Oh no! More boring computer problems! Oh no!

If the worst possible thing has happened and iPhoto either won't open your library or there are photos missing, they are probably still in the library, stored by year, month and day. Navigate through the various folders and copy them back out. When you copy a photo out of the database, use option-drag to make a new copy so that the original is left behind. All of the metadata is history at this point, but you at least have your photos. If the photos are actually not there, then there has been some serious disk issue that you should address immediately."

http://girr.org/mac_stuff/photos.html

Restore points don't get your data back they just roll back the system software to a point before you installed that dodgy driver or piece of spyware. You have to set them manually as well, it's not a backup.

As for Ambrose's problem, not sure what to suggest as far as recovering the photos which should be in the iPhoto Library. As for the slowdown, it's a known problem, especially on older systems, due to on the fly thumbnail creation.

Some tips on speeding up iPhoto.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030204061957714
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050212014121749&query=iphoto+speed

This implies you might need a specific BRAND or something of DSL (or dialup or cable) modem with yr ISP which just isnt right. Not for dialup or DSL anyway. The exception being ADSL vs DSL2 - DSL2 does need a DSL modem capable of it and older ones wont be.

Current set-up:
AMD Athlon Processor 1.14 ghz.
256mb of RAM.
Radeon 7200 graphics card 64mb

What should I upgrade in order for GTA: SA to work well on my pc? Which should I made priority? I've seen 256mb graphics cards ranging from £55 to £150 on Amazon, am I an idiot or are these similar products?

The min spec for GTA:SA is 1GHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon or equivalent, RAM: 256 MB RAM, Video Memory: 64 MB VRAM and the recommended spec is Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP or equivalent, RAM: 384 MB RAM, Video Memory: 128 MB VRAM.

Also, how easy is it to upgrade these three elements? Would I be best taking it to a proper pc shop to get sorted or can it be done at home with ease?

If you have to upgrade the motherboard too, you're essentially looking at stripping down and rebuilding the entire machine. It's usually less work to buy a new computer and put your old hard disk in it.

Take a look at these guides

http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-200506.ars/2

The budget box but with 1GB of RAM is a nice machine, keep in mind that budget means budget gaming here, the video card isn't the best around but it will run GTA:SA very nicely at 1024x768, but as the system is PCI-E you can slot in what video card you want later on or even a better one now depending on how much you want to spend.

based on this incredibly handy list:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/67909965/m/844003222631

BEar in mind the videocards at the top of that list are able to run Battlefield 2 at very high resolutions and quality settings.

You could keep your current HDD and optical drives, you might want a new case/power supply though modern systems tend to use a bit more juice than older ones and run a bit warmer so a few case fans are needed.

Really how powerful a videocard you need is based on what resolution you need which depends on the monitor you use.

Bear in mind minimum specs are the minimum to just get the game running they never really give any guide to a spec for a smooth gaming experience, the recomended specs are where you should be looking.

Don't buy from a local computer shop, unless you are supplying the parts list and they offer a reasonable quote for the work/parts.

Seriously 3200+ and 6600GT with no monitor for 1500USD is too much

also, does anyone use mkisofs much? am having trouble with options - it's turning '=' signs in filenames (yes, i know...) to '_'s and generally being a pain. am using cygwin mkisofs, source is win2k, destination is linux. don't need subdirectories but filenames are at least 26 characters long and need to be preserved.

(mkisofs -J -l -R -iso-level 3 resulted in a disk full of files i could list but not access)

(google gives lots of links to manpages full of all possible options but there's too much of a wood / trees thing going on there)

To annoy.

I don't use mkisofs much, but I've just skimmed the manpage: have you tried the option -relaxed-filenames

Yeah they don't care about the bandwidth really it's the principle or something.

am writing a script to cobble together 650M of files from a directory (there are hundreds, roughly 4M each but not constant), md5sum them, mkisofs them and write them to cd because the alternative is using windows gui 'tools'. next problem, adding filesizes together...

$sum=$(( $a + $b ))

Computers are supposed to be deteministic dammit!

prompt> sh a
+ 0 + 10 ╪

um. worked fine in real bash, gave the above rubbish in cygwin bash. am using size=`eval $size + $s` instead. the thing i thought i'd have trouble with was extracting the filesize but stat -c "%s" filename to the rescue.

Is there any way to change the attribution line in replies in Mail? So that instead of saying "On 10 Aug 2005, at 11:20 pm, John Doe wrote:" it says something a little more lively? My googling has turned up nothing, but googling for "Mail" is a most unrewarding exercise.

I used to be able to do this in Eudora with a little plug-in. I kinda miss Eudora, but I've made the change and I'm going to stick with it for a while longer.

when I turn it on all that comes up on the screen is a folder with a little exclamation mark beside it, similar to the low battery sign

I have had a little look around on google and people are registering the same complaint but no-one has provided satisfactory solution

in the past whenever my ipod has failed in its many novel ways it has normally rectified itself by just being left alone

perhaps that'll work this time but in the meanwhile, any suggestions?

thanks

I'd never seen that before

I'll try disconnecting it and re-connecting it

I'm not sure it'll do any good, can I buy replacement hard drives relatively cheap?

I want every folder on the drive to have bitrate/duration/date modified/type/size and nothing more (most of my folders are mp3s so these are the best settings for me), and I've spent an age setting these up, choosing 'apply to all folders' and 'apply this template to all subfolders' but after a short while I lose them.

I've googled for answers but to no avail, I've d/ld this TweakUI program that promised to mend it. It didn't. You guys are my only hope to stop me yelling FUCKS SAKE every 3 hours or so.

HELP!

fuck you windows, and also fuck you Maxtor drives!

but I'm coming in here for you lot to confirm it

and I'm not in a good mood so don't be a twat

OK

I have just had DSL installed

I bought a hayes ADSL ethernet modem

I had been trying to run it via airport but that didn't work

so I tried the direct connection via ethernet and that didn't work

I thought I should switch to the PC and maybe see if I can configure the modem via that route and get in on the mac through the back door

I switched to the PC

I set it all up and got on the internet for a little while

the POWER & ADSL lights have been on, steady for the duration

whereas the LAN led blinks intermittently and stays off more than it blinks

this leads me to believe the problem is either in 1. the ethernet cable or the ethernet socket

so I am going to return the modem - can anyone recommend a half-decent mac-compatible (i.e. with fkn decent mac documentation) ADSL modem I can use, preferably in conjunction with airport?

PS I am only on the internet now via the PC using the shitty USB speedtouch modem that demon gave me, which crashes my mac each time I use it

not in a good mood at all

: /