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News from Earth and Fire -- August 30, 2005 Here today, gone tomorrowMy ZIP drive is primarily used to back up my data files for the gallery every night. Coming from a technical background, I know it is important that I don't leave "all my data in one basket" so to speak. What if my hard drive should crash? What if the gallery should be ransacked by vandals or burn down during the night? My ZIP drive died last week. So for the better part of a week, I was walking on the wild side -- taking a chance that nothing catastrophic would happen and that my data would be safe and sound each morning when I arrived at the gallery. Looks like I was lucky in that regard. Now, as far as replacing the ZIP drive is concerned, as I understand it, ZIP drive technology is, like... "so last Century", and you can't even buy one anymore. I wound up buying something called a USB 2.0 Flash Drive. It's about the size of a tube of lipstick and it will hold 512 MB of data. My old ZIP disks were huge in comparison, and only held about 250 MB of data. Time marches on. Sunday morning, I read an article in the Washington Post about how VHS tapes are "out" now and the implication was that that technology was going to be gone soon, as well. I think I knew this was true the last time I went to replace my TV and found that it was exceedingly difficult to find one with an integrated VCR anymore. Seems everything has gone to DVD. I was fairly content that this was just what life is like now, until I stopped to realize that I have quite a few VHS tapes at home with "home movies" of my children growing up. Those "images" had started out on 8mm silent movie film. About ten years ago, I took those little four-minute spools of film into a photo-processing place and had them transferred to VHS. Now, it looks like I need to move them on to DVD. My company data. My children's first steps. Irreplaceable "information." This "information" is no good to me on the tape or on the ZIP disk, unless I have another device to decode it and put it all into context. And so it seems I will always be making adjustments to "save" these things. DVD's certainly seem to be an enduring technology. But for how long? I suspect it won't be long before something the size of a tube of lipstick can hold a thousand movies. "What does this have to do with Earth and Fire and pottery?" you might ask. Well, as I was thinking about all this and worrying about all this irreplacable information, I looked up and saw some of my favorite pots looking back at me. I thought about how nice it is that pottery exists on its own and goes on forever. I don't have to do anything to "save" my pots. A pot taken from a kiln a thousand years ago looks the same today as it will a thousand years from now. Unless I drop it, that is.... Have a good week. Back to the Newsletter Archive list Contact us to join the mailing list or inquire about a specific piece.
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