Sometimes I post things that are kind of personal, so I make sure to put them in this category. If there is a password on any of these posts, then the password will be my date of birth, in YYYY-MM-DD format. If you know me reasonably well, then you should know that (or just ask me and I’ll tell you).
Rael Dornfest (editor of the Google Hacks book, amongst other things!) mentioned a word on the blosxom mailing list which I have heard a times now, and which I think will become more popular;
I like it 🙂 – Just for fun, ask Google who else is using ‘mindwidth’?
Last night I dropped a message on Alysha‘s blog. I found her details on the listing available through the OLA class listing for both REA11 and NET12, so it looks like we are going to be classmates for this study period 🙂
She emailed me back again later in the evening, but I haven’t had a chance to reply yet, I’ll drop her a line after work tonight!
Well, after the usual 15 transfers and multiple “we don’t deal with thats”, I have finally gained access to the WebCT system which runs all of the online courses at Curtin — only to find out that apparently I’m not enrolled in anything at Curtin as of yet! (read: they haven’t gotten around to adding the 2 units I am enrolled in to my account, so I can’t access them!).
The stupid thing is that in the end, I knew my password, all I needed was someone to tell me what my username was, so that
I could try out a couple passwords and guess the right one. I don’t even want to get started on how I feel about finally
getting online, only to find that I still can’t start — I’ll email the course co-ordinator and see if he knows when we might
actually start…
Well, my study must be getting closer, I got a bunch of stuff from Curtin in the mail welcoming me to the unit(s) and a
basic outline of rules and stuff like that. It had a space for my student number… but I didn’t get one. There was a note
saying that it was “to be advised”, so I emailed them and will wait and see. They are probably confused because
I already have a Curtin student number and they don’t know for sure if it’s the same person or whatever.
;)
As Brendan Fraser says in The Mummy; “This keeps getting better and better”, and as Homer says in The Simpsons; “in case you didn’t notice, I was being sarcastic!”
This evening I was attempting to mount my laptop hard drive into my old desktop machine (a PII, 300) to see if I could get any data off it. When I plugged the machine in and tried booting it up – I heard 2 loud pops, followed by a small cloud of smoke, so I knew something was wrong :). I checked it out, and sure enough, my power supply was blown. You can see to the right (click for enlargement) and also in this picture that the middle of the power supply was covered with the remnants of one of the diodes (?transistors?) that exploded. Messy.
So now on to plan 2 – I’ll take the drive to work tomorrow and see if I can get a chance to try mounting it on my machine at work instead, which I know is stable and operational at least, and which has network access to plenty of storage and a CD burner if I need it 🙂
More later.
Well things are actually looking good with the recovery of data from my failed hard drive!
I went ahead and downloaded a demo version of a program called “R-Studio”, which is distributed by HDDRecovery in Australia. I had talked to the manager of HDDR and he suggested that I give it a go.
So here’s roughly the process that ensued:
At this point I was pretty happy – in the process of creating the image, my files had been recompiled into a meaningful structure, and it appeared that most of my data was there. But wait, there’s more;
So there you go – there’s the basics of my drama, and how things have turned out. Personally, I think the $AUD 176.00 was a small price to pay – compared to the prospect of having the drive dismantled in a clean room environment, which would have cost thousands :). The fact that the drive was accessible through software saved my skin, and now I have all my photos, data files and music back and happy 🙂 As it turns out, the only files that appear to have been irreparibly damaged are from within the C:\WINNT directory – and who’s going to miss them? (except the boot sequence!)
Am I the only one that has that feeling of loss or loneliness when I finish a good book? (or in this case, four good books?)
I’ve been reading the “Otherland” series, by Tad Williams for about 3 years now (4?), progressively acquiring each of the books in the series, then re-reading the ones before it so that I get the whole story. In doing this, I have obviously “spent a lot of time” with Renie, !Xabbu, Sellars, Sorensen, Ramsey, Orlando, Fredericks and all the other characters in the books. Now that I’ve finished them all – it’s over. I feel like I’ve lost a whole group of friends.
It’s strange how you can develop such an attachment to characters of a book which are completely ficticious. Personally, I think this comes partially from my history on the Internet. I have spent so much time online that the characters in a book are often more realistic, more “detailled” in their background, descriptions and actions than other people who I have spent hours discussing things with, worked on entire projects and laughed over common jokes.
With the detailed writing of professionals like Tad Williams, I often actually know more about the personality, physical appearance and mental processes of the characters in the books that I read, than I do about the people I meet on the ‘net.
The only up-side of finishing the Otherland series is that now I can finally read “Google Hacks”, the book that I wrote a small section of. I’ve had my complimentary copy of the book (from O’Reilly) for a few months now, but haven’t had a chance to read it because I was too busy trapped in Otherland and the Grail Network (read the book if you have no idea what I’m talking about here :).
I will strongly recommend Otherland (yes, all 4,000-ish pages of it) to anyone who likes science fiction, and especially if you can deal with the idea of fully-immersive virtual reality – it really is a treat.
Well, just for something new, I’ve just registered dentedreality.org and dentedreality.net at Go Daddy. The DNS won’t have quite kicked in yet, but shouldn’t be too long (a day or so should do it).
Well, it’s official, my registration with OLA has been accepted for study period 2, 2003. I will be studying the 2 units mentioned previously from June – August!
Just heard from Matt and my advanced standing has been approved – for 10 units at this stage.
I have also arranged my registration for 2 units for SP2, 2003; they are NET12 (Internet Studies) and REA11 (Applied Reasoning!)
I’m looking forward to REA11, I just hope it’s not too abstract or anything strange and annoying (the whole “argue by changing the subject” approach really gets me), but I am reserving judgement until I get into it 🙂 NET12 should be an interesting introduction to the core of the degree I think, so that will be interesting to see what things are going to be like 😉
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