photo: February 2008 Archives

to follow up...

I ordered a hard drive today, for the photo back-up thing. I went with a 500 gig external firewire 400 drive.

It also has USB 2, though I don't intend on using it. When you're dealing with long, large transfers of data, firewire easily outpaces USB 2, regardless of their specs. I didn't go the SATA route because my main computer is a MacBook which doesn't have an expansion slot for the appropriate card needed to connect to the drives.

I went with 500 gigs, because while still being obscenely large, it was a bit more stable than the 1 TB drives. Most reviews on the larger drives make them still sound a bit flakey, which is reasonable considering how new they still are. Even so, I'd guess as a strictly photo-archive, 500 gigs will hopefully last me another year or 2. I calculated that the largest my photo collection could currently be is 140 gigs, but I think realistically it's gonna be somewhere between 20 and 40, not counting thumbnails and crap.

I picked up a reasonably-well-reviewed drive from Newegg.com for $120 including shipping.

This was a pretty good weekend. I really didn't get enough work done, but I did get to relax. After the stress of last week, and the likely stress of this coming week...

After spending some time with Vail, Jessi, and the Boy down on the Mall, we all headed out to Sarah's "Living in Sin" party. I love having friends that I can spend 9 hours crowded into a small space with, without wanting to commit various homicidal acts.

It's a shame I didn't have time to grab my flash. I'm happy overall with my photos... but...

I take a lot of photos.

(duh).

But they pile up on my computer for a month or so, and then get backed up to DVD. At which point, I don't access them very much. Call it frustration with having to dig up the disk and look though it. Call it "out of sight, out of mind...". But I just don't go back to my old photos often.

So I was thinking maybe I could get a huge external hard drive, and try to dump ALL my photos on there. I mean... just now I found a 1 TB gigabit ethernet SAN drive for about $200. That would hold me for a little while.

Thoughts?

(I really do tend to find I get much more use out of things when they're accessible.)

I feel better. I deposited a couple big checks today. And given that it's also the first of the month, which is when I normally pay myself, I took the opportunity to pay off my credit card, which is the only real debt I have. For years I had kept the balance down to nothing, by paying it off every month. (And relatedly, never getting an increase in my credit limit). But early last year, I got hit with a series of expenses, such as needing to replace my old laptop earlier than expected. And while it never even reached $4,000 at it's worst, it still bugged me knowing that it was there.

But now it's gone.

I took that picture above while I was just walking home yesterday. I've been here so long I very easily forget how much there is to this place. Almost any kind of travel refreshes my vision of the city. And I try occasionally to take pictures of that 'bigness', because I know enough people who don't see it every day.

I went ice skating last night, for Sarah's birthday. Which was fun, itself. I haven't really skated much since grade school. And I got my balance fairly quickly. Never once did I fall on my face. But that's mostly because I stopped myself by smashing into the wall, shoulder first. It must have been a minor spectacle, because everyone looked at me like I was crazy. I suppose the fact that it shattered the front of my skate didn't help much. I'm still a bit sore today, but mostly when I stretch or sneeze. No great pulsating bruises or anything fun like that.

Bad this week: My power adapter for my laptop choosing to die for no particular reason. It worked just well enough to keep the computer running, but not to charge the battery. But...

Good this week: Apple replaced the adapter under warranty in less than 24 hours.

Also good this week: Dave and Shannon helping me to get a new web server up and running. I'm hoping to put all my clients who ask for help finding a server on there. Not only does it give me a bit more control and a LOT more options, but I could concievably make a little money off it. Not much, but every little bit adds up.

And recent "meh": I picked up a free external camera flash from the freecycle mailing list. a REALLY nice flash. Tilt, swivel, programmable, fill flash, etc. About 23 years newer than my current flash. And it powered up just fine. But... despite being only a couple years old, it was never built to handle digital cameras. So while it would focus and program itself just fine, it refuses to fire.

Poo.

For now I'm holding onto it. First, I don't know anyone who shoots film anymore that doesn't already have better equipment. And since it can be slaved, it can still act as a secondary flash. Plus, one of my goals is to get a Canon AE-1 to play with. Ought to work fine with that.