Photo Processing

This morning I checked my comp, and the chkdsk on my broken disk had finished, and said it had corrected a few errors. So I restarted into normal windows (as I had been running chkdsk on the disk in safe mode), but then the disk still wasn't working (Windows Explorer would hang when I tried to access the disk).

So I switched the PC off to swap the disk with a working one. But when I came to swap the disks I noticed the PC was a bit dusty, so I cleaned it up a bit, which took quite a long time. I would use my rocket blower (for cleaning my camera) to blow the dust off / out of the various components, then mop the dust up with a duster. Then I'd use the blower again, and it would blow another load of dust off / out of the various components. So I just repeated this process many times until eventually not much dust was getting blown off / out of the components.

After swapping out the bad drive, I checked my email until lunch time. I'll probably set the bad drive to do a full format overnight, then try using it as a backup drive, to see if there is actually a physical problem with the drive or not (SMART showed okay, but SMART isn't very reliable). If it breaks again after formatting it, I'll know there's probably a problem with the actual drive.

After lunch I finished checking my email, then went down town to get some deodorant caps suitable for making steB style diffusers.

After that I checked my email again and wrote yesterday's blog post and today's blog post so far.

Someone wanted to download the full version of one of my photos, so I started working on a way to do it. First I had to add two tables to my database - one to store user details, and another to store what photos each user is allowed to download. I created the tables in MySQL Workbench, then exported the SQL for them.

But when I tried to enter the SQL into phpMyAdmin, I got an error 150. Googling this, I found this thread on the MySQL forums: ERROR 1005: Can't create table (errno: 150). Most of the replies are just people with the same problem, but the answer is in there - the error occurs when you have a type mismatch between the columns you are 'linking' with a foreign key. In my case I was using INT for both columns, but on my new table I had forgotten to set the column as UNSIGNED.

So I corrected the table structure in MySQL workbench, exported the SQL, then ran it in PHPMyAdmin again. But it still didn't work. I checked what had happened, and the problem was that one of the new tables had been created the first time I ran the query (before I changed the column to UNSIGNED). So I dropped that table and ran the query again, and now it worked okay.

Time was getting on, so I decided to just email the guy the photo, and quit working on a login system for the moment. There's not much point me working on my own login system if I can just use the Wordpress one instead.

In the evening I watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and Mousetrap user "Bo".

Then I did more processing and metadataring of photos.

The weather was mostly overcast, though the clouds did break for a bit in the afternoon.

Food
Breakfast: Blackcurrant Jam Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Breaded Ham with Dijon Mustard and Seasonal Salad Mix Sandwich; 2x Satsumas; Exploded Chocolate Cup Cake with Chocolate Cake Covering in the crater; Cup o' tea.
Dinner: ½ Salmon Fishcake with Tomato Ketchup; Breaded Fish Portion; Salt; Ground Black Pepper; Mashed Potato; Peas. Pudding was an sliced Pear with Tinned Mandarin Segments and Coffee Custard. Exploded Chocolate Cup Cake with Chocolate Cake Covering in the crater; Coffee.