Brain Backup Required

A bit earlier in the summer, I was all gung-ho about sorting out years of our vacation videos. I found a very erratic collection DVDs and a few dusty SD card carrying this data. I had begun to sort out the trips already on YouTube and vowed to get everything else into mp4 files for eventual uploading. Within the last several months, I even considered that at the current 60+ GB, I might have to run into my former place employment just get it all on YouTube. (The British Columbia Institute of Technology, of course, has excellent Internet bandwidth.)

I have come quite far with getting just about all the old discs and SD cards into a useful file format. Of course, these could be played directly from any computer or the Android box for the TV. Yet something was bothering me. It did seem like there was a bit of a gap during the years of 2010/11. Hum?

Timehop, that little app that reminds one of social media interactions on the anniversary of the original dates, has its work cut out for it. There was a decade or so when I was able to escape the first term of the academic year and set aside the time for travel. We loved to get away during September weather as it was always pleasant. In addition, the autumn can be very conducive for touring in Europe, or in fact many places, without crowds. For example, today, I got notification for sharing the eJournal entry from September 15, 2011. We were on the 'missing day' enroute to Shanghai. The video of that trip is online for sure.

Yet, what I saw on this date in 2010 caused me a bit of concern. We'd also seen a TV episode of Departures of Canadian guys travelling in Fes the other night. I couldn't recall ever seeimg that trip video when we travelled to Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Had I lost that whole trip? And where was our trip to Central America in 2011? Crap, had I copied over those SD cards and lost all that video too?

Today, I was cleaning a drawer and located an old Seagate mobile drive.


Of course, I had been organized. I found all sorts of HD video in a neatly organized folder. I should have given myself more credit. It's not the data I had forgotten to backup; it was the fact I'd forgotten the hard disc even existed.

As a classmate from high school used to say: Oh Lordie!

Just Give Me a Little Space

I should be mentioning the continuing perfect weather we're having, especially as I just saw that Calgary had some rather early snow! There is not a cloud to be seen. Of course as my class was, again, in NE 1 320, we didn't not notice the lack of clouds. Alas, we are in a windowless room on Mondays and Wednesdays!

The sky is blue. Yet, I want to add several images to remember what I picked up on the way home today. Who would have ever thought that I'd need much local disc space. More and more of our data ends up stored somewhere on the Internet. Nobody really cares where one's email site stores the messages nor where Facebook keeps one's family pictures. As long as it is there when we switch on the computer, all is fine.


It is my little Minix NEO X8-H which prompted me to update my local storage. I may stream a lot of content via Netflix, but I am also ditching copies of movies on DVDs and moving to mp4 files. An entire movie kept in a minimally-acceptable resolution eats up between one and two gigabytes. If I get hold of an HD television program, an hour can be anywhere between 600 and 900 MB. Suddenly, my old storage space started looking a little sparse.

This little mobile Seagate requires only the USB for power. I can leave it plugged into my Android streaming device. If I'm going to bother to watch something, I may as well keep the copy. Two terabytes of space should keep me going for a while. All this storage for less than $90. The continued technical progress of physical data storage never ceases to amaze me.

Cheap Chips

When coming to Canada, I think the computer I shipped here had a 12GB hard drive. Now, an inexpensive, standard Secure Digital card can hold more than that. As well, the ones in the picture are substantially larger than the micro-SD size found in my phone. I still find some technological improvements a little amazing.



I went to my computer store to pick up a 16GB SD card for my tablet. I'm finding it a little annoying that Android Honeycomb doesn't allow one to move programs to the external memory like on my phone which is running 2.3.6. Anyway, extra SD cards are never waste of money as they can be used in a variety of devices for years. In fact, I also picked up two 8GB cards at $11 each. I always buy Class 10 cards for the HD video camcorder. I like that size as I can copy onto a duel-layer DVD in Blu-ray format.

