Well, I recently tried to reanimate my old crappy laptop by installing Gentoo on it. Its cdrom drive is actually not 100% working so I had to use an usb key to transfer data to it. In effect, I have been reformatting and repartitioning the usb drive lot of times using my desktop computer. After a few times I deleted for the tenth time the key’s partiton table to format it again.

Huge mistake.

I was using GParted to do tasks and inadvertently deleted my primary hard disk partition table. Omitting variuous blasphemies and swearwords when I realized what I just did, I took an Ubuntu 9.04 cd and here is how I solved the problem.

There’s a little program that can be found in repositories, called testdisk, that brings up a partition table recovery function, wich is pretty fast and accurate. With the first scan it already recovered my PT, and an in-depth scan confirmed first results. In a snap!

But just in case, here is how to backup your PT for emergency recoveries. Just in the case that one day you’ll be stupid like me.
Using the dd command (see man pages for details) you can do something like this:

dd if=/dev/sdX of=/tmp/sda-mbr.bin bs=512 count=1

replacing /dev/sdX with the drive of interest and /temp/sda.mbr.bin with the path of the file you would like to store informations in. Save this file somewhere safe outside of the disk. One day, you will do something like this to restore the PT:

dd if=sda-mbr.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1 count=64 skip=446 seek=446

always replacing sda-mbr.bin with the backup file and /dev/sdX with the decive you want the PT to be re-writed.

Never understimate the power of dd. It has super powers.

PS: I donated 10$ via paypal to testidisk developers. It literally rescued my ass.

Como había dicho en un post anterior, prometí hacer un review por voluntad propia del que ya es uno de mis albums favoritos de toda la vida. No ha estado conmigo más de 1 semana, y listo… ya es parte de mí. Hablo por supuesto de Radio:ACTIVE el cuarto disco de estudio de la banda inglesa McFly, que salió ya hace poco más de un año. (Y que al fin ha llegado a mis manos, después de una larga espera… y vaya que ´fue larga).

 Estoy seguro de que algunos de ustedes se preguntarán qué me atrajo de esta banda. Y la respuesta sería la misma que la mayoría respondería en la misma situación: su música. Pero, ¿qué tiene McFly que logró superar mis gustos por otros grupos? Sus inicios. La música tiene un estilo muy influenciado sobre todo por The Beatles y los Beach Boys. Es como estar atrapado en la era del fresh 60’s rock ‘n’ roll, o imaginarte bailando en un baile de gimnasio antiguo con la diversión pura de esa època. Algo muy fresco, honesto y sin pretensiones, que increíblemente fue lo que les acabó dando la fama que tienen ahora.

Ahora, sin embargo, con Radio:ACTIVE, recién liberados de su antigua disquera y con la suya propia en la mano, McFly presentó un material más maduro, fuerte pero igual de divertido, porque esta es la razón por la que hacen lo que hacen: diversión. Y esa misma diversión que sienten al tocar, es contagiosa. El album abre con Lies que es el segundo sencillo del album: una rola ingeniosa, vengativa y sin duda nostálgica para los heart fans debido a algunas líneas. La música ya tiene un sonido diferente, no tan sencillo como sus discos previos. Incluso la trompeta es totalmente disfrutable en la canción, y nos prepara para la energía del segundo track One For The Radio que fue el primer sencillo. Èsta es una convocatoria a la gente para que no te importe lo que digan los demás, y el coro sin duda enfureció a varios, pues mencionan que no hay que pretender que los odiamos y mejor cantemos sus canciones, cosa cierta, pues a veces odiamos mucho a un artista o grupo y sin embargo, acabamos con media de su discografía en la cabeza. Everybody Knows (censurada incluso), es una rola llena de movimiento y beat de buena combinación de guitarra y batería. De manera indirecta, expresan su nueva independencia discográfica, y hablan un poco de ellos como banda a sus fans. Do You? el cuarto track, es la típica rock/pop canción de ligue, con un tono alegre, y la repetición de coros que al contrario de cansar, hacen que la rola se te pegue a la cabeza (a mí me pasó). Èsta canción, acabó siendo el tercer sencillo del album. 

