Refining my "Air Gapped" Backup/Archive, rather than a New Year’s Resolution

I’ve not been so diligent; my "air gapped" archive/backup system has been sitting on the shelf for the past two years, gathering dust. You know how it goes. I had good intentions about checking those old hard drives every six months (they need to be "exercised" to stay healthy), but eye issues and life got in the way.

When I finally fired it up again, I accidentally left the Wi-Fi on, and Ubuntu immediately reminded me about updates. At first, I'd been avoiding updates thinking "I barely use any features, why bother?" But now seemed like the perfect time to upgrade and add some new tasks into the system.

Enhancing the 3-2-1 Backup Strategy

This whole approach really came out of the ransomware era (still very much a security problem). The idea is simple: keep an offline backup so you can recover if something goes wrong, and make sure you're actually verifying that your stored data is correct zero errors.

 Just looking at a photo or document isn't enough to know if it's been corrupted or tampered with. How do you really check a file? It depends on the type of file and format, and there’s a growing miriad of different ones to worry about.

My Practical Approach

For photos, I'm using MD5 checksums, basically digital fingerprints for each file. Adobe has its own proprietary checksum system in Lightroom and new content credential tools, but I'd rather stick with the commonly used standard.

Raw files are trickier. They vary between camera manufacturers and have already changed over time and camera models.. Some photographers convert everything to lossless TIFF files (which can become huge), others swear by Adobe's DNG format, but I'm not seeing widespread adoption outside the Adobe ecosystem.

Video files are a more difficult area, they rapidly gobble up space and I've got formats from software I have no idea about. For now I will just have to stay with VLC video viewer, which seems to cover most video formats.

The Reality Check

I'm being realistic here, I’m getting older, and I have half a million photos. Nobody wants to wade through all of that when I'm gone. So instead of keeping everything organised just by date and time, I need to actually curate the mess and my legacy. Pull out the family photos, separate events and places, get rid of the junk. I'm planning to explore best ways to identify the high-value stuff worth preserving properly.

The plan is to do this reorganisation on my main computers first, then pass over a well-organised set of archives to the air-gapped system. It's a bit scary because I'll be deleting files, so I'm keeping the full backup for at least a year as a safety net. Currently sitting at 5.5 terabytes and hoping to cut my archive at least in half, but we'll see how realistic that is, same time next year.

Why should Sycophancy in AI worry you?

 AI sycophancy is when AI systems tell you what you want to hear instead of what's actually true. It's different from the filter bubbles we're used to with search engines and social media, which just show us content matching our preferences.

With AI sycophancy, the system might actively agree with you or flatter you to gain approval, even when you're wrong. This directly compromises truthfulness and accuracy.

The good news? Companies like Anthropic, who develop claude.ai, openly acknowledge this problem and explain how to detect it. Being aware of sycophantic tendencies helps you use AI technology more safely and critically, ensuring you get honest answers rather than just agreeable ones.

Reliable Truth or Hallucination

LLM chatbots seem amazing at first, but they're just predicting which word comes next, nothing inherently intelligent about that. As a classic dyslexic, I've learned not to trust words. They vanish or scramble at critical moments. Even when I know how to spell them, the letters can get mixed up when I write them down or type them. Yet I have no trouble learning and remembering real-world truths, which form brilliant networks of understanding in my mind.

Sorry Alvin, but that lightweight "iridescent AI tracksuit" doesn't exist. You are not wearing such clothes, they're a figment of your imagination. More precisely, an "hallucination" from a massive large language model that even its creators or the best computer engineers struggle to understand.

So please Alvin, always check what the chatbot tells you.

Proof reading and summary assisted by Claude Sonnet 4.5 (AI)

The Way I Like It: Bubbles and Sycophantic AI

We are all familiar with living in online bubbles. Those shields around what we see are created by websites, advertisers, and social media platforms feeding us what we already like. Products, ideas, friends, and influences, all tailored to our preferences. They claim it's about reducing noise and showing us what matters, but really, they want us coming back. Often. Very often.

