Lost Pictures - Recovered Pictures

Written by Paweł Barut
This weekend I've spend great time with family, and we make lot of pictures. But when I've arrived home, and plugged camera to PC, it looked like this:
All pictures seems gone ...
For us computer geeks data lost is not an option. I've started to look for tools that can help me recover those data. In such situation rule number one is: not allow to write anything on this storage. Any additional write could lead to total data lost. I've googl`ed for software that could help. I've found lot of software that does "FAT Recovery", "Recover Digital Camera", "Data Recovery" - most of them priced 49-200$. Well, not big money, but still quite many when you need to recover 50 pictures. And you never know, if this software is worth it, and will solve your problem.
Finally I've found really great software that I would like to recommend: PC INSPECTOR™ smart recovery. It run very fast, and recovered almost all pictures. When looking into Camera counter and number of files, only one picture is missing. This software is freeware, but authors wants us to "Pay What You Want". And I've did it, as this software did his job perfectly.
Hope it help someone else to recover lost pictures.

Paweł

--
Related Articles on Paweł Barut blog:

• Oracle OpenWorld 2008
• Pictures on Google map
• Rant: Great fun with Wii
• 13 – Happy or Unhappy Number?
• Autobackup of SPFILE and CONTROLFILE

Pictures on Google map

Few days ago I wrote about idea to integrate Google Maps and Picasa pictures in the way that you can see pictures on map. Today I've discovered that it is already done in very similar way. When you go to maps.google.com there is an new tab My Maps. Then you can check "Photos from Panoramio" and you can scroll and pane map to see pictures from different places. Really cool feature. I'm looking forward for same functionality with Google Picasa. BTW, Panoramio was (will be) bought by Google in May 2007. I wonder if they integrate it with Picasa ...
Have Fun with pictures




Cheers, Paweł

After Vacations: Tagging Photos with Geo Location

Welcome back after my vacations. This time nothing about Oracle, but about some idea that was in my mind for few years and now is life: Google Picasa has new functionality: putting pictures on maps. I'm using Picasa to share pictures with friends and family for more than year now. And often I was asked: where did you take this picture? Now I can tag pictures with Geo coordinates and then are shown on map. Take a look at my public galleries on picasa, especially latest one with some pictures from my vacations.
There are still some features that I would like to see;When playing with google maps I would like to have option to show pictures from specific place. Pictures from public galleries could be presented. There might be an copyright issue, but it could be solved easily: users will have option to allow (or not) to publish pictures this way.
And I must buy Camera with build in GPS receiver to simplify mapping pictures...


Cheers, Paweł

Dynamically set name of spool file in SQL*Plus

Small tip for today. Often there is a need to set name of spool file based on current time and might by also database you are connected to. It's often needed when script is run as scheduled task and there is a need to generate files with different names. So here is an solution for using date:

define logname=date
column clogname new_value logname
select 'prefix_'||to_char(sysdate, 'yyyymmdd') clogname from dual;
spool '&logname'

If there is a need to have also name of database included into filename then it can be read from global_name view:

define logname=date
column clogname new_value logname
select 'prefix_'||substr(global_name,1,
 decode(dot,0,length(global_name),dot-1))||
 to_char(sysdate, 'yyyymmdd') clogname
from (select global_name, instr(global_name, '.') dot from global_name);
spool '&logname'

Hope you find it useful.
I would also like to share an photo I made in Rome in February this year

To see more pictures you are welcome to follow Rome 1, Rome 2, Rome 3

Cheers, Paweł