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Name: Evil Roy: Maestro of the ... [Researcher: 175884]

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ABOUT THIS RESEARCHER

ABOUT THIS RESEARCHER

Created: 16th May 2001

Greetings..............

...and welcome to EvilRoy's Personal Space

For reasons which shall probably become no clearer than they are now, I am EvilRoy. I am a full-time Computer Programmer and part-time Audio Engineer/Musician from Melbourne, Australia. If you want to know any more, e-mail me at evil.roy@optushome.com.au

Want to learn more about Australia?

Australia - A Cultural Perspective

Australia, it has been said, is a state of mind. Not a very sober one, I'll grant you. Certainly not a very sophisticated one. Definitely a fun one.

Anyway, read it yourself and see what you think.

Read The Manifesto
for the Campaign to Rename Thursday: "Thing"

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At a loss for something to do?

Perhaps the Ancient Art of

Thumb Twiddling

is just what you're looking for.

Learn the Reverse Twiddle, the Forward Twiddle and the (soon to be released) Antipodean Concentric Twiddle with Pike.

Happy birthday to you....

Researchers Birthdays

Melbourne Mini-Meetup

A few of us got together for a beer or three!

Leave a Message

RESEARCHER DATA

Name:

Evil Roy: Maestro of the Thingite Orchestra, Knight Errant of the Thingite Cause, Prince of Balwyniti, Aussie Researchers A59204
Last posted: Dec 6, 2008

Researcher Number:

175884

Referenced Entries:

All-New Researchers' Birthday Page

The Manifesto for the Campaign to rename Thursday, "Thing"

Thumb Twiddling

Australia - A Cultural Perspective

CONVERSATIONS

ABOUT THIS RESEARCHER

CONVERSATION	COMMUNITY	LATEST POST	LATEST REPLY

No no no!!	h2g2	Jan 30, 2004	2 Hours Ago
Putting candles on Tom's cake	h2g2	No Posting	Yesterday
Dropping like flies they are	h2g2	Nov 6, 2008	Yesterday
Day out.	h2g2	No Posting	Yesterday
"Portrait of a Leg End"	h2g2	Feb 12, 2002	2 Weeks Ago
The Palace Flophouse and Grill	h2g2	Sep 7, 2001	2 Weeks Ago
When the temporal order of events just works against you	h2g2	No Posting	2 Weeks Ago
Wise Words...	h2g2	No Posting	2 Weeks Ago
Join Here!	h2g2	Sep 4, 2003	2 Weeks Ago
Liv Tyler or George Formby	h2g2	Sep 3, 2008	3 Weeks Ago



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MESSAGES

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Leave a Message		LATEST POST

Evil Roy's Evil fan club<musicalnote>		Dec 6, 2008
Hi ER!		Nov 5, 2008
You have but to ask...		Nov 5, 2008
Remembrance		Apr 5, 2006
Hey dear!		Jan 18, 2006
second Ashes test		Sep 14, 2005
I enjoy conversing with you...		Apr 27, 2005
Box girder bridge		Jan 19, 2004
Melbourne meet-up		Jan 11, 2004
happy shirt		Dec 13, 2003


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JOURNAL

ABOUT THIS RESEARCHER

I did promise a journal entry....
Sep 10, 2007

So here it is!

I'm back at home in Australia......... well, for the moment I'm going to say that "part" of me is back.

Most who read this entry will know that for the past almost 2 years I have been resident in China, teaching English. In Yichang, Hubei, China.... to be more precise. And I got married while I was in China, which is absolutely

fantastic.

.

But on the last day of July 2007 I returned to Melbourne, Australia.

The day after I returned, I bought a car. The day after I bought my neat little 1989 Subaru Leone, I drove to the offices of my former employer to be greeted with something akin to "Thank Bob you're back, when can you start work?"

So, I'd been back for 2 days and already I had transport and employment checked off my list. Accommodation is another thing altogether. At the moment I am staying in my parents home.... not the best of situations, but one which can wait a little while to be resolved because, you see, the major unresolved issue at the moment is the fact that my wife is still in China - which is a major, major, major downer.

Okay, hereafter my wife shall be referred to as "Betsy" (the reason for which should be obvious to anyone who knows where I got my screen name from).

The problem, as you may well guess, is a government - but probably not the particular government you might imagine it to be. The Australian government has already granted temporary residency to Betsy, she got approval before I flew out and can enter Australia whenever she likes. Nooooooooo, the problem is the

Chinese government. They're not stopping her from leaving, just taking forever to do something very simple which has nothing to do with her leaving the country.