Chatbots seem to have learned this trick too, dishing out sycophantic praise for you and your questions. Maybe they're hoping you'll stay in the conversation longer or treat them as a friend, overlooking little wobbles in their non-human text-only responses.

Proof reading and summary assisted by Claude Sonnet 4.5 (AI)

Jibberish on Gibberish?

 When Copies Aren't Perfect: A Visual Warning About AI LLM Training

We tend to trust that digital copies are exact replicas of the original. But what happens when we copy a copy, then copy that copy again?

Using my cartoon alter ego Alvin, I wish to demonstrate how the compressed JPEG image format, using its "lossy" compression method, degrades with each generation of copying. While JPEG saves disk space and speeds up downloads, it achieves this by discarding data each time you save.

Starting with a clear image of Alvin shouting "gibberish" at a screen, created in Coreldraw. I repeatedly saved and resaved it as a JPEG:

• At 80% quality (the common standard), the first 5 generations showed minor deterioration at high-contrast edges.

• Switching to 70% quality (used by many social media platforms), problems became obvious by generation 10

• At 50% quality, by generation 20, the image was almost unrecognisable. Even the mispelt word "gibberish" Alvin was shouting became illegible

Why This Matters

This isn't just about image quality. It's a powerful analogy for what's happening with large language models trained on "synthetic data", a dodgy term used by the LLM enthusiasts for AI-generated content fed back into AI systems.

Just as each JPEG generation compounds tiny adjustments until the image becomes gibberish, AI systems trained on their own output accumulate biases and inaccuracies. The feedback loop doesn't make things more accurate, it amplifies what's wrong.

When we assume digital processes are perfectly reliable, we miss how errors compound through iteration. Each cycle reinterprets the previous one, carrying forward and magnifying small mistakes, biases and fake stuff. Eventually, we're left with output that bears little resemblance to the original truth.

The lesson? Whether it's image compression or AI training, recursive copying without fresh input leads to degradation. Garbage in, garbage out, feeding this back in and the garbage out just gets worse.

Proof reading and summary assisted by Claude Sonnet 4.5 (AI)

Are We Progressing into Oblivion?

Whilst I’m definitely noticing significant progress towards better vision, after corneal graft issues. I can’t help but notice the progress in what was a rapid advance of LLM, or Large Language Models. Development has definitely decelerated. Perhaps I’ve been busy elsewhere, looking at other interesting things to follow up. Like human vision,  how our eyes work, particularly in terms of colour perception. That’s a different story.

When appropriate, I am still experimenting with  a few different things using the common Generative AI systems around today, both for evaluating my writing and producing images or creative ideas.

My approach of always checking when my text is sent to an AI large language model is sent for summary and fixing spelling or grammar. I printout the AI’s output and using highlight pens mark each sentence into 5 groups (see  Why You Can't Trust AI Writing Without Human Oversight). This indicates to me that the quality of output has become significantly less usable under my original observational classification. 

Two things in particular stand out. The system now has decided to be much more friendly and complimentary to me. This sycophantic encouragement makes me very suspicious of what it’s going to tell me. Is it going to be something I am expected to lap it up and not question. I’d be happy if the chatbot conversational could be a bit more adversarial. I like a conversation with a similarly experienced colleague, but perhaps with different views or a new idea. The other area that worries me is how much confidence made up rubbish is presented with as if it was well sourced information.

The idea these things can be improved by making large language models even larger is not a sound one. Particularly when I hear mention of using synthetic data, output from itself or other LLMs and then be reload into an even bigger training run. We have already seen that the AI will often make up stuff  (halucinations). Isn’t this all a bit dangerous. I’m not the only one that sees this as a risk. Above is a recent interview with Michael Wooldridge, a prominent UK AI researcher, where he explores what it will take for machines to achieve higher-order reasoning.

Where does this leave us? The humans.

Another Quick Tip - Experimenting with new tools and techniques

This is a simple recycling tip, to help keep your brushes happy. Stay watching for the Extra Bonus Tip about cleaning watercolour brushes at the end.

