Our taiko group played for a friend's wedding yesterday. At the party afterwards, that is, not the ceremony itself. The bride is one of the group, so she was playing with us, with a shoulder-slung drum over her full white wedding rig. Later today I expect to be very happy when the restoration of my Mac from backup completes (touch wood). The disc failed last weekend and I've been poking at the Internet through a variety of letterboxes since. Or maybe I shall be happy in a couple of days. It has just announced, "About 37 hours and 2 minutes remaining."
About 1.75 TB. I got the machine back from Apple yesterday with a new disc, the current OS, and nothing else. I booted it, it saw my Time Capsule, and in just a few clicks and 18 hours, it's back to normal. It reported a transfer rate varying between 8 and 25 MB/second, I'm not sure why it would be that low. My broadband is faster. Maybe I should have remembered to plug in the Ethernet before it started over Wifi.
Having said that I had a backup that ran for a comparable time over USB2 last week. I had resized my hard drive from 3/4 TB to 1TB and told windows to do a backup to the same drive I had used to do the restore from the smaller image. Part of the problem was I forgot to disable Malwarebytes until 24 hours had passed uneventfully (as in the "end of backup" event hadn't fired), but I think that there was some sort of messing around comparing block usage with bit maps too. I should have used a clean USB drive from the get-go.
[rab] The backup was made with Time Machine, but the restore process was handled by the Migration Assistant. Apart from whatever speed issues there may be, it seems to me that Time Machine works the way that all backups should, ever since disks superseded magnetic tape. You aren't limited to just doing a full restore, you can look at the backup and see all the individual files and access them just like they're ordinary files on a disc, which of course they are, not hidden in some opaque archive format. Automatic hourly backups meant that without having to think about it, when the disk failed I lost no data. Do modern backup solutions for other systems provide this level of does-it-right-ness?
Discs haven't superseded mag tape. The cost factor is with the disc, but in streaming mode tape can beat a spinning disc in speed of writes. Not only that, you might be surprised at how robust the tape market has become since defense in depth backup strategies were developed in the wake of cheap,reliable discs. Of course, it is all about to change again as Flash becomes cheaper and more reliable.
[Rakk] My understanding is that discs can recover lost blocks if they are in the right sort of configuration, and Flash has hardware redundancy built-in for its peculiar fail modes, so I guess the answer is "Yesnabe".
But in order to get the sort of speed and reliability from spinning discs that tape offers (in streaming mode - important specific there) you have to "waste" a lot of discs. Personally I think tape is neat just because of the robot silos. Technology should have moving parts to provide visual interest. Today's tech is all solid state in boring boxes. Some years ago I toyed with the idea of using tiny motors like the ones in toy helicopters to drive lightweight gear trains, the whole on an appliqué that could be stuck to a tower casing to make it look like it was doing useful stuff. Might still try that.
Made it over here late morning, flood-like and loud as anything. Which was fun as I was having a job interview, to which it added some useful absurdity. Didn't manage to use it as a proof of divine support, though.
[Bis] I got one of my loveliest-ever jobs during a day or so of deluges and flooding. I even had a refugee friend staying over because his street was flooded - I was reluctant to take him in because I wanted to read-read-read before the interview, but humanity prevailed, and the job was a good fit. Where's 'over here'?
You should have calmly placed your smartphone on the table between you and the interviewer and had it play Ride of the Valkyries as the weather crescendoed. If it had been me I would also have thought to wear 15 inch cymbals attached to the inside leg of my trousers at knee-level so I could join in the fun as I interviewed, but that's just me and my over-preparation thing at work.
AS the weather glooms, looms, flashes and crashes about outside, two people sit opposite each other at a table while tinny Wagner belts out of one of the glass slabs on the table..
"What would you say your biggest faults are?"
"WHAT?" syncopated metallic crashes are heard coming from from under the table
"I SAID: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY YOUR BIGGEST FAULTS ARE?"
"MY INCONVENIENT INTROVERSION. ARE WE GOING TO DO THE ONE ABOUT WHICH TREE I WOULD BE NEXT, BECAUSE IF WE ARE THE ANSWER IS THAT ONE OVER THERE."
[Stevie] I've downloaded RotV for future reference, you never know. Didn't get asked what my faults are (there's a Pandora's box...), did you ever support Communism and would you rather plant a tree, cut one down or cut one down and lie about it. [pen] One linguistic border to the south of you.
[Stevie] Still in two minds... Wagner didn't score for knee-cymbals, so it lacks authenticity for the purist, which might count against me if the interviewer knows their stuff.
It was Wednesday, I think, we had very hot thundery weather, torrential storms all around us but only a few hot drops of rain chez windy miller. Thursday - I think the neighbour's weather station recorded more than an inch of rain. It was spectacular.
I looked at central Europe on, I think, my Friday. There was a spectacular string of storms in an elbow, almost a right-angle, from north of Hamburg curving down to southwest of Saltzburg then a bit of a gap to western France (SE from Paris) where a smaller but significant area was also producing much electrical activity. Given that the lightning markers are coloured from white to yellow to orange to three shades of red depending on six 20-minute periods it was a most colourful sight.
[Rosie] South of the Netherlands; the big islands of Zeeland just to the west of us, and to the North, via the big Haringvliet bridge, Rotterdam. We would be able to see the lights of the bridge if it wasn't for our neighbours' house.
