Bah! This summer I’ve had 2 drives die on me at home. The first was a drive I used for many years so it was no surprise it died. Unfortunately it died just after I came home from the USA in July. Thankfully I had backups from last November done, and was able to recover the photos from 2003 up to the end of June before the drive died permanently. The second drive was the one I brought back from the States so I’m not surprised it died after a plane journey.
I’ve backed up all my photographs twice now. There’s 2 CDR copies of each backup, just in case.
Now this article from The Register throws some doubt on this strategy. No premium brands were tested but cheaper CDRs become unusable after a few months. I can confirm that this does happen as quite a few CDs I burned in the past are now unusable.
I’d like to look at DVD burners now. It’ll be a lot easier to reburn 2-4 DVDs rather than 12-16 CDs every year. Liam on #linux suggested the Pioneer 106 and I’ll look around, so if you’ve used a DVD burner with Linux I’d like to hear about it in the comments below.
Author Archives: Donncha
Irish language – Wikipedia
Fascinating page from the Wikipedia on the Irish Language. Starting from an overview of the different dialects found around the country to the history of the language it finished by discussing the Irish language used today.
In spite of all the efforts since Ireland achieved independence (some critics claim because of those efforts) the Irish language is in rapid and perhaps terminal decline… The death of the Gaeltachtaí would make a break forever between Ireland’s cultural past and identity and its future. All sides… …agree that such a loss would be a cultural tragedy of monumental scale.
PHP MVC overkill?
Good Times with a Mac?
Interesting article via #linux on irc.linux.ie.
No Mark, just because I spent some time in 2 Apple Stores, I’m not going to buy a Mac! I was impressed by the different types of people using the machines though, everybody from a Mac geek wearing a ‘Mac Inside’ tshirt to a musician in a corner to a middle aged couple fiddling with a desktop machine.
Mozilla Firebird nightly builds – built with gtk2 and xft.
it would appear that the nightly builds from Mozilla.org of Moz Firebird are now built with gtk2 and xft! woo! I’m downloading the latest build right now and I’ll post again in a few minutes with an update here.
Update! Yes, the new build is just as nice looking as the old ones I’ve been using! yummy!
Radio in Chicago
If you’ve spent any time at all in Chicago you may have come across 103.5 KISS-FM. I listened to this station all the time and now I can listen at home too! They have a streaming media page but it links to a popup full of javascript. If you’re running Linux it probably won’t be very useful. However, here’s the url you should feed to mplayer, xine, or your favourite Windows Media player..
Microsoft Interview..
Interesting interview here..
LONDON, Aug 30 (Reuters) – This is a test. Please ignore. This
is a test. Please ignore. This is a test. Please ignore. This is a test. Please ignore. This
is a test. Please ignore. This is a test. Please ignore. This is a test. Please ignore. This
Ok, ok, we all mess up from time to time 🙂
Back in Cork – again
Here I am, back in Cork. Still suffering slightly from jet lag but at work and sorting through a lot of mail. In the past 10 days or so I received 183MB of mail. That’s over 5300 emails. Over 1400 of them were email viruses (mostly Sobig) which is the largest number I’ve ever captured coming through our mail server. wow!
Just like the last time I returned, a hardrive died on me. This time I was prepared a little better. I had already backed up my photos onto several CDs (as I mentioned previously), so all I lost was 2 days of photos (about 30-40 pictures) which I still might get back if MS undelete works on a USB device. (I used ‘mv’ to move the files from the memory stick. The fs on the stick is fat16, so I’ll try it tomorrow – I forgot to bring my camera to work today!)
I’ll post some photos over the next few days. There’s lots there as you can imagine!
On another note Mark’s getting strange comments on his weblog. I know he likes to talk about the broadcast media, politics, and rant a bit, but did he ever say he was connected with CBS? *boggle*
Leaving today..
We’re heading back to Chicago today. Mark – you’ll be glad to hear that I have a few snaps of the Apple Store. I didn’t take photos inside this time but it looks the same as the one in Chicago (I wasn’t about to repeat the same ‘Sir, you’re not allowed take photographs in the store’ mistake I made in Chicago!)
My cousin has a beautiful Sony Vaio desktop machine. Built-in memory stick, dvd-rw, big 100GB HD alongside the smaller 14GB one, and a very nice LCD monitor. It runs so quietly the overhead fan makes more noise! *sigh*
While burning 3 copies of my photos (667MB – 469 pics) I took a look around the ‘net.
- PHP Neural Networks on phppatterns.com has some interesting links. We have lots of stock market data at work. I wonder if I can apply some code to it?
- phpcomplete looks really good. I probably linked there before but you know how it is, if it’s not in the blo.gs favourites it’s forgotten!
- John Coggeshall is doing interesting work at a low level with the Zend engine, including a PHP to ASM converter!
I may post from Chicago, but it’s not likely. Otherwise, see you all on Monday or Tuesday!
Posting from New York… again!
This time from the Apple Store here! I prefer the store in Chicago, but this one is in the middle of SOHO which is a bit cool.
I’m just after a chicken salad in a local store – Irish prices (ie. expensive) but probably the healthiest meal I’ve had all summer!