viewing is on cable or streaming, and I don’t even have a DVD player in the living room anymore. I’m not going A-Z like I did with CDs; I’m mostly trying to hit any stuff that I can’t easily find on a streaming site.
So since 10/26, I’ve added 431 GB and counting, but a lot of that was schlepping things from external drives over to the RAID. Fun stuff.