Walk, backup, and diffuser making

This morning I started processing a pano, then went out on a walk while my comp did its weekly virus scan.

The weather was sunny the first half of the morning, then was cloudy the rest of the morning. In the afternoon there was a mixture of sun and clouds, I'd say probably ¾ of the afternoon was cloudy and ¼ was sunny.

There still wasn't any clover around, and hardly any buttercups, however I did see Speckled Woods, Orange Tips, and various other insects and plants in flower. Near Lubenham there was a field with loads of seeding dandelions in it, which looked quite spectacular. I hope to go back there with a wider angle lens, as I only had the MP-E and 100mm Macro with me.

Also, a mat for kneeling on would have been useful, as there were some low angle shots of seeding grass I wanted to take, but couldn't because the ground was too soft to kneel down on. (Of course, I could have taken the shots anyway and got my knees covered in mud if I had really wanted).

When I got home I found the Virus check had completed. Yesterday evening I was unable to complete a backup of My Pictures as the backup drive also had a backup of my Korea and Japan photos on it. But before deleting the Korea and Japan photos from the backup drive, I wanted to make sure that it didn't include any images in good condition where the originals had become corrupted.

So I used Beyond Compare to do a binary comparison between the Korea and Japan photos on the backup drive, and the 'original' ones on my hard drive. While that was working I checked my email and went on the internet a bit.

When the comparison was done, I found that the large majority of files were different. Obviously, I didn't manually compare every single one, but I found that some were different in that the 'original' one had a later date created (but date taken and everything else appeared to be the same). Some were different in that the ones on the backup didn't have GPS data, while the 'originals' did.

And I did find a couple of 'originals' (these were ones that were in folders where they were different between the backup and 'original', but all the others in the folder were the same between the backup and 'original') were actually corrupted. Possibly there were more corrupted files, but I couldn't really open every single file that was different between the backup and 'originals' as this would take far too long. I did open one or two files from every folder marked as different though, and they were all okay.

Since I had done a binary comparison on my Korea and Japan photos before, and these corrupted images hadn't been picked up, I wondered if they had become corrupted since my last binary comparison. Admitedly, the last binary comparison I had done wasn't with this backup, and it could be that the same files were corrupted on the backup I had done the comparison with before, and that was why the differences weren't picked up (because they weren't different). Anyway, I turned off PerfectDisk from defragging my drive with the Korea and Japan photos on, just in case.

I continued my checking into the afternoon, and when that was done, I deleted the Korea and Japan photos backup folder, then did a backup of My Pictures, since there was now enough free space on the backup drive.

I then repeated this process with my other Pictures backup drive, which also had a backup of the Korea and Japan photos on it. This time I didn't find much difference between the two. While the comparison was running I worked on making SteB style flash diffusers for the MT-24EX.

In the evening I watched Lost with Mauser and Bo, then tested the new flash diffusers I'd made, which didn't seem to work very well. At 8.15pm I watched Springwatch with L, then after that I watched Monday's episode, which I'd missed (I watched both on BBC iPlayer).

The weather started of cloudy, then was a mixture of sun and cloud most of the morning. In the afternoon it started off cloudy, then was a mixture of sun and clouds for most of the afternoon. The sun set behind a large bank of cloud, so there wasn't any visible sunset.

Food
Breakfast: Lemon Marmalade Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Breaded Ham with Dijon Mustard, Iceberg Lettuce, and Sliced Cherry Tomatoes Sandwich; Banana; Satsuma; Home-made Biscuit; Rocky; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Spaghetti Bolognese; Mixed Veg; Ground Black Pepper; Grated Parmesan. Pudding was Rhubarb Crumble with Custard and Ice Cream. Coffee; 4 pieces of Galaxy.