Falling In Love (el cuarto sencillo), tiene un sonido ya bastante diferente. Es una rola alegre, romántica, emocional, y la música en ella es lo que más resalta. El final, con una combinación de tres coros, resulta ser una belleza acústica, y la letra si puede llegar a lo cursi, sí que resulta bastante buena para “enamorarse”. Por lo menos a mí me recuerda a mi chica, haha. Luego sigue P.O.V (Point Of View) que podemos considerar una balada con un beat mucho más fuerte. Su principal instrumentación es el piano, y con una voz (de Danny Jones) en un background, que sube con los coros vocal y musicalmente hablando. Su letra habla de decepción y enojo. Don’t you dare come and, try to make things right, ’cause I’ll be ready for a fight. Corrupted es probablemente una de las canciones del disco que tiene resalta por su gran diferencia con las demás. Una letra un poco confusa, la rola llega a tener (increíblemente) tintes de lo que llamamos el nu metal aunque muy apagados. Tiene un beat fuerte, y que en lo personal, me hace imaginar mucho humo en un cuarto. Smile puede ser líricamente hablando, la peor de las canciones del album. Su tema es la autoestima, e sonreir siempre ante los problemas y tratar de llevarla leve, cuando se pueda. Lá música tiene un tono algo disfrutable aunque de repente suena rebuscada y sin sentido, pero en su inicio recuerda algo de los antiguos albums.

The End, el noveno track, llega con un tono más calmado, que abre con simple guitarra, a la que luego se le une una instrumentación completa, incluida con violines. Tiene un todo reflexivo, y como lo dice su título, el final de las cosas, de los momentos, de alguna acción, el “no se acaba hasta que se acaba” es el tema de esta canción. Súbitamente, inicia Going Through The Motions con su rapidez un poco desesperante. En lo personal me recuerda a alguna rola de algún grupo de los 70’s, que ya he oído. Es la típica rola hecha totalmente desmadre, que resulta buena después de varias escuchadas. Probablemente, si no tuviera el título de la canción tan repetitivo, sería un track muy bueno del disco. Down Goes Another One (mi canción favorita del album), es el track número 11, y que reúne todos los elementos del album en uno sólo, mejorándolo y simplemente dejando una rola bastante disfrutable. Es un poco lenta, sin llegar a balada, con un tinte de decepción también, con el pensamiento “ahí va otra más”. La música después del segundo coro, es una de las partes más instrumentalizadas del album, y que demuestra que McFly puede dejar de ir sólo divitiéndose, para crear algo más serio. El final sorprende un poco, pero deja una calma aparente con una pequeña secuencia de piano. Podría considerarla como la mejor rola de todo el album, simplemente por esta razón. Only The Strong Survive suena bastante parecida al track número 10, aunque con un poco más de sentido, y después de la primera estrofa, opaca a esa canción. Nos regresa un poco al inicio del album, con un beat prendido, y con un buen uso del ritmo. Everytime we get up, are we destined to fall? And I’m asking myself if it’s worth this at all, every corner we turn, we just run into walls, because loving you feels like a kick in the balls.

Como su nombre lo dice The Last Song es el último track. Inicia con una balada a piano, que desde un inicio suena bastante disfrutable. Sin embargo, pasando la segunda estrofa, cambia totalmente el ritmo de la canción, para volverse algo muy movido. Habla sobre qué harían su tuvieran que tocar su última canción debido a la muerte. Un buen tema para cerrar el album, aunque en momentos se siente mal logrado, pues intentaron abarcar algunos sonidos para los que todavía no están preparados. El final de la canción recuerda a las llamadas “canciones de grandeza” estilo Queen, Bon Jovi, o The Who, aunque probablamente pudo haber sido mejorado muchísimo. Thank you all… acaba siendo la frase que finaliza al album.

En su versión especial, el album incluye algunos acústicos de las canciones, además de un cover de Stay With Me de The Faces. Èste album podría estar balanceado junto con el primero, como el mejor album de la banda. En general tiene un sonido muy fresco, y da la nueva dirección a la que se dirige el grupo. Debido a sus influencias, de repente intentan apuntar hacia algo que todavía no son, o para lo que aún les falta, pero se agradece, pues no muchas bandas tienen este tipo de metas. Si bien McFly es una banda de rock/pop/punk común, han tenido ya varios aciertos, como el desbancamiento de los Beatles en el #1 o sus numerosos covers que les ha otrogado buenas críticas.

Sencillamente McFly es todavía una banda joven, con mucho por delante, y que esperemos que vaya por buen camino, aunque en este medio, los errores se aceptan, con tal de que no se repitan. Les dejo el video de One For The Radio, y el tracklist del album completo. Escuchar o no, dar una oportunidad, o a quienes ya conocen al grupo, pues esperar el nuevo material, haha. no se pierdan!

Corrupted Live At Wembley

Radio:ACTIVE (2008)

1.- Lies

2.- One For The Radio

3.- Everybody Knows

4.- Do You?

5.- Falling In Love

6.- P.O.V.

