Just a quickie from me because I wont be around for a while.
Last night after several hours working on my photojournalism photos, my computer caught fire! I had just finished for the night and went to show Graham my photos before bed and they had all vanished. So I rebooted and while booting we could smell smoke so we turned it off, waited for the air to clear, opened it up and a bundle of cables had fused to the side of the case. The cables were tightly twisted back on themselves and tied with a cable tie. Our theory is that when the technician twisted them the plastic coating was cracked and the bare wires had been shorting. This would explain why I kept having intermittent problems with the drives and eventually it got to the point where the wires caught fire. Unfortunately I have no idea if my drives have survived this. We do know that the previous drive suffered bad sectors and now we know why. Don't know if the cpu etc survived either, obviously we're not about the turn the computer on to check. The PC is only 6 months old so it's going back to the shop today. I want a new one or an extensive rebuild and I particularly do not want any cables twisted and tied like the last lot!
This means I wont have any photos ready for next weeks photoclub comp which is a shame because I was really pleased with some I took on the weekend. Who knows if I have any photos left on my harddrives now, I may have lost all the photos of Alex too. I have a lot backed up but the ones from the weekend weren't yet because I thought I was safe with a raid system. I never expected all my drives could be damaged at once.
So I wont have any computer for a while and email and internet access will be limited to Grahams PC and I certainly wont be able to process any photos.
Oh and typically I didn't think to take a photo of my computer on fire or even the melted mess inside. Pride comes before a fall, I was proud of some of my photojournalism shots and now this just reminds me I an not a photojournalist.
The question is though.... does this mean my photos are 'hot stuff', 'seriously uncool' or 'smokin' ?
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Monday, September 25, 2006
Up and running again.
Wooohooo my computer is stable again! (touch wood).
Last night we installed 2 new 320gb harddrives. They are raided to mirror each other so I only have 320gb but at least I have some security now if one of them goes the same way my last 3 drives have. I now have 720gb in total on 3 drives (4 if you count the raid as 2).
I then had a very long night of copying my photos from the old dodgy drive to the new drives. I couldn't leave copying and walk away because it kept crashing so I had to stick around to reboot and try again. Eventually I got all the photos over except for a couple that caused constant crashes so I just deleted them. I probably lost a few others to the corrupt drive but at least things should be safe now. Huge relief!
Now we'll try the old drive in Grahams PC just to see if we can scan and format it, then it can go back for a warranty repair.
I still have to rearrange some files and set up another partition so there's lots to get done while Alex sleeps. I also have heaps of photos to go through from yesterday which will take a while.
Yesterday was a good day, except for starting out knowing I had computer problems and had to spend money to fix it.
Mom and Dad came over in the morning and took Alex for the day. A trial run for next weekend when they will get him overnight.
So Graham and I got to go to the computer markets without a pram! So much easier to get around and it was nice to be able to hold hands again instead of pram handles :) We bought the 2 harddrives, a new 2gb compact flash card to replace my 4gb microdrive which died and a card reader for Graham. Graham even bought me lunch (bacon and egg sandwich).
Then we went off to a local festival to try and take some photos for camera club photojournalism subject. It was really windy. The news reports say the wind got up to 107km/h. So the fete was mostly over. The stands and tents were blowing away so they packed up early and there was so much dirt blowing around it wasn't a nice place to be (especially with a camera). We did get some photos though, mainly of the show rides that were still going. I tried some photos of the tents blowing over but in the photos it just looks like they were in the process of being packed up. It's kinda hard to photograph wind.
So we headed off to Mom and Dad's to fetch the boy and on the way we saw smoke and a firetruck so we decided to go fire hunting. We got close enough that there were flames on the side of the road but the roads were blocked off where we wanted to go and there was so much smoke I couldn't get the photos I had envisaged. I took some but I don't think they will be good enough for photojournalism. Funny thing was there was plenty happening around us but each time I had the camera in my lap but was so caught up in what was happening that I forgot to take a photo. Like when a fire truck with lights and siren was trying to get through an intersection and a woman had stopped her car across 2 lanes blocking them off, and when the back window (frame and all) blew out of a car in front of us and landed on the road, and there were bits of trees flying around everywhere. I missed it all! Was really quite a dramatic drive though with roads cut off by fire when we went the back way and traffic lights out the front way.
