Tech Blog for #18

This blog is for the assignment #18 where we blog about technology. Having already read Jack’s post, I’m going to start out by commenting on what he started and let it develop from there. I too used to take photos on a SLR with zoom lens and wait for the photos to be developed and then put them in albums, shoe boxes and plastic storage boxes and have to search through all those photos to find the one I was looking for. Now I have CDs with photos on them that I can’t find. But posting these things to flickr seems to be a good way to have the photos ready to be viewed with little or no storage space required. I would not trust the baby pictures to flickr alone though. I recently started trying to organize the storage room and came across yet another storage box of photos from 25 years ago. I also have a box of vhs-c tapes of Katy’s babyhood that I want to get transcribed onto DVD. Which brings me to the frustrating side of technology. I have gone from 45 rpm and LP vinyl disks, to 8 track (very briefly) to cassette tapes and then CDs. Now CDs are out and our music is going to come from a little bitty thing with earplugs. I won’t miss the clutter but just looking around at the rows of CDs on the shelves near me and then thinking back on all the money I have spent on all the different formats just keeping my music in the latest fashion. You young people will accuse me of whining but wait 20 years and you will be doing it too but I’m guessing with a lot less clutter since it all seems to be digital anyway. I can see it now, all the music, stories, photos, videos, everything on one little chip. They will probably implant it in your finger so all you have to do to review any of it is to poke your finger up....nah, that’s going in the wrong direction. Anyway, you get the idea. Add your id, your debt card, a gps and one of those those RFID chips and you won’t need to carry a purse anymore... Except for lipstick and a comb. No way those are going high tech.

Anyway, the thing that I’m really looking forward to is the MP3 player. Last summer Ron and I started making a list of our top 100 songs of all time. We had a hard time limiting the list to 100. We were thinking at the time of how neat it would be to have one of those old fashioned juke boxes like the ones that sat on restaurant tables with the little pages that turn, the chrome trim and the push buttons. The old Stephen Foster Hotel Coffee Shop had them if anybody remembers that. I know the MP3 is a far cry from that but the idea is that we can have our list of 100 songs (only now it doesn’t have to be limited to 100) and have it at the dinner table or in the car or where ever. I was telling him yesterday that one of the things I wanted to get started doing is going through my CDs with a pad of sticky notes and writing down which of the tracks I want to pull off to put on the MP3 player. He started talking about some of his favorites...Broadway Showtunes...and I think he may have to get his own.