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Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Paranoia when working...

In 2010 I was in the middle of editing a book... and my old desktop PC died.  From malware attacks.

It had survived many moves with me.  [Don't ask how many.]  We'd gone to live in Vegas, my old PC and I, then moved back across country to Michigan.


So today I've done some more research on my current tech problems.  On my new Acer desktop, which I bought in 2010.

I thought this was malware.  Nope; yay!

It may be the hard drive.  Not yay.  Not at all.

OTOH, my marvelous tech adviser at Chicon 7 -- hi, CKD! -- gave me lots of wonderful advice.  One was to get regular backups scheduled to an external hard drive.  I did these things.

This is far better than saving to a flash drive and having to readjust back and forth.  Computers get tetchy about that.

Monday, February 24, 2014

GAD spoilers.

(The links contain the spoilers.)


The Strand Magazine has a lovely piece on the detective of Margery Allingham, who is one of my very favorites of the gentlemen detectives.

The Great Detectives: Albert Campion is full of spoilers.  Do not read it unless you've already read the series.  I enjoyed the piece a lot, but again, I have read all the books many times over.

You could read the first six paragraphs of the essay and not be terribly spoiled -- possibly teased into reading the series that way.

Or into finding the BBC series Campion; it had two seasons and starred Peter Davison of Doctor Who fame.  That's how I discovered Campion myself.  :)  Huzzah for Mystery! on PBS.