Wagner Not Having The Foresight To Score For Knee Cymbals
I see your point, but it would be difficult to answer the interviewer's questions while playing a trombone or french horn. Perhaps you could join in one of the brass parts by playing it on those Irish Armpit-Actuated Bagpipes. Now I think on it, the vigorous Clouseau parrot-inflation arm movements would augment any interview process, thunderstorm or no thunderstorm.
So what's everyone been up to? I've had three weeks off - spent 8 days in the UK. Ate fish and chips by the seaside watching the rain and visited the Mary Rose at Portsmouth's Historic Naval Dockyard - the best museum I have ever visited.
[pen] I just got back from a road trip across the north of Pennsylvania (and a small bit of Western New York). Quite lovely, and I'll be uploading some pictures soon-ish.
[Stevie] Splendid. I have worked so bloomin' hard this year on supporting my department with all of its projects (*ahem*) that I have been unable to use up my vacation days at the correct rate. So I've had a bit of a session in the working hours part of the SAP platform, which fell over only twice as I tried to use it. As a result I'm having at least a week off per month between now and the end of the year.(Smug, I know, but this is a benefit of being a Dutch university employee).
[Rosie] It's that time of year. Time to fire up the genny and clean it's pipes out. Hopefully it either blows itself out or goes someplace else before I have to drive through it in a week and a bit.
So how was everyone's week? And what's planned for the weekend? If I apply myself, I could be making jam for the fourth Sunday in a row - it requires a foraging expedition by cycle from the windy miller's mill tomorrow (but first, the bicycle must be retrieved from another windmill where the apprentice left it a couple of weeks ago). Pffft.
My week sucked balls but tomorrow I plan to vent my spleen by putting three intrepid investigators into the middle of a den of vile cultists doing things so unspeakable to anyone falling into their clutches that the very minds of all will be torn asunder by the mere contemplation of the foul ... but I've said too much. Delta Green day. My favorite day of the month. Crippling SAN loss all round if it all plays out properly.
Sun blacked out; Texas flooded; Los Angeles on fire; N Korea about to launch nuclear missiles. You'd think God was upset with America about something.....
You've probably spotted by now that I tend only to drop by whenever I fiddle with the server config. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that I'm now running mariadb instead of mysql.
Fine, although it would be nice to create around another 20 hours in the day. Although if that was 20 more hours of being shouted at by the world's loudest six-year old, I might well revise that opinion.
[Phil] Paraphrasing something I just saw on Facebook: If Irma destroys Mar-a-Lago while leaving the rest of Florida unscathed, I will hand in my atheist card.
[Stevie] We don't live in a windmill. They're too full of machinery - and drafty gaps to ventilate the dust out - for anyone to live in. However, I have often considered how convenient it would be to attached the wet laundry to the sails and have them dried and straightened at the same time. Less ironing to do is always a good thing.
[penelope] *puzzled* But don't all the houses in Holland have windmill sails on them? I'm beginning to think the Junior Boys Bumper Book of Foreign Places (1962 ed) was perhaps less authoritative than I was led to believe by the Raptnuckle Infants School librarian. You'll be telling me next that the skies over Berlin are not darkened by fleets of dirigible warships, waiting for the Next Big One.
I've been about 2/3rds of everywhere, and it was in Utrecht that I realized that Holland is almost certainly a better place to be a human being in than anywhere else I've ever been. One day perhaps I'll even find the words to explain why. I think the words exist but I'm pretty sure they're Dutch.
A belief in the power of gezeligheid and the 'keeping our feet dry' polder model of discussing everything to the nth degree before making a decision (and the ability to have a proper discussion that this necessitates - missing in 'other places' where political point-scoring is seen as winning), probs. Actually, it is pretty organised here. Lots of red tape and regulation, and plenty of tax to pay, but the roads don't have holes, the water stays out, and I can get a next-day appointment with my GP. If only I could speak better Dutch.
It's a good feeling is it not, Rosie. I had the same sensation when I fronted up at the local traffic authority to renew my drivers' licence (5-years and a few bob) and was told that as I had reached 'a certain age' they declined to take my money. I would like to thank the taxpayers of this blessed country for your magnanimity. We don't have TV taxes here, by the way, although we used to. I think someone in the public service did some number-crunching and found that enforcement didn't really work and that it cost more to try to enforce licensing than the income garnered.
(Stevie, Raak) All I watch regularly is Match of the Day 1 & 2, HIGNFY and University Challenge. I never watch anything live but record it and play it back about 2 in the morning with a strong cup of coffee or a stiff brandy. That way you can fast-forward through the interviews, which tell you nothing, and the sages on the panel. I reckon that on ITV could watch the entire World Cup in about 20 minutes. (Dujon) The driving licence for over 70's here is only for 3 years and you have to self-certify that you're fit to drive. (Stevie) Can't even dominate the sodding back garden.
[Superman] Nah. This is the chat thread, and you're just wanting to rant poetically. Who knows where it will end? Start a game for it if you really want to. (I do an awful lot of it on Twitter - in fact I troll 'Brexit Central' daily.) In other news, I have successfully used my Dutch network *smug* to get new tyres installed on the windy miller's 70-year old Fergie tractor, as a birthday present. And the local GP surgery has offered me a Vitamin D shot to counter the winter gloom.