Anyway we made it to Moms and Alex had a great day there. They lost power for a while so had to be a bit creative with heating his food and they'd been a bit creative with his nappy too (it was not done up). Alex had been on his best behavior, he even had a nap for them. He was tired when we got there but he kept going, showed us what he had been up to in the garden, then he had a bath and dinner before we came home. I of course took photos of him the whole time :)
We got home and Graham hooked my new drives up in time for me to make Sunday night chat with the Austprem group http://www.austprem.org.au/ It's only the second time I've made it into chat and I really enjoyed it. I chatted while my new drives formatted then left before I started copying files. I was lucky things were stable until I accessed the old drive.
Alex went to bed as soon as we got home and slept through beautifully.
I downloaded the photos from both cameras to the new drive today and I've got just over 500 photos to go through. Hopefully some of them will be good enough for the 'photojournalism' comp. Most of them are of Alex though :) There should be some funny ones cause Mom gave him a chocolate biccy.
Here's a few that I have converted but I wont get a chance to look at the rest until later tonight.
Dad took some photos of me with Alex. Dad takes great photos (so does my camera). I wish I'd had some make up on and red and pink clothing does nothing nice for my skin (Alex always looks good even with dirty face) but still it's really nice to have some more photos of us together.
I finally got a photo that shows some family resemblance on my side. It looks like Alex gets his funny wobbly walk from my Mom :P She'll hate this photo of course but I think it's funny.
Last night we installed 2 new 320gb harddrives. They are raided to mirror each other so I only have 320gb but at least I have some security now if one of them goes the same way my last 3 drives have. I now have 720gb in total on 3 drives (4 if you count the raid as 2).
I then had a very long night of copying my photos from the old dodgy drive to the new drives. I couldn't leave copying and walk away because it kept crashing so I had to stick around to reboot and try again. Eventually I got all the photos over except for a couple that caused constant crashes so I just deleted them. I probably lost a few others to the corrupt drive but at least things should be safe now. Huge relief!
Now we'll try the old drive in Grahams PC just to see if we can scan and format it, then it can go back for a warranty repair.
I still have to rearrange some files and set up another partition so there's lots to get done while Alex sleeps. I also have heaps of photos to go through from yesterday which will take a while.
Yesterday was a good day, except for starting out knowing I had computer problems and had to spend money to fix it.
Mom and Dad came over in the morning and took Alex for the day. A trial run for next weekend when they will get him overnight.
So Graham and I got to go to the computer markets without a pram! So much easier to get around and it was nice to be able to hold hands again instead of pram handles :) We bought the 2 harddrives, a new 2gb compact flash card to replace my 4gb microdrive which died and a card reader for Graham. Graham even bought me lunch (bacon and egg sandwich).
Then we went off to a local festival to try and take some photos for camera club photojournalism subject. It was really windy. The news reports say the wind got up to 107km/h. So the fete was mostly over. The stands and tents were blowing away so they packed up early and there was so much dirt blowing around it wasn't a nice place to be (especially with a camera). We did get some photos though, mainly of the show rides that were still going. I tried some photos of the tents blowing over but in the photos it just looks like they were in the process of being packed up. It's kinda hard to photograph wind.
So we headed off to Mom and Dad's to fetch the boy and on the way we saw smoke and a firetruck so we decided to go fire hunting. We got close enough that there were flames on the side of the road but the roads were blocked off where we wanted to go and there was so much smoke I couldn't get the photos I had envisaged. I took some but I don't think they will be good enough for photojournalism. Funny thing was there was plenty happening around us but each time I had the camera in my lap but was so caught up in what was happening that I forgot to take a photo. Like when a fire truck with lights and siren was trying to get through an intersection and a woman had stopped her car across 2 lanes blocking them off, and when the back window (frame and all) blew out of a car in front of us and landed on the road, and there were bits of trees flying around everywhere. I missed it all! Was really quite a dramatic drive though with roads cut off by fire when we went the back way and traffic lights out the front way.
