WOYWW 471

The only change in my studio and office this week is more chaos, I’m afraid. Some of my wools have been put away because I’ve finished the socks (not yet blocked). No change on my main desk area, so no photo of that this week.

I can’t get near my office desk at present for clutter. There are also a lot of computer cables on the floor.

After the death of my old laptop I’ve been trying to sort out my various external hard drives and in the process, managed, at a single key-stroke, to delete all the back-ups from my other old laptop that died – this was totally devastating because it was the sum total of many years’ work and accumulation of my entire music library… until I thought to do a google search into data retrieval, and for a sum I’d have preferred not to spend, have downloaded a truly excellent program called EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, and I’ve got it all back, despite it being “permanently deleted” from the drive!! It just goes to show that when you think you have safely deleted something, it is still there to be retrieved, so if you are disposing of an old computer, it is best to trash the hard drive with a sledgehammer because that way, no unscrupulous people could retrieve your precious and confidential data with a data retrieval program.

When I told my hubby I’d had to buy the program, he said, “Would you have been prepared to spend a pound for each of the files you’d lost?” and I had to admit that yes, I probably would – and what I paid for the program was a tiny fraction of the total of £1 per file!! He does have a knack of making me feel better!

So I’m mightily relieved, but there’s a huge amount of work to be done! Not only has it retrieved the back-up I deleted, but it’s retrieved a whole lot of other stuff as well which had been lurking underneath and which a “deep scan” found – and there’s some excellent stuff there. Most of it is duplicated but it needs to be checked. I’m amazed at how much stuff has been layered onto this drive, and that any of it can be retrieved. Isn’t technology wonderful?

My work is cut out for the foreseeable future, sorting everything out. I’m backing everything up onto a new 2 TB drive so all the back-ups will be together and easier to manage, and I’m going to store all my media files on another external hard drive (also backed up) so these will be accessible from all my computers.

My new iPhone is now up and running – the SIM card arrived very quickly – and yesterday I sent my first text, and I got the terse reply from my hubby in confirmation, “Got it.” Nuff said! His texts are as terse as his emails lol!

Kitties

Great excitement. I knew we’d got a pair of very intelligent kitties, but I never thought they would learn how to use the cat flap all on their own! Since letting them out into the garden we’ve been fixing it open with masking tape so they get the idea there’s a hole in the door to go in and out through, but when it was shut, it appeared to be as much a barrier to them as ever. A couple of days ago, though, Lily came out on her own, soon to be followed by Ruby. Yesterday I managed to get a really sweet video of them going out – still struggling a bit with it, but they’ve definitely got the idea! Look out for the bit where Lily appears to be telling Ruby what to do!

Before I grabbed the camera, there was a moment when they both had their heads up against the cat flap, and I thought they were both trying to get out at the same time!

We are still locking them in at night after they’ve come in for their supper, but soon they will be coming and going as they please. Lily has got over whatever fright she had that made her scared to go out for a couple of days, and we have a job getting either of them in in the evening! They absolutely love it out there.

Here’s another clip of them playing in the garden yesterday afternoon.

Not sure when I’m going to be able to get back in the studio, with everything else that’s going on at the moment. I’m still trying to catch up with a backlog of stuff from when I was ill as well.