7.- Corrupted

8.- Smile

9.- The End

10.- Going Through The Motions

11.- Down Goes Another One

12.- Only The Strong Survive

13.- The Last Song

14.- Do You? (Acoustic)

15.- Falling In Love (Acoustic)

16.- P.O.V. (Acoustic)

17.- Stay With Me. 

Looks like the solution is to use Diskwarrior and rebuild the disk.  You can also try the solution presented in this thread.  Thanks Rich S.

I saw a post on Facebook from a fellow photographer and it got me thinking of how fortunate I have been over the years with memory cards.  Yes, I lost photos on one occasion, but I have managed to escape complete catastrophe.  Knock on wood.  Uh, maybe knock again just to be safe.  It got me thinking that losing images in a memory card meltdown might be like crashing in bike racing.  There are those who have crashed, and then there are those who are going to crash.  My point, I will run into a  memory card meltdown at some point.

First thing I did after reading his post, which had a happy ending by the way (he was able to recover all the wedding images he had just shot), was to bookmark the application he found that recovered the lost images.  CardRescue for the mac allowed him to recover all the images and salvage what was looking to be immanent disaster.  Of course I run on the Win platform so I was a little disappointed, until I found a link at the top of their page to the CardRecovery app that accomplishes the same thing for windows.  Yes, they are both bookmarked in my favorites now.  Hey, I do have a couple macs in the home, they just aren’t mine

Check out Dave’s work since you are browsing links anyway.  He may have just saved you some real headache if you ever come across a corrupted memory card with important images on it.

Rất nhiều lần tôi nhận nhận được thông báo lỗi khi giải nén tập tin RAR, tức một cái là khi tải về và giải nén thử ở tiệm Net thì không sao (có lúc không thử), đến khi chép vào USB mang về nhà thì error mới tức chứ ! Nhiều lần tôi gọi điện yêu cầu người gửi file giải nén thử trên máy họ xem có vấn đề gì không vì cứ bị hoài, câu trả lời vẫn là “giải nén được mà !”. Đợt rồi, tôi nhận được file RAR chứa database Access để về làm báo cáo, rút kinh nghiệm những lần trước, tôi thử giải nén ngay tại máy này (máy ở công ty, sài phần mềm 7zip), giải nén thành công tốt đẹp, yên tâm chép vào USB mang về nhà, đến khi dùng WinRAR ở nhà để giải nén thì lại Error, tức điên !

Tuy nhiên lần này, tôi đã may mắn sửa được file bị lỗi bằng chính WinRAR, khỏi phải ra tiệm tải lại.
Đọc tiếp… »

Supersonic 2009, 24th-26th of July (inclusive): I will recap this via three categories, I think.

The Good

~ Nisennenmondai (Saturday evening): Nisennenmondai did some sort of “Alice…” kinda thing where they’re tiny but start playing and it’s like they’ve eaten an “Eat Me” and grown by about four hundred miles. Either that or they just sounded really big. The best set of the festival, anyway, and they got the reception from the crowd to prove it. They live somewhere between Battles and Can with maybe a twist of Lightning Bolt too, creating a driving and constantly building instrumental sound. The nutty drummer makes a great contrast to the other two more demure types.

~ Theo (Sunday afternoon): Joint-second-best. Your man (on his Jack Jones) guitars for a bit, loops that, then slings the axe over his back and drums for a bit, before looping that etc etc. Eeeeeveryone is using loop pedals nowadays (I heard an ice-cream van layering it’s choons the other day. Or maybe I just wanted to, I forget) but it’s the quality that’s important, and this lad created a wonderfully intricate-and-detailed but still high-energy mathsrock business.

~ Earthless (Sunday evening): The other joint-second-best. They weren’t as Southern as I was expecting (I reckon I may have become confused between tracks on the Brumcast preview podcasts, although I’m not sure who that means I actually was thinking about. Someone I didn’t see, anyway). I’m hesitant to call them ‘stoner rock’ as others have, and will instead go with the “brutal psychedelia” appellation that a wise man suggested afterwards. Or something. Loooong songs with lots (and I really mean lots) of widdly-wah guitar, but all serving the purpose of taking you on an adventure into the heart of a rocking sun. Or something.