Size Matters

I have an old external hard disc for backup storage. It is just 500GB but seemed substantial at the time of its purchase. That drive sits in a custom drive enclosure and is switched off most of the time. Things such as word processing files seem to take up virtually no space in today's computer environments. Years and years of digital pictures are easily shoehorned onto a few dozen GB as well. I even have a number of old DVD movies on that drive so that they can be fired up from within the Win 7 Media Center. Still, there are a few hundred gigabytes left vacant.


So, there's certainly no rush to buy a replacement. It has been a long while since I went down memory lane, so to speak, and blogged about computer storage. The cheap price of storage is what's prompting me to mention it today. My computer store is offering a Western Digital 2TB drive for just $74.99. Two terabytes! I wouldn't have been able to fathom that much storage back when I paid hundreds of bucks for my first hard drive which held an astonishing (at the time) 30MB.

Which Movies Define You?

I'm something of a film buff. In my blog I have mentioned specific titles, genres, and eras of film. I appreciate a diverse collection. Since I first got a computer with a DVD drive, I have kept copies which I deem significant. Strangely, over time opinions change. When a new blockbuster comes out, it nearly always seems worthy of saving. Yet, as time passes true classics emerge.

Rather than keep hundreds of discs, I want to whittle down part of my collection to around 120 movies one shouldn't have to live without. A new terabyte hard drive costs around $100 so it should cost significantly less than a buck a movie to store permanent copies on an external drive. They'd be portable and instantly accessible. The new Windows 7 Media Center easily reads directly from sub-folders on any disc. I shall wait to divulge what titles my collection shall entail.

I might be forgetting some 'must-haves' and need your help. What ten movies are so important to you that you would want to store them? You may answer as a message on the blog or under its corresponding note on Facebook.

320GB in a Pocket

I've never lost computer data, ever! I generally am quite good at making sure important files are backed up. I have a duel-layer DVD that contains some personal files from as early as 1986. Of course, Wordstar is not the word processor of choice nowadays, but with a little work I can still read those letters and memos.

I routinely back up my most important directories to an external 3.5" drive which sits on my computer desk next to the gold fish tank. Both hard drives are 500GB and not near full at all. I did get into the habit of storing music on the external only. I have a fairly large collection and find it's a good way to use up extra time. Any type of collecting takes hours of sorting and labeling and the same is true for all those mp3s. Recently, I got very scared when I thought how much time I've spent getting that 52GB of data. I was afraid as I realized that it existed on the external drive only. I needed to have another copy of those audio tracks too.

I saw this little 2.5" Seagate on my computer store's website. It has given me another 320GB in a very small form factor. I rationalized its purchase by thinking I could carry files back and forth to BCIT with it. Of course, actually, I never have more than will fit on a 8GB SD card. Still, even after copying all my music data and every digital and scanned photo I have, I still have 250GB of free space. A man can never have one that's too big though.

Name That Tune

People are born with an innate desire to classify and bring order to their world. It's probably the key to understanding one's environment and our place in it. I believe it also leads to the specific trait of collecting. Most humans are hardwired to collect things. That, in itself, doesn't make us much different than crows for they horde shiny objects too.

In humans, however, the desire is more organized and has various manifestations. Wine connoisseurs collect vintage bottles. Scientists collect empirical data. A lady's man such as Casanova collected lovers. The rest of us horde a wide variety of other objects such as: magazines, tools, mugs, stamps, toys, antiques, recipes, coins, dust, paintings, postcards, books, fountain pens, match books, thimbles, and more. The list is nearly as diverse as people.

As I used to move a lot and now live in a relatively small space, my energy tends towards gathering non-physical items. Computers have made the collection of ephemera possible due to the increasing capacity of hard disks. For example, I was just downloading music files this morning. It suddenly struck me that my mp3 and wma files exist only on my external drive. They are one of the few things of which I don't have multiple copies. Now, I have to buy a 2.5 portable drive. I need to back up over 50 gigabytes of music. To prove I'm in it just for the collecting, I know I'll never actually have time to listen to a great portion of the ten to twelve thousand titles.

Confession of a Collector

Every week I get an email from Ticketmaster.ca informing me of event tickets which are on sale in the Vancouver area. I got one today. Summers tend to be quieter times as there are fewer new ticket releases at this time of year. I did notice that Tony Bennett tickets will go on sale tomorrow. He'll be playing at the River Rock Show Theatre in Richmond in October. Tickets for Alicia Keys at a different venue go on sale on August 1st.



That seems an unlikely pair to show up in the same paragraph, doesn't it? I love my present age but I'm too young to listen to Tony Bennett and too old for Alicia Keys.

Well, perhaps that's not really correct. Both these artists do exist on my external 500GB drive. Lots and lots of music exists there and I'm now making it a habit to play those files. My computer contains a audio card that outputs in Dolby Digital and DTS. I have a long optical toslink cable running to a switch on my home theatre system.

So, I can sample both the artists mentioned here as I'm typing out this entry. I suppose it's not really necessary to keep music files in a file folder on a hard drive. I mean, after all, I could simply choose to listen to music from more than a dozen themed channels on the satellite TV box. Or I could play continuous music from thousands of Internet radio stations. I wonder why I have a desire to collect digital music files. I guess a trip to ebay could prove that people are born collectors; it's in our genes.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

My Flickr membership runs until the end of next year. What a bargain it is! It costs me $5 a month to host this web site which allows 200 megabytes of storage, I think. Flickr costs out to a bit more than $2 per month for unlimited uploading. A single file from my Kodak can be as large as 4 megabytes. We're talking big numbers here.

Now I'm lazy though. So far I've put only ten photos from last week's cruise. In fact, I still have vacation photos from Zürich, Switzerland in the fall that I haven't gotten around to upload.

One really can take pictures of anything nowadays at near zero cost. I can compare this to when I was a kid and taking each photo had an associated price tag even when developing B&W film on the stairway. (When the door was closed it was nearly the darkest place in the house.) I took two photos from the balcony today and one yesterday. They're on Flickr now. I don't know at what point quantity becomes overload.

To see a slide show of pictures taken from the balcony over the years, click on this example picture.

Holy (Half) Tera!

I'm no stranger to improvements in computer technology having been involved with personal computers since the 1980's. The first hard drive that I purchased was a 30 MB Seagate and the one I bought yesterday was 500 GB. The first drive would hold about two dozen of today's digital photos. Nowadays, a half terabyte doesn't seem excessive at all. The newly purchased drive will just be used for storing my personal data. Having put that storage space in an external enclosure, I'll have a bit more flexibility.

Driving Me Crazy

I ran to pick up my new Seagate drive yesterday morning. I came back and found it easy to format by keeping in my current drive C.

Nothing went easily after that though. I did unplug C and managed to get Windows XP running on the 300 gig drive. The problem, which I discovered much later, was that it didn't recognize my network adapter. Then there's a Catch 22. How could I connect to find the correct one from the Internet when my network adapter wasn't working?

Also, the wizard that's supposed to make it easy to copy files and settings, didn't work right. I could 'collect' the data from the 'old' disk on a USB flash drive. Yet, when I booted up with the new drive, the program told me that I hadn't inserted the correct data drive for the necessary files. I consider myself a nerd and yet I couldn't figure it out. How in the devil is an average-Joe supposed to figure out what to do?

There's nothing that said I had to get things completed yesterday. I actually copied all data files to the Seagate. It seems to rip right along. It's inside the box along with the old drive C. I'm running Windows on the old one and data on the new one. when I get the time, I'll completely install the operating system and then throw away the old drive.

All the playing around took the better part of yesterday and I guess I enjoyed every minute of it ... in retrospect.

