2008-07-14 01:11:20

Well Hi people.

appologies for the absense, a combination of illness, wrk, and the harddrive on my desktop deciding to completely and totally explode the other day. I'm now at my parents', and will be here by thursday, hopefully soon after then I should have a machine upon which to apear more frequently.

just to let people know that no, I haven't been eaten by anything large and scaly, fallen into a portal to the shaddow realm or been kidnapped by aliens.

Of course, there is a ravinous vampire out for my blood, but as I'm already existing almost entirely atnight, and have never fancied getting a steak through the heart, I don't think this will make too much difference to my appearence on this site.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-07-14 02:17:19

I was wondering, and debating on whether to email asking if you were okay. Sorry to hear about the hard drive, they're finnicky beggars at the best of times.

Hope you get something sorted out without much trouble, personally being without a computer for long would drive me mad.

Incidentally you might want to check out my topic further down in the off topic room about the release of D&D fourth edition in PDF, or not as you feel like. It was just an "about time" moment for me.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-07-14 19:13:43

Hi,
I'm sorry to hear about the hard drive and your illness. Hopefully you'll get a machine with not too much trouble. I hope you'll be back more frequently soon.
Good luck with the new machine.
Regards,
aaron

2008-07-14 19:52:24

Hmmm, D&D fourth ed? I'll have to check that out. the explosion was very quick, one minute it was fine, I turned it off as normal, then turning it on windows xp refused to appear and the drive started making unpleasant dead sounding noises. but sinse the Dvd drive was already a bit problematic, and the keyboard needed replacing it's not too bad, ----- and of course everything is backed up on my external harddrive and my laptop.

the only really irritating thing is having to reinstall so many things, some of them (like my internet connection, and two versions of net framework), ----- being rather fiddly. I don't even know where my Cd's for Chillingham and grizly are.

Of course, I'm going for a windows Xp machine. though hal certainly works with Vista, many other things I wish to run do not.

Oh btw, I'm also going to Site village tomorrow, the Uk Tech show, so expect some interesting reports.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-07-14 20:13:40

hope everything gets sorted out smoothly

Connor

2008-07-14 22:36:07 (edited by big d 2008-07-14 22:39:00)

Hey, I have the gg cd, I could image it. Hey, you already paid for it so...

Not sure how legal this is though. Did bavisoft really go out of business?
Sorry to hear about your pc! Wonder why the hd did that? Did you perform tons of operations on it, for a few hours non stop? That could do it...

"Actually, they're just super-advanced holograms created for the sole purpose of enriching a children's cardgame."

2008-07-15 02:10:43

Sometimes hardware just fails. I doubt Dark put it through anything nearly that vicious.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-07-15 09:50:58

Well, as reguards the bavisoft games, i'll see if they actually turn up, though to be honest as they don't have loads of replay value and I ran through them a second time comparatively recently (in february I think), it'll probably be a good few months before i miss them, also, as the Bavisoft site is well and truly stil up, I don't believe they've gone out of business, and afterall I've nobody to blame for losing install Cd's but myself.

I'm slightly more worried about all my audio games which require key activation as it means asking for yet more keys from people, and doing more complicated things with Che martin and Vip gameszone sinse they only give out one copy of the game in the first place.

I haven't even finished installing stuff onto my laptop, I stil haven't done the gma games yet.

As to why the harddrive failed, well much as I've always wanted to do the thing mentioned in hitchhiker's guide and give my computer an unforgettable reprogramming with an axe, I never actually did it.

I think it was just a case of my pc being incredibly heavily used for almost three years, from the noises my pc is making and the fact that Windows Xp doesn't even start, i actually believe it's a physical hardware problem, not anything particular which I've done.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-07-15 23:44:23

Dark,

I feel your pain.
Your hard drive disaster sounds a lot like the virus that ate my pc last year.
I'm still not fully recovered, what with licenses, etc.

It well and truely sucks!

Hang in there.

