Cold Mornings provide stress relief

Just thinking about setting up a new computer sends my stress levels through the roof. Loading software, downloads, internet connections, soft ware compatibility issues. Sometimes you just need to walk away and take a break, relax and remind yourself that it can wait.

I got up at 4am last weekend. It was my first realization that winter was here. The Autumn has been extremely warm and only in the last 2 weeks have we seen the temperature drop below 20 degrees. It was dark and the air was crisp and cold, I made a thermos of hot chocolate and packed slices of freshly baked carrot cake from the night before into a container. Put on my coat, and hat and headed out the door and off to a friends house.

It was only 6 degrees and while my friends we wishing they had bought their gloves like I had ,I was wishing I had worn a pair of tights under my jeans. Despite the cold I really enjoy walking early morning when no one else is around and the fog just adds that extra element of mystery. I’ve always dreamed of owning a cottage in the country somewhere where I would wake up early every morning and walk. On the cold winter mornings I’d come back to my little cottage and curl up by the fire place with my hot chocolate and spend the rest of the day staring out the window at the impending weather rolling in over the hills.

Preparing for the future

I’ve stopped taking photos at the moment as both my internal and external hard drives are full to the brim. For some time now I’ve need a new pc and so I’ve decided to get a desk top because I can get a much faster and more powerful system at a more reasonable cost. The computer shop is now in the process of building my new system and I will pick it up next Monday. Then comes the painful task of installing and downloading all my software.

With my new system I also purchase a second external hard drive to be used for backups. I currently don’t have a disaster recovery plan and after a 3 year period of avid photography and 10,000’s of photos I think I really should have one.

The digital photography medium is fantastic in my view we take so many more photos now because there is no cost associated with taking a photo. If the image is bad we delete it but in some senses digital photography has made us lazy. Hands up who regularly prints their personal images? …. (both my hand are typing and not in the air) Yes I am guilty of no longer printing my images too. They sit on my hard drive and only a percentage of them make it here or to flickr. In the event of losing all my images I would only be left with the images on the net and they are sized so small for copyright protection purposes they cannot be printer.

Then we are faced with the problem of advancing technology. Often we think what possibility could come next but when you look at history  in such a short time frame floppy disks have become virtually impossible to read. CD’s will no doubt, follow suit in the not to distance future, making our data stored on them unreadable too. That’s if the CD’s data lasts that long. Most of us buy the cheap quality CD’s and then don’t store them correctly in acid free and cool environments. Then one day too JPG files will be replaced with something better and there will be a whole generation of children with no embarrassing childhood photo to show at their 21st birthdays.

All this has lead me to think about how can I preserve my own kids memories of their childhoods. Over the last week I have started creating personal coffee table books for each of my children. While I have made coffee table books before, I have never made individual ones so the children can take their own books with them when they leave home. I now have the pain staking task of sorting through all my 2008 and 2009 photos to create their books and then I plan to make one book a year for each of them.

This is why I have been absent from blogging.

To all my bloggy friends regardless of your photographic skill level … Get Printing! Make your memories last forever.

What's on your i-Pod?

My goodness a week’s gone by and I’ve hardly been around to visit or blog here at this space. I’m driving around in the new car, telling my kiddies … don’t put your feet on the seats…. Get your hands of the windows…. No you can't have a drink even though we have cup holders in the back seat…. Blah, blah, blah .

Mikaela has played model for me this weekend. She seriously loves her I-pod and music (never goes anywhere with out it) and I love that fact that even though a song can be 30 years old it can still touch today’s generation.

So I only have one thing left on my mind before bed. Australia’s version of the Emmy Awards were on T.V tonight and I am left me wondering if this artist is so poor that she can no longer afford shoes to perform in. If anyone sees a shoeless woman busking in the Mall, please throw her a couple of dollars. I think she might need some money to get home.

Tell me what your favourite band from the 70's is. I admit I'm partial to some Neil Diamond  and Boney M tunes and my all time favouirte from that Era is Split Enz.