With my new PC only just a month old, there has been a catastrophic failure of the hard disk drive. Windows Vista initially reported issues with the USN journal on my data partition.
Vista suggested formatting the drive.
Instead, I managed to get it back temporarily using a chkdsk /R and backed up the data.
With the data safe, I allowed it to attempt to reformat the data partition – it failed claiming that there were errors.
I tried a full system recovery, first from the recovery partition and then from the recovery DVDs I’d created when I received the machine.
The computer refuses to recognise the hard drive completely now, and has been returned.
John Lewis, who sold me the computer have refunded the money, as they were unable to replace it.

Like many people, I own a Swiss Army knife made by Victorinox. (actually I own more than one). One of them is a Victorinox USB2 with 1GB memory stick.

I recently lost mine, and was quite upset. Eventually the pen-knife turned up in the laundry, after passing through the washing machine in a 40 degree wash.

I tested it straight away. All the blades were fine, as was the LED torch, the pen and amazingly the memory stick itself. I was seriously impressed, and must award particular credit to Swissbit, who manufacture the USB memory stick on the knife.

The Sony Ericsson S500i comes with a USB cable to synchronise calender and contact data, as well as for downloading music of other content.

What the manual doesn’t tell you is, that while the S500 is connected to the USB cable, it also charges the battery. It is obviously a trickle charge, but it does charge the phone.

In S500i I discussed the difficulties of installing the supporting software for my new Sony Ericsson S500i Mobile phone.
I’ve also been having a SIM related problem, where the phone seemed to periodically lose contact with its SIM and gives an “Insert SIM” message or saying that it was an “Invalid SIM”.
I phoned Christopher Duffy, of Carphone Warehouse in Knutsford, where I had purchased the handset, in order to complain about the “Insert SIM” message. He was kind enough to explain that he had come across this problem before, but there is a solution.
You need to push the SIM right in with a pen until it clicks and locks in place, almost like inserting a memory card. – A little detail that they omitted from the (very superficial) S500 manual! In the manual, it gives the impression that the battery holds the SIM in place. This is not the case!
In order to extract the SIM, it needs to be pushed in again, at which time it pops out.
I wish Sony Ericsson would improve their support and documentation standards to match Nokia’s.
Since “clicking in” the SIM, I have not had the dreaded “invalid SIM” message.

I have found an interesting piece of research about the dragons that can be found in the Middle Earth Play by mail game at
www.meturn.com
What amazes me about this dragon research is that it contains so much information when the normal outcome for an encounter with a dragon is a deceased character.

The Stoke-on-Trent based games shop Shire Games holds regular gaming sessions in their shop on Thursday evenings. I decided it would be worth going there and enjoying myself. So I went yesterday. Shire Games provided a good gaming experience in a friendly atmosphere.

The two games that I played were Wildlife and Formula Motor Racing which is long since out of print.

Wildlife took a couple of hours with 6 players. It seems to be a well balanced game which requires strategic thinking to achieve multiple routes to overall victory.

Having been a player of postal games for many years followed by a long lapse, I’ve returned to the world of play by mail and have joined my first Middle Earth PBM, as the Elvish faction in a Battle of Five Armies game.