Yesterday, I made a post about backing up. A few hours later, Peppery, the server admin decided to upgrade my Wordpress blog to 2.5.1. Well what happened was instead of upgrading, he ended up deleting my blog off the server. He fucked up. To make it worse, he didn’t have a backup to restore my blog. Ironic how a couple of hours after I write a post about backing up, something goes wrong with my blog and there is NO backup!

At least all my posts and settings were in tack in the mysql database. He managed to restore my blog and theme and some of the plugins. I don’t have a clue what plugins are still missing but they can’t be important or else I would remember them. After he mucked around for a while, everything seems to be as good as rain. The only thing I am missing are PSP themes that were on the server. Lucky that I moved the pictures saved on the server to another host so they will be fine if anything was to happen, like this. Now I just need to restore the themes.

Yesterday, I decided that it was probably about time I backed up some files in case something goes wrong with my computer. The day before that, I got given a DVD writer for my laptop to borrow. I was going to give it straight back but they said I can borrow t for a bit longer. Since I had it, I thought that I might as well put it to use. I had some music to burn to CDs, music to rip from CDs, and some backing up to do.

I used Windows to format the disc to enable me to drag and drop the folders and files I wanted to back up. I was hoping that I could backup all my important files to one DVD disc so I didn’t have to mess around with multiple backup discs. I managed to just fit everything that I needed. I didn’t backup my desktop because the videos there will be transferred to an external drive later. I also didn’t bother backing up my music folder because I didn’t need the podcasts and iTunes libraries that were there because I wouldn’t use or listen to anything there ever again. If something did happen to my data, it would be easy enough for me to start fresh. After backing up, I closed the disc and labeled it with a marker and filed it in my Disc Case for archive purposes.

I then burnt music to disc and them ripped music into my iTunes Library. That was a simple task. I then decided that I would backup my iTunes Music Library because at times, I have heard clicking coming from my external music drive and also Windows Vista doesn’t spin down the disc when I eject it from the computer so I have to unplug it in a special way. If I just yank the USB cord from the computer, the drive makes an awful sound, and it could one day possibly destroy the drive somehow. For me to safely remove it from the computer, I have to pull the cord half out to spin down the drive, then I can take it all the way out without it making the horrible sound. It took a bit over 30 minutes and 3 DVDs to backup my iTunes Library, which was a little over 10GB.

Backing up my files on my computer will help me sleep easy and in the event on my computer fully dying, I won’t have to worry as much about the data I have lost. Also if my music drive dies, I have a backup which will contain most, if not all of my music and recovering my library in the event of a failure won’t be that painful. Using iTunes to backup my music was simple, I love how it just does it. I wish backing up what I want with Windows was as simple as that, without requiring third-party software.

About two weeks ago, when I was checking out my Flickr Stats, which I do everyday because I’m obsessed with the line graph, I happened to see that one of my pictures had 50 views that day. 50 might not sound like a lot for most other Flickr users, but for me 50 is a HUGE amount of views of one picture in a day. I went to see what site the views were coming from and it told me they were coming from the bbc.co.uk website.

Now I thought this we very weird, because the BBC is a big company and why on earth would I be getting clicks from there. I went a little deeper and found it on the BBC Internet Blog on a post about the BBC’s iPlayer for the Nintendo Wii. The odd thing was, my picture, which is of an S-Video port on my laptop, had nothing to do with the Wii. I read through the post and saw that the author was talking about watching shows from your computer on your TV. I thought it was a little weird that my picture got chosen but looking at other first page results from an S-Video search on Flickr, I can see why mine was picked over the others, I just don’t know why a more suitable picture wasn’t chosen.

Well today, the picture made it into my top 10 most viewed pictures on my Flickr photostream. I’m pretty happy my picture got used on the blog site and generated hundreds of views of that picture, but I don’t really care that much. Its nice to have you picture on some biggish website for everyone to see, as long as the picture isn’t crap or humiliating. This is a win for me

Yesterday, my friend Morgan hosted an Xbox LAN party for his birthday. There we had 3 Xboxes, 3 televisions, 3 copies of Halo 2, 3 Ethernet cords, 1 router, 12 controllers and 12 people playing. There were a lot of people there, many experienced Halo 2 players, me on the other hand, was not. It was a lot of fun and I had a great time. But afterwards it got me thinking about myself and gaming, shooters in general.

