Comments for Rusty's Blog http://rustytanton.com I write things, which may or may not interest you. Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:51:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 Comment on A friendly reminder to keep local backups of anything that’s important to you by Amber http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CommentsForRustyTanton/~3/504968579/ Amber Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:07:15 +0000 http://rustytanton.com/?p=451#comment-916 Also, we don't always know until after the fact which items "mean something." Things that seem mundane at the time may later have huge personal meaning. I'm not a pack-rat with anything else but when it comes to preserving personal records, I am, for that reason. ]]> http://rustytanton.com/2009/01/04/a-friendly-reminder-to-keep-local-backups-of-anything-thats-important-to-you/comment-page-1/#comment-916 Comment on A friendly reminder to keep local backups of anything that’s important to you by Rusty http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CommentsForRustyTanton/~3/503613911/ Rusty Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:32:18 +0000 http://rustytanton.com/?p=451#comment-914 Thanks for the comment(s) Joseph. I don't know that there's a universal answer to what's worth holding onto, which is why I qualified the title of this post with "anything that's important to you."

There's a lot of stuff I've held onto that I thought at the time I would never want to read again, but in seeing it there now found pretty useful. Example: all the cover letters I sent out when I was looking for a job a few years ago. Aside from being hilarious, I can see which ones people responded to and which ones people didn't.

Also, an individual Twitter message is pretty worthless to me (as it is read live), but the aggregate of them is informative about my thought processes and routines at the time. Same goes for email in a lot of cases.

All this is YMMV, but I think it's good to have an anthropological record even if you have no plans of revisiting it and sifting through it. Disk space is cheap, losing something valuable because you didn't think it was important at the time could be expensive.
There’s a lot of stuff I’ve held onto that I thought at the time I would never want to read again, but in seeing it there now found pretty useful. Example: all the cover letters I sent out when I was looking for a job a few years ago. Aside from being hilarious, I can see which ones people responded to and which ones people didn’t.

Also, an individual Twitter message is pretty worthless to me (as it is read live), but the aggregate of them is informative about my thought processes and routines at the time. Same goes for email in a lot of cases.

All this is YMMV, but I think it’s good to have an anthropological record even if you have no plans of revisiting it and sifting through it. Disk space is cheap, losing something valuable because you didn’t think it was important at the time could be expensive.]]> http://rustytanton.com/2009/01/04/a-friendly-reminder-to-keep-local-backups-of-anything-thats-important-to-you/comment-page-1/#comment-914 Comment on A friendly reminder to keep local backups of anything that’s important to you by Joseph http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CommentsForRustyTanton/~3/503433162/ Joseph Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:46:59 +0000 http://rustytanton.com/?p=451#comment-913 Sorry to comment twice - I thought what I posted on Facebook about this story might be relevant to the discussion. Here it is in a slightly edited form:

<blockquote>This is an interesting post. For a long time, the reason I was so resistant to services like Facebook & Twitter was that I wouldn't own my content anymore - but the conversation has kind of moved away from blogs, and I didn't want to get left behind. In some ways, the interactions on these newer social media sites are richer than on my old blog. In some ways, not.

Anyway, the post did inspire me to make a PDF copy of my old blog. I'm about half-way through, and will probably make a few different back-ups of it to stash away. I may look into ways to back up some of my FB content, too, which is essentially where a lot of the energy spent blogging has shifted to.</blockquote>

In regards to backing things up - I do think the lines about what is valuable enough to warrant a back-up get kind of fuzzy. Is every single text message I send really worth holding onto? Every IM? Every @ message on Twitter? How are these things substantially different than an off-hand remark in conversation? If we save EVERYTHING, especially now that we are generating so much content, we run into the problem of not being able to pick out the items that really "mean something." I think this post is valuable, though, because it makes people start thinking about these issues - and forces them to determine how much of their content they really want to trust with a 3rd party.
This is an interesting post. For a long time, the reason I was so resistant to services like Facebook & Twitter was that I wouldn’t own my content anymore - but the conversation has kind of moved away from blogs, and I didn’t want to get left behind. In some ways, the interactions on these newer social media sites are richer than on my old blog. In some ways, not.

Anyway, the post did inspire me to make a PDF copy of my old blog. I’m about half-way through, and will probably make a few different back-ups of it to stash away. I may look into ways to back up some of my FB content, too, which is essentially where a lot of the energy spent blogging has shifted to.


In regards to backing things up - I do think the lines about what is valuable enough to warrant a back-up get kind of fuzzy. Is every single text message I send really worth holding onto? Every IM? Every @ message on Twitter? How are these things substantially different than an off-hand remark in conversation? If we save EVERYTHING, especially now that we are generating so much content, we run into the problem of not being able to pick out the items that really “mean something.” I think this post is valuable, though, because it makes people start thinking about these issues - and forces them to determine how much of their content they really want to trust with a 3rd party.]]> http://rustytanton.com/2009/01/04/a-friendly-reminder-to-keep-local-backups-of-anything-thats-important-to-you/comment-page-1/#comment-913 Comment on A friendly reminder to keep local backups of anything that’s important to you by Chris Meadows http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CommentsForRustyTanton/~3/502913853/ Chris Meadows Sun, 04 Jan 2009 21:29:14 +0000 http://rustytanton.com/?p=451#comment-911 For more coverage of Ficlets's demise, check out my article at http://www.teleread.org/blog/2009/01/04/requiem-for-ficletscom/

Also, I have written a tutorial to advise those people who have written dozens or hundreds of ficlets as to how they can back them all up much more quickly and easily than pasting them one by one into a word processor:

http://terrania.us/saveyourbabies.html http://www.teleread.org/blog/2009/01/04/requiem-for-ficletscom/

Also, I have written a tutorial to advise those people who have written dozens or hundreds of ficlets as to how they can back them all up much more quickly and easily than pasting them one by one into a word processor:

http://terrania.us/saveyourbabies.html]]> http://rustytanton.com/2009/01/04/a-friendly-reminder-to-keep-local-backups-of-anything-thats-important-to-you/comment-page-1/#comment-911 Comment on A friendly reminder to keep local backups of anything that’s important to you by Amber http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CommentsForRustyTanton/~3/502913854/ Amber Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:10:57 +0000 http://rustytanton.com/?p=451#comment-910 OMG tags!!

Good post. And some of the comments on Jason Scott's post really pissed me off. I think his post was excellent and spot-on, but some of those people REALLY have their heads up their asses. Talk about high horses.
Good post. And some of the comments on Jason Scott’s post really pissed me off. I think his post was excellent and spot-on, but some of those people REALLY have their heads up their asses. Talk about high horses.]]> http://rustytanton.com/2009/01/04/a-friendly-reminder-to-keep-local-backups-of-anything-thats-important-to-you/comment-page-1/#comment-910 Comment on A friendly reminder to keep local backups of anything that’s important to you by Joseph http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CommentsForRustyTanton/~3/502913855/ Joseph Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:48:14 +0000 http://rustytanton.com/?p=451#comment-909 Re: LinkedIn -- if you really want to save your messages on that service, you can set your profile to send you messages via e-mail when someone e-mails you there. I think typically, they quote the entire message in the e-mail. ]]> http://rustytanton.com/2009/01/04/a-friendly-reminder-to-keep-local-backups-of-anything-thats-important-to-you/comment-page-1/#comment-909 Comment on Video for my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary by Sara http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CommentsForRustyTanton/~3/499814885/ Sara Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:06:09 +0000 http://rustytanton.com/?p=443#comment-906 Awww, I wish I had the skills to have done something like this for my parents' 40th earlier this year. Very cool Rusty. ]]> http://rustytanton.com/2008/12/31/video-for-my-parents-40th-wedding-anniversary/comment-page-1/#comment-906 Comment on Video for my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary by griftdrift http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CommentsForRustyTanton/~3/499743812/ griftdrift Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:45:57 +0000 http://rustytanton.com/?p=443#comment-905 "Chris isn't dead and Rusty isn't in jail"

HAH!

That's an amazing video.
HAH!

That’s an amazing video.]]> http://rustytanton.com/2008/12/31/video-for-my-parents-40th-wedding-anniversary/comment-page-1/#comment-905 Comment on Video for my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary by Rusty http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CommentsForRustyTanton/~3/499716132/ Rusty Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:47:38 +0000 http://rustytanton.com/?p=443#comment-904 Thanks everyone! ]]> http://rustytanton.com/2008/12/31/video-for-my-parents-40th-wedding-anniversary/comment-page-1/#comment-904 Comment on Video for my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary by Joseph http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CommentsForRustyTanton/~3/499716134/ Joseph Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:42:52 +0000 http://rustytanton.com/?p=443#comment-903 First, congratulations to your parents on 40 great years - here's hoping they have at least 40 more!

Also, I wanted to say that the production values on this are really good. The music is at all the right places, the shots are well done, and it moves along at a great pace. Awesome work!
Also, I wanted to say that the production values on this are really good. The music is at all the right places, the shots are well done, and it moves along at a great pace. Awesome work!]]> http://rustytanton.com/2008/12/31/video-for-my-parents-40th-wedding-anniversary/comment-page-1/#comment-903