Anachostic

Everything’s A Phone Now

Posted by anachostic on December 25, 2015 No comments

A recent post on a blog I follow informed me that there was a great deal happening on an entry-level, budget Windows Phone – the Lumia 435. I could pick one up for $30. That made me pause for a moment.

A brand new smartphone, capable of running Windows 10 Mobile, with expandable memory that can take an SD card up to 128GB. What if I bought it, never put a cellular SIM in it, maxed out the memory and just used it as an MP3 player? Huh? What’s stopping me?

Let’s look at some current MP3 players. They are really dwindling in numbers, because, well, smartphones do everything now. 16GB Sony Walkman – $80. 8GB Sandisk Clip – $35. 160GB iPod – $399. 32GB Zune HD – $275. This phone – $30. 128GB MicroSD card – $50. And I don’t even need the 128GB card now. I have a 32GB card from my old phone. Consider this a done deal.

So now I have another Windows phone. It’s going to be my new MP3 player. And better than other MP3 players, it will do Internet and Bluetooth audio, and games, and whatever else I want (except phone calls).

I began setting it up by installing the 32GB SD card I had around and upgrading the phone to Windows 10. Boy, what a drawn-out process that upgrade was. When I was done upgrading, I then uninstalled every app except for the ones I needed – primarily Groove Music.

Ok. Now, how do I get my music on there? I keep the music on my computer in WMA Lossless. That format works with Zune. But you can’t sync to anything other than a Zune device using the Zune software. And although I can copy the files right to the phone, I don’t want to use my lossless files since they’re around 25MB per song. I was dreading the idea of manually transcoding my entire library just to copy it and delete it. Surely there has to be some software that would automate that.

Enter the old stalwart, Windows Media Player. This software will not die, nor should it ever die. Windows Media Player can sync files to another device that is nothing more than a memory card. And in the process of doing so, it can transcode the files to a different bit rate – Exactly what I need.

Then you choose what you want to put on your device, and drag it to the Sync pane. Then Windows Media Player just does its thing.

So, with my test using the 32GB card, I got about 40-odd percent of my music on there. There’s some stuff I can take off because it’s not really mobile audio stuff. I also discovered that Windows Media Player encodes to WMA format, so I probably don’t need a high bitrate of 192k. 192k in MP3 is moderate quality, 192k in WMA is very high quality. Bringing that down a notch to 160k should reduce the space usage. And I see I also need to get cracking on cleaning up my album art.

But! Once that’s all done, I will have a pretty sweet MP3 player, that isn’t a phone, but really is a phone, just not being used as a phone.

Late Night Thoughts (But Torture Is Discussed)

Posted by anachostic on December 18, 2015 No comments

I’m coming down with a cold (I don’t get sick). Last night was the transition from a scratchy throat to a runny nose. Obviously, I was kept awake. During one of my wake-up sessions, I had a thought: Getting death threats from people could be pretty scary. But if you got a death threat from a death metal band, I don’t think it would be scary at all. How could you even take it seriously?

“I’ll rip out your guts!” – Yeah, ok. I hear ya.

“I’ll murder you while you sleep!” – You said that on your last two albums.

“You will be tortured for years and years!” – Blah, blah, blah.

And threats like that, whether you hear them from a death metal band or from someone who is trying to express how they don’t like you, are, by-and-large, empty. It’s what I will call a “smorgasbord of torture.” The person has no clue what they are going to do to you, so they say they’re going to do it all. Break your legs, crush your skull, rip out your tongue. Yawn. Do they even know how much effort those things take? Do they even know how a body works? Clearly, you can’t rip out someone’s guts and torture them for years. It’s not realistic. And what, in the realm of death metal music, is ever realistic?

Now, what you have to watch out for is someone who makes a threat and then starts making the threat more and more specific and detailed. This person knows. This person has a plan. This person is the one to be feared.

So yeah, I hope I feel better soon. It’s the holiday season, after all.