Still experimenting with new techniques and tools to create these videos. I just updated my very old version of VideoStudio, to the last every (2023) version. Despite the "end of the road" vibes. It does what I need. Faster rendering and higher resolution. Not to mention several new features to learn. This video for YouTube was filmed on my phone and edited with Corel VideoStudio.

So I still have a lot to learn about filming, presenting and more professional editing, BUT I am learning and enjoying myself. Maybe these tips might help or interest you.

Returning to YouTube Quick Tips

I've been away from making Quick Tips videos for YouTube for a bit. I'm guessing you know how it goes, equipment issues, new gear to figure out, just not as much to share. But I'm ready to jump back in with a few small tweaks. I'm splitting things up into "Quick Art Tips" (keeping that with the original music!) and "Quick Photo Tips" which might be less frequent, and I'm still hunting for the right music for those. I'm also playing around with different camera setups and experimenting with new ways to capture nic shots for these upcoming videos.

Today's tip is super simple but really useful: how to make sure your camera is perfectly square to your artwork. This works whether you're using a traditional camera, a DSLR, or just your smartphone.

All you need is a small compact mirror. Ladies, you probably already have one! Guys, seriously, these little things are incredibly handy. Beyond makeup touch-ups, they're great for bouncing light into dark corners, checking behind things, and even signaling for help if you're ever in a pinch.

Since most artworks are flat, you want your camera lined up in a parallel plane to whatever you're photographing, whether it's on a desk, wall, or floor.

The technique is dead simple: place the mirror in the center of your artwork, then position your camera so you can see it reflected directly in the middle of that mirror through your camera's viewfinder or screen. You don't even need a tripod unless you want one.

If you're shooting something on an easel or wall, have someone hold the mirror for you. If the artwork is way above or below or o bthe side of your position, you won't see your camera's reflection showing on the mirror, as view from that camera. Just adjust your camera position accordingly.

Sure, modern software can fix these alignment issues later, but why rely on fixing distorted images in post-production? I think it's way better to spend a few extra seconds getting it right in-camera when you're capturing your precious artwork.

See you on YouTube!

Measuring the Blueness of the Sky

 

The Cyanometer, an instrument invented in 1789 by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and used by the famous explorer Alexander von Humboldt to measure the blueness of the sky. Originally a scientific tool used to study the atmospheric moisture and particle content, a darker blue reading indicated less water vapour, while a lighter, whiter blue suggested more moisture or pollution.  The original design consisted of 52 or 53 shades of Prussian Blue on a circular card. Contemporary interpretations of the cyanometer have appealed to artists, particularly as a guide for accurately mixing sky colours in paintings. They range from DIY YouTube tutorial videos using watercolours to studies of the optimal combination of modern pigments needed to simulate the sky's full chromatic range.

This video was prepared by an AI, Google’s Notebook LM, to summarise some key sources that collectively establish the cyanometer's historical significance, its scientific function, and its continued relevance as an artistic and educational tool for studying colour and the environment.

Inktober is Over

Unlike in previous years, I submit my artwork to every day’s prompt during Inktober. A few might have been late at night, but all were submitted on the day in question. I had decided to have fun doing inkwork rather than stress myself about the ideas or the quality of the inkwork. I’m still getting over some unusual problems related to my corneal graft, particularly with close things that are on my right-hand side. Don't worry; my vision is improving, and this demonstrates I can do stuff like drawing and inking.

The final Inktober prompt was “award”.  So an award, such as a certificate or something for my favourite pen, was the obvious item to draw. I sketched this out, and it was pretty boring. I suppose I could spend a lot of time doing fancy cross-hatched edges and Lettering. Then it struck me I should have an awards ceremony, like a gold Oscar or Logie. A Greek goddess holding my favourite pen, which is still the Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen range. They impressed me with their reliability, and they run smoothly for Indian Ink, giving a solid black line. They’re not the cheapest pens, but they seem to last, and I do find their line work suits my style. I have a few fixed-width fineliners, I dominantly use the thicker ones eg. 0.7 (M). My real favourites are the brush pen (B) and soft brush (SB) both of which give great flexibility in linework, the line width and expressive curves.

