-
Some time late Saturday or early Sunday, the portable hard drive connected to my Mac Mini mysteriously disconnected (it was still physically connected but was reporting as being unplugged). I should have immediately shut things down and seen what I could salvage but instead of doing that, I restarted the computer a few times and connected the drive to a variety of devices that were lying around as I tried in vain to get one of them to detect the portable drive as a hard disk. I eventually succeeded somehow—I’m still not sure what I did—only to have macOS freeze as I tried writing to the disk (yes, for reasons I cannot explain, even once I could read again from the drive, I did not immediately copy everything off it that I could).
-
As of this writing, the drive isn’t working on any computer I own. It is detected on whichever USB bus that it’s plugged in to but it isn’t recognised as a disk at all so I can’t run any diagnostics on it. I assume it’s probably hosed and I’ve put it aside for the moment. Why would it work if I wait a couple of weeks and try again? I can’t think of a rational reason but it’s all I have left.
-
My largest disappointment (other than with my own incompetence) has been with Backblaze. I don’t know if I did something wrong but despite intending to configure the Backblaze client to back up the entirety of the drive, when I now check Backblaze’s website, I see no record of the the ‘Developer’ directory (and some of the other directories doesn’t seem as complete as I expect). Most of the code had been pushed to GitHub but not all of it. Notably, I’ve lost the Sketch file for the Flext logo. It’s not a huge loss but that was and is my first app and I created that icon myself—now it’s gone.
-
I don’t believe in premonitions, but if I did, I would tell you that I had one last week that almost prompted me to check that the Backblaze backup contained what I thought it did. Almost prompted me.
-
The one silver lining was that I didn’t lose more. About six months ago, I moved a lot of the older data I’ve been carrying around for decades at this point to iCloud. So fortunately my study notes for the 2000 HSC remain safe and sound should I ever need to brush up on my Thucydides. Which you never know.
-
Before the hard drive incident, Saturday had been a fun day. I let Eri have a quiet lunch while I took Emma, John and Rowan to Shibuya to visit the official Nintendo Shop. I try not to buy the kids presents outside of their birthdays and Christmas but I figured this was an exceptional circumstance and so ‘splurged’ on a couple of plush toys and a Paper Mario origami set. It turns out the latter was a poor choice as the set is far too difficult for any of the kids (or me, if I’m being honest).
-
Around the time of The Last Jedi, a couple of film critics I follow (such as Patrick Willems) were critical of the overemphasis from some fans on plot coherence. As someone who thinks plot coherence is a fair thing to emphasise (especially in the case of The Last Jedi), I appreciated Freddie deBoer’s somewhat tardy rejoinder.
-
I’d forgotten Ed Sheeran’s ‘Bad Habits’ until it came on my personal Apple Music radio station. Searching for it later, somehow led me to the Apple Music Home Session of Norwegian singer-songwriter, Sigrid, and her cover of the song (Apple Music).
