After moaning about the tedium of sorting out photo albums the other day, I spent Sunday biting the bullet and sorting the remaining images into the file; the best part of 500 photos mounted, plus all the little tickets, maps and souvenirs along the way. The boredom was alleviated by two things; firstly James was over so I had conversation/gave tutorials on setting up the Macbook and secondly I was reinstalling Windows on the WDM, which as anyone knows is one of the devil's favourite punishments. Gladly I didn't idly have to sit in front of the thing all day as it worked it's Windows Update magic.

Both the photo album and reinstall are complete now, although there is still some software loading to be done but hopefully the upshot will be that things will run a bit faster now.

There are a number of projects to get on with today, as is there a need to be making a number of phone calls... my bill this month is likely to be something ugly.

Today has been a day of actions. I've swapped my wardrobes round, retired a load of old and unwanted clothing, and began to work my way through last year's photo prints from the USA. Every year I create an album of the photos and collected paraphernalia (leaflets, tickets, casino chips etc), and using the little sticky corners, some prittstick and a great deal of patience mount it all up. Usually these folders take a day or so, and in the past have been done within three months of returning home. It's now a year and a bit since the US expedition, and I've still got a box with 700 prints remaining; that's not even including all the ones from Milan, Ireland and Crete that I got done at the same time.

It's a big task, and whereas I used to find some relaxation in it, now it seems tedious. It has to be done however, and it does give me a break from computer tedium (making DVD backups of 340Gb worth of work, music, photos and video).

Being deprived of interesting things to do, I organised a curry for this Thursday with a few friends, spoke to Rosie, emailed Devito, organised to meet with James tomorrow and went for a drink with Will at the Taphouse. Apparently he's off to France for four months, and once again my little travelling mind thinks can I make it out there to visit him. This isn't the first time in two days either. STA Travel notified that it I booked by Monday, I could get return flights to New York for 219 squid. That's right. Part of me says go, part of me says easy on the quick-spends. Well, in reality it's not going to happen. I've got too much to do right now and the real travels will probably commence sometime after Christmas.

After a couple of months, I've finally got around to uploading all my Australia and Japan photos, which you can now see in the galleries here...

• Australia
• Japan
• (Gallery Home)

Although still not entirely happy with the system, the new Flash layout does give greater visual appeal. One th down side it's still not showing the photos in chronological order (the bain of my existence) and if Flash isn't your thing, then you can use the old gallery system here (look in the 2006 gallery).

Today has been productive, and I've finally whittled my inbox down to a skeleton on six messages. The first time in years. I've also managed to pick up a new client who I'm looking forward to working with on a fairly short term project. Now that I've finally hooked up everything on a network it's tempting to re-format the WDM (a huge task). Before it was a bit of a nightmare, but since I got it talking to the Mac backing up has become a lot easier and so this could be the opportune moment.

Still in the computer-related vein, yesterday I took James to buy a new laptop at the Apple Store. My first Windows/Mac convert! Admittedly the thing that flipped his choice was that you could run Windows on it, but when he had a couple of plays on mine he decided the difference was manageable and has made the switch. Due to the bargains going on at the moment he got a pretty sweet deal too; he managed to get the student discount, plus a iPod nano 4Gb for 30 quid, then a printer for free and Apple care for sixty more. It did knock the initial price up, but after rebates he's rolling in it.

I took the opportunity to check out the Mac Pro while I was there, as I have now resigned to the idea that when the WDM finally falls over, I'm going to make the switch properly. Fortunately they had a couple set up in the shop and despite not having Photoshop on either (?) I made the most of seeing what punch it packed. I was impressed with Aperture's performance, as I was with the video editing, but it frustrated me not to find more example content to play around with and so I resorted to the time old industry test (that I just made up) of loading up everything on the dock to see if it still worked. And it did.

Aim for tonight; get the inbox down to five and hang up the phone for the first time today.

When I received my post this morning I was pleasantly surprised to discover some money inside that I hadn't been expecting. Apparently there had been some overpayment on my gas/electric this year and my landlady sent back the change. It put a smile on my face while I had my haircut.

I've resolved my Windows XP issues, and eventually resolved my IE7 issues as well. Glad that's sorted. I am surprised to tell you this, but Microsoft's phone support was fantastic and I can't actually think of any company that did more to keep me happy. They even phoned me back 24hrs later to see how I was getting on. That is good service in my books.