John

2008-07-16 15:22:52

thanks John. Fortunately, we have a really nice, cheap and quick pc shop (a small local firm), on the road just up the street from where my parents live. I phoned them on tuesday, and their building a Pc for me now with 4 G ram, a DvD rw drive, and (for some odd reason), a 500 G harddrive. tomorrow we have the fun task of carting it (along with this laptop), 200 miles up the country on a train.

At least though this means I can start installing stuff streight away, but if I suddenly vanish next week, assume that I'm having a huge arguement with my internet service provider.

the only good thing is that my phd thesis, as well as all my various music, audio, games and extra levels and such are backed up on two machines, my external harddrive and this laptop so I haven't actually lost anything which is good, other than what writing I got done in the last two weeks sinse I had a backup session.

it could've been infinitely worse.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-07-16 16:27:17

wait a second. did i hear, 4 gb of ram, and 500 gigs of hard disk space? i am no where near that! and i thought mine was good: 2 gigs of ram, duel core processor, and i believe about 100 gigs of hard disk space.

2008-07-16 23:32:17

I believe I heard there was a glitch in XP anyway that actually makes it slower if you've over 2gb of ram.

As to the hard drive, well the prices are fairly low for everything right now... but the difference to most people between 100gb and 500gb would be minimal since you're unlikely to use that much.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-07-17 00:03:31

the only bit I'm personally responsable for requesting was the 4 gb ram, sinse I want a fast machine. i'll have to see how it compares to my last 2 gb ram machine.

the 500 Gigs of drive space as Cx2 said, doesn't mean much to me, it's just something the pc comes with. my last machine was comparatively small at 80 gigs, but in three years I only managed to use about 32 of them. Even my external backup harddrive is 200 Gigs.

I believe the reason things have expanded is that people are now downloading a lot of films and videos, which obviously take a hell of a lot more space, but if you don't do that, then not too much gets taken up.

At least it'll make copying cd's etc much easier.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-07-17 03:26:59

Some of it used to be what a tutor at my old college called "bloatware". Rubbish gets left in from older versions that just isn't needed. Win 95 could live on a fairly small drive, my first win 95 machine was actually rated as 875mb not even 1gb.

By the time win 98 was well in flow it was probably about 14gb as standard. Hard drive prices just came down hugely on a cost per gigabyte, and software bloat hasn't been able to keep pace. 80GB is still more than fine for me as a main hard drive, though admittedly I tend to avoid iffy download sites.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-07-17 03:48:47

As with the harddrive. It might also get full, if you're a musician with a billion samples. As the quality here is that counts, you get a hell lot of these and they're larger than a bernhardine, so you might think of a 1.5 minutes long pad on 44100 samplerate at 16 or even 32 bit.
So I have a 250 gb harddisc on my computer and a 750 gb backup disk, sinse I also download a lot of songs here, from which to grab inspiration

Languages don't influence the way we think, but they still have a world and worth in themselves. Celebrate your mother tongue, the world is a diverse place.

2008-07-17 19:21:01

hi,
well i had a brake as well, but because of lack of internet i couldn't access the web.
then, i forgotten my password and finally today i got to changing it.
anyway, dark i had a similar situation a long time a go in 2007.
i was browsing the web and my laptop went "click"
all things, my screen and the braille display went blank and my speech synth stopped speaking.
i shuttet it down and couldn't get it going again.
my grandma red the screen for me.
it said that the hard drive couldn't be found.
the usual hum of my harddrive not the fan was strange too.
it started and when it clicked it stopped.
my friend maciek took a look and said that the hard drive has burned out.
actually it had 6 years so well, it was a bit old.

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2008-07-18 16:00:05

Well, I'm now back, on my new machine, and have to begin the grand install. I've got about 6 gb of music thus far myself, but as quite a bit of that is old game soundtracks in original format (which are surprisingly compact), it doesn't take up too much space.

The weerd thing is I was expecting an uba struggle at reconnecting my internet hub etc,but yesterday we just stuck it in and it worked, which is odd sinse I was expecting a major arguement with Bt, my isp, and probably a lot of installation malarchy.

