three enemies of digital image preservation (in a nutshell)

1. Corruption
I'm not talking about dirty politics here, but rather compression of the file, lossy compression in specific - the type that creates smaller file sizes for jpegs and what not. Lossless Tiff formats keep all the pixels, which mean the image quality won't suffer over time. One thing I learned long ago about jpegs is that every time you re-save one it compresses it a little more, if you do this a lot over the course of years it will definitely lose a lot of image quality.

2. Unrecognized file format
Ever find an old file on your computer that you can't seem to find any application that will open it? Proprietary file formats might offer great features today but there's a chance they'll not be supportable in the future. One way to sustain images saved in proprietary file formats is to have a good migration plan in place. Meaning if you have a bundle of files that only application X can open, you should routinely make sure that application X still works and that the files can still be opened. Other times to think about if you have to migrate or change files are when you upgrade an operating system, when a new version of application X comes out, and upgrades in general.

3. Loss
Without a good system in place to know where a specific digital image (or file) resides it often becomes unfindable, especially as more and more images (or files) are stored in the same context. One method of insuring that you'll not accidentally delete, destroy or lose a certain file is redundant storage. Basically keeping copies in multiple places. If you're dealing with large file sizes this might be restrictive, but storage costs are getting cheaper all the time. I just saw that you can buy a 1 terrabyte external hard drive for less than $300 these days. Of course if you put all your data there, and only there, there is a chance that in one terrible second something happens and it all disappears, like say a fire or flood. In order to prevent something along those lines many smart archives keep a copy of the important things off site, and some even in cold storage.

the ultimate media storage for long term preservation

Self-destructing DVD's, CD's and hard drives would be the ultimate media storage for long term preservation. Now, before you go thinking I'm crazy and heading off to some other site that talks about good quality metadata and long-term storage devices and media please hear me out. I agree that having good quality metadata (information about your files and media) helps sustain them into the future, and that so-called archival dvd's will probably hold up longer than non-archival ones, but the point I'd like to make is what's so good about a DVD that lasts up to 100 years if in 100 years there are no DVD players or devices to read them?

Timed Explosions
Of course you wouldn't want your precious digital stuff to self-destruct out of the blue so it should have some flashing lights and alarm sounds that get brighter and louder the closer it is to its doom-day. This would give you a chance to migrate files onto a new self-destructing media storage device before the old one becomes obsolete.

Books and tablets

I was planning a trip to a bookstore to purchase some new technology books. Instead I came to a cafe with laptop and read about teaching with technology.
I realized that one reason I wanted some new technology books is to fill a shelf above my newly established computer workstation at home. Books just for looks.
Another reason was for tax purposes. Instead of books I should be spending the money on a new, extremely large (in capacity, not physical size) external hard drive. I wish I could find one that looks like a technology book.

Another item I'm looking to purchase soon is a graphics tablet. I haven't thought about them in a long time, and they are apparently becoming much cheaper. I saw one the other day for less than a couple hundred dollars. I do a lot of diagramming and drawing on scratch paper and usually refine the drawings before scanning them. If I could get used to a graphics tablet I could remove several steps from my work-flow, plus I think it'd be fun.

PicLens - Firefox extension

PicLens, by cooliris is one of my favorite Firefox add-ons. Searching images on the web is such a better experience through PicLens. Google image search is amazing with it (as is Flickr)...no longer page after page of results, but rather one continuous wall of images that can be zoomed into and out of. The slight reflection below the wall makes it appear even more three dimensional.
PicLens

[edit]
Not long after posting, I decided to try out Firefox 3. Then as I launched Firefox it notified me that there was a PicLens update. Apparently it's up to 1.7 now. The main difference I noticed is the "Discover" functionality, which gives you a small variety of "channels" to browse visually across the web, including but not limited to: US News, International news, movies/TV and science/technology.
By the way the install of Firefox 3 was seamless, and the default theme is pretty slick...

File Migration

Yesterday I woke up early, which is unusual for me on a Sunday. I was excited to complete the transition from two old computers to one new laptop, which involved amongst other things migrating all files from the old machines, cleaning the living room and arranging the furniture. A laptop really changes the way a house is organized, since you can sit with it anywhere. So between migrating data and cleaning I stumbled across a box of old Zip disks. I hadn't seen them or thought about them for a couple years, so it was a surprise. Luckily one of the old machines I was getting rid of could read both the 100MB & 250MB disks and I waded through their contents, moving them to a hard drive and deleting them. I came across several images from 1997, which were luckily saved in Tiff format and thus were still readable. The image sizes were ridiculously small by today's standards, but they were images I didn't know still existed and happily migrated them as well. I may touch on digital image file formats in a later post, but will say here that Tiff's are great for long term storage and preservation.

