Monday Long Song

On Friday evening my laptop (formally my trusty laptop) screen froze and, then it went blank and I got a 'no bootable device' message. I ran a scan and it couldn't detect a hard-drive. On Saturday morning I took it to a local computer repair place who confirmed that the hard-drive was dead. The guy installed a new hard-drive within the hour and now it's like I have a brand new computer! For five years it's taken between 10-15 minutes to boot up, but now it's instant. Miraculous! He's trying to recover whatever he can from the old hard-drive, but even if he's able to retrieve anything, it's going to take him several days. It's mainly GB's of music which is neither here or there in the grand scheme of things, but also more importantly it contains hundreds of photos. More recent shots from my phone are automatically backed up to cloud storage, but older photos uploaded from my camera aren't (I know, I know...), so I've potentially lost virtually the entire record of my time with Mrs S. You may well have thought that I'd have learned from previous mistakes. Nearly 10 years ago I backed photos and diaries from an older laptop onto a mains driven external hard-drive, which literally went bang shortly thereafter. Nothing at all was retrievable that time. I lost the very earliest photos of me and Mrs S plus all my writings about her. Our history is gradually being erased. Very symbolic. On a positive note, the laptop is so fast now, it's amazing - like having a brand new piece of kit. Before you ask, yes I've ensured that everything going forward will be properly backed up, plus I've ordered a brand new portable external hard-drive for added security!

The only digital music currently left in the archive (other than hundreds of CDs of course) is on a small, much older portable hard-drive that I've been lugging around for years. I've completely forgotten what most of the stuff on it sounds like, but have been having a listen to various bits and pieces over the weekend. Here's a Kreidler tune from 1996 (....gulp.), though I suspect that I chanced upon it via a 2000 reissue.

Kreidler - Traffic Way

All Change

The time has finally come and it really has been a long time coming. While generations are born, raise families, grow old and die, I sit and wait for a single page to load on my computer - and when it finally does, I pray that it doesn't cause the hard-drive to crash into blue screen mode. How the darned thing hasn't been thrown out of the window at some point in the past couple of years, I truly don't know. So anyway, the short and long of it is that after much emptying of pockets, rummaging down the sides of sofas and raiding of piggy-banks, I've ordered a new Dell laptop, which should hopefully be arriving at Swede Towers within the next 48 hours. I mention all this to forewarn that normal service might be even more sporadic than usual while I familiarise myself with the comparatively cutting edge technology that's currently winging its way in my direction. If I get a chance I'll schedule a couple of posts to tide me over the bedding-in period, though, as ever, time is tight at the mo'. Also, the endless waiting for, and re-booting of, this old steam driven computer is doing nothing for my stress levels.

In other news, I've nearly finished removing the jewel-cases from all of my CD's (as mentioned here). In the process of carrying out this fingernail shredding task, I've unearthed a veritable mountain of tunes that I hope to share in the future. I've also had bright ideas for a couple of potential new features that may (or may not) crop up round these parts at some point. I haven't actually written anything down yet though, so that's a worry - I might well forget it all by tomorrow.

To commemorate the various changes currently taking place in my part of the world, here are Sparks, with a favourite of mine from 1985.