27-March-1999 [Artur Marques]
Today [21:00]: #1) EVERYTHING IS LOST!; #2) Suicide Attempt! KYALAMI; #3) ALAIN PROST RACING countdown; #4) KILL Cellular Phones!; #5) BLEEM, the PSX emulator; #6) UltraHLE back?!; #7) The usual Picture of the day
I am back. Sorry for yesterday. Too many problems, as you'll read...
I've lost ALL my e-mails and contacts, since February 1998. That is 13 months and thousands of e-mails lost. I am very, very sad :-(
The problem occurred yesterday, while I was installing new hardware in my main PC. I was replacing the 4 IDE drives (MAXTOR DIAMOND MAX 7 GB, 7GB, 11GB and 13.6 GB), by 4 new IDE drives (MAXTOR DIAMOND MAX 17.2 GB). I am very experienced in these kind of operations, and some over confidence costed me a LOT...
I was partitioning and formatting the HDs, exactly the same way as they were in the original configuration, only with bigger partitions. Then I copied all the data, including hidden files, using a 100 Mbps HUB, between the main PC (hosting the original drives) and a host PC that was being used for the setup of the new MAXTORs. Everything went 100% OK, despite some technical problems that Windows networking poses:
for example, you can't LAN copy files with names with characters like "ç", "ã", "õ", etc... these chars will cause a "file not found" error between machines, in some particular conditions. There are also problems when copying stuff whose absolute location (the complete path to it) is longer than 255 chars, and when files have blank spaces.
BUT, despite some tricks, that I already knew, I never expected to SIMPLY FORGET one root file in my HD G:
The file I forgot was the mailbox.pst file, that OUTLOOK 97 uses for storing all its data. I was copying all the directories, and I forgot this root file! I simply didn't copy it, and, because I was giving away the "old" HDs to other person, I FDISK'ed and FORMAT'ed all the "old" MAXTORs... AFTER completing the process and PREVIOUS to detecting that SINGLE missing file (100 MB in a total of 40 GB!)...
So, later today, when I was finally ready to download my e-mail, I noticed the ERROR! Oh HORROR! SHOCK!
Easy... I also have some knowledge on data recovery EVEN after FORMAT and FDISK... and I tried everything, only to come to the conclusion that I would be able to recover >50% of my stuff, EXCEPT for for the files in a ROOT directory!!!!! How frustrating! If I wanted, I could have recovered some 25 GB, that I didn't forget to backup... while I COULD NOT recover a simple 100 MB .PST file, the only one that escaped me, and the most important...
Such BAD LUCK! Do you have suggestions at all? E-mail me, please.
So, IF you sent me e-mail AFTER February 1998, please BEWARE that I LOST YOUR ADDRESS! If you want to contact me, please e-mail me again.
Ah! MOVE ON! While trying to recover from my disappointment, and after one suicide attempt (I jumped over the window, but it is only 1 meter high, and there is grass outside :-)), I decided that I should go to KYALAMI, in South Africa, thousands of miles away from Portugal... Some minutes later, I was living in 1967 (!!), driving a FERRARI @ KYALAMI, in the superb F1 simulator GP LEGENDS... I did some *rage* laps, beating my personal best, that it is now set @ 1:22:08... still somewhat slow compared to the **world record** of 1:19:55, although I am still very unexperienced. I will beat the world record. BELIEVE me. Read the next topic, if you have doubts.
My improvements come from the fact that I am now running INDEPENDENT axis for throttle and brakes, which is not possible, by default, with the MS Force Feedback wheel... I've read a post @ rec.autos.simulators, where I learned about how to tweak the sidewinder software from Microsoft, in order to make this possible.
Tomorrow, APR (Alain Prost Racing) will debut @ this website. The wait will finally be OVER!
APR is one the top internet racing teams, with a hugely popular website, currently @ Geocities. Check it from http://come.to/AlainProstRacing; it is your last chance to visit the "original".
I am finishing the port of the website, and it will feature a trophy room, where you can see pictures of the CUPs I've won last year, when I was GP2 DIGITAL WORLD CHAMPION @ LFRS, the world's biggest Internet racing league. I am still holding that title (until the end of the 1999 LFRS season), but I am no longer competing in GP2.
KILL ALL the cellular telephones in a radius of hundreds of meters!
NETLINE is selling cellular phones jammers. These devices KILL all the mobile phones, within the reach of some meters to several MILES. NETLINE comes from ISRAEL, where everyone & his dog has a phone. Phones ring @ the cinema, @ the hospital, @ home, @ everywhere!!, and some people got so sick of it, that the demand for these jammers, inspired in military technology, did begin!
I don't know if NETLINE sells this stuff to Portugal, but it could be of some use, in certain conditions :-)...
BLEEM is selling. This is a SONY PLAYSTATION emulator for PC, that allows you to run all the games of the console, in your monster Pentium system. If you have a good PC, games can even be better than the original, due to the possibility of running them in higher graphical resolutions.
I didn't try BLEEM myself, but I will post a micro review here, soon.
UltraHLE, the NINTENDO 64 Ultra High Level emulator, might be back. There are increasing rumors that the authors did NOT stop the development of the emulator, despite very severe legal threats from NINTENDO, and despite their public statement...
Remember that UltraHLE was only available in the Internet for some 4 hours... and that was enough for everyone to download it and post it @ many websites... that I will NOT link to...
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This is the 1967 EAGLE F1 car, driven by *me*, jumping (low speed) @ NURBURGRING, in Germany. NURBURGRING is a track that will take the best drivers in the world, over 8 minutes to complete! It has almost 200 turns, and it is very hard to memorize. GPL is a racing simulator for the PC, with *extremely* accurate physics. The computer performs THOUSANDS of calculations per 1/10 second, per car's part (independent suspensions, independent axes, etc... !!!!) |