Christmas Cheer Is Here

Posted by anachostic on December 15, 2015 No comments

I have to say, I love my first Christmas tree. It’s a great mix of standard ornaments, special ornaments, and embellishments. The color palette is varied enough without being too schizophrenic. The ornament coverage is full, but not overwhelming. It’s at the point where adding garland would be too much.

There’s a nice mix of balls – matte, shiny, and clear. There’s a set of 6 glass icicles and an even cooler set of 3 ice drops, just enough to be a nice surprise here and there. Then there’s a bunch of diamond and ruby drops hanging at the ends of branches.

As far as unique ornaments go, there’s enough on the tree that it might be a nice scavenger hunt to find them all. This would be the list:

Hedgehog
Balloon animal dog
T-Rex
Flamingo
Bird nest
Coke cans
Buoy
Nutcracker
All three birds
The owls

And there’s plenty of others, too, but not unique enough to call out. Metal bells, acrylic stars, snowflakes, and candy canes, fabric candy canes, and more.

As I mentioned before, all the ornaments are hung with fancy hangers, not the simple green or silver wire hangers. Aside from how much easier it is to attach the hook to the ornament and how much easier it is to hang on the tree, these fancy hangers are sturdy and become a part of the decoration. So not only do you look at the ornament and try to ignore or look past the simple hanger, you see the hanger as part of the ornament.

I remember how the lower loop of the simple wire hooks wrapped around the bulb’s hanging loop. I remember how that was always just a little annoying to connect the two and it was enough of a hassle to not want to detach it when breaking down and packing the bulbs back up. Well, the fancy hooks don’t loop; they’re just hooks. So disassembling them after the season is going to be a breeze. It makes we wonder why the wire hooks had to be so secure like that?

The great news is that neither cat nor dog had any incident with the tree. For the most part, there wasn’t any need to put the non-breakables at the bottom of the tree. But we did put all the bells down there as an early warning system. In fact, the cat loves it. “…and to all a good night”, indeed.

Christmas Startup Costs

Posted by anachostic on December 13, 2015 No comments

This is the first year I’m going to be celebrating Christmas. When I say that, I mean this is the first year I’m going to be doing the traditional tree and trimmings. In years past, I did a tiny 3-ft, pre-lit artificial tree. You know, the bare minimum. I’m approaching this as a multi-year project, building up a little each year. Maybe next year will be exterior decorations.

The point I’m making is that I’m starting with nothing. I don’t even think I have a single tree ornament of my own. So, if you are considering doing your first Christmas, consider this list for the things that you will need. But, keep in mind, most all of these will be reusable next year, so you can spend a little more and get quality stuff that will last year after year. Normally, I would factor in whether I wanted to have something new each year and budget for disposable items. But I think Christmas stuff should have a sense of stability and memories each time they are used. And if your approach is also a multi-year vision, decide what you want for next year and hit the after Christmas sales.

So, this is what I started with:

Tree Skirt

This was the first advance purchase. The GF and I were evaluating our options at Old Time Pottery and we found one with the fabric we liked, but not the right colors. Later, we were at Lowes and saw one we both immediately liked. We noticed that Lowes’ Christmas supplies were really selling out (impressive), so I grabbed it right then to avoid any remorse over missing something we both agreed on. Price: $30.

Tree Lights

Wow, so many options. When I was growing up, we had one option for bulbs. I think they are classified as C7. But now, you have the LED lights and all these different shapes and colors. This is where I had to start thinking. I could do a themed tree, like all gold or silver or blue, in which case, I’d probably get a single-colored set. Or, I could go traditional and get the multi-colored sets.

I like the look of themed trees, but they seem so boring to me. I wanted a more interesting tree, with ornaments of all different types, to encourage exploration and to capture different moments. So, the lights I choose will either be multicolored or dual colored.

