Ok, this is my third post tonight and I'm beginning to catch up. The brief flurry is partly the result of attempting to defrag my hard drive last night, which knocked out the computer for about 18 hours. I eventually halted the process today having succeeded on covering about 17% of the drive. I'm going to have to do that job in stages. My own fault for ignoring it for far too long.
But back to the photos. After the mist of recent days, we had a glorious sunny Easter Monday. We spent the afternoon at Rottingdean. It was more crowded than usual (well it would be), but the fulmars weren't keen on inviting visitors in for tea. As this jackdaw found out!
"And don't come back"
Camera note: all shots taken with the EF 400mm f/5.6L USM lens.
gdare
14 Apr 2009😆 @ jackdaw But it looks nice on the white background 🙂
As for your computer, 18 hours is a way too much. Maybe you should consider to turn off all unnecessary processes that may be running in the background – some of them is making changes on your hard drive and defragmenter needs to return to that part. It happened to me with some printer drivers before. And turn off Internet connection.
Flying Red Fox Blog
14 Apr 2009Wow what a big mouth that Fulmar has! :yikes: 😆 Hope you PC gets better soon.
Words
14 Apr 2009Darko, I've turned off network, internet, AV and run relatively few processes anyway, but I could try to strip it back a bit further and see what happens. Thanks for the tip.
Words
14 Apr 2009Mark, I love the way they gape like that at all comers. They can spit apparently, but I've not seen them do that (yet). The PC will be fine. I'm just trying to speed it up. It may take a while, but I'll get there. 🙂
annoushkiss
14 Apr 2009The jackdaw is great against the white :up: and the fulmar is a little bit scary :nervous: Is it a juvenile or a mature bird?
SittingFox
14 Apr 2009Wow, it's a brave corvid that would mess with a fulmar :eyes: I think the jackdaw has probably learned its lesson :whistle: Talking of corvids, I had the bizarre experience yesterday of looking out the train window and seeing a magpie attempting to fly off with a very large slow worm (which I hope escaped as magpies aren't about to starve any time soon and we're very short on reptiles in this neck of woods…)
I haven't had to defrag my new laptop yet, but my old computer would only take a couple of hours or so, even if I hadn't done it for weeks :confused:
gdare
14 Apr 2009I just hope you don`t have very old hard disks and that you have a backup :insane:
Ukwildlife
14 Apr 2009Wow – is it fulmars that can skwert and oil liquid on attacking birds? If so that jackdaw had a lucky escape!
Whata re you using to defrag? The built in windows ones are rather slow.
Words
14 Apr 2009Adele, I fear for the slow worm population. Cats are the main threat round here. I had a pleasant surprise clearing the garden yesterday and came across three slow worms together (they'd hidden by the time I got the camera), plus another one in a different part of the garden. They don't come out too often, but they're there.
The defrag was something I've putting off for far too long… at least a year and with the amount of upload/deletes of images the drive was in a very nasty state. The Windows defragger is rubbish so I tried something called Ultradefrag (that was the one that took 18 hours to do 17% of the drive), and then today ran Diskeeper, which is fab! It still took several hours but at least I could use the machine properly while it ran, and it's now running permanently in the background. I'll test for a few more days and then buy.
Words
14 Apr 2009Darko, well everything important is backed up (like the photos). I eventually got something called "Diskeeper 2009" which worked a treat. The defrag took 6.5 hours (which for a 360 GB drive in bad shape was good), plus it will now defrag on the fly so no more problems. It's a 30 day trial program so if the machine stays good I'll probably buy it.
Words
14 Apr 2009Anna, I think those are mature birds (I've not seen any young yet). Tough birds, for sure. They mainly live over the Atlantic.
gdare
15 Apr 2009One small tip. You may test it using Photoshop or other photographs editing software, while it works in the background. Use the biggest photographs you have. If your software works without unusual glitches, then Diskeeper works fine. If you haven`t change anything after Windows installation, processor and memory usage should be set to work best with active programs and not the ones in the background, so your editing software will work fine and the background ones will not interfere.
Words
15 Apr 2009Thanks Darko, Photoshop seems fine so far (a dozen images open, all but I'll keep an eye on it. The Windows memory usage hasn't been touched. I have stopped most of the services that I don't need, and I limit the number of applications that run on start-up, so memory is fairly efficient (I just don't have enough 😉 )
gdare
15 Apr 2009We all need more memory 😀
cakkleberrylane
17 Apr 2009Awesome photo story!!
Words
17 Apr 2009Darko, and I now have more memory 😉 And for anyone just catching this thread, the PC died shortly after the defrag :((all apps disappeared in a crash). So not the best recommended route, but a timely reminder of the value of backing up relentlessly if you take photos.
Words
17 Apr 2009Lois thanks! It was a good moment to get.
gdare
18 Apr 2009:up: