3

Near Timber Creek

Somewhere in this entry I will get closer to the heart of what I am doing. This entry is a combination of my past weeks enterprise. Starting with changing a setting on Deja Vu ( the backup software) to clean up the weekly log I managed to lose my whole PhD folder. Everything was wiped and the replacement file left nothing of the previous folder. I won't go into detail how this happened but I immediately sought out a data restore program. I found Data Rescue and I could see my missing files in the demo version. Of course you have to pay the registration if you want to actually restore the files and my department advised me to use Disk Warrior and Nortons first. So I did. Disk Warrior read only the current directory and so did Norton even using unerase. In fact I think using unerase changed the capacity for Data Rescue to find my files. My department then bought the registration.
Now, running the cataloguing and content scans of Data Rescue, I can't see what I saw three days ago. Nothing works. The brunt of it is that I only lost 2 days work because I did do a manual backup earlier this week. Two days where I had surprisingly been lucid and wrote things I can't retrieve. As well as the gems I have to let go this is the second time I have done a final edit on a 7000 word article which is also lost. I spent more than a half a day on it each time. Gone again.
Don't hold onto anything is my life lesson.

My problem with backup is that I use too much memory with my media and I can't backup my system completely to the server provided by my Research Centre which allows only 1gig per person. I am about to change my whole system so that all these essential files can go there and I store my combined media separately. The reason I have not done this earlier is because I can't actually access the backup server. When I first tried to go onto the server earlier this year it didn't recognise my user password so unknowingly I tried to go in under guest instead. I was declined but at the same time I am now locked out of entering with a username and password. This is a preference somewhere in my username on my mac G3 powerbook. I know this because I can access the server by switching to another user on my computer and logging in from there. That is no use to me as I don't want to have to change everything over to the other user. My IT support at the centre have no idea where the preference is located. I need to find out...
I am at a loss to know why I have to do all this myself... but then I am also at a loss to know why so many other things are done for me. The world is a strange place where the demands that are made upon us are unrelated to the rewards and assistance that comes our way.

If this sounds as though I am going round in circles then you can feel a bit of the frustration I am going through. With such limited time to work on editing and writing I can't believe I am losing days on this.
So for the past two days I have tried to put aside the fact that my laptop, which I regard as home to all my work, has a huge memory hole in it. Instead I have concentrated on editing the footage of the Timber Creek Native Title trial that I filmed in March 2005. In this editing process I am learning something about what happened there that I didn't have time to take in while I was filming.

As I work my way through the way Alan Griffiths, the main corroboree creator/owner I have been researching with, talks about his country and acts in his country I see and hear things that I missed or didn't hear at the time. One of the reasosn for this is that I used an MP3 player in Alan's pocket and there were times when I was not able to hear what was said during the court session. As part of the first few days a lot of time was devoted to going to sacred sites to be on the land that . In my research I was fortunate to have the opportunity to film inside a Federal Court hearing where the questions and means of having those questions answered are supported by anthropologists and lawyers. Everything is rehearsed so that the types of questions which come up have been explained and discussed prior to the court hearing. I couldn't in three years come close to seeing and hearing this kind of material.
It makes me more aware, day by day, how strong Alan Griffiths and his wife Peggy are with their family, extended relations, art, custodianship of country, ceremony and corroborree.
The legal council for the Northern Territory government are following a line to try and discredit continuity of attachment by Alan and his family. The questions raised by their barrister with advice from their expert anthroplogist, in my mind only strenghten the case that Alan is the genuine custodian of a traditon which goes back a long way in this part of the world. That means in simple terms that under gadiya (European) law he and his family own the land.

I am off to finish editing the Timber Creek sequence. I have 26 minutes down from 6hrs footage. There are no issues with FCP today other than to say that it is a great tool. The new sound system is now working superbly, with Genelec speakers and an Apogee Mini-Dac preamp, since we changed it over from a USB to optical connection. Go technology.