The difficult task of eternizing the past

I know it's a very difficult task, but I at least started: tell the story of my past.

Why?

But why not?

I start a text telling about my birthplace. This location is named Tujuguaba and is a village within the State of Sao Paulo, near Campinas, in Brazil. The text is still small and full of errors, but once I give it a polished, I will make available to the world, be it with ten or a hundred pages. It does not matter.

But the thing is harder than it looks.

The reason for this difficulty is that I know almost nothing about what happened before I existed. Just I do not know enough to answer my own curiosity, and I see no means of supplying this lack of knowledge.

 

My past before me, I mean, past the place where I was born and where lived my distant relatives, I is not accessible. I left Tujuguaba when I was 14 years old and simply do not have any contact with anyone there. Even with my family. And every day that passes, has more probability that little that remains of that past is lost by the death of people who still have important memories to be recorded.

What can I do? Nothing.

It comes down to deductions based on what I know after I was born and the famous Internet searches. But the Internet is far from offering the ease of research I need for work of this type. The Internet records very well this time, but the past is out of their records.

So I gather crumbs from those which came before me.

Ah, but how would it be simpler if I could just talk to people ...

But that no longer exists.

 

It is true: the conversation is gone. I am a witness of this fact and say with all category this reality. No one else is available for a simple conversation that lasts more than ten or fifteen minutes, more enjoyable or important that it is.

The rush in the world swallowed us.

People have commitments, need to do thousands of things at same time and the dialogue is not part of any list of priorities. Phone calls are expensive, and chats online are not even a shadow of what would be true talk in a  room or kitchen, watered with cakes and cups of coffee on a quiet afternoon in a common weekend.

I will never forget the day I visited an elderly  and widow aunt, and she just disappeared from her home to the street, because he had a "third age" meeting. He ran hastily in search of a dance or something and left us, me and her daughter, brooding recent memories, while she might be telling us beautiful and lost in time stories, inaccessible to Google and MSN and Orkuts and Facebooks of modern life . My aunt just did not have time to talk about the past.

 

So, my record work goes by leaps, and as flawed as an old comb.

I think the best thing to do is ensure that what I experienced personally. It is true that there is nothing as old or spectacular, but I have unlimited access and is an available and reliable source.

I still do not have to run to the dances of the "best age"...

Exploring the world with fingers

It is true that a blog is not all. It is not a suitable environment for certain types of literary work of greater importance as an article or a book. So, I can not say that I am or will be faithful only to this blog. I must admit that I have written things and posted it on other sites more suitable for their intended purposes.

I have posted things on http://www.scribd.com/. The result has been modest, but honest. It also has something simple in http://www.bookess.com/. And then there's something in the embryonic state, not yet posted on any site. Only small text in Word. But it's a start.

I have another two or three other blogs on specific topics scattered around, but stillborn. Unless ...

Unless I reinfund it life. Blogs, after all, are not biological entities. They just stop, hibernate, but do not die or rot or smell, although may contain a lot of rot and rubbish. Well, I do not know yet, but I think I can fix at least two of them.

Moreover, I think I have been somewhat daring with regard to my participation on the web. I've been better at it awhile ago, participating in interesting discussion forums and communities, especially in Orkut. I think the debate is always more exciting than a simple blog, because the feedback from board postings is faster and more personal. Blogs are not interactive, except for shares of commentators, which I think is very limited. A comment is far from the excitement of a real debate in a forum.

Anyway, even in foruns and communitys my participation is reduced to almost nothing.

It remains I take courage and return activities.

After all, this is the demand of our time.

Must be live the time, must makes the time and that makes it one time only. After all, we will leave and never return. We need to be remembered forever by the time we live. These are just a few decades, and time is running against us. Therefore, all ambition is not enough. We need to be vandals, barbarians, goths, mongols, and conquer all possible spaces, even if virtual. After all, this is the space that must be conquered.

Explore the virtual world is the challenge of an era, and posterity will never forget those who paved the first.

Keyboard in hand, we must hit!

Hitting is needed, not live!

six years

It may seem a lie, but true: this blog is on his 6 years old  birthday.

This is not a healthy blog, I must admit, but still in the air, though.

Meanwhile, not too useful stuff has been posted, and this is due more to my neglect than properly due to lack of the talking.

But times are changing.

The world is changing. Not so fast, but not so slowly. He is in his proper rhythm. More than for slow to fast.

And finally, I'm changing. But that's another story.

In these six years much events has happened.

I'm still having lots of ideas, and old ones need to be polished yet.

I do not writing in rhythm I like, but for a good reason: I was doing other more important things.

My agendas(yes, there are many ...) continue to be filled with important scribbles.

I keep reading so much and life has progressed.

So this blog enters its sixth year with the expectation of receiving a healthier stream of posts than in previous years.

Happy birthday and long life to me and him.

And no more misery.

Apparently dead, but hibernating...

This blog is still alive.

He is still alive because I'm still alive, very alive and active, and keep it current, active, is only a matter of time and priority. Just this loved blog is no longer a priority for some time, but it is still important.

