Yzabel / June 23, 2012

Could we forget how to write?

I stumbled upon that article today through another blog I’m following:

Could we forget how to WRITE? The typical adult has not scribbled anything by hand for six weeks

In a world where we increasingly tap out our thoughts, messages and reminders on a keyboard or a touchscreen phone, the traditional note or letter appears to be becoming redundant.

The research, commissioned by online stationer Docmail, revealed that the average time since an adult last wrote by hand was 41 days. But it also found that one in three of us has not had cause to write anything ‘properly’ for more than six months.

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Yzabel / July 13, 2006

The Great Disk Failure of July 2006

Time for another update, but not a happy one, I’m afraid.

One day, I’ll learn. Oh, yes, I swear it: one day, I’ll learn to make backups more regularly when it comes to my “unachieved” data, instead of stupidly dwelling in that odd pefectionism of mine that causes me to burn a CD/DVD only when I can fill it “for good”. Too bad if I end up with trash CDs, or CDs made unreadable by too much rewriting: from now on, I really need to change a couple things regarding all of this.

One of my hard disks died two weeks ago. The big one, of course, where I stored all my unachieved designs, drawings and writings, and where I used to park the footage for my videos, during those periods I was into video editing. It had warned me, poor thing, through very disturbing noises, but what I didn’t know was that it’d die in my arms on the very moment I’d start performing the needed backup, after the mandatory realization of “uh-oh, this time it seems really sick”. Aye, Murphy rules this world. Nevertheless, for once, I’d have liked a little less chaos in what is called my existence.

To tell about my disgust is the least I can do. I don’t care much for the video footage, since I can extract it again, but the unachieved and now lost artworks are daggers repeatedly thrusted in my ego. Yes, yes, I had backups. Alright. Dating back to several weeks or even several months ago. What pains me in particular is the loss of the edited version of my NaNovel (given how I loved editing it, I won’t do THIS again soon * sighs *), the latest version of the Wall of Silence (the few changes in it, I can rewrite and am doing so, though), and the previous attempts for the latter story. No matter how many times I try to persuade myself that it’s a fresh start, without these leashes hindering my Inner Editor, this is still a blow dealt directly to my heart.

Not everything is lost: we’re trying to resurrect the HDD, for long enough, at least, to perform a hard copy… However, I prefer not nurture too many illusions here–the fall would only be harder.

Ah, yes. One day, I’ll learn…