~ The catering situation: The food/drink provisions for the hungry/thirsty masses this year was better than one might ever have expected. The Hogan’s Organic Cider Crizzew were selling pints of their lovely apple beverage for £3 (dear, obviously, but not really all that obscene given that we’re at a festival-type-affair), and Purity (your young funky fresh real-ale that doesn’t market itself towards old men like other breweries who are all SQUARES anyway) had nearly-a-pint bottles available for £3.50. The generic kegged lager and cider from the main bars were £4 per pint, and thus only purchased by certain kinds of mor-ron, or perhaps those particularly and overwhelmingly committed to lager and lager alone (these probably aren’t the same thing, but may be). The Hogan’s was really nice though, you honestly should’ve tried it if you’re one of this lot who seem to be unhappy about having paid more for things that weren’t as good. The Thai food stall was nice if expensive (it doesn’t matter precisely what it is, if it’s served in a polystyrene tray then £5 is expensive for any kind of food. This was of course a lot nicer than practically anything else you’ll ever get in a polystyrene tray), and I can officially reveal to the world that a “100% Cornish BBQ” is in fact a burger/barbeque/etc stand that additionally-but-separately sells pasties and clotted cream. They don’t put them on the barbeque grill. They’re not certain kinds of mor-ron.

~ PCM (Friday night): UK drum’n’bass all in your face. A touch funkier and less head-wreckin’ than usual, I thought, with some squelchy rave-synth sounds that I don’t recall them using quite so much before. Great fun. I’m glad they didn’t use Bolt Throwerman again this time – that was fun at first but the novelty has run its course.

~ Tartufi (early Saturday evening): Hard indeed to describe, but worth the effort of checking out if you get the chance. Noisy pop, perhaps, marrying frequently-changing song structures to some really catchy hooks, and assortment of different instruments, loop pedals (yes, yes), and a ridiculously broad sound. Apparently they’re American. I thought someone had told me they were Belgian. They were probably on the verge of going into the ‘joint second best’ category with Earthless and Theo, but let down ever so slightly by occasionally trying a bit too tough to be ‘epic’ for their own good. Only occasionally, though.

~ Iron Lung (Saturday evening): I was amazed to learn that the band I saw supporting Municipal Waste in Dudley (“Doodley”, as they had it) last year are considered by many to be legends/really important. Quite good, anyway – fast shouty hardcore/grind (‘power violence’, if you will. Truly the most fantastic genre name this side of ‘krunk’), with inhumanly tight and precise stopping/starting/rhythm-changing. The singer-come-drummer is clearly a frustrated stand-up comedian, bless him.

~ Thorr’s Hammer (Saturday night): I wasn’t expecting a lot (oh, cynic), but I enjoyed them. Doomy huge riffs met a pleasingly happy onstage attitude, in contrast to the pomposity that so often attends this sort of thing. Runhild Gammelsæter (a dream of a name for a metal singer, it has to be said) was downright giggly, bless her heart. And also, yes: huge riffs.

~ Zu (Saturday night): I only saw the middle bit of their set, but it was bloody ace energetic jazz-rock sort of stuff, although that doesn’t really do them any justice at all as a description. Saxamophone, saxamaphone, with turbo-charged rhythms. I wished I’d stopped with them a bit longer, actually – in retrospect it would have been worth missing the start of Corrupted.

~ Corrupted (Saturday night): Dooooooom. Corrupted are one of those bands who are considered legends those who A) have heard of them, and B) are the sort of people likely to consider them legends. They sounded huge with a capital Hyoo. On the verge, perhaps, of overdoing it a touch with the post-rock style jangly guitar build-up bits (they never felt like anything more than a build-up, that was the trouble. If I’d been wearing a watch I would probably have checked it at times) but I suppose that when they kicked in the light & shade thing really did work. They did sound absolutely corruscating when hitting it, too. Bosting stuff and no doubt it’s an “Ah, yes, I saw Corrupted once…” tale to tell the doomster grandchildren.

~ Nancy Wallace (Sunday afternoon): I only arrived in time for her last song-and-a-half, but her voice & guitar and the (very attractive) violinist combined to make an absolutely lovely folksy sound.

~ Zzz (Sunday afternoon): A mix betwixt Depeche Mode, Suicide and Dead Or Alive. The chaos/noise bit they briefly had a stab at was absolutely and entirely unconvincing, but other than that they were great keyboardy fun.

~ Khyam Allami (early Sunday evening): Played traditionally-styled Syrian music on the oud (a bit like a lute? It makes that jruangly type of sound I associate with Middle Eastern music. “Jruangly” is a word I’ve just made up to describe that sound that sounds like “jruanglllle”). He seemed surprised but genuinely really happy to be well received, which was quite nice for all concerned. Then, he covered “Black Sabbath”. On the oud. Awesome.

~ The Memory Band (Sunday evening): Apparently they were playing “The Wicker Man” soundtrack, although I wouldn’t know since I’ve never seen it (yes, yes, we know, heresy and so on). Very effectively creepy nursery rhyme-ish folk, from my perspective.