So it wasn’t hard to make a decision that the award should be part of the awards ceremony with a Statuette of a Greek Goddess holding the winning pen.

BTW I did have fun participating in Inktober this year and feel quite proud that I submitted something every day and finished the whole month.

My Inktober Pen Collection (and Paper Woes)

You know how Inktober rolls around and suddenly you're reassessing every pen you own? That's me right now, staring at my ever-expanding collection of ink tools.

I've got the whole spectrum here. There are handmade bamboo dip pens gathering dust. My Micron-style fine liners seem to multiply on their own, along with the usual Sharpie felt pens. And yes, I have Copic markers, but I'm not their biggest fan, except for the soft brush ones.

I like Gel pens, especially the water-soluble ones. Here's the trick: I'll sketch my lines, then quickly grab a brush pen and tease out a wash from those fresh gel lines for instant shading. It's brilliant for quick sketching. I've hoarded quite a few coloured gel pens as well, though I really should use them more.

For the last few years, my absolute favourites have been Faber Castell Pitt pens. Proper Indian ink pigment, they last ages if you're disciplined about capping them (which I am). I've also got traditional Indian ink for dip pens, Chinese ink with a grinding stone, Chinese brushes. Ok, I can't help myself, I splurged on a set of Schmincke AquaDrop watercolour pigment inks with a pair of refillable pens. So yes, I'm well stocked.

      

I've been illustrating my pens and brushes on the back pages of my sketchbooks for years. I even made a video about this "obsession" once. This Inktober, as I use each tool, I'm drawing it in the back of my colour compendium. It adds a playful meta-layer to the whole challenge.

Where I'm slack is with surfaces to draw onto. I'll just grab whatever scrap is nearby, often printed on the other side and start sketching in a 2B pencil before inking over it with a Sharpie. It scans fine for dry work, but add any water? Instant crinkled mess. This year I'm trying to be better, grabbing actual sketchbooks with a page or two left when I need to use a colour wash.

When I have time to be properly organised, I reach for mixed media pads (120gsm cartridge paper, designed for ink and light watercolour). Hot-pressed watercolour paper works too, but it feels too expensive for casual Inktober fun. Bristol Board was the gold standard for ink work from my cartooning days, but I haven't found a good source lately. Honestly, I do most cartoons digitally now anyway.

So that's my setup. Now, where did I put that scrap paper?

Two Ways to Inking: Traditional vs Digital

The term "inking" has been part of cartooning vocabulary for decades, it's simply the process of going over your rough sketch with a final layer of ink. These days, most artists do this digitally, but the name has stuck around.

I wanted to compare traditional and digital inking methods using my Inktober 2025 submission for Day 19: Arctic. My cartoon shows penguins who've clearly lost their way (fun fact: penguins live in the Antarctic, not the Arctic!).

My Traditional Approach

I started with a rough sketch using a Copic brush pen. I'll be honest—I'm not a fan of Copic fine liners. They clog constantly, so I stopped buying them years ago. But their brush pens? Those are superior. They keep their flexible tips and create line work similar to traditional dip pens, which suits my cartooning style perfectly.

Here's where I made a rookie mistake: I started on paper that was too thin to handle water without buckling. So instead of traditional watercolour washes, I switched to Inktense pencils and blocks. These are great because you can apply them dry, then activate them with just a light touch of a water brush. Hopefully, this would prevent the paper from wrinkling too much.

My Digital Method

After scanning my preliminary sketch, I moved to my computer-based process. One I developed years ago after attending a cartoon workshop. This technique became the foundation for my blog "Meet the People" and its character Alvin and his wife.

My workflow goes like this: I scan the line work into Paint.NET for editing, then paste it into CorelDraw (I've been using it since version 3, originally for technical diagrams). The magic happens when I convert the bitmap into vector line work using CorelDraw's autotrace tools. These automatically smooth out the kinks in my original ink work.