Bragging about a Big Disc

Yesterday, I was simultaneously working on the PC and my notebook. That is the only true way of multi-tasking! I was in the middle of creating another DVD for use at BCIT. It contains 14 four-to-seven-minute stories from the Daily Planet. The science and technology segments are fast-paced and the variety of the topics is wonderfully broad. I cannot think of a more appropriate format for use in a pre-technical communications course. I'm doubly thankful the folks at the Discovery Channel have made the show copyright free for use by educators.

While my main computer was labouring to convert the mpgs, I checked yesterday's paycheck information online. I no longer receive paper pay slips as things are continuing to head paperless at BCIT. That's okay, as it is easier to copy from that screen directly into MS Money.

Then, after seeing how large my bank account had grown, I opened up the website of my usual computer store. Their Easter Sale was on. Generally, I gravitate towards a few specific areas of interest. Yesterday, however, I couldn't get past a Seagate special offer.

Playing with video files takes space and I'd been thinking about installing a new hard drive. I had intended to wait for Windows Vista so I could start from scratch. I don't want to just add a drive, I wish to replace my C: drive. With Monday off, I guess I can devote an entire day to getting up to speed on the new 300 gigabytes. I haven't done a fresh install for years and years.

If you don't hear from me here next week, you'll now know why.

Storage

I accidentally clicked a link under my favourites list in MS Explorer. I do like how the new beta deals with favourites, but that's an entry for another day. My favourite computer store popped up on the screen. I've already mentioned that when Windows Vista comes out this year, I plan to buy a new hard drive to install it on. I had bookmarked the page with drives. How amazing! Nowadays a 300 gigabyte component goes for $150 Canadian.

I won't go into details to prove I've been computing since DOS. I have already mentioned that my first IBM-compatible came with two 360K floppies and no fixed disk. My first Seagate cost a fortune and could hold 20 megabytes.

We certainly do have the ability to save lots now. There's not much reason to be organized. It's easier to save the junk along with documents. When was the last time I wrote to a floppy drive? Email attachments beat a sneaker-net in the 1990's. Hell, most every photo out of my digital camera is too big to fit on a 1.4 meg. floppy disk.

(This photo was taken with a borrowed digital camera in December of 1999. It was a Kodak which saved on standard floppy disks. The original image was 480 x 640 pixels and about 60k.)

Price Roll-Backs Continue

Is it just me or are many products cheap nowadays?

In the classic example of falling prices, we always examine technological advances in personal computers. I'm looking to buy a DVD burner now and they are a whole lot cheaper than my first simple CDROM reader of the early 1990's. I once paid nearly $500 for an 80 megabyte (not gigabyte) hard disk. Now we get a thousand times more space at a quarter of the price. I will also admit that technology is constantly providing many new and interesting goodies to buy.

Yet, it's not only hi-tech items that appear cheap. I went to Sears yesterday ... okay, it WAS an outlet store, but I'm often amazed at prices. I am sure that a good pair of dress shoes cost the same or less now than when I was a child. Ditto for an average bicycle. Big box stores can offer a microwave oven at practically give-away prices. (I bet every dorm room nowadays has one unlike during my college days -- in the late 70's & early 80's.)

If we examine the hours of work needed to purchase many basic goods and services, I think we've moved considerably ahead in the last thirty years. As proof, I'd like to suggest that most households own a greater quantity of junk than ever before. I'm sure this phenomena can be traced to many facts:

When people can save a few pennies they often choose the cheaper of two items. This helps explain why foreign goods flood this continent.

Many companies can keep prices low because of more efficient distribution networks.

Increased productivity per worker creates manufacturing savings.

An enormous company, such as Walmart, buys in such huge quantities that it can dictate prices. I'm sure manufacturers have to squeeze every penny in order to guarantee a seat at the retailers' table.

We've conditioned ourselves to think of inflation as a normal fact of life. Maybe it isn't. You may or may not share my views. What do you think? Jot out a message to me.