Finding an old CD-ROM and a terrible Diablo rap
Finding an old CD-ROM and a terrible Diablo rap
Kevin Barrett, a Senior Engineer at Postlight, wrote a short essay about a subject dear to our hearts: Legacy data, when that legacy data is your very own life.
There are services (Facebook, TimeHop) that trot out your past, but they show you what you’ve already made public. And then there’s the stickier, more manual kind of reminiscing, where you look at old files and see the patterns of your life back a decade or more ago. Kevin writes:
Inside the folder were two .docs. I will not share with you their exact contents because if I did teenage me would actually step into the future and commit that terrible crime. But, briefly:
Selftimeline.doc was a several-page enumeration of depressing world-historical events — the start and end of the Cold War, the US invasion of Iraq, the melting of polar ice sheets — interspersed with my quotidian life of being born, going to school, and being a Boy Scout.
Guilt.doc was an AIM conversation thanking xXm00nch1ldXx (fake — though representative — screen name to protect the innocent) for inviting me to a party and then further explaining, at long unreplied-to length, that I never get invited to parties, so thank you, it was a real treat for me, seeing as I never get invited. To parties.
One of the things about carrying around a large digital archive wherever you go (which all of us basically do, now) is that you can travel back in time and see just how lame, awesome, smart, and weird you were. It’s often a pretty edifying (if highly uncomfortable) experience.
You should go read Kevin’s essay, but you should also take a look at one of the files he uncovered,
.Below the fold
Today’s links
- Today’s JavaScript library: echo — Lazy-loading images with data-* attributes.
- Today’s variety of religious experience: Bangladeshi Sangharaj Nikaya.
- Today’s Creative Commons media link: AllTheFreeStock — curated list of free stock images, graphics and videos.
- Today’s old-school Unix fortune: “We’ve lost 4 crays to the open environment.”
- Today’s freely available programming book: Bayesian Methods for Hackers — Cameron Davidson-Pilon.
- Today’s public data set: SourceForge.net Research Data.
- Today’s React component: react-tabs — React tabs component.
About Postlight
POSTLIGHT is a growing web agency in New York City. We build great things for the web and mobile. We like solving complex data problems, and building giant, scalable APIs in the cloud, and creating interactive designs that work for lots of different audiences. We code in all the regular languages and use all the regular frameworks and deploy to all the regular platforms. We’re also incubating a few new products. We’re getting kind of busy so if you need us now’s the right time to check in — email contact@postlight.com. Thanks!