~ Head Of David (Sunday night): Intriguing: their sound seemed to me to be closer to what would often be called noise-rock than what would often be called industrial, in spite of the fact that it was actually closer to the sort of panel-bashing rhythms that you’d associate with industry than it was to anything like free-form noise. Interesting semantic dissonance, ar kid – yow can tell they’m proppa folk from the Black Country like we.

~ Caribou (Sunday night): The last band, for me. They sounded absolutely nothing like the gentle psychedelia found on the recorded bits’n’bobs I heard, and were instead more like some energetic post-rock thing hopping up into big rhythmic drum freakouts. Good fun but I only saw a bit before needing to leave. A whole weekend o’tiredness was beginning to settle on me.

~ People: This is uncharacteristic for me, I realise, but I give shouts to the actual audience – firstly I didn’t have to negotiate too many unpleasantly dense crowds (no idea how many folk were there, but they were spread out a lot more nicely than they might have been) and secondly I bumped into a lot of lovely bredrins and sistrins who I hadn’t seen for ages/don’t see very often. Aaaw.

~ Boids: There was, of course, “There Are No Others…” (Or maybe there wasn’t. Weren’t. My head hurts. I suppose there was a titular absence of others, so “there was” is permissible) (see here, whichever way up) (anyway: BIRDS~!); there was also the bird-shaped-cushion I bought from one of the merchandise stalls to take back to Louise. I named him ‘Poultry’. He was later re-named ‘Percy’.

~ Bunny Bissoux’ “Petting Zoo” pictures: Really cute. I absolutely love the lion that you can see at the bottom-central-left here. I’m still claiming responsibility for giving Capsule the idea to have this made, too, whether or not the actual artist knows a thing about that (I suspect she probably doesn’t).

The Bad

~ Sunno))) (Friday night)))): When you can barely breathe for dry ice you know it’s time for Sunnoparenthesisification. Or a Sisters Of Mercy gig, perhaps. One of the two. I only watched a little bit before wondering off to see Scorn, admittedly, but after the intro tape had ended and their performance had started (figuring out the precise point at which this happens is not the easiest feat) they went “Buuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” for the ten minutes or so I bothered with. As, obviously, is their custom. I think they could be interesting as a kind of endurance test if they actually were as loud as popular legend claims that they’re supposed to be, but on neither of the time-and-a-bits that I’ve sent them has this been the case (at least a couple of folks whose stuff I’ve read from the Collective Memory seem to have been carrying portable decibel meters and reckon that this hit that 130db-ish plane-taking-off range. I am as deaf as a post, admittedly, but that really doesn’t sound even approximately close to right to me))).

~ Diagonal (early Saturday evening): Erm, I know that I definitely saw at least some of their set but I don’t remember the slightest thing. I don’t recall them as specifically bad, but not making any impact at all can’t be a good thing.

~ Trying to keep the rain from falling into my cider whilst walking between stages on Sunday: A pain in the arse. The weather was OK otherwise, though.

~ Tiredness and aching: Clearly I am a complete and total Jessie.

~ Travelling by taxi: This was necessary for the journeys home on the first two nights. It’s not a cheap hobby.

~ Missing some of the bands that were worth seeing: I signed off Venetian Snares (who I would particularly have liked to see) and Monotonix as being casualties of playing in the middle of the morning, and now everybody seems to be saying they were particular highlights. Bah. I didn’t get around to getting my name down for the list-only Pram performance beforehand, either. Bah.

The Middling

~ Scorn (Friday night): Not as good as I wanted, but I think that may mostly have been due to me having the wrong kind of expectations – this was more of a ‘minimal electronics’ sort of affair than the thick swamp of dub that I was looking forward to. I spent a fair bit of the set chatting to The Infamous John Matie (I hadn’t seen him for a year) in the other room of The Med Bar and Scorn’s set made ace background music for that, though.

~ Rose Kemp (Saturday afternoon): Whilst it seemed like a theme for quite a few acts over the weekend, Rose Kemp took “sounding very different live to on record” to a ludicrous degree. Her voice was a hell of a lot more shrill than I expected, and accompanied only by big dragged-out doomy chords. At some points this came together to create a hellish sound, whilst at others it sounded like half baked hit-the-guitar-and-howl improvisation. There was also some very extensive swearing and amp-fiddling between songs. Lots and lots of each. It’s nice to have hobbies.

~ “Home Of Metal” talk (Saturday evening): After a fun little documentary about the project, there was an on-stage interview Johnny Doom, Nic Bullen and a couple of Sunno))) blokes. With the mics helpfully turned down really quiet. I left halfway through – I would actually have liked to stay and strain to hear for a bit longer (not being sarcy) but I absolutely did not want to miss any of Nisennenmondai.

