clivemurray.com

This is the 500th post here on clivemurray.com.

It’s not the one with an id of 500, that went long ago, but lots of posts have been deleted or whatever, so the numbering system is out of whack there, and according to WordPress this one right here what you are currently reading of the nowtime, is #500 Fo Real.

Thrilling, huh?

The archive goes right back to March 2003, and covers posts produced by least three blogging engines. Greymatter and Pivot were useful at times when my hosting situation dictated certain constraints, but now with the emergence and dominance of the mighty mighty WordPress, everything is handled by that. EVERYTHING, mark you.

We’ve covered my solo gigs, the joining of Claytown Troupe (and recent discovery that I’m no longer in the band), and the emergence of Little Monkeys through to their transformation into Crashstars and almost immediate shelving. I’ve changed jobs a couple of times, I’ve dyed my hair, broken a tooth, grown a few beards and taches, moved house, got engaged, been on a few holidays, bought a car, sold it, Flickr’d several thousand photos, posted a buttload of YouTube videos, embraced the LOLCat phenomenon, balanced cans, I’ve told you about my books, my CDs, my movies, my friends, my original music, my cat, my code, my inner self, I’ve bought guitars and sold them, I’ve cast pods, I’ve ranted, I’ve raved, I’ve Opened Letters, I’ve kicked faces, I’ve shuddered, I’ve gone NNNNNG and Errrrr…, I have rocked and I have been rocked, London has burned and the sun has set on Camden.

Thank you all for reading, and coming back for more even when I’m being hateful. I’ve had a personal website full of stuff for over 9 years now, since before the word “web” got glued to the word “log”, since the place was wild and free and not driven by advertising revenue and clickthrough rates.

I’m not going anywhere, so settle in for another 500 posts, why don’t you?

Cheers,
–c.

For one reason and another, I have recently had both my work and home PCs wiped and reinstalled. This can be an extremely fraught process, but as most of you will know, it’s all about backing up stuff beforehand. Every time I’ve done it before now, I’ve forgotten to back up something, and it’s usually just as the formatting process completes that you realise that the vital document was either in My Documents or on the Desktop rather than safely squirrelled away in your data partition (you do keep data in a separate partition to your OS, don’t you?) and there’s no way of getting it back short of lengthy data recovery techniques the like of which I have posted about (at length) before.

But I’ve now done this so many times that I’m pretty much aware of all the pitfalls. I now use MozBackup to handle my email, addressbook, bookmarks, extensions, and generally everything Mozilla-fied that needs backing up. I keep most of my shit in a separate data partition, and I know to back up the important parts of My Documents just in case. I have it pretty much handled.

One thing I liked about running Litestep was the option to have no desktop icons, as LS provides many different ways to launch processes and programs. Personally I’ve always been a desktop creature of habit. I always have My Computer top left, Recycle Bin bottom right, shortcuts to my drives top right, email and browsing program shortcuts alongside those, and then commonly used program icons flowing down alphabetically from My Computer, and filling up two or three columns on the left of the screen.

Thing is, this inevitably led to Desktop crufting. I’d drop a file or two in the middle of the desktop while doing something “just for now” and in a week there would be 4 or 5 files, then a folder to keep them in “temporarily”, then another, then a whole area of the desktop set aside for such things, plus shortcuts to things I don’t really use cropping up next to my drive icons… you get the picture. (NB: when I ran Litestep, this was still happening – I just didn’t see it.)

Now, however, I have decided to take a leaf out of Litestep thinking and have no shortcuts on my Desktop except ones to my drives. (That’s just plain useful and time-saving.) I now launch absolutely everything – at home and at work – by either using the plain old quicklaunch flyout, or using the wonderful Launchy.

Now my Desktops are 97% clearer, and so is my mind.

Alt+Space FTW!
–c.

“I think politics is a lot like sex. It’s something for consenting adults to do, it’s an important part of life, and if you spend too much time thinking about it, you’re a pervert.”

- Derek Powazek.

Amen, brother.
–c.

People worship the
Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Pasta is sacred.

–c.

Overjoyed to hear the old party game “Beerhunter” mentioned on the Adam & Joe XfM podcast . Sometimes I’m not sure if things I remember are real or not, but this has verified that I didn’t just invent it because two funny people on the radio have mentioned it.

I am happy.
–c.

Sennheiser earphones
Model CX300
They’re the best – superb.

–c.

Velvet Revolver
The best since Guns N’ Roses
Not surprised really.

–c.

OK, here it is. Here’s the great idea I’ve been humping on about for ages now. But first, let me tell you how it came to be.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was at home watching Poirot on the tebly-box. He was doing the usual, using the little grey cells, making Hastings look like a cock, all the usual that you expect from the diminutive Belgian. Oh, and by the way, David Suchet is Poirot. There can be no other. Don’t even come round here with your Peter Ustinov bollocks, or I’ll kick your face off. Albert Finney? Fuck off, more like.

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