TARGET MODE
At some point after I had cleared off and moved a large desk I decided to check the old computers for any miscellaneous files I would want to keep. I started copying them to my external hard drive and then remembered a trick involving two Macs and a firewire cable. Basially you can make one computer a "slave" and the other the "master" by holding down "t" when starting up the "slave" computer. Apple has an article about doing it here. One issue I ran into is that my old Power Mac G3 wouldn't start in target mode, so instead I made it the "master" and started my new laptop in target mode...it worked in reverse sort of, and I think my old Mac was thrilled to be, at least temporarily, master over my laptop. Files were migrated, furniture was moved and a lot of cleaning took place, but I still have piles of paperwork to dig through. I'm fairly certain most of it can be recycled. I'll be doing a paperwork triage in much the same way I did a digital file triage.

biological clock & digital preservation

It worked! Last night I went to sleep a little earlier than usual (which I didn't do the night before). Before falling asleep I made sure my alarm was turned on and was set to an obnoxious sound. This morning I woke up an hour before the alarm, I think I was terrified to be jolted awake by the alarm sound, I went back to sleep and then woke up 15 minutes before the alarm. Had time to make some herbal tea and look through my day-planner. I began by dumping all the things I knew were coming up onto a piece of paper I titled "Mental Inbox: June 12th" - then took all these plans and deadlines and transfered them into the appropriate times and dates in my planner. This morning I'm much more relaxed and ready to tackle anything.

PRESERVATION METADATA
An e-mail this morning notified me that PREMIS version 2.0 has been published. In a nut shell the PREMIS data dictionary deals with preservation metadata, a subject I find fascinating but also rather dry. Perhaps I find dry things fascinating. It's not information for everybody, but I believe if the concepts could be boiled down for the average person it could be a great help in preserving digital items on a personal level. For example, someone came into my office the other day asking if I had access to any Mac's running OS 9 (which I didn't). They had a proprietary datafile that they couldn't open in OS X and couldn't think of anyway to get to the data. Without being able to look at the data I could only make general recommendations on how I might go about retrieving the data, which was apparently rather important. If there were any sort of information about the specific operating system requirements, applications which could read and/or write to the data, creator application, etc. the chances of retrieving the data, as well as the ease of doing so, would be significantly increased.
You can find out more about PREMIS here.

learning the hard way

In an effort to make waking up earlier a little easier I set the alarm tone to a calm sound instead of an annoying beeping or generic alarm sound. I slept through both alarms. Didn't have time to review anything in my planner and was a couple minutes late to work. All day I felt like I wasn't prepared. I'm changing the sound of my alarm to something loud and annoying and will try this again.

productivity conversation

This morning I chatted briefly with a colleague about how podcasts have helped me in a variety of ways. She mentioned attending a time-management seminar and taking away the concept of putting aside fifteen minutes every day to go through your planner. She said she does take time to go through her lists, but it's more like once a week. I told her I had a planner, that was my big first step. I do go through it daily if it's a busy week, but not if everything is under control. I'm assuming if I did take time everyday to plan and update plans I would probably be more productive everyday.

WAKE UP
I just now set my morning alarms (which are cell-phone alarms) 15 minutes earlier. I'll see if I actually get up earlier tomorrow and look at my planner. What really struck me about the little conversation I had is that anyone could have a really great trick or tip that I've never heard of or read about, and the more information we share the more information we get back, it seems.

New Phone

I now have a new phone. Its not that my old phone died, or was lost or any other reason that usually makes me go get a new phone - I got a letter in the mail stating I was due for a free phone. One of the perks if you stay with certain carriers long enough. At the store they said the phone which would've been free was discontinued and/or that they couldn't get me one of those, but they did have the newer, sleeker version. This was probably the first time I didn't look at all the various phones, their specifications, size and design for an hour before choosing one. I took the sales-persons advice and got the LG enV2. I do like it and am surprised at all the features (bells and whistles) phones come with. The last phone I bought was a quick replacement for a phone I lost, about two years ago. I'm still playing with the settings and figuring out the extra options.

RINGTONES
One option is to have the phone say who is calling before you hear the ringtone. Seems very cool but the volumes are set differently, perhaps I just need to adjust one or the other. I'll admit, I like having different ringtones for different people and have even purchased them online and via the phone before but recently have turned to an online service called Myxer, that lets you create your own ringtones from your own music or browse their existing catalogs, most of which is free. A message gets sent directly to your phone, and you save the sound as a ringtone. Yesterday I found out that the tone they send you is copyright protected, therefor you can't forward it to someone else. In this post I've only referred to "phones" not "cell phones" - one day a phone will mean "mobile phone" and "land line" will refer to the non-mobile phones, at least that's what I'm seeing slowly happen. Its the same with "camera" and "photography" - they are slowly coming to mean (digital) camera & (digital) photography. Language is a living thing.