~ The Accused (Saturday night): They sounded really Poison Idea-esque on the recorded bits I’d heard, but more like a generic sloppy 80s thrash band live. They did have their moments though.

~ Esoteric (Sunday afternoon): I think I was probably all-doomed-out by this point. They had effective chunky riffs and a big sound, but just didn’t really get to me. The atmospheric sample bits (dripping taps sounds etc) probably would have worked a lot better in less massive venue. Your man’s Prince/Madonna stylee headset mic was a nice touch, though, although there were no dance routines to make the most of it.

~ Arbouretum (sic) (early Sunday evening): I only saw a little bit of their set – 70s folky prog sorta thing. Seemed OK-ish.

~ Jarboe (Sunday evening): Ooh, she’s an enigma, that Jarboe. Or wants to be, at the very least. Hippy-doom this time around, perhaps (ah, it makes sense in my mind), but the way that she appeared to have such great regard for the magical spiritual worth of what she was doing really did get irritating.

~ 65DaysOfStatic (Sunday night): Post-rock with d’n’b styled imitation breakbeats. I liked bits of the bit of their set I saw, but (as a tweet from I-don’t-know-whom that seems to have fallen off the internet said) every song seems trying so very hard to be all big and epic. Their stage manner was very different but somehow related to that of Jarboe – in their case they seemed supremely convinced of their own ability to Rock The Hizouse. Plenty about them to get on the ol’ nerves, all in all, but they did have some fun moments.

* * *

Not quite matching up to last year’s best Supersonic evaaarrr, but still plenty good enough. Next one please. Again again again.

Check out The Collective Memory for a whole bag o’ links to things other people have said.

Benaulim is a true natural treasure. It is one of the very few beaches in Goa which is not corrupted and commercialized. It is a very quite and peaceful beach destination. If looking for more than beaches, Benaulim is the right place. There are several famous Churches built in Portuguese style worth watching. The church of St. John the Baptist, Nossa Senhora de Merces Church, Holy Trinity church etc are the most famous ones. The activities in Benaulim are immense from Bull fighting to motor bike race, water sports to sun bathing and dolphin watch. Benaulin can be the next best thing in Goa.

June to October is the ideal time to visit Benaulim, it is just 28 km away from the Dabolim airport in Goa, and Margao is the nearest railway station, take a pre paid taxi and the 8 km ride will feel like less than half and hour. If not prepaid taxies, there are buses in every 15 minutes. It is better to stay and enjoy the experience of Benaulim plenty of hotels are available in Benaulim for over night stay.

The corrupted can be corrected,

            The perverted can be converted –

                        The crooked [1] can be made straight.  

– eab, 9/3/09

Patrick Jost has 3 4gb cards and a pair of 2gb cards with his current camera. Also a pair of 1gb cards with his backup/spare camera.

When travelling, his greatest fear is losing the camera itself, plus any cards in it or the bag. When he swaps a card out, it stays away from the bag until its been backed up. Paranoid, maybe. It also introduces another risk. Loose cards.

Patrick Jost has been known to rotate the cards on different travel days. At the end of day one, the card comes out, even if it’s not full. It might be used again on day four. That way, a card failure will be from different parts of the trip, rather than eliminating a whole section.

On his last trip, one picture was corrupted. It was necessary to shut the camera down and restart to recover so it was probably a camera issue. It hasn’t failed in several hundred shots since then. Needless to say, that card came out right away and wasn’t used again until the pictures were off-loaded and the card reformatted.

Rejected / Corrupted Pics in Photo Contest

Click  here to visit Yamaha Photo-Contest

Can’t post anything at the moment because my camera is loading on corrupted files- But my dad will fix them soon (Hopefully)

In an earlier post,  10 Watt wall of Sound, I talked about my interest in low resolution film.  Supersonic seemed like a pretty good place to road-test some of the more extreme limitations of my extremely limited Blackberry’s  video camera, specifically how it reacted to Low Frequency, high level sound.

Let’s have a look at the results.

Here’s how the recording of PCM turned out.

Next up was Scorn

Followed swiftly by Sunn o)))

The results seemed pretty conclusive but I decided  to continue my studies…

Here’s how the Blackberry’s camera handles difficult lighting conditions courtesy of Monotonix

It does seems to react pretty well to Goblin’s synths though!

And lo, Capsule’s annual Supersonic festival at The Custard Factory in Birmingham’s Digbeth (the Irish/arts/disused factories/SILENCE, YOU quarter) inexorably advances upon us like one of those scary street-hooverer-vehicle-things with the big brushes on the front. Scare the bloody life out of me, them bleeders.

