s h ! n d ! d

I’m a little scared of the new backend of Wordpress 2.7.1 and don’t intend to learn it just now, so I am doing the most simple thing I know. Post.

Over the weekend I bought a Western Digital 1TB My Book Home Edition from Officeworks. It was cheap. Real cheap. But sometimes, I guess you get what you paid for, and in my case I think by the end of the week I will be returning my said item. It’s been shit.

First of all, the drive is unrecognised on my 2007/8 Macbook Pro OSx Leopard. By chance (or miracle) I got it to work once with continual rebooting on my part! And it hasn’t worked since. Now the lights aren’t even coming up – I’ve tried several outlets and even the wall plug. Still nothing.

I contacted WD who told me to hook up my usb and update the firmware and stuff… HOW!? It’s recognised my USB connection NEVER as opposed to my ONCE with Firewire! Enough ranting. I’ll just post the angry letter I just sent WD.

Oh, and I most definitly don’t recommend WD external hard drives. I’ll update this post should they resolve my issue or the drive starts working properly from here on. But I ain’t holding my breath.

My hard drive worked ONCE! I continuously rebooted my computer and it worked just ONCE with my Firewire and never with my USB!

Your suggested solution failed as the hard drive was never detected when hooked up with the USB. Therefore, I have been unable to install the suggested drivers.

Tonight I tried to backup again, this time not even the power would turn on. None of the lights turn on. Like last time I continuously restarted, and nothing.

I find WD’s support to be very average. The “thread” style of questions is intriguing, however confusing and thus flawed. The UI of your site’s Help section is disorganised and useless. I’m sure I am not the first customer to be upset and definitely not the last.

I researched what other users in my situation have done over the internet and have found many many others in the same situation as I over the last year! In all of the three days of having purchased this item I’ve been completely unsatisfied! This has been really frustrating and by far the worst external hard drive I have ever used! WD should release products they KNOW works – even now you would think with such a faulty product there would be a recall!

I will never be purchasing another Western Digital external hard drive – especially not the My Book series.

I hope you have other suggested solutions to my HDD issue, as I don’t know what to do with my dud paperweight.

Broadband – ADSL2 has speeds of 24Mbps?!

I’m on 56kbps… good ole dial up…
Kinda embarrassing…

Oh well won’t need to worry where I’m going.

I want a laptop. Free.

Nominations are out: http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php

Some great stuff out there. Lot’s of inpirational ideas floating about in the interweb.

Couple of faves:

http://www.interacttenways.com - simple interactive photography/image use.
http://www.wefeelfine.org - superb way of capturing the emo essence of the blogs.
http://www.girlsoloinarabia.com/ - will be reading carefully.

Not enough time to see them all…

Happy Surfin’ y’all!

Oaybo46kMC8Did I only just discover this? Amazing. Love Motion Theory.

It’s been a tough 36 hours or so. I’ve lost one of my best technological friends.
My mobile phone.

Oh, where have you gone, dear k750i? Weren’t we friends?

Seriously though, I lost my sexy black all-in-one digital camera, video camera, music player and phone first thing Friday morning, somewhere in Parramatta. It’s not so much the phone itself I miss, it’s the means to communicate – instantly. I’ve come to rely on my phone too much lately. Everything from waking me up in the morning, organising my life, practicing my photography to entertaining me. Maybe it’s time I stepped back from it?
Luckily, I have insurance and might be able to get a nicer phone (I’ve been drooling at the new Sony Ericsson lineup), and just now I found an old expired sim card with some of my phone numbers. I’m afraid however the last 13 or so months worth of new contacts have been lost… argh.
So if anyone has been trying to contact me, you probably wont hear from my mobile for another week at least. Try my email. This totally blows.

Panorama setting uses three separate photos sewn together on the spot for wide angle shots.

Regular black and white setting.

My evening watching Josh Pyke (again) at the Spectrum was spent; not so much listening to the music, but me playing photographer with my mobile phone. After the crappy photos last time, I told myself not to forget my camera this time. Alas, I forgot it.

So I took prime position at the front and clicked away with my Sony Ericsson K750i, 2 megapixel camera phone. I’ve justified this as the beginning of a new photomedia challenge – coming up with the best pics possible using the limiting toy camera. Actually mine’s not so bad, has white balance settings, light and flash, and some cool stuff like “panorama”! It’s the coolest thing to try and get a wide shot.

Yeh, and the music was good too. “Pooh, F*CK YEAH!”

More (unedited) photos can be found on Flickr.