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DO. NOT. CUT. CORNERS. WHEN. BACKING. UP. YOUR. PHOTOS.
I was getting happy while trying to free of some gigs on my nearly four year old Mac and I let a tech savvy spirit inhabit my body and mind. I now only have 32 -64 KB images of every. single. picture. i. have. taken. since.i. got. my. new. camera. in. december.
I know, I know…there are many tragic things that happen in life and in the grand scheme of things…IT’S NO BIG DEAL.
But, I am still experiencing a bit of a mourning process and it’s taking me a little time to assess the situation and salvage what I can of our year in pictures so updating is clearly going to take a bit longer than usual. Couple this with a reorganization of my office space and the impending school year (year 10 for me, year 1 for Lucas! Big!) and there are sure to be delays.
To answer the obvious questions:
1. No. I had not yet burned to CD/DVD.
2. No. I had not uploaded to my photo processing/online back up site.
3. No. I had not properly copied them to my external drive.
4. Yes. The being that took over my body still knew how to empty the trash on the desktop.
5. No. Copies of the files are not somewhere else on the hard drive.
6. No. I do not use Blogger so I do not have a back up on Picasssa.
7. Yes. I resize all my blog photos in Photoshop before uploading them to WordPress.
8. Yes, I have splurped my blog to Booksmart and I can print a coffee table book with thumbnail sized photos from Shoot. Post. Repeat Daily. I imagine the same results with Notes for Tomorrow. I welcome other suggestions.
Lesson learned.
Once more, with feeling:
DO. NOT. CUT. CORNERS. WHEN. BACKING. UP. YOUR. PHOTOS.
It’s kind of a no-brainer, but I think there are a few Mac users out there who feel a little invincible. Really, it’s not very often that one hears of a “bad Apple.” But, they do happen and even a good Apple can start behaving sluggishly without routine maintence. I’m trying to tidy some things of in my digital world and this is my current “State of the Project.”
Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive.
That’s a good deal of music I’d like to hang on to.
I have all photos uploaded to Snapfish through December of 2008. I still have to select The Best of: October, November and December. This is HUGE, for those of you not following along at home. Just two months ago, I was still working in 2007. I now have all photos printed through February of 2008.
My next goals is to have selected, sorted and printed all photos through 2008 by Evan’s third birthday in April. Remember, my long-term family historian goal for 2009 is a year long project. I’m just now setting my short term goals to paper. By May I should be ready to work full force on Evan’s albums and by December I’d like to have finished year one, at least. I will certainly push myself.
I am really enjoying taking and posting a daily photo, though I do get a day or so behind in the posting of them from time to time. I have to resize each one in Photoshop before uploading it, so it’s a little more labor intensive now. Notice my iPhoto has fewer than 1300 pictures on it, down from over 8,000. For having a brand new camera, that’s not too shabby.
I think I’ll update the iPhone and iPod before turning this little desktop off for the weekend. Talking about getting unplugged a little. The next few weeks will be busy ones. Today, taking a “mental health” day to chill out was well timed and well spent in preparation for it.
Lucas started back to soccer practice yesterday and Matt’s got a weekend camping trip coming up next weekend and I’ll be taking 15 senior high school students to Orlando for a week during Spring Break. Ahem. Very busy. I will keep taking pictures, but I may not post them until Sunday night. Stick with me!
As I last posted, I got to spend a good part of the weekend in the good company of six other ladies who also wanted to get away from it all to get some scrapbook related things done. The three hour drive to Greer’s Ferry, Arkansas was quite pleasant as you can see evidenced from the following shot. It is not easy to take photos in a car on Interstate 40. The bumps alone make this nearly impossible, but of course, my inexperience coupled with things like windshield glass and fast speeds are also a factor. Trust me when I tell you it was gorgeous.
The cabin was, by far, the best location of the three I have attended. It was new and immaculate. Everyone felt totally comfortable. These two shots were taken before four of the ladies awoke on Sunday morning. My table is the one on the far right. There are two other tables out of the shot to the left.
I didn’t take any other pictures from inside the cabin, but I did get “my little corner” from the outside on Saturday morning.
I managed to do a couple layouts and also sort through and organize all the printed pictures I had. See January 11 post for the amount of unsorted pictures. I did get 6 more months on my porch upon return and I can’t wait to dig in and get them sorted as well!
That was roughly May 2006 through August 2007, by the way. And I take roughly 200 a month. It was pretty major. I’m converting from chronological scrapblock to Stacy Julian’s Library of Memories system and so I filed and sorted accordingly: if I didn’t feel like I wanted to spend any more time with the pictures, they immediately went into “cold storage.” Of course, I do still plan to honor my commitment to chronicle Evan’s first three years in order, so there was a little bit of “hybrid” thinking (chronological v. moments).
Another thing that I did was nearly complete the boys’s Baby Teeth Albums. I have some finishing touches to complete as I find time over the next week, but here you can see a little of my handiwork.
I am so delighted with how it’s turning out; I almost can’t believe I created something so beautiful. I look forward to being able to post the entire project to get some feedback.
I am so fortunate to have such a fine group of ladies with which to collaborate. It was a great time!
