My laptop is operable only by loading a "live" CD that comes with the Ubuntu (Linux) book; and then clicking on "try before installing."
This takes about 25 minutes to load a bare bones Linux into the on-board RAM of the laptop, and sets aside 2 gigabytes of it so the user can save stuff, but mostly so applications can use it, because, as soon as you are done "trying" it and shut the computer off, everything saved there is lost.
This would mean that I should only put the laptop to "sleep," and never shut it down. So I won't have to wait 25 minutes the next time I want to use it. And that I should save everything onto my 1 Gig flash drive.
I could theoretically have a pretty much fully functional laptop doing it that way.
It remains to be seen if I can install the Audacity audio editor onto a flash drive, as this is one of the programs that doesn't come bundled with Linux, or if it does, certainly not on the 255 megabyte "live" distribution from a CD.
All this is very fascinating to me, who wants to master the programming languages and be able to take Linux apart and put 'er back together; and that is some recompense, for having my computer on the fritz.
Like, when I go to use an exotic character, like Ꝿ, I can hear the computer fetching the font for it, off the CD. Fascinating!
I guess that character isn't automatically loaded into RAM upon startup (just the alphabets that 99% of the people use). It would be, if we were in ancient Italy, though!
I won't get into any more technical stuff here, other than to say that I have found a work-around, and can probably continue to use my laptop from this point on, without any noticeable degradation in the quality of my work -while exploring "data recovery" options through Google (like Alex in California suggested).
I wouldn't be surprised if the technician at the computer store who will guarantee recovery of your data (or your $149.95 back), uses a data recovery application that anyone can download for free somewhere off the Internet. Maybe the application would be called Byte Back and would have a cartoon dog on the cover, sinking its teeth into a cartoon virus...
Maybe I had better copy-write that name Byte Back Ꝿ -there.
The Power of Now
I would be remiss if I didn't conclude that this is all cosmically connected with the fact that I am reading The Power Of Now, by Eckhart Tolle.
By losing my hard drive, the past is gone, in a sense.
It was kind of a wake up call, in the sense that, my first reaction was a mild panic, thinking: My whole life is on that hard drive, my music, my writings, my pictures, my cartoons!!
But, Eckhart would point out the folly in thinking like that.
The stuff on that hard drive doesn't define me, it only feeds the ego. It is not who I am; that is right here, right now.
The future doesn't exist, and the past only causes the mind to produce feelings of regret, guilt, anger, prejudice, etc. Eckhart say's it better...
The Parable Of The Cake
It's kind of like all the stuff I have done in the past 2 years that is on that hard drive is a cake that took me 2 years to bake.
Someone came along and grabbed the cake and threw it out onto Canal Street (OK, that someone was me) where it was immediately run over by a truck (a Hostess truck, with a smiling kid holding a Twinkie on the side) splattering it in every direction on the road, with intermittent spots of gradually fading frosting on down Canal Street, from where its tires have rotated back around.
My attitude is kind of like: Well, I was stoned most of the time I was in the bakery...
(By the way, the cake is my hard drive in this analogy).
...and, I was going to put a bit of turmeric in the frosting but forgot to, and that's been kind of bugging me...
Plus, now I wouldn't have to keep glancing at the recipe if I want to bake another one, having done it once already....
But, I'm still going to Google: Data recovery.
The heads didn't crash on the thing, nor did it suffer any physical damage. All of the ones and zeros are still on the thing, it just happens that the laptop doesn't know where to look for them anymore.
All this because the volume slider for the Snowball microphone didn't work in Audacity...
There has to be a home remedy...
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| Hey, the web cam works, at least! |
This takes about 25 minutes to load a bare bones Linux into the on-board RAM of the laptop, and sets aside 2 gigabytes of it so the user can save stuff, but mostly so applications can use it, because, as soon as you are done "trying" it and shut the computer off, everything saved there is lost.
This would mean that I should only put the laptop to "sleep," and never shut it down. So I won't have to wait 25 minutes the next time I want to use it. And that I should save everything onto my 1 Gig flash drive.