SssssSonic, conversely, fills me with joy. This year it is held between the 24th (that would be this coming Friday) and the 26th (that would be this coming Sunday. This coming Saturday will be between the two, in the customary fashion) and – as ever – features a load of bands that everyone else has heard of apart from me. On the off chance that you don’t already know the lot, I’d recommend the preview podcasts that Brumcast have assembled as a starting point: part one and part two will give you an intro to a fair few of the acts a-playing (on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, if you’re looking for the timetables).

The headliners are a mixed bag for me: call me crap at liking music if you must, but neither Goblin nor SunnO)))parentheseseseseses))) hold a particularly large amount of attraction. Japanese dooooooooooom-types Corrupted should be good, though, as long as they don’t come across as toooooooooo samey live, and breakcore/IDM/lunacy-merchant Venetian Snares will be ace if he can actually be bothered to get on stage and do a set this time around (word had it last time he came to Brum that he refused to play because the venue had the wrong brand/make of CD player, although I can’t really remember if that’s a rumour I heard or a rumour I started). I don’t really know industrial-rockers Head Of David all that well (there’s half a week left, gimme time) but the bits I’ve heard sound like fun.

Things of note elsewhere, then:

~ Scorn’s dark-arsed industrial dub will be ace, but since he’s on at same time as Sunno)))bracketseseseses))) I’m slightly concerned that he might not be easy to hear. I’m even more concerned that the combined bass of the two acts might be enough to get all of Digbeth shut down forever.

~ I saw rhythmic instrumental Japanese ladies Nisennenmondai supporting Acid Mothers Temple last August and thought they were really very good – the missing link between Can and Battles, perhaps. I also enjoyed the great bit of lost-in-translation-ification from their recent interview in that “Stool Pigeon” freesheet thing – “What’s your new album about?” “It’s about £10.”

~ Earthless were completely unknown to me until I listened to the above podcasts and are still pretty unfamiliar, but I’m liking what I’ve heard so far of their cross between Comets On Fire, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Corrosion Of Conformity and The Edgar Winters Group.

~ When I first saw the name Rose Kemp around, I’d assumed it was a band using a fairly poor pun on “Ross Kemp”. Cruel and unfortunate fate has it that it’s actually an individual’s real name. Poor cow. What’s good, though, is her Jeff-Buckley-in-a-folk-metal-band sound.

~ The Accused – ‘Splatter Rock’ sez they, ‘fun metallic punk ala Poison Idea’ sez me.

~ Bunny Bissoux will be creating Petting Zoo-themed artwork. The artist herself probably won’t be aware, but I’m claiming credit/responsibility for giving Capsule the idea of this. And I’m doing so whether it’s actually true or not.

~ Stuff elsewhere: I’m always slightly surprised that no real fringe festival has ever evolved for Supersonic (given the large audience and full complement of national/international folk travelling inwards you’d think there’s be all sorts of related things going on around the outsides, whether officially connected with the festival or not. Or is that just me?), but even without that there is stuff a-happening. On the way there (well… on the way if you’re coming from roughly the same place as me. If you’re not coming from roughly the same place as me then I won’t rub it in, you probably feel bad enough as it is) former Soup’n’Sonic guest Yukio Fujimoto has his The Tower Of Time installation at Perrott’s Folly in Edgbaston (in which the ticking of 1,111 clocks blurs into supertone white noise as you ascend the tower), and then at Moor Street Station you can see There Are No Others, There Is Only Us (boids and Ben Frost). Once out into Digbeth, Ikon Eastside has When The Scales Fall From Your Eyes (visual exploration of alledged modern obsession with weights and measures), Vivid has Participation – The Film And Video Workshop Movement 1979-1991 (wot film-makers dun in the 80s), and Eastside Projects has Does Your Contemplation Of The Situation Fuck With The Flow Of Circulation ( I’m really not sure, but there are some pretty pictures at that link). If the metal at S’Sonic ain’t quite consistently proper-metal enough for you, meanwhile, Testament are playing at The Wulfrun Hall in Wolverhampton on Saturday night (about twenty minutes on the train from New Street Station).

~ Surrounding establishments: Make sure you pop into The Rainbow while you’re in that neck of the woods and buy a pint or two to help them raise money for their troubles. The Lamp Tavern on Barford Street is probably the best drinkin’ pub in Digbeth, although most of ‘em round there are good. Manzils on the High Street (head back towards Selfridges from The Custard Factory and it’s on your right when you’re nearly there) is a reasonable place for a curry.