Anyway we made it to Moms and Alex had a great day there. They lost power for a while so had to be a bit creative with heating his food and they'd been a bit creative with his nappy too (it was not done up). Alex had been on his best behavior, he even had a nap for them. He was tired when we got there but he kept going, showed us what he had been up to in the garden, then he had a bath and dinner before we came home. I of course took photos of him the whole time :)
We got home and Graham hooked my new drives up in time for me to make Sunday night chat with the Austprem group http://www.austprem.org.au/ It's only the second time I've made it into chat and I really enjoyed it. I chatted while my new drives formatted then left before I started copying files. I was lucky things were stable until I accessed the old drive.
Alex went to bed as soon as we got home and slept through beautifully.
I downloaded the photos from both cameras to the new drive today and I've got just over 500 photos to go through. Hopefully some of them will be good enough for the 'photojournalism' comp. Most of them are of Alex though :) There should be some funny ones cause Mom gave him a chocolate biccy.
Here's a few that I have converted but I wont get a chance to look at the rest until later tonight.
Dad took some photos of me with Alex. Dad takes great photos (so does my camera). I wish I'd had some make up on and red and pink clothing does nothing nice for my skin (Alex always looks good even with dirty face) but still it's really nice to have some more photos of us together.
I finally got a photo that shows some family resemblance on my side. It looks like Alex gets his funny wobbly walk from my Mom :P She'll hate this photo of course but I think it's funny.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
computers suck
Just a quicky while my computer is up. I'm having intermittant computer problems. One of my hard drives is stuffed, the one with 200gb of photos on it. I've lost some of my photos and I'm hoping to rest will hang around until I have a replacement drive to move them to.
One of my other drives has been having problems too, it comes and goes.
Not sure when I'll have a reliable pc again. We're shopping for harddrives tomorrow. Then we still have to work out what's causing this. I go through harddrives very quickly.
Alex is well but doing his best not to sleep when we want him too.
Here's some photos. They're safer up here than they are on my harddrive.
One of my other drives has been having problems too, it comes and goes.
Not sure when I'll have a reliable pc again. We're shopping for harddrives tomorrow. Then we still have to work out what's causing this. I go through harddrives very quickly.
Alex is well but doing his best not to sleep when we want him too.
Here's some photos. They're safer up here than they are on my harddrive.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Last of the Alex shots from the weekend
Ok here's the last of the photos of Alex from Wisteria Gardens. There are more but I think this is more than enough for this blog.His second molar has broken through today so he now has 10 teeth! That may have something to do with his crankiness the last few nights. Or it could just be that he is having so much fun walking that he doesn't want to go to bed. Tonight we were playing shadow puppets. He has discovered his shadow but previously he would just look at my hand if I tried to make a puppet for him. Tonight he was watching the shadow of his hand and when I joined in he kept watching the shadows and thought it was hilarious when my shadow crocodile ate his shadow hand. Of course we had to do it over and over again :)
Tomorrow night is camera club. I'm not sure I want to go. I have no doubt Alex would have a great time but these days his 'great time' means being very loud and active and it's just rude for us to distract everyone with a noisy child (and noisy parents going shhhhh) during a guest presentation. Not sure what we'll do yet.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Last lot for tonight.
There are more photos to come but they can wait until tomorrow. This is more than enough for tonight.The photo of Alex at the edge of the pavement was funny. It was all flat but he wasn't sure about the change in surface. He walked to the edge and stopped and had a good think about what to do. It was like he couldn't decide whether to step over the edge or get down and crawl. In the end he stepped carefully and kept going.
Alex enjoying his gingerbread man.
