Thanks to the internet, I found how to fix it. Took a while to find though. Didn’t find it last night (error occurred yesterday) and earlier today I’d more or less resigned myself to dumping it, but I found this tonight…

Recovery mode on the Sansa e200 series

…and that did the trick. Also, the linked page here is very useful.

I’m going to cut ‘n’ paste some of the advice here, just as a mirror. If the author (Alfmeister) wants me to remove it, no problems, let me know.

I repaired my player in this order:
1. Turn off the player buy holding down the menu button for about 10 seconds or however long it takes to turn the screen black.
2. Set the hold switch to on (shows red.} Hold down the record button on the left side of the player while pressing the menu button.
3. The player will run in a similar manner to using safe mode on a computer. That is it works just enough for you to connect it to your computer to make the necessary repairs.
It will prompt you to connect the player to the computer and then it will display that it is connected in basic text.
4. Now you need to download new firmware.
The latest I could find that I trusted (from the SanDisk site) was version 1.02.12.
5. Now run the firmware you just downloaded (the .exe file.) It will ask you if you want to reformat the player which will erase all of your stored data. Say no if you think you know when the problem first occurred so that you can correct it. After the player installs the fresh firmware it prompt you to safely disconnect the player which you do by clicking on the small drive button in the system tray which reads ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ and selecting the Sansa drive letter. Now click Finish.
6. Your player will restart and this time (fingers crossed) it will reload the database and will function normally. The database refresh will take longer than normal because it’s reading the entire database. Now your player will ‘come back to life’ and you will swear never to install any files that you haven’t checked (until you do it again!)
7. Reconnect the player. If you have the Sansa Updater already installed it will prompt you with the message that new firmware is available. At this writing that will be 1.02.15.

Also, in a bid to help out anyone else trying to search through the millions of pages mentioning Sansa and crash~, some key words:

• sansa
• corrupt
• hard-reset
• crash cycle
• trashed

That’s bound to help.

So, this is rapidly becoming a bank-holiday only blog, by the look of things. Anyway, this has been the first chance I’ve had to get out and christen my new Grey’s Missionary 5wt, and I decided to take it up to Farletonview for a bash, hoping for a bit of surface action.

The rod came with one of the Missionary kits – so I got a 9′ 5wt in 7 pieces, no less, plus the smallest of the now-defunct G-Lite reels – they’ve obviously still got some stock of these, I believe they’ve now been replaced by the G-Tec for 1997 – and a #5 WFF Platinum fly line in Heron Grey (off-white). The rod is pretty fast and tippy compared to my Platinum XD’s, and even the Grey’s website intimates that it’s not an easy rod to use, saying “The seven-piece has a slightly faster action of the two, whilst the five-piece is a little easier to use.”, so I was a little dubious about it when I ordered it, particularly when you throw into the mix that it’s also lighter than my usual set up, I usually use 6wt. Would I be able to cast it at all? Would I be able to cast it a useful distance, after all I’m not a great distance caster anyway!? Well, it turns out not to be too bad – the timing is waaay different to my XD’s, and I found myself hitting tailing loops a few times, but when I got the timing right, it was just fine. It’ll take me a while to get used to, but I like the lighter set-up, it’s noticably quieter on and in the water, and I think I’ll like it a lot when I get used to it. The Grey’s line is nice too, good colour for visibility and very supple with barely any line memory even on the first outing. My only criticism is that it doesn’t float as high as I’d like at the tip, and fishing static for any length of time saw the front few yards pretty much submerged. I can probably fix this with some mucilin, I guess.

Assembling the rod is no chore either, really. I loved the idea of a travel rod for convenience of storage and transport, obviously, but thought it might end up being a right pain in the arse to assemble. It realy isn’t a problem, and there are dots on the blank to help line up the rings, something which I don’t know why we don’t have on all multi-section rods, really; I’d find it useful on my 3 piece rods as well as this 7 piece.

None of my new fancy tackle helped much, though, and, as you can probably guess from the title, I wasn’t able to test the rod fully. Ho hum. I missed a lovely take to a shipman’s within a few casts of starting, and had a few other follows later on, but, other than that I didn’t trouble the trout one bit.

I’m sure Stuart’s real name is Jonah – I only ever struggle when he comes. He blanked, too, btw.