I started at Lowes. What the hell. They’re down to less than a full isle of Christmas stuff. Less than a full isle! They didn’t have the lights I wanted. Ok, let’s try Sears. Sears usually surprises me with prices and selection. Nope, Sears is down to thin pickings as well. Ok then, I know Target has them because I saw them the day before when I bought my tree stand.

I bought a 200-bulb string and two 50-bulb strings, for a total of $63. All LED, all sphere shaped. The 200-bulb is shiny and faceted and the two small strings are solid pearl lights. That’s about 100 ft of lights, at $.63/ft Not cheap, but much better than I budgeted.

Tree Ornaments

Consistent with my choice to have a non-themed tree, the ornaments will be a collection of many different shapes, colors, and styles. One thing I am against, though, is “shatter-resistant” ornaments. These plastic bulbs with the visible molding seams are cheap and tacky. I understand their place in families with dumb children, but for the record, I never broke a glass ornament when I was growing up. And since my household is not and will not be child-friendly, I’m having nice high-quality glass ornaments. Although, after discussing with the girlfriend, we’re going to have to put shatterproof ornaments of some sort at the bottom to account for curious cat and clumsy dog – their first Christmas with a real tree.

There’s no shortage of variety when it comes to ornaments. And the prices are all over the place, too. You’ll probably start with some multi-sets, then in future years, buy unique individual pieces to create memories.

I hit two places at first, Old Time Pottery and Michaels, and got some basic red/green/clear balls and a spire tree topper (which I’ve learned is called a Finial). Total running cost: $47. Then I did another run at Big Lots, Sears and JCPenney. The quality is getting better and plenty of diversity. Total now: $104. At this point the cat thinks this is going to be the best Christmas ever.

Then I hit Pier 1, Hobby Lobby, Bealls, Target (again), and Michaels (again). And I think we’re done. Total: $195. We did decide to go with the fancy ornament hooks instead of the simple wire hooks. I have to say, they’re worth the investment, both in looks and usability.

As far as what we ended up with, there’s probably close to 200 ornaments on the tree, between glass balls, icicles, bells, diamond and ruby gems, a few birds, a bird nest, individual personal items, and some novelty items.

The Tree

The tree is going to be a live tree. The initial reason for this is to have the more traditional experience. If I find I don’t like it, I can always go artificial next year. But I think I owe it to myself to try the real tree first.

We went to a tree stand that’s always been coming to town since I can remember: “Booger Mountain”. We picked out a tree. A big tree. 8 feet high and dense and wide. They only took cash, and it was a chunk of cash. $90.

Tree Stand

Since I’m going natural, I’ll need a tree stand. I might as well get a nice one. I had a couple of gift cards from Target, so I figured I’d use them there. I ended up with a nice plastic stand with an easy watering opening for $20, $10 after gift cards. I thought that was a good deal until I stopped at Walgreens and saw a stand on clearance for $7. But what’s done is done. My stand is good for an 8’ tree. It did the job just fine.

The Complete Damage

Adding up everything, I’ve spend $390 on this project. All but $90 will be reusable in future years. The girlfriend spend $300 on her own exterior home decorating (first year for that, too) and all of that will be reusable in future years. So, it looks like we’re even.

Behind-The-Curve Savings

Posted by anachostic on December 10, 2015 No comments

There was an XKCD comic a long while ago that made the joke that if you consistently remain behind the curve, technology still advances and is just as impressive, it’s just that the experience is delayed for you. It doesn’t say anything about the great savings you will have if you adopt this strategy. For example, I can pick up a Wii pretty cheaply now. I think I saw a bunch for $30 at local pawn shops. I’ve not really experienced the games a lot, so it’s still all new to me.

So, last Friday, I was a little klutzy and dropped my phone. It was fine. I’ve dropped my phone a few times in the years I’ve had it (photo history looks like I’ve had my Lumia 810 since March, 2013). It’s always taken the falls like a champ, even if the case back flies off and makes you think the phone has exploded into pieces. I have never used a case on my phones – never seen a need to.

