The cruel world of Data Backup and restore

As regular readers will know I recently lost a whole bunch of data from my laptop due to some crap going on and resetting things etc. so I set up a rigid regime of backing up every day to ye trusty old LaCie 300GB external hard drive designed by Porsche.

All my data got sent to the drive every day at 11:15 pm while other trivial stuff got sent to my iDisk at 11:00 pm. All was working fine and reporting as completed full back up and daily incrementals until I tried to restore some data. Can't mount the volume .... or some such message. Great! I've backed up but can't restore. Luckily I didn't actually need any data restored.

Since then I've been intermittently doing a full backup manually to the external drive. Now the story gets worse.

I keep ALL of my digital photos on the external drive and while doing some work on sorting out some data I accidentally knocked the drive from a low table onto the carpeted floor. Now all my backed up data is locked in the drive which now just clicks twice when it's turned on.

I know, I know, I should have backed up the backup and stored it off site etc etc but I didn't. I absolutely could have cried yesterday when this happened and even considered kicking the cat but we don't have one and I couldn't find someone else's.

Looks like this will cost me between £140 and £250 to get the data back. Worst thing is I don't even know for sure what's on the disk. I know I've got a full backup of all my current laptop data b ut I'm not sure what I've deleted from my laptop and "Archived" on the external disk. I guess I'll just pay up and start thinking of some other way to back up and back up the back up.

We've also got 2 machines now so I'm considering 2 NAS disks, one for each machine, and then back up disk 1 to disk 2 on a weekly basis.

Oh how I long for a TIME MACHINE.......

Gloucester

A couple of months ago we went for a day trip to Gloucester City with the Photo Club. This week those that went on the trip met up to decide which pictures we would choose to enter into the inter-club competition with Marlow.

To my absolute amazement, four of my pictures have been chosen to go forward for the competition. We'll be using three in the Projected Images Competition where 15 images from each club with be judged and I'll have one in the Prints competition where each club present 10 prints to be judged. The date for the competition has not yet been set but I'll post the results as soon as I know.

Here are my four pictures being entered.

BOLLARD


Café René


Modern Architecture


Ice Cream Lady

Any port in a storm...

Yesterday evenings recommended aperitif was "Chip Dry White Port" served with Roasted Almonds and Olives. This was quite nice especially with the Almonds but I think I had a little too much port.

Strange Email you get sometimes

In a recent email exchange about meeting objectives I got this...

"We and that is a big we will pull them together an drive the ambiguity out.

I will call you tom"

Yes that's all it said. When asked what it was about the sender admitted they couldn't understand it either.

Funny old world really...

Happy Holidays

I'm planning a little trip to New York and got a price from Trailfinders of just over £1500 for a 3 night stay. joy of joys I've had an email today with a special offer from Trainfinders for the same trip costing around £1200.

We deserve it, so I'm gonna book it...

Yippee we're off to new York in November...

Stay tuned for the pictures

The King is Dead...

After 3 years faithful service (well a bit sporadic actually) the Powerbook G4 is almost dead.
Mums been having problems for the last couple of weeks with it not connecting to the internet, crashing and switching its self off.

Mums become quite attached to it and had started calling it Mr Mac!

We're looking at getting her a new Mac Book. What do you think?

To Pro or Not to Pro that is the question...

Black or White?

I'm thinking:
MacBook White bottom of the range for £750

Happy Holidays!

As it's almost 6 years to the day I thought I'd post this picture of Me, Wendy, Pete, Ben and Tessa at Lands End. I can't remember what we paid for this. The sign post was fenced off and you had to pay to get to it for the photo.

Apart from this the place is pretty boring as I remember. Still we all look very happy!

I've just realised, I still have that T Shirt and Shorts!!

Computers

While sitting in te garden this evening and chatting away about nothing much really; the conversation went onto computers and I asked Wendy what our first computer was.

Do you know?

I'll tell you it was a Texas Instruments Ti 99 4/a and is the only computer I have made money on.
I bought it in 1982 from Argos in Brighton got it home and after a couple of days it busted.
Lukily, Texas Instruments had thought it a great idea to offer a £50 cash back on the purchase of the Ti99 4/a so I'd already sent off the voucher.

I returned the machine to Argos who refunded my money, no questions asked, and a couple of weeks later we got a cheque for £50 from TI. We of course sent the cheque to Argos. ;-)

This little aside got us reminiscing about other computers we'd had and I couldn't really remember what we bought to replace the 99 4/a. I think it may well have been a BBC Model B and soon after fitted a SOLIDISK external drive chip to the mother board. Very adventurous !!!!

Favorite game on this was (and still is) ELITE. Marvelous space trading game that I've not seen the like of since. I seem to remember that we had an analogue joystick. Yes analogue. None of your modern digital rubbish. What would it be like to have a digital accelerator peddle on your car. Rubbish !!!

I think we then moved onto a Sinclair Spectrum and after that it all gets a little blurred and I think we may have had the Spectrum before the BBC.

I know at one point after moving to Victoria Road we had an Intel 8086 PC that I used to send type setting via modem to a firm in Bournemouth whp would do the setting and return it the next day via DX mail and I'd collect it from the Solicitors office in Shoreham.
I remember I was spending about £250 a month on that little baby. And that's how I got involved with Macs. Never needed to look back!

Search Engine Position

I've been doing a bit of research on where Henley Photographic Club is positioned when you search for it in google.com and google.co.uk.
I think most people will search for "Henley Camera Club". Well I did this and found that in TOP position is Henley Rowing Club. and HPC are languishing in 287,000th position.
Searching for:
Henley Photography = 619,000th
Henley Photo = 2,560,000th
Henley Photographic = 114,000th

People searching will NEVER find it!...
unless they search for henley photo club. In which case we're TOP!

I'll have to get some Search Engineering done I think!

By the way. I didn't look through all the results and count them myself. I used a little application called Advanced Web Ranking. I'm n ot sure how accurate it is though.

LRPS

Finally I feel I am ready for embark on gaining a Photography Qualification. I'm going to start out with what I feel will be the easiest to achieve, the LRPS.
This is the requirement for the Licenciateship:
The Licenciateship (LRPS) is normally the entry level Distinction and requires a sound basic technical skill and the ability to compose and control the image or medium as a means of communication. Evidence of a developing style is desireable.

Ten prints are required. Print size should not exceed 40cm x 50cm (16 inches x 20 inches) and although there is no minimun size, 20cm x 25cm (10 inches x 8 inches) would be considered reasonable. Consideration should be given to arranging prints as a cohesive panel, normally in two rows. Prints should be numbered clearly on the back and in the order you want them displayed. presentation and mounting of prints should be sympathetic with the subject matter. Commercially processed material is acceptable.

I'll be displaying my LRPS panel selections as I choose them on an LRPS page on this site and I'll be writing my thoughts a feelings down on the journey as I go along.

Wish me luck!