Obsolete technology as objets d’art
June 28, 2007
Motherboard Gifts and More sells beautiful things made out of dead technology.
I’m partial to the coasters myself.
The business card cases are pretty cool, too.
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Why not bring a portable scanner when you visit family this summer?
June 27, 2007
Are you heading out to visit family in the next few weeks? Maybe you have a big reunion scheduled this summer.
Here’s something to consider:
Portable Scanners Are Very Affordable. If you have a laptop and $80 in your family history budget, you could purchase a brand new portable scanner and bring it with you. Just imagine returning from your trip with digital copies of one-of-a-kind, antique family photographs, letters and documents. You know, the treasures that no one will EVER allow out of the house.
Scan and Share. You can use the scanning time to collect family stories. Or write down important information on the backs of the originals if no one has done it yet. And thanks to the wonders of our Instant Digital Age, you can burn a set onto a CD and hand it to the family member who owns the originals. Regular CDs are fine as long as it’s only for short term storage. For long term storage, I recommend MAM-A Gold CDs or an external hard drive. It’s great to upload an extra set to the online storage company of your choice, but don’t rely on them to store your photographs indefinitely.
My Portable Scanner Recommendation: I’ve had a CanoScan LiDE for years and I love, love, love it. I’ve been meaning to blather about it here for weeks. Here are some of its great features:
- Lightweight enough to carry around.
- The box it came in has a carrying handle so no need to buy a separate case.
- Powered by USB cord, no separate power cord needed.
- The platen locks to prevent damage while in transit (I’m sure all portable scanners do this, but I was impressed).
- Lid removes completely, allowing for scanning of bound volumes and oversize materials without squashing.
- Great quality high resolution scans for under $100.
I’m not alone in my love for the LiDE. Becky over at kinexxions is singing the praises of her new Canon LiDE 70. Her post was my inspiration to dust mine off and get it uploaded.
Stay Tuned: Later this week I’ll share tips on how to name your digital files so you can find them again, how to scan originals without damaging them, and how to safely mark the originals so they don’t end up as orphan photos in the attic.
Related articles you might have missed:
Flash drives not recommended for long term storage.
Digitally restoring photographs.
Do you know about this digital printing feature?
Will JPEG be around in twenty years?
CD player from a bygone era
June 26, 2007
I’m not sure whether this counts as steampunk or not, but any way you slice it, that’s a beautiful anachronism.
And, yes — it actually plays CDs. The speakers are in the trumpet.
By bringing back a familiar nostalgic form of a phonograph, the design seeks transport the user back to the golden age of phonographs in early 1900s where sound broadcasting had a magical feel.
More info about this hack can be found here.
[Link via Neatorama]
A correction about digmypics
June 24, 2007
Loyal readers, I need to make a correction. I got this email last week:
Hi Sally,
I found your blog. It’s great, but it makes a comment that my company sends our customer’s photos overseas. While its true that some companies do that, we aren’t one of them. We do all of the work right here in mesa, AZ. Would you mind making the correction?
Thanks,
Scott Crossen
www.digmypics.com
I said I would be happy to print a correction, and asked Scott my Big Question: How do you keep prices under 50 cents per scan?
Here is Scott’s reply: We’ve invented and developed a lot of software processes to maximize our productivity on things like CD burning and tracking and managing orders but the fact remains we do a lot of work for the 30 to 50 cents we collect on each image. We don’t believe that asking a customer to allow us to send their photos overseas is an option and our customers agree with us on that. The risk just doesn’t justify any reward. I understand that having a service scan all of your photos can get pricey, but having them sent to China or India? It might make good business sense but lacks good common sense. If you like, you can put a link to our video that shows the process and a link to our home page.
Done and done, Scott.
The video took a really long time to download, but I waited it out because I’m not going to publish a link to something I haven’t watched. YouTube would have been much less annoying.
Update: Scott provided me with a link to the streaming version of the video. That way, you don’t have to download the whole thing to your computer. Watch the streaming version here.
I was impressed by their system for preventing photo orders from getting swapped accidentally, but not as impressed as I was by the white gloves. Yay! I also vowed to get myself a lab coat if I ever make my own videos.