Later on that night, I dropped my phone, again. Geez. This time, it landed on its side on my chair’s base and when I picked it up, I saw something I’d never seen on a phone of mine before. It wasn’t cracked, it was shattered. I was shattered, too. Now, I had to find a new phone and pretty quickly, too. This phone still worked. Touchscreen still worked. Swiping and dragging was a bit more risky since I don’t like cuts all over my finger. So, I wouldn’t want to be using it more than a couple of days.

I am a Windows Phone user. What does that mean for me? Well, I don’t have the massive selection of devices that Android users have, and I don’t have to pay outrageous prices like iPhone users have to. I had just read a couple of reviews of the newest Microsoft phones to come out and I was a little surprised at the retail prices. Over $900! No, that’s not going to happen.

Saturday, I hit some pawn shops looking for a cheap phone replacement until I could figure out what my plan was. Surprisingly, no one had phones. I didn’t get it, they used to have craploads of phones. When I asked about that, I was told that people were pawning phones that weren’t fully paid for and the phones would get blocked, so the next buyer could never activate their phone. Damn scammers.

So, Amazon it was. I was amazed at the prices of Windows phones. Most were less than $200. And these weren’t cheap phones, either. The one I ended up getting was the Nokia Lumia 925. A phone from 2013, discontinued in 2014. Windows Phone OS is very lightweight, so older phones have no trouble running it, either. This new phone will still be an improvement over what I had and was under $200. I don’t need to spend $500 or $800 or $1000 for a new phone. That’s awesome.

Since it’s a new phone, obviously I need to buy more accessories for it. This time, I’m going to invest in Qi wireless charging. The 925 has an optional wireless charging back in a few different colors. I picked up a white back for cheap (because discontinued phone, right?) and Qi chargers seem to have become commonplace since when I last remember researching them.

And the best thing is, it’s still all pretty much new to me.

The Way It Is

Posted by anachostic on December 8, 2015 No comments

Recently, I was at a thrift shop, shopping for CDs, and I picked up Bruce Hornsby’s The Way It Is album. I’ve heard the title track plenty of times on the radio, but I’ve never really listened to it. When I did, I was disgusted to hear that the song has the same 4-beat drum machine pattern playing through the entire song: four and a half minutes. No rhythm changes, no drum fills, no cymbals, nothing. Just the same beat. You can almost imagine Bruce playing the intro, then reaching over and pressing Start on the drum machine. The song even fades out since there’s no programmed drum ending.

Absolutely horrible. And that song was a hit!

But, that’s not what this post is about, even if the message of the song is somewhat relevant. This morning, I was reading a news story about a police officer shooting an armed suspect during what may have been a standoff. The details of the situation aren’t important. I was struck by the reporting of the story. When I finished reading, I had the thought, “was the guy black?” I went back and re-read it and there was no mention of the suspect’s race. Huh.

Well, we can probably assume he was white, then. But that made me wonder, why do news stories always indicate the race of the people involved when they aren’t white? The person’s race has nothing to do with the story unless it involves race, and sometimes, not even then.

This reminds me of a time I was reading a local newspaper from my hometown area. I had moved away a long time ago and come to the understanding of how prejudiced that tiny area was. The story was more or less, “Police are investigating a report of an assault on a white female by a black male that occurred late Friday night.” Take out “white” and “black” and the story is still accurate, but doesn’t stir up any racial biases.

There’s a natural tendency for people to call out differences. Like if you give directions, you reference places that are different and easily identifiable. I think this has something to do with the fact that we crave novelty. But to specify a person’s race in a news story is almost saying, “this person is different and easily identifiable.” And I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t work the other direction, too. In black culture magazines, they probably use “white” a lot, because it’s different than the “normal”, their majority black readership. I honestly don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised, nor would I be offended.

What I’m trying to say is what is being treated as a detail is not a detail unless it is a detail. For example, in that news story from my old hometown, the man’s identity is known, so his race is irrelevant. That would be different than “Police are asking for help finding a man involved in a fight yesterday at The Local bar. The man is white and balding, and referred to himself as Chuck.” That’s something you need to know in order to take action.

