Blog: The Life Of A Supreme Ruler

Back in Albany

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— orudge @ 16/09/2006 4:42 pm

Well, yesterday I got all my stuff moved back to Albany (managed to fit it all into one car load, wow!), and today I moved myself back into Albany. The new house is alright – my mobile phone signal isn’t too great in my room, which isn’t fun, and the Ethernet switch we’re connected to is an old 10Mbps switch, not a 100Mbps one. 🙁 But apart from that, the house is alright, and I’m vaguely attempting to get my room in order. 😛 Went out last night and was surprised at just how packed the union was – although compared with what it’ll be like tonight, it was nothing. 😉

A whole year since I first set foot (properly) in St Andrews… time does fly.

Wow, that old trick actually works!

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— orudge @ 14/09/2006 12:37 am

Yesterday, in a last-ditch attempt to save my hard disk, I put it in the freezer. It’s an old trick – you stick it in the freezer, the parts inside it contract, and then expand again, in theory loosening up whatever got stuck in the first place. I figured I’ve give it a shot. Took it out this afternoon, plugged it in while still cold… nothing, the disk was still clanking away and not reading correctly. Sigh, my disk is dead then, I thought. However, tonight, I thought I’d give it one more shot, now that the drive had heated back up to room temperature… and it worked! that old trick worked! The disk is still working happily now, which leaves me with a bit of a problem. I can’t send it back when it’s working nicely… I’m leaving it on tonight. “Hopefully” it’ll die again. I don’t trust the disk as it is, seeing as it blatantly could die at any minute. (I did read one story the other day of a guy who put his hard disk in the freezer. It continued to work then for over a year). If it still works after a week or so (using it for “safe” things like watching videos – no new data on there), I’ll buy another 300GB HD, RAID-1 the two of them, and hope it all continues to work. I am VERY glad to have my data back now, anyway… a better backup scheme is in order, I think! Whee! 😀

Not again!

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— orudge @ 11/09/2006 11:31 pm

A month ago (well, technically, two months ago – the day before I went to Brazil for a month), my Maxtor hard disk failed. I replaced it when I got back to Brazil with a nice shiney new one. Lovely, all is fine and happy… until today, when it goes and fails too. Great. The last month’s e-mails, logs, and a whole pile of other things (such as my nicely planned out timetable for next summer, quite a few hours work there!) gone. Probably permanently. Tomorrow, I shall try sticking it in the freezer and doing that old trick, and see if it lets me get any life out of it. If it does, I shall try rescuing some important stuff. If not, bleh. The hard disk is obviously still under warranty, since it’s only been in operation for a month, but it’s very annoying. I’m very tempted to get RAID-1 sorted for my computer when I put things back together, in addition to sorting out the cooling in my case for hard disks if possible. *sigh*

More plans…

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— orudge @ 09/09/2006 6:31 pm

I’m considering, if I can afford it, to go by train all the way to Beijing or Vladivostok next summer, on the Trans-Siberian railway. As the longest railway in the world, it would be quite a journey… quite a journey indeed. Been looking up various details on it just randomly this evening, and it doesn’t look too expensive, just a bit complicated to get it all sorted. Would be the journey of a lifetime though, I’m sure!

Ah, the many places I want to go in this world!

Rome photos are up

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— orudge @ 04/09/2006 11:06 pm

My photos from Rome are now up on the gallery – click here to view them. I need to rotate some of the zoo and Vatican photos, but otherwise they should all be fine enough.

And here’s my updated Visited Countries map…