Backup, Backup, Backup!

backup back up backup

My Dell Inspiron 1720 Laptop recently was me giving trouble where by it started to hang for no apparent reason. One minute I’d be working away contently with very few applications running, next “Bang!” it would freeze with a constant (Vista) spinning icon and a screen that turned opaque white. Nothing I could do to rectify it only to wait… and wait… and wait… by running Windows Task Manager I noticed the CPU Usage was running at a near constant 90% all the time which was pretty high. I tried all sorts of tips from registry defrag to killing unnecessary startup processes even being suspect of Firefox sucking up resources but no luck to be had.

It finally ground to a halt and would not boot up so with the laptop still in warranty I called Dell to arrange a repair, strangely enough they sent out a repair tech a few days later who discovered the problem was a screwed up motherboard which was replaced. It was also recommended that I format my hard drive and re-install Windows (Bloody) Vista. At this point I decided to back up my laptop data to an external hard drive via USB. I left it transferring all files overnight and presumed all was ok with no error messages that anything went wrong with the transfer, having backed up I was happy to prepare for formatting the drive and re-installing.

Dell arranged a phone call and a talk through of the reinstall. All went well and at last the laptop is back to peak performance so tonight it was time to hook up my external drive and transfer my stuff back . BUMP! nothing there! yes there was a c: drive backed up with full windows directory etc. but no “My Music” – “My Videos” and worst of all no “My Pictures” aaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!!

No pictures!!!  over a years worth of photos… nowhere to be found. Family snaps, birthdays, events, creative pics… all gone… thank f**k I had uploaded a few of those pics to my flickr account…. and all for the sake of a couple of backup DVD’s!

Lesson learned? shit happens… (note to self)  from now on always check an test your Back Up, Back Up, Back Up!

Drumming Bear – Video Promo for Claycastle Recording Studio, Youghal

Below is a short video promo I completed recently for Claycastle Recording Studio in Youghal. It was all a bit of fun and a play on the popular YouTube video the Cadbury’s Gorilla Ad. My new YouTube widescreen settings are working well on this video as mentioned in my last post.

[youtube width=”500″ height=”307″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8BUSla150w[/youtube]

CERN Large Hadron Collider – Explained in 3 minutes

First beam of the Large Hadron Collider

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(via CERN)

Geneva, 10 September 2008. The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometres of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at 10h28 this morning. This historic event marks a key moment in the transition from over two decades of preparation to a new era of scientific discovery.

Large Hadron Collider – Simpler Explanation


Who stole the bridge?

Russian Bridge

This news makes me laugh …. how the hell did they do it?
The article came via Ananova image by current.com

Russian Bridge

Scrap metal thieves in Khabarovsk, Russia managed to steal a 200-tonne 38ft structured steel bridge without anyone noticing. The criminal scrap metal collectors most likely were interested in four steel pipes which served as the foundation for the bridge. They dismantled the bridge during the night of December 29 and vanished with its parts in an unknown direction.

It was part of the only road leading to a heating plant. Bosses at the company said the cost of replacing the bridge would be ten times the value of the scrap metal that had been stolen.

Local road service crews are currently reconstructing the bridge, they plan to replace the bridge with one made of concrete while police have launched a search for the criminals.

This incident became the third such case in 2007 – the two previous bridge thefts occurred in the Ryazan region and the Primorsky region.