Thanks for the Memories

It's mid-year, and for me, that means a couple of things. As a photographer, and a prolific one, one of my challenges is keeping my photo libraries in order, and keeping them small enough to work with, and keeping them backed up frequently enough.

I experienced a catastrophic failure of my entire photo library, back in November 2020, during a migration to the new Catalina operating system. My workplace tech people threatened me: I had to move to the new system instantly or lose access to my computer entirely. So I upgraded, and the photo library (10 years worth of photos, more than 2 TB in size) tanked.

I was able to recover the master files, but not the database itself. So I have at least two, maybe three, copies of most of the master photo files from 2010 to 2020. But things were lost. And it's not easy to access the things I still have, unless I know the specific date and thing I'm looking for.

I tried to reconstruct several photo libraries out of those master files during my retirement, which occurred at the end of December 2020, but I found it tedious work. I made several more photo libraries that tanked for one reason or another; eventually, I gave up.

But I vowed to do better. And so now, I have changed a couple of my behaviors: 1) I still take as many pictures as ever, but I back up more frequently, 2) I keep the camera memory cards that I've filled up, and number and date them, and 3) every 6 months, I back up the existing photo library, delete the old one off the computer, create a new library, and begin again. 

Somewhere around January 1 and July 1 are typically the times when I do these tasks. The photo libraries have names in alphabetical order: anita, bobo, callista, destiny, elvira; the most recent one starting July 1 - I kid you not - is fabulous. Before moving out of an existing photo library, I find three photos, tag them with all of my keywords, export them, and then import them into the new library. This populates all of my keywords in the new library.

These practices keep my working photo library generally under 200 GB, which is manageable enough. I find I can fit a bit more than two of those libraries on a regular 512 GB USB drive; I buy the SanDisk dual drives; they currently run about $37 apiece on Amazon.

My newest SanDisk drive arrived the day before, and I needed to format it to get it ready to use. I looked at my existing drives and decided it was time to get organized. So I got out the drives, checked them, created a Word document listing the name of each drive, total capacity, amount of space remaining, everything that was on each drive, and a screen shot of the contents of each. I printed out the document, cut it all up with scissors, and put the description of what's on each drive WITH that drive. The Crittergators looked on in amazement, as order came from chaos!

So now each physical drive has the info with it, and I have a document on my computer with a nice summary. This is what it all looked like, with the Crittergators looking on happily once my task was done. I plan to go through it and make sure I have backups of everything important. It feels good. 

And thanks to Blipfoto, no matter what happened with all of my photo libraries, I still have the memories of all of those years saved and tucked away, showing some of the best things I saw each day since December 15 of 2011! Better yet, Blip helps identify WHEN I took each shot, and that is like a homing beacon, allowing me to identify the date, and then locate that photo set, in my original master library files.

Now, it is my custom to include a song link with each posting, but I've got several for this one. I made two major music purchases recently: I bought the album set for the 25th Anniversary of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which I have not gotten to listen to yet (but have high hopes for!), and I bought Petty Country, which came out in late June of this year.

I own all of the Tom Petty solo offerings and all of the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers studio albums, plus a few of the live ones, most notably Pack Up the Plantation: Live. (I don't generally prefer live albums because I'd rather hear the ARTIST singing than the CROWD doing so.) I had been eagerly awaiting the Petty Country album ever since I first learned of it, and it does not disappoint. I am in the process of listening to it - on shuffle - on my newest Sandisk MP3 player*, but have not heard it all yet.

Some initial impressions are that every song is good, the sound is great, the interpretations are energetic and fun. Dolly Parton does justice to Southern Accents. George Strait, with just a wee bit more yodel, could pass for Dwight Yoakum on You Wreck Me. Margo Price sings Ways to be Wicked with former Heartbreaker Mike Campbell; the lyrics ring quite differently coming out of a woman's mouth. Lady A earns a gold star for sounding the most like Petty and Nicks without actually being them on Stop Draggin' My Heart Around. A major omission from the album is that there is NO cover of Insider, which is an all-time Petty/Nicks fave. Oh, and if you want to hear the originals of any of these, here they are:

Southern Accents, TP and the HB
You Wreck Me, TP
Ways to be Wicked, TP and the HB
Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty

*What the heck is going on with the Sandisk mp3 players? I bought two of them in the past year, the first one (32 GB Clip Sport Plus, it is blue, and bigger, and has bluetooth) on July 3 of 2023, after my beloved pink iPod shuffle went croakers last summer (more iPod shuffle love here), and the second one (32 GB Clip Sport Go, it is black and red, and smaller, and lacks bluetooth) on April 30 of this year. And now neither one that I bought can be purchased new anymore! They are available in "renewed" format, but not new. Hmmph!