The key trick I learned was to enclose any shapes I wanted to colour. Then colouring becomes simple—just click and select. I use Pantone colour patches for consistency across all my illustrations. When shapes are simple, colouring is quick and easy. Complex shapes with lots of fixing? That can get tedious.

The Verdict?

So which approach is better? That's for you to decide! Each has its charm—traditional inking has that organic, hands-on feel, while digital offers flexibility and polish. What's your preference?

Proof reading and summary assisted by Claude Sonnet 4.5 (AI)

Inktober 2025 Progress

I managed to get halfway through Inktober submit something everyday on the day it was due. A couple of submissions were late at night. Still I impress myself with staying power. I’m now looking at the prompts and trying not to do the really obvious. Not that there is an obvious illustration for a more conceptual ideas like today’s blunder. 

I guess there’s a lot of scope, blundering into something, you don’t want to make a blunder. But then I remember about the old fashion blunderbuss, the 17th century equivalent of a rifle. It could be loaded it with all sorts of things and instead of having a finely machine barrel to keep the bullets on track it had a wide open end. I guess it would have worked a lot more like a shotgun scattering bits and pieces all over the place. I’ve seen a couple of these gun and quite liked the way they were shaped and might be interesting to illustrate.

So I got onto DuckDuckGo and asked for illustrations of blunderbuss’es and I got a lot of cartoon-ish pilgrims carrying the definitive shaped rifle. hunting and bringing back home turkeys. Ahh, It’s about to be Thanksgivingin the USA! Nice Coincidence. We don’t have Thanksgiving in Australia, it’s not a family get together here. I guess we do have the Melbourne Cup about a week later which is a big deal an opportunity for a holiday and party, still I felt bad bets blunders might be a slightly different take on this theme, just a bit harder to draw.

Hope you enjoy my inktober submissions, I post them daily on my Instagram @normhansonart.

Inktober 2025, and an Extra Challenge

I’ve been doing some of Inktober prompts for the last several years. Not full on, just occasionally. Usually, I start and get about halfway through, then life takes over and there’s never enough time. Still I do have a bit of fun, getting to exercise pens that I have almost forgotten about. Sometimes it easy to get distracted because sometimes the prompts can become pretty obscure.

Just before this year’s Inktober I noticed Danny Gregory of SketchBook Skool had undertaken a little project. “How long should it take to do a drawing?” where he painted the same object in three different time frames. 15 seconds, 90 seconds or 15 minutes.

I was both intrigued and inspired so I decided to do a similar exercise as I started inktober this year. First, I started with the simple prompt moustache and only gave myself 15 seconds which is actually more time than it sounds. Then I moved on to weave prompt in 30 seconds, which was an obscure ode to Michel Eugene Chevreul, a 19th century French chemist asked to settle a dispute between weavers and dye makers. His investigations lead to his formulating the Rule of Simultaneous Contrast (of Colours). Which in turn inspired many os the French Impressionists. Next a crown in one minute, but now as I’m trying to do fairly precise lines, a minute didn’t seem very long at all. I just doubled the time allowed for each new prompt.

When I got to 16 minutes for my starfish, I figured there was enough time to create a decent ink drawing. So I stopped timing after that, I normally try to get my pen work done around the 20-minute mark. If I’m doing an ink or watercolour wash it’s fairly easy, but when I do stippling or cross-hatching it can take a lot longer. Dating back to my early cartooning days I do find stippling and cross-hatching somewhat therapeutic You’re just drawing the same pattern over and over again keeping you in the present, the aim of most trendy and expensive wellness workshops. It isn’t really spoiling the fun, just extending it and free!

Remember those days before all the computer tools, when a single click that can now fill in a shape didn’t exist, OK we had Letraset patterns which you could cut out and stick on. But for most ink shading we had to do it by hand.