I've been cracking on with some ASP coding again. Having to make retrospective alterations on any system always grates as it's never as straight forward when you have to reacquaint yourself with even your own code after a year. I think I've got it sorted now.

Jon called this morning and we discussed the next couple of weeks. He's planning a party again (Jon's parties are good), and asked me to whip up some interest, so have been on the phone this afternoon, and will be again this evening. The list of my Things To Do is melting down, but I need to keep up the heat. Back on it...

Right, this fix might not be for everyone, but it's definitely worth trying. Firstly, there are two types of incident here:

• those people who put a CD or DVD in the drive and lost a burn halfway through
• those people who were stupid enough to put a CD or DVD into the drive with a paper label on it

This applies to the latter group only; if you cannot get your CD or DVD out for a physical reason.

I was stupid enough to put a paper-labelled DVD into my Macbook's optical drive last night. I needed to copy it and so made an image which took about 15 minutes. When it finished, the disc would not eject, but not for want of trying (nasty groaning sounds, then automatically remounting without popping out of the slot). "Damn," I mused, "I'd better Google this one."

After only finding info on Macbook Pro users' problems with software, I eventually stumbled across an article which did the trick (for the life of me I can't find it again).

The Solution

Everyone knows that Macbooks, although lovely and shiny and Appley, can reach temperatures that will melt diamonds, and apparently, this is the key to the paper label CD/DVD problem. At these extreme levels of heat, the CD expands, the sticker glue melts and the paper... well I don't know what the paper does, but it doesn't help things. If you don't find a website in time to help you out, you might be mislead to believe this can be fixed by sticking a credit card/other firm item into the drive. Do NOT assume this is the solution - it will not solve this type of problem (as far as I discovered). The best route to enlightenment, and returning your DVD scratch-free is very simple. Let the Macbook and optical disc re-solidify at room temperature (e.g. turn it off). After you have let it cool down for a few hours, boot it up, press eject, DVD-a-la-presto, pops out a treat.

I maybe of course stating something that all Mac users have been used to for years and therefore making a dipstick of myself, but it helped save part of one Windows-user's seven-and-a-bit hundred nicker investment from a credit card/sharp object related death. I will add this disclaimer and say I'm not responsible for anything I suggest here - you do it at your own risk (but letting your Macbook cool down isn't too risky to try first, surely?).

We spent last night in Plymouth. It's been about six years since we last visited and things have changed considerably in some places, and not so much in others. There are some really nice looking bars along the Barbican though (compared to what I remember).

The journey back today wasn't as bad as I had been expecting, and we managed to arrive back midafternoon. Since then I've mostly been burning photo DVDs and resolving a problem with my external hard drive. It's really annoying me that I can't just ethernet between my macbook and PC, as for some reason it just isn't playing ball either end. I need to seek some professional advice. I also am going to have to resolve a problem with a copy of Windows XP I downloaded (bought from a genuine student retailer) that won't allow me to click on the Install Windows XP button (and that alone - everything else works). The company say it's my incompetence and that they can't deal with technical issues, so keep pointing me to Microsoft and telling me to ask them. I am fairly sure Microsoft will soon point the finger back at them for selling dodgy downloads, or even better, help me with improving my 'clicking' skillz.

The past few days have made it impractical to blog, and so this entry is sort of a very brief summary of a lot of activity. Since we arrived in Newlyn, we've spent most of our time in the neighbouring towns like Landsend, Porthleven, St Ives, Mousehole, Falmouth and doing quite a lot of walking. So far there has been no surfing; St Ives being the closest chance, but due to a lack of suitable clothing, a lack of good breaks and an overcrowded beach we decided to not bother.

I've taken a fair whack of photos (not surprising really is it?) and am waiting to get them home. I think I'm likely to start looking into selling prints of some of my photography work at some point in the future; it's something I love to share, but unfortunately never gets to paper/canvas due to the costs involved. Will have to think more about this.

I've got a list as long as my arm and it's growing, which means I'm going to be very busy when I get back. On the whole, the holiday has been great so far, and given me a chance to think over my next steps. Finally feeling a little more settled about what I need to do and when.

Tomorrow we start the journey home back through Plymouth.