A Lucky Find

I love second hand shops. I can spend hours in them sifting through stacks of records and rummaging through boxes of bric-a-brac. You never  know what you might find from one week to the next. It is also important not to dismiss the humble box. Open it and look inside, you never know what it might contain. It was just such a box that caught my eye this morning in Long Sutton. The box in question was quite blank apart from a BT label. Opening it, I found two mains plug adaptors, both wrapped and an Ethernet cable. There were no instructions but on closer examination, I realised what they were.

A few years ago, I had read an article about how someone was experimenting with the mains circuit in a house and using it to transfer data from one point to another. In effect, it was being used as a data network as well as carrying domestic power to sockets. The idea seemed to me a little fanciful at first and the thought of high voltage and data mixing wasn't that appealing but as I thought about it a little more, it did all begin to make sense. It occurred to me that every home does have its own ready made network. It's primary use is to get electricity to every room but in theory, it could certainly be used to carry data if the current could be separated from the data stream.
Holding the adaptors it became clear that someone had in fact made the idea a reality - I had to have them! Looking at the box more closely, I could see that £5 had been written on the lid. I know for sure that they are worth a lot more than just £5 and to be honest I doubt if they have ever been used. I bought them instantly and was eager to get home so I could try them. As I drove home, I thought about how I could put them to practical use. I already have a good wireless network covering the house, well three in fact - each for a different type of data. But there is one gadget that would benefit enormously by being 'hard-wired' to my data network. We have a wireless media centre that streams video and TV programmes from a set of hard drives to our TV set. It's a few years old, but works very well. Not having a cable long enough and being loathed to drill a hole through our lounge wall, we have plumped for the wireless option but I've always been aware that the device can be hard-wired. Wireless is brilliant, but it can be subject to the odd stutter and this can be quite frustrating when watching a film.
I set about plugging in the adaptors, connecting data cables between the 'access point' adaptor and my data hub and between the 'receiving' adaptor and the media centre. A button on the front is all that is used to configure the devices and in a few minutes they were talking to each other. This was a very good sign so I tested the media centre and it worked perfectly, markedly quicker than it is on WIFI.
I always set out hoping to find something different, unusual and 'gadgety'. I was lucky today, doubly so as I was able to put it to really good use. I like days like this.

Hard Drive Trust

I've had it with hard drives. Over the last few years, I've bought nearly twenty of them to store things like photos, MP3's and video. I really assumed they were safe and durable. How wrong I was! So far, eight have failed and everything on them has been lost. They just sit there, ticking or whining. I could open them up but as soon as the cover is off, the drive and contents are contaminated. Not that I could actually fix them, I've seen the inside and it's no place for a novice.
So I'm now placing my trust in DVD and CD. They are cheap and from my experience more durable than a hard drive. Rant over.

My digital past

Normally photographs or written diaries would give clues to a person's past. In my case, it's different. Yes there are photographs though these get fewer the further back you go. In my case, it's a box packed full of floppy disks and tapes. I'd retrieved it from the loft yesterday curious to know what was in it. I fished out all the floppy disks, some of them covered in dust and with cryptic labels only I knew the meaning of sometime long ago. I began to read some of them and was surprised to find things such as backups of my e-mail, photographs of pen friends, early electronic diaries and letters - many of which were to and from my early 'electronic lovers'. It was actually quite a shock to find that I had committed so much of my early adult life to digital media. The majority of the disks date back to 1995. I even found a great many projects and documents I had created whilst with my first proper employer. It's all useless today, but interesting nevertheless.
My dilemma now is what to do with them all. My wife knows of their existence but has no idea of what they hold, or the faintest clue of how to read them. Would I be worried about her knowing their contents? Well, yes - the letters would certainly upset her. She gets like that very easily. She'd insist on them being destroyed, of that I have no doubt. For instance, last night the Gadget Show on Channel 5 featured gadgets that could powered by daylight and she got really upset at the fact that I was getting excited over a solar powered camcorder. 'You don't get that excited over me', was her retort. 'You're not portable and solar powered', I replied. We sat in silence for some time after. I really don't want to get rid of any of it but I find myself feeling guilty at keeping this digital cache secret. It's difficult to explain how important it really is to me. It contains so much of who I once was and destroying it would be like destroying a part of me. It is true that back in the early to mid 90's, I did have a life different to my wife's. She is keen to tell me that hers was a life of the outdoors, picking vegetables in the fields and enjoying what nature had to offer. Mine on the other hand was one consumed by TV, electronics and computers. I know I spent most of my time in front of my computer - far more than I do now. I had begun to rely on it for most things - including company - which I know is wrong. Back then though, the Internet was relatively young and it was an exciting time. I will always justify that period in my life as being an important factor in my IT career. Admittedly that's now behind me but I earned good money and lived a good lifestyle as a result.
At the heart of it all was my obsession with collecting. I tried to collect everything I could once, so much in fact that there was a real danger of me falling through my bedroom floor. Much of it is now gone and I have a small den at home which I'm allowed to retreat to occasionally. I was very keen back then to collect what I did and I backed-up as much as I possibly could. The media of the day was tape and floppy disk - each limited in the amount of data they could hold. The tapes I will have a problem reading. They are first generation DAT tapes and I don't currently have a working drive. In addition, I've no idea what format I used to back up the data. A project for another day I think - I've plenty to look at on the floppy disks.
So, do I keep them or destroy them? They have no value to anyone except me. I doubt even if my son would be interested in years to come. He'll have his own life to worry about without wondering what his Dad did way back in 1995. Should I really get rid of them all simply to appease my wife or am I right to want to hang on to my digital past...?