Dooey Sat 29th Oct

Arrived at Dooey just after 10 this morning, and the wind was quite variable. At first I was tempted to try the 9, but after checking the wind for a few minutes I set up the 12.

Out on the water things were going much better today. I now feel like I'm back to the standard I was at a couple of months ago, which I had regressed from last time I was out.

The accidental rolling and board nose problems with jumps are almost gone, and I was riding out over the waves well. The wind started off cross, and moved around to cross on, so perfect conditions. Waves were good, quite frothy, but with long flats in between. Still haven't got a proper handle on the jumps, but getting a lot better; today I was able to consistently jump two waves that came in doubles - never managed that before.

My toeside riding right to left is coming on, usually I just carve around to heelside again, but sometimes I tried a flip back to heelside before turning, managed it not too bad, although I'm sure it wasn't that beautiful.

Not sure how long I was out, but I think after somewhere between one and two hours on the water I started to mess up some simple stuff, so I knew I was getting tired and lazy - time for a break.  During my break I helped launch/land the other four guys, and also took some GoPro footage of Jonny. It was a warm (~14 degrees) and sunny day, so that was perfect.

During my break the wind had picked up, so I set up the 9 before heading back out. Just as I was preparing to launch the wind seemed to drop, but I though the 9 would be ok. I walked to the water, and had a few runs out and in, but the wind was really for nothing, so I came back in.

I had a few good falls today, drank a fair bit of the sea, some through my nose, and also I think in my ears. Oh, and when I was setting up my new trim line I forgot to add the wee black stopper, so that was a bit of a hinderence, although it didn't cause me as much trouble as I originally thought, I just couldn't let go of the bar.

All in all it was a superb day, I think I'm more suited to short sessions than long ones; my fitness level can let me down.

Data Recovery - TestDisk

I was asked by a friend to help set up their 'new computer' and while I was doing so I discovered that they had taken the computer to a local (reputable) PC shop, and they had said the hard disk was done, and replaced it. They also said that there was no data left on the disk to recover, so all was lost.

I got the disk, and got to work on it. Sure enough, plugging the disk in showed an empty, newly formatted volume. I spent an evening downloading quite a few free data recovery tools, and ended up getting the best results from "TestDisk".

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

After a couple of tries, I was able to set the software to only bother about image files (otherwise you recover txt, dll etc that I really don't care about)

You could see it stall as it got to the bad sectors on the disk, but it kept spitting out files, thousands of them, mostly internet explorer cache images. It ran for a good few hours, I let it run overnight. I then filtered the images by dimensions (most of the cache images were thumbnail size). This left me with 700 image files, some of which I knew were of interest, others obviously came with the PC.

I used the unix (cygwin) exif command in a script to move all the files into folders based on the camera that took them, and subfolders named by the date taken. This should help the user to reorganise them, when they get them back.

I would heartily recommend this tool, its not very beautiful looking, but it is quite easy to use, and very effective.

Benone Friday 7th Oct

Today I had planned to have an extra long lunchtime session at the beach while working from home. I had already more than done my hours for the week, so had agreed to take some time off today. However plans changed, and it was after midday before I got to the beach.

It was sunny with showers today, as I got to the beach I could see the rain blowing in from the distance. I knew I could get set up in the meantime, and so I got the bar and lines out and got the kite pumped before the rain arrived. The rain was over in a few minutes, but it was so heavy that there were puddles on the kite.

When I went to get my harness out of the boot it had locked itself shut, but I managed to prize my way into it from the back seat (to repair later)

On the water with the 12 it was blowing great, although quite up and down, but some trim adjustments meant I was powered nicely, having a great session. The waves when breaking were huge, over 6ft, and it was a frothy break, but really long flats in between, just how I like it.

However, with it being almost two months since I had a proper run out I noticed I had lost a lot of progress. When jumping out over waves I was rotating a bit, meaning I had a tendency to miss the landing, and end up on my side. Once I did this and smashed straight into an oncoming wave, boy that was sore.

Apart from that I was getting on grand, lost the board a couple of times, bodydragged back and picked it up no problem. Still working on the toeside on the way in and the jumps on the way out.

I was sailing in, ready to turn in the shallow water and suddenly the bar disappeared away up the lines. I thought my chicken loop had come out, but when I looked it was still in! My trim line connecting the chicken loop to the front lines had broken!

Fortunately it was in the shallow water, so I could walk to my kite and gather it up. If it had been out in the deep water it would have taken longer. That's why its nice to have a big beach :)

automating ssh login

ssh instructions

http://linuxproblem.org/art_9.html