Explanation: We bought an apartment in Yichang and we got the keys to the apartment on 1 July. What My Love is now waiting for is the official Ownership Certificate. You may ask, "Why wait? Why not get them to send it to you?".... the answer - because the Chinese beaurocracy is so steeped in red-tape and the idea that the left hand should not know what the right hand is doing that, firstly, we don't know who to talk to in order for that to be achieved and, secondly, they probably wouldn't want to pay the cost of mailing it to us in Australia or (if we did pay them on-the-spot) would probably lose any payment we made in order to achieve this.

We could get a member of Betsy's family go in and pick it up for us. But that person, once they have the certificate in their hand, could actually sell the apartment without our knowledge. Not that we don't trust members of my wifes family, it's more that she had to stay for a while anyway (to train someone to do her job), so we decided that she may as well stay a little while after the training is complete and come here in early/mid October, because the certificate is supposed to be ready by the start of October.

The "staying a little while longer" was, of course, a bad idea. I've been home now for about 6 weeks and I miss her terribly.

And there's still about 4 or 5 weeks to go before she gets here.

That's all I have time for at the moment. Any questions?

Discuss this entry - 6 replies - Latest reply: Oct 14, 2007

China 2005
Dec 20, 2004

Well, it's official.......... well, *almost* official..... I mean, the flights are booked and a deposit has been paid....

visas still need to be acquired and there's probably one or two other things which need to be done..... *but*

30 April 2005 - Melbourne to Sydney to Shanghai (Arrive 30 April 2005 8:20 pm)
15 May 2005 - Shanghai to Melbourne (Arrive 16 May 2005 10:20 am)

After successfully not killing each other during six weeks in the USA, Peter and I will once again be on the road (or should that be "in the skies"?) together. Upon arrival in Shanghai we will be met by my friend Kelvin (who is currently working in Yichang - pronounced Yee-chung) and his wife, Lyn. We'll have a look around Shanghai for a day or two before flying to Yichang.

Once in Yichang the itinerary becomes a little blurry. This is a much less structured trip than our USA tour (no more of this "flying to a new city every few days"). We'll check out the local sights of course, probably in the company of an interpreter (though Peter has bought a Book/CD to learn a little Mandarin and in January I will be doing a short course - Mandarin for Travellers - at the university across the road from where I work), and we may even organise to have a couple of days in Beijing and/or check out The Great Wall. But all that is mere speculation...... all that is definitely decided so far is that we're going!

and there'll be a new website....... eventually.

Discuss this entry - 18 replies - Latest reply: Dec 24, 2004

I have a cunning plan.....
Nov 13, 2003

Okay, here is a rough outline of where my friend and I might possibly be, on or around the listed dates.

22 May 2004 to 24 May 2004 - Los Angeles
25 May 2004 to 31 May 2004 - Salt Lake City
01 Jun 2004 to 04 Jun 2004 - Las Vegas
05 Jun 2004 to 08 Jun 2004 - New Orleans
09 Jun 2004 to 14 Jun 2004 - Charlotte
15 Jun 2004 to 17 Jun 2004 - Washington DC
18 Jun 2004 to 22 Jun 2004 - New York
23 Jun 2004 to 25 Jun 2004 - San Francisco
26 Jun 2004 to 04 Jul 2004 - Honolulu
05 Jul 2004 - Home

I can already hear everyone screaming "Why the

has he added Salt Lake City to the trip, it's in Utah for Bobs sake!", and the reason is quite simple - the brother of my travelling companion is currently living and wo*king in SLC.

This is, of course, a far more structured trip than I would like, so be prepared for details to change as we go along.

Discuss this entry - 190 replies - Latest reply: Apr 12, 2004

Data Recovery
Oct 23, 2003

On Sodit evening my 40GB secondary hard drive suddenly decided that it no longer wanted to live. The data and files which I had accumulated just disappeared. Gone completely. If you selected the drive, it proudly announced that I had 40GB of free space.

I know the reason why this probably happened, but I won't bore you the technical "whys" and "hows".

On Wimpy evening I borrowed and tried 3 commercially available data recovery packages and all that they were able to find, with varying degrees of success, were a large number of text files filled with rubbish (it wasn't actually "rubbish" but you would have to be the worlds greatest programmer to be able to decipher what you were looking at). I won't tell you the names of these programs because, quite frankly, they are not worth the bother.

What follows is an absolute *rave* about some data recovery software which is freely available on the Internet.

If you *ever* find yourself in this situation, the best advice I can give is this: ignore all the commercially available software which claim to be able to rebuild your drive and go straight to the BinaryBiz website and download their data recovery software.

Last night I downloaded and installed the BinaryBiz software, ran a partial scan of the disk and, when I continued to the next window, there were some of my files all nicely set out in a directory structure (albeit with directory names like "dir0", "dir10", etc). Then I went back and started the scan again and let it do the entire hard drive (which took about 75 minutes), after which I could see files which I had deleted months ago.