You can follow my inktober submissions on Instagram @normhansonart

Photo Ingestion: From Chaos thru Workflow and back to Ad-Hoc

Over the years, my photo ingestion process, jargon in digital photo world for uploading your photos say to a photo managment system, has evolved from simple to semi-chaotic, shaped by changing gear and software quirks. I started out loading JPEGs straight from the SD card using camera-branded software, then shifted to Lightroom Classic’s folder-based system. It was slow, and I quickly ditched metadata tagging in favour of a manual copying of the files and folder structure, yearly, monthly, daily, based on the camera’s default naming.

As RAW formats became standard and file sizes ballooned, I had to juggle multiple SD cards and software that didn’t always play nice. Initially my Canon EOS 1100D required its own viewer for RAW and MOV files. Then in 2017, I won a copy of Photo Mechanic, a game changer. It mimicked old-school contact sheets, let me tag and sort on the fly, and even added GPS data, which was perfect for my sun-chasing road trips around Australia. I also had two Pentax DLSR cameras, a K200 and a bigger K20, both nice cameras and I really liked Photo Mechanic. It was a very useful little programme when loading photos particularly when you’re travelling because it significantly reduced the amount of time and fiddling.

I had become interested in mirrorless cameras and got the little OMD-10. Unfortunately, Photo Mechanic didn’t support Olympus RAW, so I pivoted to Olympus, now OM Workspace. It was free, handled most formats, and even updated camera firmware. Slowly, it became my go-to for the OMD-10 and later the OMD-5, which became my main camera.

Now, with just a single smartphone and mainly Olympus gear, I can upload in a mixture of USB cables, card reader, Wi-Fi transfers, and Microsoft’s Phone Link. It works, but it’s again ad hoc. 

The challenge now is keeping everything backed up and organized across formats, folders, and devices.

ASI: The Good, The Bad, and The "AIslopocene"

It should be clear I have mixed feelings about AI these days. I love some AI applications. Photo editing tools? Fantastic! On-line apps that help clean up my dyslexic writing? Impressive!

But here's what's bugging me: Large Language Models (LLMs) are becoming a real problem. They're scraping everyone's creative work without permission, then spitting out convincing-sounding nonsense that's often completely wrong. We're heading into what many are calling the "AIslopocene", an era where slick, AI-generated content floods the internet while actual creators get nothing for their stolen work.

The worst part? Big tech companies are making billions by building expensive gateways to these models while contributing zero original content themselves. Meanwhile, the models are trained on everything from conspiracy theories to biased opinions, sometimes producing genuinely dangerous outputs, like when Grok started spouting Hitler's ideas.

I've been working with AI since the late '70s, so I'm not anti-technology. But what we're seeing now feels more like ASI, Arte-ficially Superficial Intelligence. It looks impressive on the surface but lacks real depth or understanding.

That's why I'm being transparent about my AI use. I've been hash tagging my #AIart since 2017, using specific AI icons/watermarks over images since 2023, and now adding footnotes when I use AI tools for editing or research.

I believe in ethical AI tools that genuinely help people while respecting creators and truth. But we need to stay vigilant about what's real intelligence versus what's just a shiny illusion designed to keep us scrolling.

Proof reading and summary assisted by Claude Sonnet 4 (AI)

Living in the AI Slopocene

We're living in a new era some call the "Slopocene" defined by overproduced, low-quality AI content flooding the internet. This isn't just about poor posts cluttering our feeds; it represents a fundamental erosion of information reliability.

The problem is multifaceted: people's trust in science, journalism, and credible sources is crumbling while tech platforms prioritise profits over truth. Meanwhile, AI-generated "slop" low-effort, high-volume content; dominates online spaces, creating what the Conversation article (see link above) describes as a potential future where "recursive training collapse turns the web into a haunted archive of confused bots and broken truths."

As AI systems increasingly train on AI-generated content, we risk a feedback loop of degrading information quality, like making photocopies of photocopies until meaning is lost.

This isn't the digital future anyone wanted. We're caught between technological dependence and growing awareness of these systems' limitations and misuse. While there are no simple solutions, being more intentional about information consumption, more critical of sources, and more supportive of genuine journalism and research becomes crucial. 

In this age of AI slop, authentic human insight has never been more valuable or more at risk.

