Well ok, it didn’t quite explode, but let’s face it – “when laptops suddenly stop working in an anti-climactic manner” isn’t such an eye-grabbing blog title, is it?

In short: I rebooted my laptop, it didn’t want to. I’ve one hefty corrupt hard drive. Ouch. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem – one quick trip into the Recovery CD and we’re away again – except the DVD drive on my battered and much-used lappy hasn’t worked for quite some time.

Solution two is usually to boot from Linux on a USB Pendrive. That’s what I spent a fair chunk of yesterday trying to do. Except the problem is that my USB ports are…. uhh…. intermittent. Did I mention this laptop is battered and well-used? Yeah. That thing.

So here I am using the same laptop without the harddrive thanks to the wonder that is Damn Small Linux and UNetbootin. 50Mb download, onto a pendrive and I’m in. Add one shared network connection through Christa’s desktop machine (my wifi doesn’t work in DSL) and we’re rolling again. As DSL is entirely resident in memory when it’s up I can remove the pendrive and know it’ll stay up and running just fine. It’s blazingly fast too. I love DSL – easily one of the best versions of Linux ever made.

No new renders from me until I get a replacement laptop though, but that should be Real Soon.

Later, folks.

Unlike