dug 
You know you’re a Mac OS X user when you tend to forget about computer problems. I’ve carried a system-repair disk in by bag for the last 10 years but since about OS X 10.2 I haven’t used it in anger. Most problems can be dealt with with a combination of fsck -fy, booting in target mode or the plain old disk utilities app.
So yesterday afternoon, I’d been working like an absolute dog all week trying to define a page-personalisation technique that meets the demands of the client in France while keeping to our company’s brand values and interaction principles when the document I opened looked slightly different…
After faffing about for a bit trying to figure out what was up (I figured I must have done a “save as” in the wrong place late last night or something) I realised that my entire project directory was an image of where it was at 1 o’clock the previous morning.
I effect, my file system had been through a wormhole, a temporal disturbance or whatever and had resulted in me spending most of Saturday saving files into nothingness, a parallel universe (Spock with a beard etc etc).
Gordon Bennet, this one was new to me. Turns out it’s to do with journalled file systems – as far I get the concept, the OS maintains multiple states of your file system and repairs and readjusts in real time.
So anyway, I haven’t used a commercial disk utility in years, but late last night Alsoft’s DiskWarrior saved (most) of my bacon.
So here we go again in the garage and last I checked it was -2° but on the plus side, I’m listening to Weekend’s La Varieté album and I haven’t heard old Alison Statton in ages:-)