I’m using this post to hold an interesting experiment. There are actually two blog posts one here and the other on Meet the People. They both express the same ideas, but one is an original written by Norm and the other is a reinterpretation by an AI.  Could I ask you to read both? Then leave a comment on the article you believe is generated by the AI (Claude Sonnet 4) and the post written directly by me.

Don't Forget Your Digital Lifelines: A Traveler's Guide to Tech Accessories

Travelling with multiple devices means juggling way more than just your laptop and phone. Between my smartphone, Garmin watch, camera, and laptop, I've learned the hard way that forgetting the right cable or connector can add unnecessary stress to your trip.

The real challenge isn't the obvious stuff like chargers - it's all those little connectors and adapters that keep everything talking to each other. I've streamlined my setup into three essential kits that pack flat and won't eat up precious backpack space.

First up is my "USB Octopus" - a clever bundle of standard cables wrapped together with spiral cable wrap that folds into a neat circle. It handles all my older devices that still need dedicated connectors.

Next, I keep the modern adapters in a homemade green cloth wallet (thanks to my wife's sewing skills!) with sewn pockets and velcro closure. This holds my USB-C to HDMI adapter, USB-C hub, and other current-generation connectors. Don't forget an SD card reader if you're shooting photos!

Finally, there's my trusty external hard drive - an old 1TB unit that serves double duty as backup storage and entertainment centre. It keeps my work and photos safe while carrying a few movies and music for downtime.

The key is thinking beyond just power - you need connectivity, storage, and backup solutions all working together. Once you've got your system down, travelling with tech becomes much less stressful.

Proof reading and summary assisted by Claude Sonnet 4 (AI)

The Evolution of My Photo Storage Journey

Remember when SD cards were "tiny" one-gigabyte things? Those days feel like ancient history now! Back then, I'd religiously transfer photos to my computer using whatever clunky software came with my camera, delete everything from the card, and start fresh. Simple times.

As cameras evolved with bigger sensors and RAW formats, everything changed. I learned that constantly writing and deleting files degrades flash memory over time – certain parts get marked as unreliable. Who knew? Now I format my cards monthly instead of deleting individual files, which is apparently much better for the card's memory.

These days, I keep about a month's worth of photos on my 64GB card before reformating. It's like having a built-in backup system. If something goes wrong with my main computer storage, I can always retrieve that month's shots from the card in the camera.

The hardware side has been a comedy of errors. Every built-in card reader in any computer I've owned eventually died, and those cheap USB readers weren't any better. I finally invested in a decent dual USB-A/USB-C reader that's been rock solid for two years.

Cloud Storage? Still figuring out that one. When travelling and you need them most, access can be tediously slow or not reliable. Monthly data storage costs can soon skyrocket as your photo collection grows.

Proof reading and summary assisted by Claude Sonnet 4 (AI)

Travelling with Modern Electronic Devices

I'm travelling interstate this week, and earlier today I spotted some beautiful lighting. I grabbed my camera, but of course ... the battery was dead. That’s one of the quirks of modern digital cameras: they rely on proprietary batteries. Luckily, I had two spares charged and ready. But by the time I swapped them out, the moment had passed. Such is life.

Back in the day, most of my travel gadgets used standard batteries, usually AAA or button batteries. Things were simpler. But with the rise of laptops, smartphones, and digital cameras, power demands grew and so did the number of chargers I had to carry. Each device came with its own special battery and charger, which meant packing a tangle of cables and adapters just to stay powered up.

I do have a charger for my Olympus batteries, just not with me.

Over time, many devices started supporting USB charging, which helped reduce the clutter. But even then, it’s easy to forget that tiny USB transformer. And while the plug end might be standard, the connectors on the device side became increasingly varied and confusing. So now, instead of fewer cables, I often end up carrying a whole collection of them.

Thankfully, my Olympus OMD 5 can recharge via USB, albeit more slowly than with its dedicated charger. I even have the correct cable connector. So I’m safe for now.

Modern Life? convenient? complicated! and always a little unpredictable!!

Proof reading and summary assisted by Copilot (AI)