~ Curious Charlie ~

DHA meetings anyone? @ Saturday, August 04, 2012

I've just realized something, as I'm sorting of the many many, 243 to be exact, photos I took this week... I'm a digital hoarder. Perhaps someone should start "Digital Hoarders Anonymous Meetings", or at least write a book on it :P As technology is becoming cheaper and better, it's easy becoming easier to store stuff. No longer are the days where computers had floppy disk drives and music was recorded on cassette tapes. Today you can easier store thousands of photos or hundreds of song on something the size of your finger, something that no one would have thought possible in the 50s, a usb. And then there's the external hard drives, yes it's a great idea to back-up regularly, part of the computer maintenance routine, along with cleaning out dust bunnies from the air vents. But not if you're doing it daily, that's just counter-productive, but I admit I have been there, I used to back up my usb daily. I also used to always check to make sure all the windows and doors were locked, but that's another story.

A bit of googling suggests that I'm not that much of a hoarder, while others have double digits in their email accounts I don't, while I save emails it's just what I need for records e.g. paypal stuff. I don't keep random junk, and my inbox only contains current stuff. After usage/replying most emails are deleted, a few selected ones are filed away in perfectly organized folders. Organized clutter?

My real issue lies with photos. I think it began long before I got my hands on a camera. It started when I got my first PC, and I discovered pictures of pretty things on the internet. I like to collect pictures of pretty things, things that inspire too - so it's not all useless, and then there's the foodporn. It's that bad, I have 890 pictures of food I collected, that doesn't includes photos I've taken myself. I have so many pictures that when I save a picture from the internet the system lags for a few seconds, more than normal and my graphics card has issues.

The Stats:
My Pictures - 210 folders, 9380 files - pictures I collected mainly.
Photos - 119 folders, 6109 files - photos I took
In Total = 329 folder, 15,489 imgs
And at the moment they're increasing at around +100 a week

If all my photos were printed, as they were a decade or two ago I think I need at least one shipping container to contain it all.

Something I love about blogging is an opportunity to use my photos. But I take too many photos. This week I took 97 pictures of 4 doughnuts with my mini. I would take less if I used my DSLR, but that's not convenient to bring everywhere I go. And if I go somewhere where there's a photo op I get very upset - something that's only ever happened once, not having a camera on me that is. While my photos will be thoroughly sorted, and half will be deleted, I will still be left with at least 40 pictures of doughnuts. Why do I need 40 pictures of doughnuts?! I don't know... but I don't want to delete them... and so you see where the problem lies.

I also hoard favourite/bookmark links. Some so I can check them out later, lots of recipies that I'll never use, craft projects.