I think I am one of the only ones in our little group that is calling this weekend a “retreat,” but anyway…I’m heading to a somewhat remote location for two nights with very little distraction to participate in a somewhat meditative activity. RETREAT! I am so pleased with what I am going to pack. I think this is easily the least amount of stuff I have ever brought when trying to scrapbook away from home. In fact, I almost think it could be a world record. For anyone. Ever.
Thank you, Stacy Julian. I tried to not like you. I did. But, charmed life or not, you’ve got my scrap booking number, lady. Thanks for helping me redefine what it means to scrapbook. I needed an update. Posting will be light (also read non-existent) this weekend. I will be taking my daily photo, of course, but I’ll have to post it upon my return as I don’t think there’ll be Internet access.
Being out of touch is not necessarily a bad thing.
My dear friend from college, Luanne. I lost touch with this fine lady many, many years ago (the truth of the matter is much more complicated) but she is now back in my life and I couldn’t be more pleased. Really, old friends are the best friends. I am so excited to introduce her to you all because, not only is she a friend of mine, as you are, but because she is also a talented paper crafter (as you are as well). See? You’re connected already!
She has a blog devoted to her altered art, her personal life and her daily photo (again, isn’t she just like all of us?), so please check out her world! And…if you realize that she is uber cool, like I have all over again, you can also head over to her website. She was a member of an online paper crafting community and they went and changed everything up, making things more complicated for the core members. So, because necessity is the mother of invention, she and a friend took matters into their own hands and started over. They have had quite a bit of success in just a few months and I found the forum to be much more inviting than other sites I have been to. I’m usually terribly overwhelmed and at PaperArtistsOnline(PAO), I feel that I’m (almost) getting it at the ground level, which is just right for me. Go, show her some love and get to know her. She’s a pretty cool cat. Caveat: her Project Playlist is pretty hardcore, so turn your volume down. 
Yep, that’s me. I am on a roll. I have spent all morning transferring blogs, creating blogs and getting my virtual world all straightened out. And this is where the magic happens!
To my handful of readers: I will not move again for at least a year. Update your blogrolls, I’m at WordPress now, ladies. Go ahead and check out my new daily photo site while you’re at it. You might just find you wanna make the move too!
So, this whole moving the blog thing isn't going as smoothly as I had hoped. The pictures on there are huge (and that's saying a lot coming from me, since I tend to post my pictures rather large anyway). When I try to resize them, they end up too small. I really don't have the time to troubleshoot and get it working perfectly, so I think I'll just keep paying TypePad and try to cut the money out of the budget somewhere else for now. Call me fickle, see if I care.
I'm pretty behind with my posting, but not nearly as "behind" as I am with my family memory keeping (also known as scrapbooking (sshhh), for those in the "know"). I currently have 8,214 items in my iPhoto library that have not been backed up, printed or really even acknowledged (unless they were posted here). I think I'm going to focus on that for a while, so posting will continue to be light. With the holiday season and the travelling, shopping and baking upon us, I'll likely be plenty busy. Just know that we're likely having fun doing all the same seasonal activities everyone else is doing.
If I end up being able to "catch up" sooner than I expected, I'll post the pumpkin patch, corn maze, baking sugar cookies memories, followed by all the things we've done since then. If not, look for them in a scrapbook sometime in 2011.
You are not alone with the whole LIST thing. Even the number one blogger in America is in on it, haha!
Finally, mine:
Matthew McConaughey
Edward Norton
McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey)
Sting
Heath Ledger (I'm in denial)
As I mentioned in my last entry, about a month ago I hung out with a friend of mine to do some good old fashioned paper-crafting. I posted some photos of an album that I created with her help and her Zutter binding tool (thanks again, Amy!). Well, I added photo sleeves to it a short while after that. Yesterday and today I selected my favorite photos from the past year of Lucas and Evan to put in it, converted them to black and white and tried to figure out how to print them. Because I am a little behind my scrap booking friends, I have rarely printed photos at home, not to mention that I didn’t have enough sense to use the 4 x 6 photo sleeves. Instead I used 3.5 x 5, which I never print. Well, after a few misprints, along with my husband telling me that he wants to see his kids in color, I figured it out and printed 28 (color) pictures, cut them and placed them in their proper places within the album. I would not recommend adhering the photo sleeves to the pages before making the realization that you actually take very few horizontal shots, but I was able to make it work by carefully moving a couple of the photo sleeves.
All of this detail is necessary to share because I have been unable to get my world together enough to accomplish much of anything in the scrap booking department in two years. In fact, I am even a year behind in getting images printed. I am really proud of my little mini album and my “stick-to-it-ness.” I will continue my concerted efforts to find a way to preserve the photos of my family in albums I can share because it brings me such joy.
I am really behind with my scrap booking (that’s an understatement) and I am also behind on the things I wanted to be sharing on the blog. I am leaving for an unexpected, planned trip to Chicago. Imagine that?! Confusing, I know. We were planning to go, but then plans changed due to a death in the family, and then they changed yet again.
I created an album a while back and I am now ready to fill it with pictures. Black and white?
I am so excited to be spending time with my pictures again. I’m about to do a test print for the first time. In black and white,even.
Wish me luck!
Oh yeah, stumbled upon this picture of Evan (before the stitches, but after the cousins!).