On the other hand, this morning internet explorer couldn't find a connection, and I had to use the windows connection diagnostic thingy, which obviously worked. If this happens again I suppose I'll have to contact bt, ----- but that's something of a nightmare!

tomorrow, or later today, I have the grand installation project, not to mention restoring my E-mail address, which is going to be fun.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-07-18 22:40:43

If you turned the router/hub/whatever on after your computer then your computer won't have been able to collect an internal IP address, and so the router/hub wouldn't recognise it until the computer refreshed it's IP which you have to tell it to do.

Equally it might be your new computer didn't know it was supposed to use it's local network connection for internet access.

Both are probably one time things either way.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-07-19 20:18:37

Wel which ever, it certainly seems in ful working order now, which is good. Sinse my hub is also my main phone, the hub actually doesn't get turned of at all. the only slight annoyence in reinstalling, is that I need to fix the E-mail first, so that I can request more product keys (luckily I stil have the old ones, but at least I've now finished copying my music, audio and documents (including my phd), onto my new machine, so their now safe.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-07-19 22:17:41

The same applies if you didn't connect it to the hub until it was already on, unless of course it uses wireless... but then it doesn't really matter right now. I'm just honestly glad to see you back and posting.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-07-20 03:50:43

Thanks Cx2, as I said, I was rather unwell before my computer exploded as well, which didn't help. I'm also afraid I'm boggin off to my usual music festival for three weeks in August, and this time I'm staying in a Hotel with no wireless internet. It's annoying, but it's also a good bit cheaper, and sinse I'm saving up for a skeeing holiday, and a trecker, not to mention next years fees I do need to think about money, --------- though of course I'l continue with my habitual game buying, once all the instalation shinanigans are done with.
I've now got my usual address working, but my private one is causing major hastle, including an hour to Bt tech support this evenng, and its stil! not fixed.
I told one particularly useless individual to please ask his cyber controller to emplant some more inteligent software into his clearly defective malfunctioning excuse for a brain! that was quite satisfying!

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-07-20 05:24:54

Laugh, I can well imagine. There is nothing worse than having to spend hours on the phone to a helldesk.

Hmm Trekker? So you decided against using Wayfinder? Interesting. Personally I'm just keeping track of all the options and prices until I've got more money available, which could be quite some time.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-07-20 08:23:34

Wel, after viewing a trecker at site vilage, i rather liked some of it's extra options which wayfinder doesn't have, such as placing markers, geting your course in degrees, and being able to switch from walking mode to motor mode on buses. also, I was impressed at the number of points of interest it had already registered, ----- I got them to look up Durham, and there were a fair few places I knew (great for finding restaurants).
It can also do things like learn routes, so once someone has walked a route with you, you can set it to remember it, which struck me as a bloody useful function.
After geting rather lost last friday night due to taking a wrong turning, I've absolutely! decided I want one.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-07-22 18:30:11

Heh, I have a pc running windows xp, with a 7.84gb, probably at least 8 year old hd, a p3 processor and 256mb of ram... But of course it's not my main one! lol.

"Actually, they're just super-advanced holograms created for the sole purpose of enriching a children's cardgame."

2008-07-23 00:12:44

Well, as long as it works.

unfortunately, my new Pc decided to completely blow out on me yesterday, I'd turn it on, and get no sound and nothing on the screen. I'm hoping it's just a miner problem, ---- though if necessary it is under guarantee.

Luckily, I've been able to configure my laptop to my wireless home network, ---- though that meant more fun with Bt tech support, especially sinse the network key was written on the back of my hub and Bt couldn't get it into their thick skulls that I wasn't able to read it and had nobody to do so, ---- though they did suggest if I connected my laptop to the internet they could remotely connect it to the internet for me! rofl!

Luckily I was visited by a friend yesterday and ended up asking her to read the key for me.

I'd deffinately prefer my desktop, ---- though admittedly mostly because it's screen allows me to use my remaining vision and watch dvd's and things, and also the wireless keyboard is highly useful for lying on my settee writing random stuff, but my laptop is certainly miles better than nothing at all.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)