Personally, I’m too squeamish to send original items through the mail — even if it’s only going as far as Arizona. If you’re cool with it (and most people are, including my own dad) then digmypics seems like a fine choice.
Have you hired someone to scan your photographs? Would you recommend them to a friend? Leave a comment and share your experiences, good or bad.
Another "oops" time capsule story, this time it’s personal
June 22, 2007
Tulsa’s buried car isn’t the only time capsule ruined by leaking water and mud. When I was a eight years old, my hometown decided to bury a time capsule. It was 1976 — the U.S.’s bicentennial — and everyone had History Fever!
The opening of the time capsule was scheduled for July 4, 2000, which might as well have been a million years away as far as I was concerned. I found it impossible to imagine being 32 years old when I was only eight.
It just so happens that my dad was president of the Glencoe Historical Society in 1976, so I got to write a Letter to the Future. My best friend Kate Hackbarth got to write one, too. My letter wasn’t terribly profound (I was eight, remember?) basically a list of places in my hometown that meant a lot to me. I remember going through the ads in the village circular to make sure I didn’t miss anything. My Letter to the Future was a list of all the places I wanted to still be around in the Exciting Jet Pack Age! that was sure to be The Year 2000.
The list included:
1. Wally King’s record shop
2. U-Name It iron-on t-shirt emporium
3. Wienicke’s hardware/toy store
4. Harry’s Jewish Deli
5. Big Al’s (where the fries were made from scratch)
There are two punchlines to this story.
Punchline #1. By the year 2000 every single one of those beloved places was gone. Some of them long gone. Nearly all of them had been replaced by chain stores like Starbucks and Einstein Bros. The hardware store had been converted to fancy schmancy condos.
I lived in my hometown from 1972 to 1986. During those years, there wasn’t much you couldn’t buy in town including a car, a bicycle, or an airplane ticket. In addition to the shops on my list we had a grocery store, a butcher, a baker, a shoe store, a movie theater, a dentist, an optician, a pizza joint, Chinese takeaway, and two of the following; pharmacy, deli, hair salon, bank. It was a kid’s paradise.
On the drive down, I said to my husband: “You know, archivists don’t do time capsules. It’s a terrible idea to bury something if you want it to last 30 years. There might not be anything to see when we get there.”
Which leads us to punchline #2…
Punchline #2. The time capsule was destroyed by water and mud. They put the soggy little bits on display, but it was a little painful to see. Especially since I was really looking forward to reading that letter again.
On the up side, I visited my hometown for the first time since my parents sold the house ten years prior. I got to see Kate Hackbarth and we got to meet each other’s husbands. And since it was the Fourth of July, I got to visit the craft fair where I sold painted rocks with googly eyes, and see the parade with floats and scouts and tons of kids on decorated bikes. Plus a slice of pizza at Little Red Hen. At least some things stayed the same.
P.S. My classmate Rich Cohen grew up to become a great writer. His memoir of growing up in our hometown is called Lake Effect
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Archivists don’t do time capsules. Here’s why…
June 21, 2007
One of the most basic rules of preservation is this:
If you want something to last fifty years or more, do NOT store it underground.*
What you see in the amazing photo above is the most common kind of damage you get when you bury something: water damage. That 1957 Plymouth sure was purty. I suppose it has a different kind of beauty now.
Unlike most time capsules, this one consisted very few items: The 1957 Plymouth, a bottle of tranquilizers, an unpaid parking ticket, several combs and a few bobby pins. Curious about why these items were chosen? Read more about Tulsa’s buried car time capsule here.
*Underground = Bad. That includes your basement, by the way. But wait! There is an exception to the “no bury” rule, and that’s salt mines. Even so, this kind of move is safest in the hands of professionals.
Photo by Michael Bates.
You can gawk at more hauntingly beautiful photos of Tulsa’s Buried Car in Michael’s Flickr photostream.
What to keep? What to toss?
June 19, 2007
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/17374145.htm
Here’s an excerpt from author Cindy Larson:
Like many other baby boomers, I suspect, my house is overflowing with boxes of papers, photos and mementos from my parents, who are both deceased. Add to that the stuff I’ve saved from my own marriage and children, and the result is an unorganized mess of boxes in our spare room.I didn’t have a clue as to what to keep and what to pitch. What was truly a memento, and what was just clutter? What would be valuable or meaningful to my children and possibly, some day, their children?
