Fortunately, I was told of a programme that has managed to recover all of my lost data. It works by searching for lost partitions and then, once found, allows you to choose to mount that partition so that you can then recover the data within that partition. It doesn’t mount the partition permanently, but that’s fine by me as long as I can get what I need. The reason the programme works this way is to prevent malicious software (malware etc) from running.

The programme worked a treat. It took less than two minutes after the very simple install. I’m now in the process of copying the 18GB of restored data to a new location. This programme has now been added to my list of Must Have’s. And amazingly, it’s Freeware. You can visit their site by clicking on the logo below:

My darling husband always finds cool stuff online! Yesterday he sent me a couple of videos by Matt (the american guy who travels around the world and dances). It is so much FUN! I watched those videos like a hundred times. Also, the interview is very good. He mentions that in Africa, he had a terrible time at a bus because of the BAD smell and had to pay US$5,00 to the woman sitting next to him to switch seats so he could breath some fresh air.

I love people dancing together with Matt (and he came and filmed in Rio and São Paulo). I would love to participate and dance.

As Matt tells, he used to work as web designer until he found out he wasnt good enough and decided to quit his job to go for a around the world trip. The videos with the dancing happened casually when he was in Hanoi.

Lucky guy! He is quite famous now and get sponsors to travel and dance.

Must be so good – sooooo GOOD – when you do something you like, specially when its about creativity (and traveling )

I dont like my job (I just want the MONEY) and I should really look for something that would make me feel happy as ocuppation……

Today, my Sunday, I am going to watch Harry Potter DVDs, maybe read (if I have time – I think I will) rest, maybe have lunch with my father and, most important – talk to my husband online.

Try to make the most of my resting day because tomorrow will be Monday and I think that court where I work SUCKS!

I went on a hunt through the webby-tubes and found several sites that had what I was looking for. I ended up settling for a set of three templates from Glowing Keyboards. For a US$22 you get three sets of a full keyboard that you just peel off and stick over your keys. The sticker sizes are large enough to cover a standard desktop or laptop keyboard. They even managed to fit over most of the keys on my Kohjinsha. I had to cut some of them to fit the more unusually designed key shapes, but the end result was fantastic. But first a picture to show you the difference between the original keys and a few with the stickers already on. Sorry about the quality but my camera is pretty poor:

Now these keys don’t actually glow on their own accord. They just reflect the ambient light in the room. That’s all you need though as even in pitch dark the stickers get sufficient light from the light produced by the screen. Here’s the finished result. Err, well, almost finished. I see that the Page down sticker isn’t on yet in this photo and I couldn’t decide what sticker to put on the remaining Japanese only key, but you get the idea:

Now, there are a few other companies out there that supply very similar stickers. One is My Glow Keys, but they wouldn’t respond to my email, so they got the ditch quick pronto. As a contrast Glowing-keyboards.com responded immediately tomy enquires. I was asking about delivery to New Zealand as most US site never quote delivery costs to other countries. Likewise, none of them have ever heard of the Post Office and seem to think that Fed-Ex is the ONLY way to shift physical goods.

Another set was from Latkey. Now, I LOVE, absolutely LOVE these keyboard stickers. Especially because they DO have stickers that actually glow in the dark. There are two reasons as to why I chose not to buy. One is that they were more expensive, but most importantly, they only give you a template of the qwertry and number keys and nothing else. If that’s all you require then these would be a great buy:

Compare this to the full set from Glowing Keys:

Lastly, there’s one more reason that I love my new Glowing-Keyboard stickers is that I went from an awkward Japensese keyboard layout to a United States keyboard layout. So much nicer to use. No more struggling to find those damned @ and underscore keys.

So far the stickers have stood up to the test of time and I’m very pleased with my purchase. Highly recommended.

Ana too has used one of the two remaining sticker templates on her laptop. Her keyboard was great and I had no problems reading the keys as they were, but I’m really glad she decided to put those stickers on. It really does make a great difference.

It installed fine on my Windows XP machine. Skype recognised it straight away. I wasn’t happy. The image looked great, however, as soon as I moved my head everything went blurry. What’s the point of having a webcam that can’t maintain a clear picture? I took it back the next day.

I was quite surprised at just how bad this webcam was. After all, I have a Creative Webcam GO that’s over SIX years old now. They share the same resolution and yet the creative is far superior in it’s ability to produce clear video. There’s over six years of technological difference here! What gives?

Now I’m on the lookout for a good webcam at a reasonable price. I don’t need the latest and the greatest, just something that works well with Skype. Ana & I love Skype. Skype has kept our relationship strong during the times that we’ve been apart. It’s great for talking to family and friends and has saved me an absolute fortune in overseas phone calls.