~ Onsite stuff: THERE IS NO CASH MACHINE IN THE CUSTARD FACTORY SO GET YOUR MONEY OUT BEFOREHAND (doesn’t make any difference to me – West Brom Building Society represent – but this is something that seems to be a big deal for a lot of people). If previous years are anything to go by (and there’s no reason why they necessarily should be, so don’t come crying to me if this plan doesn’t work) then there will be big queues and crowds at opening time (9pm) on the Friday, but you can usually pick up your wristband a little while before then if you have a ticket-in-advance. I’d do that and then head back to the pub for a bit if I were you. Let’s not have too many of you steaming into The Lamp, though, I’ll want some peace and quiet.

~ If the weather is anything other than ‘temperate’ and I find out which one of you is responsible then you’ll be for it, mate. Be warned.

Conservative Commentator Michelle Malkin has a simple Message for Republicans: Clean your own house. Sounds a bit like Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount, “Why are your trying to remove the sliver from your brothers eye when you have a log in your own”. First remove that log and focus on yourselves. Conservatives continue to miss their calling. Clean up and let it start with me.

NowPublic

Tags: Culture | democrat | Jesus | Republicans | scandal | World | House | eye | Keene | American | Conservative | clean | log | CORRUPTED | own | your | US Politics | speck | sliver | sermon on the mount | pay-for-play | Michelle Malkiin

I won’t lie, I feel like I’m somewhere in the middle of this… uh, debate/meeting?

So you just turned on your PC or laptop, only to find that windows has got itself into a tis, with random messages telling you various .dll files are missing or that something has got corrupted. Even worse is when the computer just wont boot into windows and remains frozen on DOS.

When a computer starts the DOS is run from the chips on the motherboard. Windows or other OS are held on the first (outer) sectors of the hard drive and DOS loads these into the RAM. Problems arise when the hard drive gets corrupted or it suffers some damage.

So you want Windows back! the easiest way is to format the hard drive and reinstall either using the recovery CD or a fresh full version of XP.

BUT! As we all know formatting the HD removes all data. Just because windows has gone haywire doesn’t mean your data is corrupted or lost. Obviously sometimes a HD crash means you cant boot at all but in this how to I will show you how to get your data onto an external drive using Linux in a fashion that is easy, not scary and while contains some command line stuff doesn’t require too much hassle.

Step by step:

1) You will need a Linux Live CD. Use another computer to download and rip the .iso image of Linux Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex or similar. Its FREE! N.B To rip it you need an iso creator/burner tool (many free)

2) Insert the Linux CD in to the CD drive.

3) Reboot the machine and use the boot options to select boot from CD.

4) Don’t install Linux, instead use the ‘try Linux without affecting computer’ option.

5) Once Linux has started up, plug in your external HD (backup device). If NTFS-3g is already installed (should be part of most modern distributions), your USB external hard drive should show up on the desktop.

6) Open a terminal, Applications > Accessories > Terminal

7) Manually install NTFS-3g (Linux is a different file system, usually ext3 so NTFS-3g is an application to talk and read/write between the two worlds). Type:

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

N.B You have to be connected to the net to do this, use a direct Ethernet link. Ubuntu has quite good wireless support though.

8.) Find out what your main partition is using:

sudo fdisk -l | grup NTFS

this should give something along the lines of:

/dev/sda1     *     1      24017        192916521        7      HPFS/NTFS

This simply is <partition name> <partition number> <start sector><end sector> <> <file system type>

9) Make a backup of the current file system config file and edit the current one using:

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

gksu gedit /etc/fstab

In the fstab file which opens using the gedit text editor add your partition to the file for example:

/dev/<your partition>    /media/<mount point>   ntfs-3g      defaults,locale=en_US.utf8  0  0

So for example with my partition I now have:

/dev/sda1    /media/windows ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.utf8 0 0

N.B If you don’t have a directory called /media/windows you will need to make it using the sudo mkdir command.

10) Remount all of the drives using:

sudo umount /dev/sda1

11) Check mount using sudo mount -a or by navigating to /media/windows

12) The newest version of NTFS-3g should show all windows files along with MAC files and unicode directory names etc.

13) Remember Linux is running from CD at this point so if you shut the computer down you will need to remount using the above steps.

14) Use the Linux GUI or Terminal to copy files from the mounted windows partition to  your external drive. Below are some quick Linux commands for the terminal:

list directory: ls

copy: cp

move: mv

new directory: mkdir

N.B st some points the Linux terminal might ask for root authorisation, but because Linux is not actually installed there is no password or root directory, use the sudo command in front of the command if this happens.

15) Remember to not only back up files, but also web favourites, music licenses, and applications that you don’t have a CD for.

16) More information is online here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=217009

I hope that all helps. Its a good idea to have a dual boot of XP and Linux for this very reason. Linux is very powerful and totally free

Ed