So, as an exercise for all of us, next time you read a news story, look for the race card being played, say to yourself, “that’s not necessary”, and self-censor it. See if the story reads just as well without those details.

It’s Happening Again

Posted by anachostic on December 4, 2015 No comments

A couple of years ago, I wrote about tea. I had casually mentioned that I found a new tea brand and I was enjoying it. That brand was Te Bustelo. Well, over two years later, I am still very much enjoying it. My GF, ever-thoughtful, bought me two huge cans of tea mix, and they lasted me, well, two years. I’m just finishing up the second canister now.

For Christmas, I suggested she replenish my stock. Te Bustelo could only be had at Wal-Mart, and that’s not a place I go. A few days later, she reported she was unsuccessful in finding any. So I searched Wal-Mart’s website. It said the product was no longer available. Panic starts setting in. I jump on Amazon. The only thing available is a 6-pack of canisters and there’s only 8 cases left of them. At a little over $7/can, this isn’t really a great deal.

Oh shit. This is just like what happened with Nestea. I find something I really like and it disappears. So, without delay…

Today, Amazon only has one case left in stock. You can’t find Te Bustelo anywhere else online. This is the end. So, I guess I’m probably good for 2-3 more years and then it’s on to something else. But what? Back to Lipton? Try the 4c brand I see everywhere? Will they even be around in 3 years?

Balancing On A Fence

Posted by anachostic on November 30, 2015 No comments

One of the bigger time-sucks in my life is the image sharing community, imgur. Recently, there has been a growing dissatisfaction with the method in which imgur handles advertisements. I honestly can’t remember what it was like before the latest implementation, which I guess is a pretty good endorsement for “the old way.” But the new way is certainly ruffling a lot of feathers.

Imgur has chosen to go the route of “Native Advertisements” in which ads look like normal content. It’s a dangerous game because it risks having your users feel deceived once they realize they were just fed an advertisement and didn’t realize it. Imgur has worked harder to make ads more identifiable while at the same time, tried to make the ad look more like regular content. It’s not working out too well.

I understand the need for advertisements from all three sides of the fence: the seller, the advertising host, and the consumer. Each party has priorities that can hinder the effectiveness of advertising. Understanding these needs and balancing them can make advertising better for everyone. Come to think of it, there are actually only two sides of the fence: seller and consumer. The host is the fence.

The seller has a product or service that they need to sell in order to stay in business. With the assumption that the business is legitimate and their intentions are noble – that they really believe in their offering – there shouldn’t be any problem with seeing their advertising and hearing their sales pitch. The problem is, the product may not be applicable for everyone, like selling cattle fencing to a wall street banker. But – and this is a valid argument for the seller – that banker may know a rancher and may comment to them that they saw an interesting product recently. That’s what ads are supposed to do, inform.

Now, the seller can be blinded by this natural benefit and may insist on everyone seeing their ads as many times as possible, because people have naturally short memories (“I saw this thing; no idea who made it or what it was called…”). This results in fatigue and resentment for the consumer.

The advertising host has a bunch of potential consumers to whom advertisements can be shown. In return, the host gets paid by the seller. This helps pay the bills so the host can continue business. The host has competing objectives: to keep the consumers happy and to keep the sellers happy. Being in this position is not easy because pleasing one too much will upset the other.

The consumer, when visiting a host, gets served ads from a seller. If they are shown too many ads or unusable ads, they will rebel against the host and maybe the seller. I do believe that if an ad is relevant and presented in the correct manner, the consumer will not be offended. If the ad can’t inform or educate, at least it should entertain. Later ads on Imgur, from Old Spice and Ebay proved this to be true.

So, with the early uprising at imgur about ineffective advertisements, I thought I’d spend a few brain cycles on how I would implement an advertising mechanism into a website. The primary thing I would want to ensure is that my users had a level of control without being able to completely eliminate advertisement. That’s the balance every advertising host must maintain.

