PATRICK MCVAY

WRITER

My Musings

This text is currently hidden by a css change. Alow's me to go directly to the category description because it is editable in the front end,

The Cloud

Somewhere out there is a big graveyard of lost digital photos, a world of images that were transferred from camera to storage device or “the cloud” and by some weird quirk of fate or bad data management took a wayward turn and ended up in a black hole, buried in a folder within a folder withing yet many more folders within this lost universe, making them more or less unfindable.

Or maybe they were completely destroyed and no longer exist, though I’m told is very hard to do that with data these days, as everything digital is intended to live forever.  

Maybe it’s not so much a “graveyard,” which suggests that we knew and cherished the images enough to have carved fond remembrances of them in a few poetic words etched into granite. Instead, these pictures that we never actually laid eyes on really don’t even rise to the level of lost luggage. At least we knew what was in our luggage – the comfortable boxer briefs, the hiking shorts with zip-off pant legs, the Ebenezer Scrooge sleep hat – whereas the pictures were snapped on a phone but were never viewed before we screwed up the file transfer and deleted them entirely.

But in losing them, these have become the best pictures ever taken. In my mind I desperately need to find them again, as they will one day remind me of this day in history, which was otherwise unremarkable were it not for the fact that I took pictures to my remind myself of it.

Actually, sending things to the cloud is an apt description: many a photo I’ve uploaded has disappeared, like a plane does when it ascends into the skies of New England, fading away to nothing as it rises into the ceiling of cumulus vapor, eventually gone.

And if I were to find these lost photos, what would I see? Probably something like 30 burst images of my big toe, snapped when I was trying to futz with the camera to get the settings right.

I’m not referring to the recent images of a large Hawaiian sea turtle (Honu) I took on a GoPro, as I did really care to see the several minutes of video I shot whilst snorkeling on the Big Island of Hawaii. Alas, I’ll have to settle for a photo of a moray eel, taken when I visited Kealakekua Bay and the monument to the British explorer Captain Cook. I haven’t deleted that one! (Yet). 

Mr. Moray upside down

 

 

Continue reading
  652 Hits

 

 

J'Biden Era Haikuage

 

People's Arms. That's right!

200 million shots

In 100 days

 

We are good people

But we still have far to go

Repair. Restore. Heal.

 

There's nothing new here

The Affordable Care Act

We're restoring it 

 

America's Day

Democracy is fragile

The world is watching 

 

Strategy is based

On Science, not politics

Truth, not denial

 

 

Subscribe To The Blog

Produce This Audio Play!

Ever wanted to produce a radio play?  Think you have the mettle?  Read on!

Tag Cloud

Earth Quebect Advertising Mom and Dad Soup Bicycles When I die Christmas Biden Syracuse Imaginings The Past Hache Verde Yeast Diseases COVID-19 plan mid-winter vacations Cats Bands I've seen the future My grandparents Cars Pats Golf China Good Reads Drumming Zoom afterlife Bob Dylan Skating Texting NPR Things I've done Vaccines Reveillon soapbox rantings Communication Channels Audubon Bar coronavirus Climate Change technology Bunker Snow Guns Marketing Gimmicks Religion tambourrine Rock Bands Ticketmaster nukes Rabbit Hole Coyotes Peacekeeping Big Shoes Bodysurfing Politics As Usual Email COVID War and Peace punk music Wind The future Dad advice Beer Liz Phair cornhole Chowder Vaughn Me Hand Planes Sports Soviet Union TV Red Sox Audio vacation Trump Plastic Existential Crisis Food Spoon the band Accounting Royal Stuff Cornhole star seasons My Parents Eclipse Knots Roommates I've Had People I know Canadiana Folk Music Bikes Martinis Guns and Ammo acerbic high school principal Mustard Boston midwinter vacations Skiing town square Putin Scotch and Sirloin curling shoes Soul Coughing Mass General Hospital Belgian Ales Hawaii Allergies Barber Shops Car Dealerships 1980s gathering throngs Canada Stairs Theater Sugarbush The Old Days US Senate weather My Estate Weather baseball Them Kids Music New England Spice Girls Art the sea Ketchup Ice Dancing Hot Air Balloon Higher Education Eating and Drinking Tom Waits The Future Work high winds Ukraine My sisters Bands I've Seen Mike Doughty Hurricanes Fiction Grass Skiing Brain Surgery Bands I haven't seen