2011 March

My Mom as a baby in 1931 with Dad, Grandpa, Grandma, auntie and uncle (her Mom was taking the photo)

This weekend I popped a Kodak PhotoCD in to my computer that I had made in December of 1996—a “gold” version Kodak touted at the time as having a “100 year archival life“—and found that I didn’t have ANY software on my system to open that “.pcd” filetype. Alarmed, I finally found an inexpensive utility called Graphic Converter, an open source tool called ImageMagick and another called pcdtojpeg that would all do the job of converting the photos. Poking around I also discovered that Apple’s iPhoto would, in fact, pull all the images in to my system and convert them.

Phew!

This only goes to prove the point that I made in a post I wrote nearly one year ago entitled, “Will Your Digital Photos & Media Survive?” and why YOU MUST PRESERVE YOUR PHOTOS NOW:

Most of us have hundreds (if not thousands or like me, 20,000+) digital photos sitting on hard drives, at Flickr, or on some old and obsolete media? In my home office closet I have Syquest, Jaz, Zip, Mac OS 7 formatted CD’s, DOS CDs, and other media I can’t read NOW…and it’s been less than 15 years. My grandchildren or great-grandchildren will pick up a Jaz cartridge and say, “What the heck is this!?!” Viewing the photos on that cartridge? Not a chance. But it gets worse since most of the digital media we’re creating today may not survive the media it’s on, let alone if it’s in a proprietary format.

THAT is the problem I ran in to this weekend: Kodak PhotoCD was a proprietary format that, due to a lack of consumer acceptance, was abandoned slowly until essentially vanishing in 2004.

I found the photo above in a “baby book” my grandmother began after the birth of her first child, my Mom. I hadn’t seen many of her maternal grandparents, the Steens, and it was an absolute delight to come across this artifact which was so perfectly preserved and in excellent condition for scanning. The kicker? This nearly 80 year old photograph was one I could see, hold, scan and preserve but a 14 year old PhotoCD photo came close to being unreadable or unusable!

Think about that as you gaze through your photos—most of which probably start with “DSC” or some other naming convention—and realize that unless you do something NOW to preserve the readability of these photos, it’s likely they’ll be lost to your children or future generations.

RESOURCES:

SaveMyMemories.org
Library of Congress’ “Preserving Your Digital Memories“
Online Backup Strategies
Why saving in TIFF format is best (vs. JPEG, for example)

Rep. Michele Bachmann: Not the Brightest Bulb in the Sign

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, in a continuation of her tirades against the “nanny state” and “government takeover” of seemingly everything, reintroduced her Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act which essentially demands proof of compact fluorescent light bulb safety (due to the mercury it contains) and the carbon emissions purported to be reduced if incandescent bulbs begin their current governmental mandated phase-out in January of 2012.

Even though her amended bill seems to include a focus on “the people” vs. her usual focus on business, I have my doubts but can’t figure out what her real motivation is in trying to kill this 2012 mandate. In part her bill states that proof is needed that compact fluorescent bulbs, “…will not pose any health risks, including risks associated with mercury containment in certain light bulbs, to consumers or the general public, including health risks with respect to hospitals, schools, day care centers, mental health facilities, and nursing homes.” Really? I highly doubt Bachmann cares at all about “consumers and the general public” since she’s not showing ANY leanings in that direction during her Congressional tenure.

I’m still trying to figure out who wins here. Is she in the pocket of “big light bulb”? Not likely. Is it just low-hanging fruit to get the non-thinking masses riled up? Probably. But even that isn’t clear and I highly doubt she’s just being her usual short-sighted, screamingly goofy on any anti-Obama issue so other GOP’ers don’t have to be, self.

For the last five years (see this post from 2006) I’ve been closely watching what’s going on in energy and, especially, the ONE, MOST WASTEFUL energy use WORLDWIDE: incandescent light bulbs. The US Department of Energy, the European Union energy ministers, and anyone with half-a-brain can do the 2nd grade arithmetic necessary to easily see the energy wasting nature of this lighting source.

This article (written in 2006!) from the Economist summed up the primary reason why we MUST get off incandescent lighting:

Worldwide about 20% of all electricity generated is used for lighting. Several studies reckon that LEDs could eventually cut that amount in half. That would not only save billions of dollars in electricity bills, but also significantly reduce energy demand, environmental pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions.

So is Michele Bachmann a terrorist who wants us to remain dependent on foreign oil? Is she concerned that big oil companies will have their revenues lowered if the U.S. moves toward efficient and energy saving lighting? Seriously, I can’t think of what the hell her motivation is here other than finding any reason to jump on an issue that gets people riled up one way or another.

What do you think?