Month: February 2025

BACK UP THE DIGITAL WITH THE PHYSICAL

With all my digital dumping lately, been thinking a lot about digital media.

This from Patrick Rhone:

Here’s a (admittedly costly and privileged) thought: Instead of downloading your Kindle books and hacking the DRM from them, use the titles as a list to go buy from your local book store. Or, cheaper option, to keep an eye out for in a Little Free Library.

Back up the digital with the physical.

I’ve cancelled Disney+ because I watch the same old Star Wars movies, and the price keeps going up. I thought, gee, just buy those movies digitally via Apple or Amazon, so I can just stream them whenever I want, right?

But maybe I should just buy a blu-ray player and the actual discs. That way, if the internet goes down or I somehow lose access to my accounts or digital files, well, I can still watch those movies.

I thought this too with digital music – I was digging around for a media player that isn’t Apple Music, and oh my god, everything is atrocious.

But instead of re-building a system which keeps all my files inside my laptop, why not try to buy the CDs (and cassettes)? I can even burn digital files to a CD and play them on my CD player.

ORGANIZING IPHONE PHOTOS ON MY OWN DEVICES

So all my photos dating back to 2002 are in folders, grouped by year, on my external HD, which is then backed up regularly via Backblaze.

I have a reminder set for the 1st of every month to download all my photos from iPhone (via Image Capture) to my Mac, where I put them into a folder, organize (delete a lot of videos and screen shots), then add them to my monthly folder of photos I take with my DSLR.

I was using Google Photos to sync everything from my phone, but that’s $20/year going to Google. No thanks.

And now that I’m not backing up photos via iCloud, my iPhone back ups are smaller, so I was able to downgrade to the .99¢ plan, which is just $12/year. Maybe I can look more into the back up stuff and whittle it down to the free plan at some point, but this is acceptable.

SMALL CITY PHOTOS

Took myself to Pottsville, PA today, a nearby city with zero planning, just letting the vibes take me.

That brick storage unit building was built in 1900, has over 6,000 square space, and is for sale for just $150,000.

I’d have preferred finding a good place to park and to walk around, but that wasn’t in the cards today, and that’s okay.

The light was terrible, but whatever, it was a Saturday outside on a nice day.

Moving 2,600 images, screen shots, and videos off my iPhone via USB via Image Capture. I am just so done paying Apple for iCloud storage, and Google for the Google Photos storage space when I have two 2TB external HDs here, with unlimited backup via BackBlaze.

MAKE REAL STUFF

From Joshua Heath Scott:

“As artists and creatives, we face the challenge of standing out against the digital tide. Han explores the importance of making real, physical art that holds emotions, memories, and true community value, unlike the fleeting nature of digital information.”

This really makes me want to start putting together a print version of Social Media Escape Club. Of printing photos every month. Of making newspaper projects with Newspaper Club.

Via Zach

I just switched to the Brave browser, from Chrome, and I’m practically giddy about it.

Tonight I archived a bunch of old emails from my Fastmail account. Exported to Zip files, put ’em on external HD. Just like, 1000s of random sent emails, automated receipts and shit. Sure, I could have gone through and deleted a bunch, but nah.

This weekend I’ll be shutting down my Google Workspace account, and shuffling that email back to Fastmail. The less money I give to Google, the better.