About a week ago I found some old journals and have been typing them up. I suppose there’s little point having electronic back-ups unless the data is kept somewhere safe (a remote location). Any ideas? I could give CDs to family members, but how do I know they wouldn’t go and read them? 
‘Promptly lose them’ would be more likely. Several years into the future, after my journals and computers have all been flooded out or burned to a crisp or whatever, I would ask the family members for my back-up CDs, and they would reply “what back-up CDs?”
I have to find a lasting, secure, accessible location that I wouldn’t forget about. (“Opal sesame!… no, that password didn’t work. And where is it anyway? This cave? That one?”)
While typing up the journals in Microsoft Word, I wondered how big each file can be without risk of it corrupting. I consulted the internet, and ’32MB’ is a figure that comes up a few times. As straight text, it wouldn’t be a problem, but I’m starting to add photographs as well. I tend to buy bright notebooks, ensuring each journal is distinct and recognizable. Keeping photos of the covers on the Word documents would be a good cross-reference (as well as a souvenir, supposing that something does happen to the original journals).
As you see, I’ve got it all worked out (except for one or two details), and am doubtless doing it all in the most labour-intensive way possible.
2005 Journal Cover
Here’s the cover for the 2005 journal I’m typing up just now — I bought it in Woolworths for £1.49. Let’s see if there’s a journal snippet I can bear to share… this was from before I started blogging, so it’s unlikely to be repeating anything I’ve already said.
Friday 21 January 2005
Mum abandoned me by the bears in Cancer Research UK. I nearly bought a Disney bear video but decided it wasn’t my scene. So I trudged back to her house, rapping myself at every step with her windscreen wipers, and had bread and margarine for lunch.
Then I walked Thundercloud, sat with my sloth and played ‘Kings and Aces’ on Mum’s computer. Then we reorganized Mum’s I.E. toolbar.
When Mum came home we shared a dish of fish. I showed her the toolbar and then she drove us out to feed Jim, then drove me and the sloth and the new kitchen mat home and I tried to watch Cadfael on ITV3 but it wasn’t subtitled, though the TV Guide said it was. The last time they had Cadfael (a week ago) it WAS subtitled. But it wasn’t subtitled before that. They confuse me.
I wasn’t really in the mood to watch TV anyway, so I turned the TV off without a mumble. I forgot how I started that sentence because I wouldn’t have ended it that way. Very sleepy. Read a letter from Annie.
Wrote an email to Joy about the newspaper article she sent me a week ago. ‘Did the animals sense the tsunamis?’
At some point during the evening I got quite heavy-hearted and wasn’t sure why. I had a feeling I would remember something specific if I thought about it hard enough but I didn’t want to. Though later I remembered I felt sad when Annie said in her letter that she can’t stand Jim Carrey. Mum said the same yesterday – “I wouldn’t watch Liar Liar if you paid me.” I know he overacts but I’m not sure where this strong dislike comes from.
Oh yes, E was telling us this morning that Emma came home from holiday and her parents have a Siamese cat that just turned up on their doorstep and they were trying to find the owner – rather reluctantly as they didn’t think it was possible to find owners. They wanted information on why Siamese cats were so loud and wouldn’t stop yowling. Then E emailed me and said they found the owner and it was the next-door neighbour, who didn’t want the cat any more.
That’s it right there… the defaulting Siamese owner depressed me. There we are trying to say “yes we want to know where our cats stray to,” and this person just didn’t. What are they going to learn from that?
I was sitting here eating an expensive Baci chocolate. A little gold slip of paper fell out of it when I unwrapped it. It said ‘Love asks me no questions and gives me endless support.’
My racing frog (introduced in my last blog post) was 3rd in today’s race, and has qualified for the Superfrog this coming Sunday. He won’t do well in the Superfrog as he’s too young and new, but it’s nice for him to get in this early. This morning he caught a Praying Mantis powerboost in his trap, which is better than yesterday’s Thermal Core and Pike Scales. (Strangely. Is that a statement about the power of stealth and cunning?) Cross your digits for him…
Click image to supersize…
