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Home Digitization Project
One of my tasks this summer is digitizing all that is digitalizable in my apartment. Like anyone who lectures on media, I have for more than a decade argued that the ability to make something digital is one of the core pieces of technology that is part of the rapid social changes we are undergoing: our “digital revolution.” It is, perhaps, strange that I write this surrounded by several thousand books: ink on dead trees.
CDs and Tapes
The earliest step of this process, I completed many years ago: cutting my Audio CDs over to MP3s. For years, I kept the physical CDs around, as a backup in better audio quality. When I got rid of them, I kept the jackets, for lyrics and album art. But under the principle that not touching something for a year or more probably means you don’t need it, I finally got rid of them as well, years ago.
More recently, I’ve freed myself from all tape. I went through boxes of video cassettes and cut over anything I wanted to keep to my DVR. I did the same thing for some of the old audio cassettes my wife had collected, a recordings of her grandfather that had deteriorated on audio cassette.
The machines that supported these formats are also gone. I am gradually disassembling them, recycling the interesting bits into my “junk” files; consumer electronics from an era not so long ago when they contained lasers, electric motors, switches, knobs, and connectors.
Bills, Correspondence, Manuals
I am nearly through the next part of the process, working my way through several drawers of a file cabinet, scanning bills, letters, forms, receipts, various manuals, appraisals, health records, contracts, and the like. Incoming mail is now opened and either scanned or shredded. After some hunting, comparisons, and advice from others, I ended up getting a ScanSnap S510. It was an expensive purchase, but well worth the satisfaction of being able to drop in a document and have it quickly turned into a PDF on my hard drive, findable without taking up space.
The final step will be to scan the majority of my library. It took me some years to decide to do this, but I think that most of it will be scanned “destructively,” using this sheet-fed scanner. The result will be more space in my home office, which I’ll be sharing soon, but it will be strange to be without those pages around me.
Of course, I have already run into things that have a particular “aura,” that makes them especially difficult to part with. Anything hand-written to me by my partner, no matter how trivial, is impossible to throw away. And I don’t think things like my passport or birth certificate will do me much good in electronic form alone.
Services I Maybe Should Have Used
Some lessons learned? If I were to do this again, I might try a couple of services I now know about. I would use a service like Ship’N’Shred which will pick up a 30 lb box of paper and shred it for $30. Yes, I only paid a little more for my own shredder, but hand feeding paper into it and constantly emptying it is a pain. Obviously, I’ll shred my own stuff going forward, but for the massive one-time effort, it probably would have been easier to box it and send it off for shredding.
When I decided to cut my CDs over to MP3 many years ago, I sat in front of the computer feeding them in one-by-one. I was a starving student then, and a starving professor now, and don’t think I can shell out the $299 for a week’s rental of ripping machine that will transfer over a stack of CDs. Since a number of my CDs were imports, or strange, or both, and didn’t have CDDC, which apparently means their system wouldn’t work.
What about dealing with the incoming mail? For now, at least, it is not worth the $120 a year to get someone to do that processing for me, though that would be far more enticing if I were still nomadic. Being able to have a stable mailing address every time you move is almost worth it in itself.
I’ll write a bit more about this process, if I get the chance, detailing some of my decisions in scanning and some of the things I find out about during the process.
Obama as a monkey
First, Limbaugh airs a comparison of Obama to Curious George, then a T-shirt depicting the same, and now this: a sock monkey version of a black presidential candidate. Race is being openly discussed for the first time in a long time, and with it, we should expect some real ignorance to show up, and racism that has been hanging out in back rooms to be placed out in public.
I wrote the following email to Rob Bishop, president of Binkley Custom Products, who hosts the site, and presumably produces the doll.
Dear Mr. Bishop,
I am writing regarding “The Sock Obama” that your company produces and sells. Although the site purports to be in support of Mr. Obama, I find it difficult to believe that you can be unaware of the long history of associating African-Americans with monkeys as a way of demeaning them. It is, in short, a racist depiction of a candidate for president.
I am writing in the hope that you have offered this product unaware of that long history, or deceived by whomever asked you to produce it. I hope, and expect, that you will remove the product now that you have been made aware of the racist statement you are making.
Sincerely,
Alex Halavais
Update: Both of the email addresses I have for Rob Bishop are bouncing, so I’ll have to send snail mail.
Alex’s Porn Collection
Someone sent me a note asking for my opinion on this. I’m not sure that I have a considered opinion. The descriptions of the images seem to be far worse than the images themselves. Two of the images described in the LA Times article appear here (NSFW), in a compilation of putatively humorous images that is not safe for work. Which gives rise to the question of that term: Not Safe for Work. Should a judge be judged by a standard different from the standards by which we judge any other citizen. Bear in mind that he has been accused of circulating distasteful images, not illegal images. I don’t think anyone would suggest that a subscription to Hustler should disqualify someone from the bench.
I can see getting fired for viewing these kind of images at work, particularly if it resulted in co-workers seeing them. I can even see getting fired for intentionally publishing this sort of material on a personal site, if your work found out about it and you were in an industry sensitive to public opinion (as most are). But there was no such intent here. It’s not like he’s been secretive about it; as he admits here, he maintains a “gag list,” from which he sends out “dirty jokes.” (There is more in this interview that seems a bit risque in retrospect.) The question is whether this should impact his role as a judge. I don’t see why it should. Given how few people we have at the appellate level that have even a basic understanding of the online world, it would seem a particularly unfortunate
At worst, I think he can be blamed for a lack of political acumen, and arguably (since it always is) questionable taste. Perhaps he should add “keeping a careful lid on your personal interests” to his advice for aspiring federal judges. And though he’s not a fan of bloggers, this serves as a great example to those who are bloggers of how personal web publishing (by you or your kids) can come back to bite you.
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