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woodwardiocomEngaging with the Cloud is requiring more thought than I expected.
E.g., Microsoft has a manual on the topic of inclusivity, designing for disability, that sort of thing. It's useful, and something I may find myself referring to in the future.
Do I download a copy of the manual, or do I simply bookmark the page where I can get it? The page might (will) vanish, and thus the manual might vanish. Am I cool with that? To what degree do I need to be able to access everything I ever had an interest it, as opposed to becoming more comfortable with the notion of ephemerality? I relatively recently got my bookmarks synching across all devices, thankgawd.
(To what extent am I comfortable with teaching my work computer that "ephemerality" is a word, without doing so for all my devices? Or is Google synching my spellcheck dictionary? Do I even know?)
If I download a copy, where do I keep it? My default "permanent digital storage" is my desktop computer's hard drive, at home -- a drive that I can't access unless I'm sitting at my desk at home, which requires climbing one or two flights of stairs, and (in the summer) sweltering heat. Should I make that disk remotely accessible? What about security? Should I store the manual in my Dropbox instead, in the cloud? Should I store *everything* in the cloud, and basically relegate my desktop to playing old games?
What percentage of my hundreds and hundreds of photos should be on Flickr?
What do I do about all the photos in my LJ archives, which were perfectly organized until LJ disallowed nesting galleries?
I have hundreds of pictures of the stuff I sold on eBay back when I was an underemployed eBay retailer. Yeah, looking at it makes me nostalgic, but why am I keeping those files?
Which all kinda gets back to: How comfortable am I with embracing the idea that not everything needs to be accessible to me forever? To what extent am I a digital hoarder? Is that actually bad, given how cheap storage space is these days?
E.g., Microsoft has a manual on the topic of inclusivity, designing for disability, that sort of thing. It's useful, and something I may find myself referring to in the future.
Do I download a copy of the manual, or do I simply bookmark the page where I can get it? The page might (will) vanish, and thus the manual might vanish. Am I cool with that? To what degree do I need to be able to access everything I ever had an interest it, as opposed to becoming more comfortable with the notion of ephemerality? I relatively recently got my bookmarks synching across all devices, thankgawd.
(To what extent am I comfortable with teaching my work computer that "ephemerality" is a word, without doing so for all my devices? Or is Google synching my spellcheck dictionary? Do I even know?)
If I download a copy, where do I keep it? My default "permanent digital storage" is my desktop computer's hard drive, at home -- a drive that I can't access unless I'm sitting at my desk at home, which requires climbing one or two flights of stairs, and (in the summer) sweltering heat. Should I make that disk remotely accessible? What about security? Should I store the manual in my Dropbox instead, in the cloud? Should I store *everything* in the cloud, and basically relegate my desktop to playing old games?
What percentage of my hundreds and hundreds of photos should be on Flickr?
What do I do about all the photos in my LJ archives, which were perfectly organized until LJ disallowed nesting galleries?
I have hundreds of pictures of the stuff I sold on eBay back when I was an underemployed eBay retailer. Yeah, looking at it makes me nostalgic, but why am I keeping those files?
Which all kinda gets back to: How comfortable am I with embracing the idea that not everything needs to be accessible to me forever? To what extent am I a digital hoarder? Is that actually bad, given how cheap storage space is these days?
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Date: 2016-07-13 03:57 pm (UTC)Since you asked, and I am a records manager...
Date: 2016-07-13 06:30 pm (UTC)I would say that Microsoft will maintain the manual and update it when it needs it. If for some reason it becomes hard to find, chances are extremely good you will find a copy on Google Books, Amazon, or Ebay.
So, I'm going to skip where do you download it, because I don't think you should.
Flickr.. photos... Hm. I would say if you've not gotten carbonite for your home computers (or something very similar), do that for backup. I would not treat Flickr as a reasonable backup option. Just allowing access to.
LJ. ::sigh:: I am very behind on downloading PDFs of LJ. I used to do it every January and then had the expectation to print it out. Then life happened. I still *intend* to do it, because otherwise I do not have a backup of my stuff.
Nothing in LJ (for me) has unique pictures. They all came from my own personal archive, which I have backed up. It's not a perfect solution.
Re: galleries in LJ.... when it stopped being practical to put lots of pictures there, I stopped using it. I also stopped using Picasa as a place to maintain good galleries because Google screwed the pooch there, too. Flickr is my go-to if I want to share images.
Ebay pics... I bet you could winnow that down and eventually get rid of them if they're not actually relevant to your current life. I support you in nuking them.
Final question: Yep. It's a thing. I deal with this more actively than many given what my day job is and I still struggle.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-13 08:04 pm (UTC)Ooo, what tool do you use? ljArchive vanished completely a while back..
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Date: 2016-07-13 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-16 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-16 02:18 pm (UTC)