I still need to register my ideas, my things, my words.

But not today.

Now it's late, I have to rest and sleep.

But tomorrow this blog will have the time and attention it deserves.

I promise.

Good night (and good luck ...)

Listbot

I have an old email from 1999, when I affiliated as the ListBot, a sort of old database of e-mails. Today, no longer exists.

I know that the Internet is dynamic, but everything related to computers is nostalgic, and it is surprising that it age so fast.

There's another email from the same period, which is a subscription to OneList. I clicked on the link http://www.onelist.com/ and it directed to, well, you know where: Yahoo! Groups.

The ListBot, well, was purchased by, well... Microsoft...

There is a third email that remind me my effort to send my link to a lot of search engines pre-Google, is that where we had to inform the search engines about our existed sites and if they were in the air. Google killed it and a brazilian search engine, http://www.aonde.com/ is to flies.

I lost interest in being part of the generation that created the web. What discouraged me was the failure of the Dot Com in 2000. Internet seemed like magic, but did not , and still does not, make money in the short term. And I, a frustrated businessman, never risked nothing but a bit of my time in this leaky boat. I do not think I did wrong, but by no means cease to blame myself for lack of courage. All because of Steve Jobs.

Speaking about her, our great Steve Jobs, unfortunately, seems to be to serious health problems and can not survive as Patrick Swaize, who died two days ago. Both victims of pancreatic cancer.

Life goes leading the people.

Well, Jobs once convinced a large executive of Pepsi, Sculley, to go to Apple.

But that is another story.

It is for later. I have my roast chicken dinner that my dear wife just bake.

Life goes on in Ribeirão Preto!

After I tell about Jobs and Sculley.

Fruitless plans

I just delete a link in my Favorites menu in Internet Explorer 8 (yes, I'm already in the eighth version!).

It is a page no longer exists. The subject was: Flyex 2008.

It's a long and sad story.

One day she will be counted.

One day ...

Disenchantment of the rock

Rock'n'roll, for me, does not matter anymore.

I do not like Frank Zappa anymore, or any band.

I dunno. It's over.

I see a hairy guy, some rare laggard, one of the few remaining of the many who showed up for that last over, and he seems anachronistic, out of place, out of tune, out of the scheme of things.

I think I'll change my CDs for a few books out there in somewhere old books store.

Rock is out-of-date.

My forgotten blogs

One day I questioned whether I really needed a blog.

The answer comes in the form of facts.

If they are needed or not does not matter.

What matters is that I have six blogs misdeeds, treating a wide variety of subjects, all without depth and without any continuity.

What to do?

I think the solution is finish them.

Finish all, except this.

I can not be polyvalent.

I'm not writing much

Interesting how we're wrong.

My first text on this blog saying that I write a lot every day.

This is not true.

Never was.

What exists is only a will to write a lot every day, but desire is just it: desire.

A year ago that this blog is to flies.

Let's make an effort and try to keep it active.

Today is a good day to start writing again.

Writing much, every day.

Backup is a hard work

I spent all day thinking of a way to make a decent backup of my data on computer.

It may seem like something a bit paranoid, but only those who have lost a hard drive with no backup or had stolen a micro know what I'm talking about.

The problem is with Windows Vista Start Edition, which does not come with a decent backup program. Incidentally, does not come with any backup program.

All right if Baixaki and SuperDownloads sites have hundreds of backup programs, but I think I have to think of something more secure than a simple backup to DVD.

 

Every good backup site states the obvious: a backup on DVD only makes sense if it is done in at least two copies, one to be kept in a safe and another to stay somewhere else on the planet, in case of any missile fall in the building where the main computer.

One option seemingly secure is online backup, but seems to be a risky business, because it usually is paid and have a size limit. And then, a company that provides this type of service must be a safe company. Tomorrow she closes the door and put our data in risk.

The size issue is much more serious.

Before making a backup, I thought, how many files I have on my HD?

The answer is somewhere around 90,000 files.

It seems little, but it is not.

I wanted a software to show me my files today, then save the entire listing in a text file. Within a month I would run it again and record a second record of the files on my HD and so on. The idea is to monitor what emerges and what disappears from my files over time. Only a history.

 

The problem is that a list containing the names of 90,000 files is simply too great. Even for a simple text file type.

It's almost One megabite only with lines of names, which equals, if it were printed, a good book of some three hundred pages.

It's too much.

Of course, almost everything is bullshit. Thousands of files belong to Windows, other thousands belong to other programs that we can easily install. That leaves a few thousand who are our e-mails, photos, spreadsheets, school works, and presentations from the company where we work. But we do not want to miss anything. After all, it represent many hours of sweat and anger in form of stored files.

In the end, few programs have worked satisfactorily. I ended up with a simple little program that you can not list everything, but at least the list more used folders without stay much.

Now, I have to think a way to select between good files that worth something and bad files that worth nothing.

Then, do the backup.

Then, hope you never have to use it to restore a detonated HD, or replace data from a stolen PC .

This digital life is not easy.