I came up with the following design. It’s greatly simplified to just illustrate some talking points.

The Campaigns and CampaignPosts are structures for ads and a means to group them. For example, on imgur, there were ads for the upcoming movie Ted 2 (which were universally hated). I’ve seen at least 3 different ads. So the Campaign would be “Ted 2 Movie” and there would be 3 or more CampaignPosts under it.

Now, how does the user have control over this? There are two ways: at the post level and at the campaign level. When an ad is shown, the ImpressionCount of the UserCampaignPosts is incremented. Imgur has voting arrows, so the downvote arrow would operate like my hypothetical website’s “Do not show again” button. This would set a negative rating for the CampaignPost and it would not be shown to the user again.

The great part of this design is the advertising dashboard for the user to allow them to disable entire campaigns. Why would you let a user do that? Well, there are some things that people are opposed to on principle and it is futile to convince them otherwise. In fact, displaying more ads to them would hurt your cause. Just think of pro-life/pro-choice ads, or anything political, or Mac/PC.

On this advertising dashboard, a user would see all the active campaigns for the website and could opt out of them. The CampaignPosts within each Campaign would not be shown to that user anymore. Sounds really simple. But! An advertiser has paid for these ads to be seen and as the host, you need to show them. If it was just as easy as unchecking all the checkboxes, no one (who was registered on the website) would ever see any ads.

So, in order to opt out of a Campaign, all of the CampaignPosts need to have an ImpressionCount greater than zero. That means a user has to see every ad for a campaign at least once. Is that fair? I think it is. I envision it being similar to this conversation:

Seller: “Eat at Joes, please.”
Consumer: “No.”
Seller: “Joe’s has good food.”
Consumer: “I do not eat at Joe’s and never will.”
Seller: “Ok, just hear me out and I won’t bug you anymore.”
Consumer: “Fine, go ahead.”
Seller: “Joe’s has healthy lunch options.”
Seller: “Joe’s is open late on weekends for after-party recharging.”
Seller: “Joe’s is also active in the community, sponsoring children’s sports programs.”
Seller: “That’s all I got. Thanks for listening.”
Consumer: “Still not convinced. No thank you.”

The seller gets all the views and the consumer, even if they just pass over them and don’t pay attention, still gave an effort. So to mimic that sort of offer to opt out of future ads by viewing all current ads in one batch, that same functionality would be in the dashboard – to view all ads for a campaign. And they would remain there just in case a consumer had a partial memory of one and wanted to get more info for someone else. But, once all the current ads are shown, the option to opt out would be enabled. Once the Campaign is opted-out, future ads won’t be shown.

If you’re thinking ahead or you’ve got a scheming mindset like I do, you might wonder why a seller wouldn’t just launch a bunch of campaigns with one ad each, so consumers would constantly have to visit the dashboard to opt out of each campaign. That onus is on the host and it’s managed very easily – via cost. Campaigns should cost more to start up, but adding more ads to an existing campaign is more cost-effective. Or maybe it’s a sliding scale that the more active campaigns you have going, the more it costs. In that way, the host protects its users and can balance risk vs. reward.

The host also gets the benefit of an incentive for people to register for the website. Registering would give a user the ability to manage the advertisements. Non-logged-in users would get ads from all active campaigns.

In this case, everyone compromises and everyone gets some benefits. The seller can’t spam the consumers if they choose to opt out, but they do get the opportunity to “speak their piece” in its entirety at least once. The host may not get as much money (if they are paid per impression), but they will have a happier user base. The consumer has the opportunity to control what ads they want to see, but in order to block a campaign, they have to see all the ads in it first.

It’s not all bad for the consumer. I can imagine there could be some compelling ads, or some from a company they respect that the consumer may choose to keep active. The host’s logic needs to be dynamic enough to not show the same ads over and over and to possibly reduce the number of ads to the most engaged users. Maybe try to hit a target number of impressions per week per user. Once a user is nearing that number, back off on the ads.