Here are my comments on the article…
Preservation. As for the archival advice, it’s not too bad. The article emphasizes the importance of stable temperature and humidity for long term survival of paper memorabilia. That’s dead accurate. It also says that paper storage containers are better than plastic, which doesn’t “breathe.” I agree with that advice. Plus you have no idea how safe that plastic is, unless it’s passed the Photographic Activity Test or PAT. But…
Email. The article claims that letters are slowly being replaced by e-mail, and you should “consider saving at least some of your newsier e-mails.” I would argue that this shift occurred years ago. And let’s not forget that digital is more permanent than a sand painting, but not much else. The easiest solution is to just print out your most important correspondence. Not everything, of course. Then you end up with the same problem of too much paper.
Best advice in the article. I’m all for purging, but remember that there might be someone in your family who wants what you’re about to toss. The older the stuff, the more important this becomes. Family historians are often the family archivist as well, so why not call up the genealogists in your family?
Treasure trove of historical photographs of African-Americans
June 13, 2007
The Randolph Linsly Simpson Collection presents a vivid picture of black life and American racial attitudes from the 1850s to the 1940s. It includes about 2,500 items, chiefly historical photographs, along with slave ship manifests, military medals, and civic trophies, postcards, stereo views of daily life in the old South, and more.
Highlights of the collection include vintage albumen photographs of Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. DuBois, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, along with nineteenth century daguerreotypes of politicians and bankers, photos of cowboys and entertainers, emancipated slave children and carnival freaks. Formal studio portraits and family snapshots, post-mortem images, scenes on the factory floor and images of African-American men in military service.
Selected images from the collection are available in the Beinecke Library’s Digital Library Online: Simpson Collection Images. I was delighted to see that they have included multiple images for each photograph. That means we get to see the lovely cases, too.
Photo Credit: Two young men with straw hats, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Flash drives are NOT for long term storage
June 10, 2007
A while back, I took a first stab at answering a reader’s question about flash drives. He wanted to know if they were safe for long term storage. Here’s what I said (cue time machine music):
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I got an email from a new subscriber to my newsletter. He was asking me to update my free-with-subscription bonus e-book about how to safely scan family photos. He wanted me to include the option of storing digital photographs on USB flash drives.
Will I make that change? That depends on the answer to some important questions:
- How long can we expect USB-powered flash drives to last?
- How soon will they become obsolete?
- How do these numbers compare to CDs? To hard drives?
Do I have an answer?
Nope. Not yet.
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By way of answer, below is an unedited post from 24/7 Family History Circle, a wonderful Web 2.0 resource from Ancestry.com.
Flash Drive Caveat I’m an IT director. When we hand out flash drives (which we hand out like candy), we have a little “talk” that goes with them. It goes like this:“Flash drives are very handy for carrying files from place to place and computer to computer. However, they are relatively volatile storage, so you should never consider them a primary backup for your files. They fail much, much, much more quickly than CDs or hard drives.”
Back up your files on CDs or hard drives. Check them after you back up to make sure the backup works. Check them once in a while to make sure they are still working. Every few years, transfer them to a new CD or hard drive. How many years depends on the conditions in which they are stored. If you have air conditioning, low humidity, and clean air, they will probably last longer than they will in a more humid or dusty environment.
Rae Williams
Wise words from the field. Flash drives are a convenient way to carry files around with you, but they are not for long term storage. Thanks, Rae!
Source: 24/7 Family History Circle
http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=1480
Another hidden mom photo, this one a tintype
June 8, 2007
Fussy babies are nothing new. Photographers have always had tricks to calm the wee ones so they can be immortalized via photography.
Keep in mind that earlier photographic processes had much longer exposure times. In other words, they required a lot more stillness to avoid a blurry photo.
Last month, I showed you a slightly spooky photo where mom was cleverly disguised as a chair.
I’m happy to report that Swapatorium has a new vintage portrait to share with the world.
This time, mom is crouching behind and holding the child around the waist. You can see her behind the chair.
To hide her arm, the photographer hand painted a blue sash directly to the tintype.
Read a little more about this intriguing image at Swapatorium, a great source for online treasures.