I’ll post details of the collection once the Christmas presents have been reeled in – I can usually count on one or two bottles at this time of year…

Loads of people have been blogging about these, and they’re pretty cool. There’s a great offer on for Flickr Pro account holders, where you can get 10 free cards. I bought 100 anyway, because they look ace and I’m in love with the idea of calling cards, and, for not much more than 10GBP, what could go wrong (well, actually, they didn’t arrive, but, you know, apart from that?).

Then, I thought, just for a laugh, I’d get the 10 free cards done out in the livery of this blog. I’m not sure what I thought I was actually going to do with them, put them on the notice board of the local Spar? Post them through random doors?

That’s not a bad idea – I’ll mail one of these dinky Empty Handed cards to the first 5 applicants who leave a comment in this post saying why they want one – Leave your email and I’ll get in touch for postal details.

Out on a whisky hunt and came across a good offer in ASDA, yesterday. The Macallan 10 year old, 15GBP. Bargain. Not quite the bargain they had from a couple of months ago, 18 yo Glenlivet, 18 quid – usually £35 (and on sale at that price in Asda today). Still kicking myself for only buying 2…

It’s never worth paying full price for a single malt in a supermarket – If I “need” some, you can usually find a decent offer on one of the popular singles in one of the supermarkets, particularly Asda, Sainsbury’s and Booths. I tend to keep an eye out and buy them when I see them. Laphroaig, for example, comes up at £17 quite a lot, but at the moment is £24 in all of the supermarket’s I frequent (which are those 3 above, basically). For god’s sake, don’t ever pay £24 for a bottle of standard Laphroaig 10 yo!

Well, you can’t pass up an opportunity like that now, can you?.

At over 30 quid a kilo they’re pricey, but still cheaper than flying monkeys. And they don’t eat so many bananas.

Right, so what else is out there? Well, nothing. Not one w/l kb in the functional-stylish-and-cheap bracket I was interested in. Loads in the cheap bracket. None in the stylish bracket, to be honest. Couldn’t tell about the functional bracket, really. Christ, there’s a lot in the Logitech bracket though, aren’t there? Bloody hell. They’re all Logitech, except the Microsoft ones. They’re Microsoft, as the name suggests.

So, I bought a Logitech one, for about 20 odd quid. Seemed functional enough, had media keys and all that (except I had to hack them a lot to work with my music player of choice, DBPowerAMP, but that’s another story), mouse had a scroll wheel, the keyboard was ‘stylish’ (well, it was black) and had an RSI-busting wrist-rest (plastic and flimsy). So that’s it, then. Forget about it and get on with things. Except that, after about 3 weeks it just stopped working. It got all jittery and started sending key strokes randomly, if at all, and the mouse got all petulant. I tried changing everything – batteries, the position of the receiver and the channel, but the only thing that worked was changing the fucking keyboard. Back to the good old fashioned brandless beige wired job. (I couldn’t be arsed taking the keyboard back to PC World for a refund, think how joyless that excursion would have been).

Eventually, though, the good old fashioned beige wired mouse has driven me mental, and the good old fashioned beige lack-of-media-keys has pissed me right off, so it’s back to the market for a proper (read NOT LOGITECH) keyboard/mouse. So that leaves Microsoft, right. And that means an outlay of at least 50 quid. For a keyboard! Something I’ve already got?! Jesus, OK then, but only because that bloody mouse is driving me round the twist (You’re thinking “so, just buy a w/l mouse then, you tit” aren’t you? – media keys, remember? and w/l mice aren’t cheap on their own either, so stretch a little further and get the kb too, I’m thinking).

So, I’ve gone on about this keyboard more than was strictly necessary, and there’s a beer calling me from the kitchen, so I’ve got to go, but I managed to get one of these Microsoft “comfort” keyboards today. I was planning to buy one like this from PC World for about 50GBP, but when I went in, they had one like this for the same price. Supposedly reduced from 85GBP, but whatever, I’m expecting to meet an old crone giving them away in exchange for pieces of antiquated hemp tomorrow.

And, wait for it, I’m using it to type this entry now. There you go.

I’ll get used to that.Seems very good. Stylish, you know? ‘End’ keys in the wrong place, but