Ever since James pointed out that an email he received seemed to be written in some kind of haiku because of the punctuation, I wondered what it would be like if someone were to write everything they said in poetry, or something similar. For instance, I love the prose-like way Josh Byrd tweets on Twitter.

I wrote my last post partially in poetic form, free verse, and I figured a haiku would be an interesting way to tell you all about what happened to my old hard drive. I lost thousands of photos from 2006 through to late last year, if you want to envisage how much was actually lost.

There are six parts to this haiku series.

1. Yesterday

It, Ekka Dreamboat,
As I had named the damn thing,
Had become corrupt.

In a nutshell, I
Stupidly wanted
Something simple done.

2. Jayne

NTFS to
FAT. Could have moved all the files
And then converted.

I tried to convert
It when the files were still there.
I thought I was smart.

3.1. localhost

Nonetheless, the files
Would not even fit on my
Local computer.

Quite some time later,
Windows did Automatic
Update. Three a.m.

3.2. Mute

I’d left my speaker
On pretty loud so I heard
The startup music.

Obviously the
Converting process had been
Interrupted. Shit.

3.3. localhost:8080

My hard drive appeared
Blank. Could not read from disk.
Oooh. There goes my stuff.

Nah, look. Basically,
I tried to repair the disk.
Haha, fat chance, G.

3.4. Unmute

Took about a day.
The folders came up empty.
“But why are they there?”

Alignment issue?
Dude, the folders are empty…
Urgh. That’s it, innit.

4. LAN

I’d ask a workmate.
~she emails the whole office?~
… haven’t done it yet.

SOON. *INSERT SMILEY*
You know, hardware problems are
humiliating.

5. “THE CLOUD”

Can you believe that
Idiot told me, “the cloud”.
lol ONE TERABYTE.

HAVE FUN UPLOADING –
This stuff is not for the cloud.
Family photos.

6. The Cloud

Yesterday’s blog post.
Really quite a masterpiece.
RIP Ekka.

I looked at that poem.
“I’ll write a haiku of it.”
And so write I did.

Notes

“6. The Cloud” refers to heaven, a pun on the death of the hard drive, given the mention of storing data in the cloud, as someone had duly suggested, completely missing the point that not only do I have RAW image files, but the point was more that I had lost seven years’ worth of photos. Notably, Jayne was also the previous name of the hard drive.

Apart from losing seven years’ worth of photos, that was honestly the worst of it. The rest included old university assignments (remember, I have a Masters degree now); music (which I had local copies of anyway); movies which I can grab off friends again; and really, really old website design files that I may never use. My new design files actually are stored on Dropbox as it is.

Yes, those photos are plenty, but I have quite a handful online, uploaded to my old photoblog. Those may not be the best photos I have taken, but they are the best of the bunch. It’s good to know that I have all my photos from the past year. Those are probably my best ones, anyway.

I’m thinking some recovery software may be able to grab at least some of what was lost, but I’m beginning to doubt it greatly. Shouldn’t get hopes up. Either way, they weren’t photos I looked at all the time, and I did print a good handful of photos from many years ago.

It’s not something I’ll really miss, there’s no point crying over spilled milk/tea/coffee/vodka.

Maybe the vodka
Because it is expensive.
You like my haiku? :D