Episode #69

There will be no mp3 release of this weeks podcast because William stupidly deleted all the audio files plus the backups that go along with them. Click through for his much longer explanation and an apology from him.

William’s Explanation

Dear Podcast 17 fans,

Short Explanation.

There will be no episode posted this week because I stupidly deleted all the audio files plus the backups that go along with them.

Long Explanation

Flashback to the morning after recording — I sat at my computer and did all the usual post-production work for the episode. I levelled the audio, cleaned up the samples and — amungst other things — consolodated the back-up recordings into one folder while I worked with them.

You might be asking yourself “Why William? Why do you move all the back-up recordings to the same place? Isn’t that a bit stupid?”. The answer is “Yes… Yes, that is stupid.”

So I finished the post-production work and headed to my university to complete some lab work. The computers at the university cannot handle the complex network and mathematical simulations I require to do my research, so I often remote into my desktop at home. I needed to take a number of screenshots to complete the report for this particular piece of lab work; and since I was remoted into my desktop it was much easier to just save them to my desktop and email them to myself to attach them to the report locally at the university.

Lab completed I headed home after a long day of research; sat down at my computer and saw that there were easily 100 screenshots sitting on my desktop. So, since they were no longer needed, I highlighted them all and threw them in the trash. Then, by force of habit, I emptied the recycle bin, purging it’s contents.

Now, you might be asking yourself “Why William? Why do you immediately empty the recycle bin?” the answer would be “I dunno, it’s a very stupid habit.”

So as you may have guessed, the podcast production work was also saved into the folder on my desktop with all those screenshots. You may now be asking yourself: “Why William? Why do you save the production work to your desktop? Surely if you do it for convenience, you would just create a temporary shortcut to the folder they’re in.” the answer would be “… I know … stupid”.

So the source files of Episode #69 are now gone… in all it’s awesome glory. However, now you must really be asking yourself “But William! When you remove something from the recycle bin it isn’t actually gone… it’s contents are just marked for deletion.” and the answer is “Yeah… I know; this computer science honours degree isn’t hanging on my wall for nothing”. But the truth is, over a time span of 2 hours I tried 6 different deep scan HDD applications; found lots of porn, but no podcast. Unfortunately, the bottom line is, that same computer science degree on my wall counts for nothing when you accidentally delete an entire podcast. So all I can say is sorry and try to make up for it somehow.

The Bad News

Other than this episode being completely gone; a lot of good things happened this episode that the “recorded listeners” missed out on. Emanuel actually did an excellent job this week, he was on top of all the news post and had something important to say most of the time — Nic and I were completely astonished. Most importantly, we lost a really good interview with the GoldenEye: Source team, which they put a lot of effort into preparing for. So I would like to publically apologise to Wake, The SSL and Killer Monkey; the rest of the GoldenEye: Source team and anyone who was looking forward to listening to this interview. I really am truly sorry.

The Good News

We have carried over the most important topics of the week to Episode #70, so you get to hear them covered in Phillip’s awesome voice.

Also, in regards to the lost interview; we we’re already planning on having GoldenEye: Source back after the release of Beta 4 — which will be released on the February 19th — so we will be talking with them about extending that episode to also cover the things lost this week. Or alternatively, recording some kind of GoldenEye: Source featurette. (a featurette being a side episode roughly 30-to-90 minutes in length which focuses on a specific topic or mod)

I certainly learnt my lesson on computer etiquette.

Well, that’s about all I have to say. Once again, sorry for completely screwing up the episode this week.

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There are 43 responses to “Episode #69”.

  • Firetime says:

    Recover the files! Chances are they are still sitting on your hard-disk and be recovered using any number of file recovery utilities. Get a free trial of “Uneraser” and see if you get lucky .

  • Pinky says:

    William failed #69? Not a surprise… On a more serious note, we forgive you William, just try to be more careful in the future.

  • Herr_Alien says:

    Darn! And I only recorded parts of the pre-show and parts before the interview. Serves me right, next time I’ll record the entire thing.

  • Jonu says:

    Please recover the files!

  • You have my complete sympathy. I know exactly how you feel. Just another reason to have Syncplicity.com

    • DuckSauce says:

      Yes use that William, or Dropbox! Both are good! Dropbox is pretty much the same as synclipicity but instead you have to drop files in the dropbox folder while syncplicity automatically syncs chosen folders.

      Personally I like dropbox alot, but when you want to expand storage space for free, syncplicity can expand to 5 GB I think, while dropbox goes to 3 GB max.

      It will help alot to prevent this in the feature :D

      • That’s why I like Syncplicity; you don’t have to do anything, except config the right folders for you and the rest is dealt with automagically.

        To my knowledge Syncplicity is the only free service that has that option.

    • I Will certainly look into this – thanks Phillip; I know it was mentioned before, but clearly I am loosing my mind in my old age.

  • Silverfish says:

    Aww, I was waiting for this one. :/
    Oh well, I forgive you sir.