Alex and Mommy
Here's some photos of me in action and me with Alex. Photos of me are a lot rarer than photos of Alex and photos of us together are really rare 'cause I'm usually the other side of the camera. So here's some photos. Doesn't mean I like these photos of me but they aren't too embarrassing. Graham took these (he did well) and I photoshopped them a little (mainly to remove the awful red cast from my shirt and minimize the hot spots). Graham was using the Canon 10D with the Sigma 18-125mm lens and I had the 20D with the Tamron 90mm lens. We swapped a few times but I don't think Graham took any shots with the 20D just ended up carrying it for me :)
Photos finished!
Wow finally finished going through all the photos from the weekend. Over 300 of them.Considering I went to Wisteria Gardens to get flower photos I ended up with mostly Alex photos. He was much more photogenic than the flowers. I love these photos of him.
There's quite a few photos to put up so I'll put them up in groups to try and control this layout a little.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Wisteria Gardens
Well no blog update yesterday because I wasted my time trying to customize the appearance of this page then I had to undo most of what I'd done because it wouldn't work in IE (I use Firefox).
Today though we have lots of photos (don't groan).
We took Alex to Wisteria Gardens today. Last year I promised myself that this year he would be walking by now and I'd be able to take photos of him standing in the flower beds surrounded by flowers. Well he just scraped in with the walking bit in time and I had envisaged him in denim overalls without a shirt and holding a spade but it wasn't hot enough for him to go shirtless and we don't have a spade. He doesn't need a spade to destroy the flowers anyway.
Alex had a great time walking around and shredding any flowers he could reach, only hampered by people wanting to pick him up and cuddle him. He got to munch on a gingerbread man too.
I was using my 90mm prime lens mostly which meant I had to keep backing up to fit Alex in the shot, then he would follow me and I'd have to keep running back. Either that or he'd get close to something he shouldn't, like the edge of a drop and I'd have to move up to catch him then repeat the whole backing away for a photo thing all over again. It was great exercise :P
I have a heap of photos to go through, besides Alex, I have some flower photos too. The flowers this year weren't as good as last year (which weren't as good as the year before) but I still got some photos.
Here's the stall where my cards are for sale and some quick snaps (while they weren't looking) of Ramesh and Rachel who are manning the stall, and a pair of funny characters enjoying the sun.
....and here is my beautiful beautiful boy walking, laughing, shredding flowers and all worn out having a drink in his pram!
Almost forgot the news from last night, Alex stood up on his own without holding on to anything for the first
time. A bit more practice at that and he will be able to get everywhere without crawling. Wow what a mess this is, I just can't get this formating to work.
Today though we have lots of photos (don't groan).
We took Alex to Wisteria Gardens today. Last year I promised myself that this year he would be walking by now and I'd be able to take photos of him standing in the flower beds surrounded by flowers. Well he just scraped in with the walking bit in time and I had envisaged him in denim overalls without a shirt and holding a spade but it wasn't hot enough for him to go shirtless and we don't have a spade. He doesn't need a spade to destroy the flowers anyway.
Alex had a great time walking around and shredding any flowers he could reach, only hampered by people wanting to pick him up and cuddle him. He got to munch on a gingerbread man too.
I was using my 90mm prime lens mostly which meant I had to keep backing up to fit Alex in the shot, then he would follow me and I'd have to keep running back. Either that or he'd get close to something he shouldn't, like the edge of a drop and I'd have to move up to catch him then repeat the whole backing away for a photo thing all over again. It was great exercise :P
I have a heap of photos to go through, besides Alex, I have some flower photos too. The flowers this year weren't as good as last year (which weren't as good as the year before) but I still got some photos.
Here's the stall where my cards are for sale and some quick snaps (while they weren't looking) of Ramesh and Rachel who are manning the stall, and a pair of funny characters enjoying the sun.
....and here is my beautiful beautiful boy walking, laughing, shredding flowers and all worn out having a drink in his pram!
Almost forgot the news from last night, Alex stood up on his own without holding on to anything for the first
time. A bit more practice at that and he will be able to get everywhere without crawling. Wow what a mess this is, I just can't get this formating to work.
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