A lot of times, I find that my ideas are too altruistic and give people the benefit of the doubt too much. Fortunately, my default is not to be jaded and cynical, despite the number of posts in the Rant category. The problem with dealing with people is that compromise is always a last resort. So this idea would probably never be accepted because no one wins.

But It Was The Right Thing To Do

Posted by anachostic on November 15, 2015 No comments

I’m sorry, Kaitlynn.

Your ATM card is dead. You left it in the Publix parking lot tonight. There were no other cars around, so I couldn’t try and find you. I had a thought to turn it in at the customer service counter and see if you would call and say you left your card there. Instead, I called your bank.

Bank of America. What a great bank. In their phone queue, they ask for my (your) account number. I enter it from the card. They ask for the last four of your SSN. Hell, I don’t know. I said 0000. I was wrong. So they start to blow me off (a machine, saying eff off - wonderful) and I say “operator” (that’s supposedly a trick to get to a human). Sorry, their customer service center is closed and no one can help me (or you). Instead of getting pissed off and hanging up, I got pissed off and listened to the rest of their message. I could report a stolen or lost card by saying “lost card”. Bingo!

The lady handling the situation was pleasant. She said she would deactivate your card right away. I said that deactivating a card could result in a huge hassle. Can’t you call the person and tell them their card will be waiting at the Publix service desk? Nope. Who knows who’s seen and copied the information on that card already before I found it. Fair enough. Goodbye, ATM card. Goodbye, scheduled online payments. Goodbye, electronic means of buying cigarettes (my assumption). Oh, and they’re not going to call you either and say your card was found. They’ll just wait for you to notice it’s gone and report it missing. Seriously, that’s what they said.

So, I’m sorry. But you should be happy it ended like this instead of the alternative. Also, you need to sign your card before using it. It says right on it: “Not valid unless signed.”

Happy holidays.

Hopefully I Remember When I’m Senile

Posted by anachostic on November 11, 2015 No comments

After reading: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4825

I’m actually not sure how to present this idea because in today’s hyper-sensitive world community of “activists”, anything can be construed as evil, manipulative, or exploitive. So, I guess I will have to say that this is my idea for myself, but if anyone else thinks it’s a good idea and can run with it while dodging whatever arrows are fired by the SJW’s, have at it.

So the premise of the article is that there is an unbelievable amount of data that needs archived into some non-degradable, digital format for preservation. I’m certainly not opposed to it, despite whatever posts I’ve made about “anchors”, “baggage”, “simplification” and so on. And it’s something that I would like to help with, but right now, I am in a generally busy part of my life. This is a very labor-intensive task, and it has a degree of drudgery. Maybe 20 years ago, I would have been able to devote large chunks of time to the cause, and maybe in 20 years I will have that opportunity again, when I am retired.

That’s when it hit me. There are a lot of people out there that are… hmm, have to be sensitive about this… underutilized. Those people could find a purpose by contributing/donating labor to the archival project. In the spirit of my previous post, they could do archival work. Maybe (hopefully) they might find the work fulfilling and be driven by the same purpose. Then they could be archivists. For many of the people in the demographic I am envisioning, the archival process could also be a nostalgic endeavor. This could be a potential source for metadata in the archives.

It’s a pretty well-known fact that people who end up in retirement homes fade away quicker because they lose a sense of purpose, the knowing that you are needed and the feeling that your contributions have value. So, what if archival stations were set up in some retirement homes? Give some of the residents training on use of the equipment, let them know the benefits their efforts are providing and let them do as much as they wish to do?

The hardware is certainly not a problem. Hardware is cheap now. It’s the labor that is expensive, unless that labor is donated. I hope I can remember to do what I can when I am too old to contribute in the fast lane of technology. Just get me off the highway and into the rest area with a bunch of data for slow processing and I’ll do what I can.

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