The 'Shuttle' saga

So I managed to grab a couple of hours to process my long awaited photos, also found some new utilities to try and recover data off a couple of drives that the Shuttle killed a few months ago.

Sooo, simple task of shutting down the machine, plug the drive it and recover the data. Well it ould be but the Shuttle refused to return to life giving me an 'invalid system disk' error. All I did was plug another drive in! Unplugged the additional drive and same result. Plugged the drives into my 2K3 server in the end and used that to recover the data. Not ideal as I hate the idea of using a live production server for this sort of thing but I was fast losing the self control needed to not throw the lot out of the window.

In the end after 2 hours of Shuttle battling I gave up and smacked it hard, this cured the problem and it now boots up! I have had no end of issues with this box and this is the last straw. I run another Shuttle and that is fine, never fails and always does as it's told.

I am now looking to get another machine and throw the 8 month old Shuttle in the bin, I can't bring myself to use it for anything else because it's so unreliable. I am looking at a Mac Pro with dual 3Ghz Xeon processors, 4Gb RAM and 2x750Gb SATA drives. Should be a monster and will allow me to run dual DVI monitors from the single installed card. With the price at over £2500 I'm still a bit twitchy as this will solely be a photo processing machine and earn me no money at all but the simplicity and reliability of the machine is seriously attractive.


More updates when I've beaten the Shuttle some more and bought the Mac :)



H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Early starts and late finishes

So I'm starting on a couple of weeks of 8AM starts, ok not the earliest but I guess when you stay up till 1AM it is :(

Means I can get out nice and early for some photos though so lets hope the weather clears up although it's reported to be wet & windy for the next 2 weeks. We have had alot of flooding around here so I might get out and shoot some floods.

Going to be a long two weeks but I should be able to process some shots at long last and get them up for you lot as promised. Bear with me, they *will* be online this week. Just hope they are worth waiting for after all this ;)



H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Miserable

So it's still raining, it started on Friday morning and hasn't really stopped yet, it's been an awful weekend of dashing about to do jobs in the brief periods of no rain.

Managed to get the replacement rear door on the Fourtrak though which is good, also refitted the dixie seats and cleaned the headrests ready to go back in.

Overall though a depressing weekend, cleared out the study and now have a mountain of paper to shred, am tempted to burn the lot in the back garden but theres CD's in there to and boy would they stink :)

Waited in all day for a Sky engineer to turn up too on Sunday, was late even by the slackest of standards. Still at least it's working now I guess, although time will tell on that one.

Still it's Monday again and I'm back at work *yay* [/sarcasm] - Lets hope next weekend is both more pleasant and productive.


H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Motivation

I don't know if it's the weather lately, tiredness or just work but I feel seriously lacking in motivation to do *anything* these days. Just had a week of and fitted a load of upgrades to the missus' Corsa, gave it a service and cleaned the Fourtrak. Even had the dash out of the FT to jetwash it, made new door panels etc.

Past that though I just don't feel motivated to do much, need to decorate the house, clean the garage and my study as well as get out there for more excersize and photos. Just seem to get up and lose the will to do much ending up slonking round all day wasting my time off.

Hopefully when the summer eventually arrives I will be more motivated, got alot done this week and the weather was lovely, let's hope thats a good sign :)


H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Weather

So we're in the middle of June and it's raining heavily again, what is with this weather at the moment. It really hampers everything and makes you want to stay curled up in bed. Will have to try and get out at some point though.

Need to head to Burnham-On-Sea to grab a new rear door for the Fourtrak [the old one is shot and beyond repair] so that will get me out tomorrow night. Doubt I'll get any shots though as it will probably be raining again :(



H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

New Gear

So I was in Jessops the other day and they had this lovely little Nikon P&S on offer [£50 off] so I picked it up. Lovely bit of kit with VR, auto ISO upto 1000 and is 7.1Mb. It's a Nikon CoolPix S200 for the model buffs out there ;)

Managed to get a couple of shots off on it so here's a few to whet you're appetite, as usual the rest are at www.randomphotos.net.









H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Maiden Voyage

Well I got out in the old girl [Foutrak] for a maiden voyage last night with a fellow photog and boy was it fun :) She ain't fast or pretty but is superb for the lanes and tracks around the area. We were able to go to places we just wouldn't have taken a car and park where you wouldn't imagine possible.

Got alot of shots to process but some are going up on www.randomphotos.net in the gallery 'Around Glastonbury' from the 'Around Somerset' section.

Heres a couple of quickly processed versions, takes soo long to get all these done these days :(

Had some gorgeous lighting for this one later on in the evening:




This one appeared and chased the rest off:






H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

New Toy - Part II

Well after a weekend of scrubbing, cleaning and general repairs she's finally ready for the road [or off-road if I get chance]. Whipped the seats and all carpets out for a good clean, gave the dash and surrounding area a good wipe down and she's looking and smelling alot better now.

You wouldn't believe the amount of dirt which came out of the carpets, just need to repair the rear door, weld some pieces in the rear inner wings and it should be MOT ready. It has a few months on it so no rush, would rather be working on it in this weather though so might as well get it done now.

Just waiting for the insurance cover note to come through so I can tax the old girl and head out for her maiden voyage :)



H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

New Toy - 89 SWB Fourtrak

Driving round recently I noticed that there are alot of places you simply can't park a normal car and wander off to take photo's. I decided I needed something more suited to parking in hedges and ditches and I have always wanted a Daihatsu Fourtak. I trawled eBay and the local free-ads and evetually found a bargain Fourtrak.

It's an 89 2.8TD SWB Sport, it has a few 'issues' but I will get a fresh MOT on it [currently has 3 months] and then sort the odd bits of rust and repair the back door. Cost me very little in the end and I want to keep that theme going ;)

Anyway enough chat heres a couple of pictures to whet your appetite:






Need to get the old girl taxed, get the carpets re-fitted after I've cleaned them and then it's out for the maiden voyage.


H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net