I have found most of the stuff which I want to recover, but I still have a bit of searching to find some very specific files.

The good thing about this software is that, firstly, you don't pay anything until you know for sure that it can find the data on your drive and, secondly, how much you pay depends on how much data you want to recover. In my case I have a 40GB drive but (so far) I have only found about 4GB of data which I *need* to recover (the rest is mostly stuff which I already have on cd). Recovering 5GB of data will cost me $119.95US, which is a small price to pay considering the time and effort I would otherwise have to put in to get back to where I was.

Maybe my excuberance for this software is heightened by the fact that the other 3 programs failed, but then the first 3 actually said that they could do it with statements like "Lost all your data? We *can* recover it for you". And had I *bought* these programs I would have wasted my money.

You can probably guess that this little black duck is now a lot happier than he was on Sodit or Wimpy evening.

Discuss this entry - 12 replies - Latest reply: Oct 23, 2003

Has it been six months already?
Oct 14, 2003

Yes, it has.

Six months ago, at this very time of day, my friend Robin died. It seems like it happened only yesterday but, at the same time, it is a lifetime ago. Then there are the times when it all feels like the bad dream that I wish it was.

Those of us who were there when he died share a common bond which no-one else can ever share. It is fair to say that, under the circumstances, we would prefer to have never forged such a union, but it is one which provides now, as it did back then, an extra little bit of comfort. A piece of my heart will live forever in each of the people who shared my tears on 14 April 2003.

The overwhelming grief which I experienced has subsided, but it is permanently imprinted on my soul and manages to surface every now and then. The intensity and frequency have decreased, but the memory is vivid.

During the last 6 months I have come to appreciate more clearly the value of family, friendship and the love and comfort which are naturally displayed and shared at such times. Those who know me best would, no doubt, recognise that I have been a lot more open and honest about my affections and feelings over the last six months than at any other time in my life.

In the days leading up to, and immediately after, Robins death, I also took a great deal of comfort from those of you in this virtual community who showed your support and shared in my grief. I may not have posted often but I lurked at every opportunity and was glad that very little seemed to have changed, except that a hell of a lot more hugs were being tossed about in my fan club. I'm not sure if I thanked you at the time, but I want to thank you now.

Thank You.

Discuss this entry - 13 replies - Latest reply: Oct 20, 2003

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FRIENDS

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Here is the friends list of Evil Roy: Maestro of the Thingite Orchestra, Knight Errant of the Thingite Cause, Prince of Balwyniti, Aussie Researchers A59204:

Amy Pawloski, aka 'paper lady' --'Mufflewhump??' click here for definition...
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Amy: ear-deep in novels, poetics, and historical documents.
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Avenging Washcloth, An unhurried sense of time is, in itself, a form of wealth.
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cafram - in the states.
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Clive the flying ostrich: Thingite Warlord Emeritus.
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Evangeline
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Farging Barstige
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Happy�ude� ... "short skirt long jacket" (have you seen my coxcomb?)...a Peripatetical entity
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Indiana Vulpix ,the ACF mascot! now with sugarXD
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King Cthulhu of Balwyniti
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Lady Scott � Keeper of Long Afternoon Naps
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Marv the Grate {KEA}
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Michele - Doily Mogul: Don't leave me! If you go there'll be no braincells in the room at all!
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Shea the Sarcastic: Play Ball!
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T J: Mr. Shea
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The Sundance Kid(Captain of the Good Ship Necromancer)If Life Gives You Manure, Use it to Fertilize your Garden
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SUBSCRIBED ARTICLES

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Evil Roy: Maestro of the Thingite Orchestra, Knight Errant of the Thingite Cause, Prince of Balwyniti, Aussie Researchers A59204's more subscribed articles | Evil Roy: Maestro of the Thingite Orchestra, Knight Errant of the Thingite Cause, Prince of Balwyniti, Aussie Researchers A59204's subscriptions | Researchers who are subscribed to Evil Roy: Maestro of the Thingite Orchestra, Knight Errant of the Thingite Cause, Prince of Balwyniti, Aussie Researchers A59204

GUIDE ENTRIES

ABOUT THIS RESEARCHER

ID	TITLE	COMMUNITY	STATUS	CREATED

A2992494	Lady Scott International Convention	h2g2	-	Sep 11, 2004
A721243	Australia	h2g2	Edited	Jun 17, 2002
A690653	"The Orchard" - the h2g2 Mac Users' Group!	h2g2	-	Feb 3, 2002
A597170	Thumb Twiddling	h2g2	Edited	Sep 11, 2001
A599583	Australia - A Cultural Perspective	h2g2	-	Jul 25, 2001
A576894	Thumb Twiddling	h2g2	-	Jun 14, 2001

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