Correction

I just realized that I used pink instead of brown in my mockups . . . The intended color was a lightish brown, this correction will be made for the final versions.

 

Thanks!

Updated Mock-ups

Alright, I worked on an update to my site entry page and also created a “home” page and one of the interior pages. Thanks to everyone who has provided comments, I am trying to incorporate as many suggestions as I can. I think that the enrty page and the “narrative” page are starting to look quite good (but then again I have been staring at them for way too long).

A few other things – many of the pictures are simply placeholders and will be changed and there will be text in the grey boxes on the narrative mockup page. Also please feel free to comment on colors/lack of colors/etc. Apparently I am color blind . . .

Thanks!

Digital Preservation

I decided to get a bit more serious about preserving my digital files just a few years ago when I started taking graduate classes. Before that time I had generally saved paper versions of articles or essays, anything digital; classwork, presentations, projects, photos, were scattered randomly on my computer or distributed among a stack of unlabeled floppy disks and CDs.

The first thing that I set out to do was think of a simple (sensible) organizational method for documents and media; a straightforward file hierarchy for all data, with supporting metadata for media files. My documents folder contains three folders; work, school, and personal. Each of these is further broken down; the school folder contains individual folders for each semester, then each class, then handouts and final project (papers remain in the main part of the folder). For digital video I break my collection down to movies, tv, and clips (for video I have shot myself).

On a work trip last year I decided to update all of the folder names and hierarchy for all of my music and digital video, I have a folder for each artist (yes, there is a miscellaneous folder) which breaks down to individual albums. I also took the time to standardize file name format and updated metadata and linked album art. It was a tedious trip and I had a lot of time . . .

As far as file format, I haven’t really run into any problems. Most of my digital video is in .AVI, my audio is all in .MP3 or .OGG, text documents are all in MS compatible formats, and pictures i keep in .TIF and .JPG. The couple of times that I have run into problems opening a particular file I have been able to find a way to convert it or have gotten a plug-in that allows me to read the file. For video the best program I have found is VLC Media Player which plays literally anything. Any digital photos that I have had trouble with I have used IRfanView. Also, for word processing I have been using OpenOffice for quite a while and it seems to have extensions for anything I could possibly want to view.

My main concern about preserving my digital files is not that I will not be able to access files, I have found that if I maintain files in popular (and in the case of pictures – multiple) formats, that I generally do not have trouble accessing data. In the cases where I have not transferred data to new formats I have found avariety of ways to up-convert the files; in a one cases even virtualizing Windows 95 to use an older image viewer. I think that software is doing a great job of meeting the needs of users to access legacy media.

The biggest problem that I have run into, and the biggest catalyst for me to upgrade hardware has been physical compatibility. Most modern devices have removable media, or connect via USB, This becomes a problem when computers begin dropping legacy connectors and media ports. Even now it is getting pretty hard to find a reader for Smart Media cards, or a computer with a serial port on the back, but many older external hard drives are connected via parallel port, most digital cameras used manufactured a decade ago used Smart Media.

A few months ago I was playing with an Apple Quicktake 150, a digital camera released prior to USB. I took several pictures with the camera, but was unable to view them (no lcd), or retrieve them from the camera (built-in eprom memory), the camera did have a port on the side which allowed users to connect the camera to a computer via parallel port. I was eventually able to track down an old server in my office that had a parallel port and connect the camera, but in a few years even that (awkward) solution might not be possible. Certainly CDs and DVDs can rot, hard drive platters can crack, and magnetic tape can degrade, but the physical components can very easily become incompatible, even with the right ports, computers need to have the correct drivers so that they know how to interpret the information.

Most of my files and media I now keep on my primary computer and on an external hard drive. Important pictures I put onto DVD as well, and the ones that I really like I print out. I keep documents in these places and on a USB flash drive so that I can carry them everywhere. I also back up all of the database files and configuration files for the program files on my computer. Also, I have started putting some files into online storage (the calender on my computer syncs with Google Calender every time I go online) and putting some pictures online. My thinking is that regardless of the technological change or natural disaster at least one storage solution will survive.

Some of the things that I have not taken the extra precaution to preserve are my personal e-mail (fingers crossed that yahoo! won’t lose it), and work e-mail (this is downloaded from a hosting server onto into Outlook). I also haven’t taken the time to preserve web based content such Facebook, IM conversations, forum correspondence, etc.

I think that I do more than some people, but my preservation scheme is certainly not perfect. Generally I have paid attention to situations where my preservation efforts have fallen short and made “system wide” changes based on this, like bulk converting image, text, and sound files, or redoing all of the files names and metadata in my music collection because my media player player refused to show the correct album art.

If everyone were to use the same file formats, and we were able to ensure the compatibility of these formats indefinitely, and if we were able to comfortably assume that connectors would always be compatible, we would still encounter the problem of physical components getting old and wearing out, just as with analog media.

Interesting blog post about future proofing data

I came across a post on Lifehacker that asks readers how they go about future proofing data on their computers (or whether they wory about it at all). Some of the responses are very interesting. One commentor asks the question, “what about timeless extensions like .txt which has lasted since 95?” It’s amazing that someone considers 13 years timeless. Most of the commentors suggest that data is best maintained through periodic and continual conversion to updated formats

The physorg.com article from which much of the post is sourced, notes that the answer may lie in the use of non-proprietary formats. It also states that several countries have mandated the use of non-proprietary file formats for all governmental use.