Main Diary Transcription Completed in Roundtrip Ticket to Paradise 2

Just finished transcribing my main diary (the one with 1680+ entries) over to Prosebox. Did it in 6-month blocks. Most if not all of the external links, eg. Open Diary to Youtube work fine, but the internal links, eg. my diary to someone else's entry, are all broken. I had my diary copied/downloaded in both .txt and .xml formats; I posted here using the .txt one.

I've been somewhat concerned as to how durable those little flash drives to which I downloaded my diary are. They've been riding around in a jacket pocket for a month or so, but fortunately I did not have any problems with the 8MB main diary file becoming corrupted.

What is somewhat scary is the fact that there were times when I did not post for several weeks. I don't know if, during those times, there were 10+ day stretches when I did not even stop by. As it stood, there was only a 10-day period between the date, 1/28/2014, Open Diary's death notice was posted and 2/7/2014 00:02 USA Eastern Standard Time it was removed from life support. On a variety of sites I have noticed postings by other diarists who had stopped by a few days after, or even later that day, only to find that their work had vanished. So I guess I can thank the stars that I happened upon the death notice in time to score a couple flash drives and do some quick downloading. Looks like I completed the download only 4.5 days before Open Diary died.

Anyhow, hope everyone was able to rescue what they wanted. I now have 24 hidden drafts in which I probably won't bother rebuilding links, but if I need to go back to find something, at least they are there. Don't know about anyone else, but I found that writing, even sporadically, in my diary was an excellent complement to all of the other therapies I've been pursuing since October 18 2002 (when I arrived at Impact Bay Area's training facility in Redwood City CA to begin the Impact Model Mugging Men's Basics self-defense course).

Now I just need to repost all of my secondary diaries. They were each created for a specific purpose, eg. a Dossier for use with my work at the workshop down in Anchorage, and so forth.

~

Of course, sometime back I noted someone's posting online that the very best information storage/retrieval system is one that has existed for a while. How many people remember compact disks? or those little (~2") hard-sided disks? or 5" floppy disks? or cassette tapes? or 8-track tapes? reel-to-reel tapes? 45rpm records? 33.3rpm LP records? (and this goes waaayyy back) 78rpm records? wax cylinders? wire recorders/players? (those were used until recently in those children's toys where the kid would pull the string and an arrow on the face of the toy would turn while the speaker would play a scratchy version of a quotation or tune)?

Nope, this system predated all of those.

Pencil (lead or graphite, NOT ink) and paper. Before those, clay tablets. It's possible to pick up (very carefully) a thousands-year-old paper or tablet and be able to read what some nameless scribe wrote several millennia ago.

By comparison, I've several 2" hard-side disks which have become corrupted, and I'm sure the 5" floppy disks are likely shot as well. In addition, the software to read the 5" ones is nowhere to be found now. Because everything before that was analog instead of digital, they can probably still be read, given the right equipment.

Rest in Peace, Open Diary. I'm glad you were there when I needed you.