I could theoretically have a pretty much fully functional laptop doing it that way.
It remains to be seen if I can install the Audacity audio editor onto a flash drive, as this is one of the programs that doesn't come bundled with Linux, or if it does, certainly not on the 255 megabyte "live" distribution from a CD.
All this is very fascinating to me, who wants to master the programming languages and be able to take Linux apart and put 'er back together; and that is some recompense, for having my computer on the fritz.
Like, when I go to use an exotic character, like Ꝿ, I can hear the computer fetching the font for it, off the CD. Fascinating!
I guess that character isn't automatically loaded into RAM upon startup (just the alphabets that 99% of the people use). It would be, if we were in ancient Italy, though!
I won't get into any more technical stuff here, other than to say that I have found a work-around, and can probably continue to use my laptop from this point on, without any noticeable degradation in the quality of my work -while exploring "data recovery" options through Google (like Alex in California suggested).
I wouldn't be surprised if the technician at the computer store who will guarantee recovery of your data (or your $149.95 back), uses a data recovery application that anyone can download for free somewhere off the Internet. Maybe the application would be called Byte Back and would have a cartoon dog on the cover, sinking its teeth into a cartoon virus...
Maybe I had better copy-write that name Byte Back Ꝿ -there.
The Power of Now
By losing my hard drive, the past is gone, in a sense.
It was kind of a wake up call, in the sense that, my first reaction was a mild panic, thinking: My whole life is on that hard drive, my music, my writings, my pictures, my cartoons!!
But, Eckhart would point out the folly in thinking like that.
The stuff on that hard drive doesn't define me, it only feeds the ego. It is not who I am; that is right here, right now.
The future doesn't exist, and the past only causes the mind to produce feelings of regret, guilt, anger, prejudice, etc. Eckhart say's it better...
The Parable Of The Cake
It's kind of like all the stuff I have done in the past 2 years that is on that hard drive is a cake that took me 2 years to bake.
Someone came along and grabbed the cake and threw it out onto Canal Street (OK, that someone was me) where it was immediately run over by a truck (a Hostess truck, with a smiling kid holding a Twinkie on the side) splattering it in every direction on the road, with intermittent spots of gradually fading frosting on down Canal Street, from where its tires have rotated back around.
My attitude is kind of like: Well, I was stoned most of the time I was in the bakery...
(By the way, the cake is my hard drive in this analogy).
...and, I was going to put a bit of turmeric in the frosting but forgot to, and that's been kind of bugging me...
Plus, now I wouldn't have to keep glancing at the recipe if I want to bake another one, having done it once already....
 |
| Things should be back to normal soon... |
But, I'm still going to Google: Data recovery.
The heads didn't crash on the thing, nor did it suffer any physical damage. All of the ones and zeros are still on the thing, it just happens that the laptop doesn't know where to look for them anymore.
All this because the volume slider for the Snowball microphone didn't work in Audacity...
There has to be a home remedy...
For some reason your comment doesn't show up on my blog (which considering the quality of your grammar, spelling, and writing in general, I'm going to call a "feature" rath than a "bug") but I did get it in my email.
ReplyDeleteThe drum you played was probably a "djembe" which for some reason is really popular. For instance, my doumbek was the only one in a cluster of 10 or 15 djembes in Guitar Center. I guess all the techniques are possible on a djembe too, but I'm puzzled why a drum that's so much larger and thus harder to carry would be more popular.
Plus, the doumbek/darbuka "comes with" all these neat Arabic rhythms that you're supposed to learn and sound awesome. Western music doesn't seem to have all these rhythms that are named, other than 4/4, waltz, some oddball times like 6/8 but those are time signatures, not specific rhythms. The rhythms give you something cool to play as a base and then you add fills and do stuff like change from one to the other etc.
As for the computer problems, if I messed around with Linux I'd probably have a dedicated machine to do it on. Used computers are all over the place cheap these days.
And: always, always, always back up your work!
ReplyDelete