I’ve learnt a lot of things since I started doing this. I’ve learnt about birds, and cats and building websites and marketing and exhibitions and so much more. And I learnt how deep the deep end is. I knew the water I was jumping into wasn’t shallow when I started this, but I didn’t know how deep it was. I couldn’t see the bottom, and there was no depth gauge to help me out. All lessons learned the hard way. But I’ve learnt by doing, and now I’ve inadvertently managed to learn by not doing. The annoying thing about it was it was something I knew I should have been doing and doing more regularly than I had been.

My computer died. I was working on some photos, then went to have dinner. When I came back from dinner, everything was frozen and unresponsive. The only way I could turn it off was by removing mains power, and then it would not come back to life. There was a blue light, which is how you know it’s on, and there was the noise of the fans spinning, but there was nothing else. My first response was rude words strung together in new and exciting ways. My second reaction was ‘when did I last back up…?’ If you have to ask yourself that question then your last backup was too long ago.

I know you have to back up regularly, everyone knows it, but knowing something and doing it are two different things. Complacency can set in, you get busy, you’re distracted by other things.

To start with I feared the worse; that I’d lost everything. After some diagnostic work by myself, aided by internet research, and some friends who know much more about computers,  it seemed likely that the problem was a dead motherboard rather than an issue with the hard drives with everything stored on them. So there was a good chance that I wouldn’t have lost everything, but it was still a possibility.

In the intervening time between my computer’s death and its subsequent rebirth, (which was brought about by http://www.simplyitonline.com/ for which I am very grateful) there was a horrible feeling at the pit of my stomach that I might have lost a lot of photos, it was made larger by the fact that it was my own silly fault, that I could have prevented it being such a problem. But I have learnt from this, I’ve added it to the other knowledge I’ve acquired by doing things. Other lessons learned the hard way. I’ll leave this blog there I think, because I have to go as I haven’t backed up for 10 minutes …

But just before I go, if you think this was a bit of a boring blog, here’s a photo to prove I’m still a fun guy (fungi)…

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