  • Diesal11 says:

    I HAVE LOST ALL RESPECT FOR PODCAST17!!!!
    YOUR OLD TIME SLOT WAS FINE FOR ME AND NOW YOU CHANGE IT TO THIS SHITTY ONE
    AND ON TOP OF THAT YOU LOST THE MOST IMPORTANT PODCAST OUT OF THEM ALL YOU HAD THE INTERVIEW WITH GOLDENEYE SOURCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    DO WHATEVER YOU MUST JUST GET THAT FUCKING INTERVIEW BACK I DONT CARE IF I HAVE TO PAY JUST DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    PLZ PLZ PLZ PLZ PLZ
    IF NOT I WILL HATE YOU FOREVER AND ON TOP OF THAT I WILL NEVE LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

    • pawnstick says:

      Shouting and screaming telling somebody to do something like they’re fucking obligated to do so will not get you anywhere. We should be happy that William is nice enough to admit his mistakes and try to redo most of the topics in next week’s episode.

    • Sorry to disappoint Diesal

      • Diesal11 says:

        ok soz i think i did go abit over the top
        but hey we are only human we make mistakes
        all i read was that the files were gone and raged i SOOOO wanted to listen to that interview :’(
        well ur having them back on again and the important shit is going to be re-said.
        lol is it just a coincidence that you failed at #69?

      • Diesal11 says:

        also feel free to remove most of those !!!!’s in my first post they go off the page lol
        leave enough so it makes a point while looking neat for you ;-)

  • Diesal11 says:

    Anyone not attending live, dont worry we will have the recorded interview embedded in next week’s news post for your convenience! quoted from GES Moddb Page
    Yes i am pissed off at you and am still roid raging

  • killermonkey says:

    WILLIAM

    STOP USING YOUR COMPUTER NOW. Contact me immediately this afternoon and I can help you to recover the files. They are not gone forever!

    • Just so everyone is aware,

      I did try using various recovery tools – my count is up to ten now. I have given up recovering these files and since continued normal operation on my PC – which involves lots of file transfers. So even if there was so magic piece of software out there that was able to recover the files there is no hope now. Once again, sorry everyone, but the Podcast is truly lost.

  • Andrew Wills says:

    Hey William,

    It’s worth giving this a shot, I won’t guarantee anything (because sometimes it’s just a lost cause), but I use a Linux distro called Parted Magic for file recovery on a weekly basis and it’s almost always successful. Download it here: http://partedmagic.com/download.html

    It’s an ISO, so burn it to a CD using something like IMGBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/

    Then just boot from it, and open up the Appication called Photorec. Head over to the options panel (it’s a text based GUI), and set it to recover MP3 files only. Then just set a recovery dump location (such as your primary HD, or better, a secondary HD/Ext HD, and set it going. It usually takes just under an hour to search everything, and it gives you a live read out of what it’s found, then afterwards you can check through them with VLC or boot back into Windows and see if it’s been restored.

    The best part about the above is A) It’s all open source and B) It’s non intrusive, as it all runs from live CDs.

    Good luck! (Unless you’ve already given up!)

    Wills

    • This is a good suggestion – probably the best yet, I burnt this LiveCD and broke out a few others including recovery distribution builds of Ubuntu and Knoppix. Unfortunately after much patience still nothing – found a lot of cool things that brought back some memories though… and mostly porn.

  • DaFatCat says:

    I could have been there if not for a trojan sappin mah browsers :(

    Recover those files!

  • Good thing I actually listened to the live recording this weekend. It’s sad though… it was one of the better podcasts especially Emanuel’s behavior and the GE:S interview (not to make you feel more guilty, haha). Shit happens.

  • Hectic Glenn says:

    A real shame, I was looking forward to Eman’s virtuoso display in this episode. I had heard from several credible sources (not Nic…he’s a liar and a thief) that Eman rocked the mic. I did stop by for a few moments to listen to the live interview with GE: S and there were around 46 live listeners so fortunately some people got to enjoy it. In the time I listened, it sounded like a particularly interesting one I would have liked to have kept.

  • Enzo.Matrix says:

    lmao FAIL BUS!!

    oh well, this still isn’t anywhere near as bad when we put Beta 3 out and Valve broke MODs

  • Leon_Kilean says:

    What a shame, but atleast you made up for it with that amusing text. =D

  • The Dias says:

    It figures. Both days that I’ve tried(and failed at) waking up to listen in live, the episode gets deleted/screwed up.

  • ThePengu says:

    I have a habit of emptying the recycle bin. Its like OCD but in pixel-waste-paper form.
    You really know how to keep us on our toes. At least the next episode is extended.

  • Maegnis Ra says:

    Could everyone stop acting like a bunch of retards?
    He said that he tried a lot of programs and seeing as he has his honor degree he knows what he’s doing.
    I’m sure he know more about recovering those files then most of the people here.
    So back off and leave him alone, he’s done a great job on this podcast so far and he’s bound to make up for this.

  • I think it’s kinda sad that the episode with no show gets WAY more comments than the ones that do! Shame on us.

  • BobWya says:

    William where is the download button for episode #69??
    I’ve looked everywhere – but all I’ve found is links to corrupted pron files…

  • BobWya says:

    OK joking aside (**JOKING ASIDE** @ Mr Maegnis!!)…

    William hows about for getting your files back:
    http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/07/7383.ars

    Bob

  • Simon N says:

    Luckily I was tuning in live *puh*
    Great show I have to say!

  • WizardExt says:

    Argh, I missed the live show. I was really looking forward to this golden podcast. And if Emanuel kicked ass then this episode is probably worth money. :D

    Shit happens William, unfortunately twice in a short period of time, but that will only make you more careful in the future. And even though the episode fails you always post a huge news post about it. Very professional.

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