I got my arse kicked! There are many reasons for it. I have never played Halo, I have never played a FPS, I have never played an Xbox, so it is understandable that I would get owned by everyone there, well maybe not everyone, but most people. It has got me thinking that maybe I should start getting into shooters. Every second game coming out these days involves guns or shooting of some description. I am missing out on an important part of gaming and should get on the bandwagon as soon as possible.

When I get my next generation, or should I be saying current generation now, I shall get some shooters. I am going to need a game to get me into the genre, enough to get me hooked into it and getting me to purchase other titles. This should improve my skills in this area, something that is considered as an important part of gaming. Being able to competently go around killing other players is a skill that anyone who considers themselves a gamer should have, which is something that I currently don’t have. Someone needs to help me become a gamer, and they better do that stat!

From now, I will have no more school for 2 weeks. This has been a long term consisting of 11 weeks, although there was Easter break in the middle somewhere so it was probably more like 10 and a half weeks. Still, the term has been pretty long and has been pretty busy, as you would know if you have read the post from last week.

As far as schools concerned, we haven’t done that much at all this term. Have had 2 assessments in Statistics, which I managed to get an Excellence in, and the other one hasn’t been marked, 1 assessment in Geography, which hasn’t been marked either, 2 assessments in ICT, one passed, other not marked (but will be a pass),  1 assessment in Electronics which I passed and 1 in Physics which hasn’t been marked, but I know I haven’t passed it, yet.

Last day pretty much was mucking around. In ICT, I had finished the test in 2 and a half of the 4 periods given, so I ended up browsing the Internet and playing Minesweeper. In Electronics, I helped a friend try and troubleshoot a computer but it was well and truly fucked, then I started installing Windows XP on another machine and later on helped, which turned out to be actually doing it, installing RAM into another machine. Then last period of the day was the Physics test which was hard. Got to leave early which was a upside, I guess.

I don’t have anything planned for the holidays but it will more than likely consist of my being on the computer and internet doing basically nothing. Two weeks after doing that, school will start again. Not really looking forward to that but it will be nice to get test results back. Hopefully I can think of things to blog about during my holidays to make up for the lack of posts during the school time. HOLIDAYS ARE GO!!!

One of my favourite times of the year, along with Christmas and my birthday, is Easter. Why do I like it so much? I think the answer there is obvious, I LOVE CHOCOLATE! Or to be more specific, I love Easter eggs, especially ones of the Cadbury variety, which happens to be the majority of the Easter chocolate sold here.

This year, I decided to save up my chocolates over the short 5 day Easter break and eat them afterwards. In the end, I think it was a great idea because it gave me something to look forward to after Easter. During Easter I was waiting to see what chocolates I get, and after easter I wait till I can finally eat my chocolaty treats. I normally eat the chocolates in order from worse tasting to best tasting. In all honesty, Cadbury chocolate all tastes good so for that it turns into eating the one with the least chocolate to the most. About a fortnight after Easter, I had eaten all my chocolate and was left with boxes in my closet.

Easter is normally during the term 1 holidays but this year, it was in the middle of the term which means we got a few random days off. We got 3 extra days which in total means a 5 day holiday. It was great to have a break during the middle of the term, the only problem was having to come back in such a short time to finish off the term. I can’t wait for the real holiday coming in a weeks time! I love chocolate!!!

As you may not have noticed, my blog was updated to Wordpress 2.5 last week, thanks to Peppery. The only noticeable change is in the admin panel where is has been redone to be easier to use and look much nicer. It is taking a little bit of getting use to but after a while, I’m sure I will remember where they have moved things. For a new Wordpress user, the admin panel will definitely be easier to use but for an old user like me, I’m going to have to get fully use to it.

You may have noticed the lack of update in the past week or so. The reason for my absence in blogging is because I have been overloaded with assessments that were due. I had 5 different bits of schoolwork to do. One was a report for geography on the processes of building the new Carisbrook Stadium in Dunedin, which was really hard to do. I’d be lucky to pass because I had no bloody idea what I was rambling about. I also had a Statistics project to complete which was straightforward, just took a little bit of thinking and time to complete and write up. There was also some small bits of homework such as 2 pages of physics questions, some Computing tasks and also an electronics research project on transducers to be completed.

I have finished doing all assignments and hopefully my plate stays relitively clean for a while, especially during the holidays, so I can do what I normally do and not be tied down with homework and assignments to get done. Hopefully there is no homework for me to do over the holidays so I can have a relaxing break without having to even think about school or school work. I guess we will just have to wait and see.