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SubscriptionsSites I Read
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| The Great Photo Sharing Conundrum(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/Gy1i4)
My mother left me a comment the yesterday (yes the mother I don't talk to) about one of the baby pictures. Her comment asked if I could send her an email with all the baby pictures we have. Here is where we have the gap in the usage level between an older and the newer generation. I remember years ago when everyone used to mail pictures around, but this was also a time where the pictures were normally 100kb or less in size. Even then business environments were complaining about the pictures clogging up their email systems ( no matter that they were sending 300KB full HTML emails each time). Now we fast forward to today.
People still routinely email pictures, but they are more apt to go look at them on Flickr, Facebook, Myspace, (insert social network of the week here). We are more likely to send an URL link then to attach a photo. It makes sense. Now I could have just blown off my mother, but I gave her the first response that I have in over two years. This does not mean I want to open a communication channel with her, it means that I responded to her comment the same way I would to any other commenter on the site. The important part of this excerpt is this:
Unfortunately I can't - this isn't because I'm being mean, this isn't because we are not speaking and this is the only response you've gotten from me in two years. It's because it is too unwieldy and impractical.
The last photo session I uploaded over 200 photos that were over 1.5 GB of total space. To give a comparison with my gmail account I have over 35000 emails (that are not spam) saved, this email only takes up 2.4 GB of space, since I save ALL of my outgoing email also just sending you pictures a few times would completely fill up my email box. There is a reason I use a photo sharing site, I could spend hours resizing photos just send them out to people who may or may not be interested to different degrees, but I always use the original size at home - so if a family member wants smaller sizes they can go to my Flickr account - which by the way has over 10GB of images (will probably pass 7000 images in a few weeks). There is a reason I actually pay for this service.
If want to read the rest of the comment which was a brief explanation of different options she could do on her part herself to be proactive, it's on the comment section of this story.
What this means though is technology has fixed this issue, ironically the people that are most likely to use this technology to get pictures of their children or grandkids are still stuck in the old guard mentality of expecting things sent to them instead of going out and grabbing them. If my sister had a picture out there I liked of her, I would go out and download it and archive it. Most of the time I don't make these pictures public, I save them as an archive for my child and any children he may have. This is normal activity, for people my age and younger. We don't take dozens of prints at the Sears Studio and send it off to relatives still.
Some of us do, but that number is dwindling as you get to a younger and younger age of internet users. How do I know they wouldn't prefer a different shot than I would, I don't. That is the point they can take their own pictures they like and have them printed up - giving them back choice instead of forcing my tastes upon them.
So how do we move on from here? I guess evolution will eventually take it's course and utilizing the cloud will become the norm. Maybe it doesn't need a push in that direction. I did finish my comment by giving my mother fairly explicit instructions on where to go.........to handle getting the photos on her own, and on demand.
Now if only she would scan all of her photo albums (at a decent and high DPI level - ie should be 5-10mb per photo) so I could archive all those pictures I would be happy. Granted not happy enough to go talk to her and get the photos and do it myself, but happier. It's tooth and nail to borrow pictures from my grandmother to scan in, but I've gotten some. I have managed to scan all of my father's photos from the pre-divorce of my parents era. I need to get his after that images still.
I don't want with my siblings over who gets what photographs once my parents and grand parents ass away (which is still hopefully decades and decades away), I would prefer to just have the digital copies, that way we could all have each photograph in the family history. Maybe someday. At least my grandkids won't have to fight over photo rights, and they will know how to share them with one another.
I'll end this with another staged studio image of myself for all of those readers out there:
(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/cSetC) | | |
| When Did Good & Fruity Start to Suck?(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/CfBQb)
So about once a year I purchase a package of Good & Fruity, and the last few boxes are terrible. It is not like it was growing up, the texture wasn't jelly beanesque - it was more like the licorice texture used in Good & Plenty. They also don't taste one iota like they used to.
According to Wikipedia, this change happened sometime around 2008 (though I remember them being bad before that), so I would say the problem occurred between 2000 and now. The 1992 formula is the one it seem that I would love to see again.
It's like New Coke all over again, except the fan base isn't large enough to make them revert.
(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/VJfHC) | | |
| Latest Baby Pictures(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/C9iaS)
I haven't been doing the greatest job of posting baby pictures for everyone. Thought I would do a quick post of the ones I took today. Of course if you don't care you can just ignore this post. To the thumbnails -
(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/OlKXY) | | |
| Wiki Visions(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/vkF3q)
I may not have been working much on my blog over the last couple months, but one thing I have been working is my own personal wiki. It's not publicly editable so don't bother trying. One thing I have found that it is useful for is an memory augmentation technique. I can keep notes or lists to myself in it that I can easily go back to.
I've gotten so used to wiki editing and syntax that I am now incorporating a stand alone wiki into my normal work flow. Now some of you do know that I run the Stars of Intrepid wiki to keep the memory of the people that played a great game in a great time period alive. I saw uses for a wiki in this scenario long ago, and it's gone OK. It would be great if there was a greater participation, but it is what it is. A moment trapped in time. There are modifications occasionally, but it's far from a vibrant community.
The best thing about a personal wiki is you are not dismayed when people are not contributing. It's all you. It can be incomplete. It can be riddled with problems. It mirrors your mind, thought process, and line of thinking. It is more of what you are. Whenever I need to write something the wiki is now a well of information I can go back to, at least htat is part of the intent.
One of the major things I wanted the wiki for (at first) was to keep a list of all of my online profiles and accounts. This makes a central repository that I can call upon to remember if I signed up for such and such a service. The other thing it's been useful is to map the flow information that I use for crossposting data across the internet.
When someone asks a question of how information is distributed I can give a very specific answer of the path it takes. Others can look for themselves how I might produce a video in youtube and have it show up on vimeo. If you haven't tried keeping a wiki for your own information, I suggest that you do try it. It is a different animal from a blog and is used completely differently. It's like comparing a book to an encyclopedia, both present information but in a completely different manner.
(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/TQ5EW) | | |
| Happy 21st Birthday Sis(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/UtH8W)
Today is my sister's 21st birthday. She is a couple months shy of being twelve years younger then me I don't think I'll ever accept that she made it past around 6-8 years old. Hopefully she enjoys her day today.
Here is what she looks like now:
But this is how she will always look like to me:
(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/oBUwA) | | |
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