Blue Monday

A photo posted by Nazila (@nazilam) on Aug 17, 2015 at 8:06pm PDT

Happy Monday. 

My Mac picked up some weird malware that hijacked my Chrome browser and it took me nearly two hours to figure out how to tackle it. I’m not sure I did the right thing, but I reset my Chrome settings, installed some malware software remover  that was recommended. I ended up ditching Chrome and removed the application. I may go back to it, but not until I’m certain everything is copacetic.

While I was trying to extract myself from this irritation, I realized that I could work unplugged and get more done with less (distractions). Why do we have this deep seated need to read status updates for things that only serve to muddle up our thought processes?  Why bother checking mail on your laptop when you can do it on your phone and be done sooner.   Why bother checking your mail at all?

Many companies are abandoning email all together and using tools like Slack or Hipchat to communicate internally and share assets via these services. I’m still not convinced that this is a way to conduct all communication or work, but how lovely it would be if you could unsubscribe from threads of conversations that you don’t really need to be part of  or tell the world you are away with a emoticon of a sleeping koala bear?

We tend to say the same things when we’re communicating by email as when we talk to our colleagues. While some things bear repeating, if this information was delivered quickly via a internal messaging system, questions could be answered quickly and succinctly and we could use that five minute water cooler conversation talking about solutions instead of setting up the scenario or problem we’re trying to solve.

Why is it that we’re so fast to answer a text and so dread answering email?

I’m going to try this unplugging while working for the rest of the week – maybe I’ll see a rise in my productivity or at least a decrease in my dislike for the sharing aspect of the web.

Backing up is hard to do - not

At the Quai aux briques, it is all about the Fish. 

Hello from the land of the waffle.

I was going to wax poetically about my feelings about Christmas markets, but I'll spare you right now.

I take a lot of pictures, some of them are awesome even without Instagram filters, some of them not so much, but I get to make that decision after I look at my pictures on a screen that is bigger than phone. That requires actually getting my photos from off my phone and somewhere secure.

I have a few hard drives that have thousands of photo and music backups, but to be honest, I never use them any more. I do check them on occasion and they seem stable. I do worry about the discs failing as they are getting old. I've experienced the heartbreak of losing physical SD cards and while I can't ever recover those pictures, they memories of the places are still so vivid in my mind.

Backing up these days is not hard to do.

My iPhone photos get backed up to my hard drive, but that isn't fail safe.  Laptops get stolen, hard disks crash and photos get deleted.  I still love Flickr, but I have all but abandoned it because the interface can be clunky.  I never took to other photo sharing sites, other that Instagram.  I love the fact that Instagram integrates with other apps as well.

I'm using Dropbox/Carousel now to upload my camera uploads automatically when I'm connected to wifi.  You can love or hate Dropbox or the cloud,  but now I have the peace of mind that my photos are getting uploaded while I'm traveling.

There are a million places you can store your photos - Evernote, Flickr, Dropbox, Smugmug, Google Drive - some cost and some are free. The important thing is to back them up somewhere. It's not hard and having photos sit on your phone or on a memory card moldering a drawer is just ridiculous these days. View them, share them, critique them and your photography will improve and you'll get to relive the awesome things you've seen on your travels.

What exactly are you waiting for?