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Even if you haven't split any atoms or won a reality TV show lately, your life is chock full of things that are important to your personal history. Diplomas, photographs, audio or video recordings, software, cameras, receipts and documents. The stuff that’s left behind tells a story of your life. Don't you wish you had some personal memorabilia from your grandparents or your great-grandparents? You know, the normal day to day items that tell a tale of how they spent their time, their money, their vacations and fascinations, which items were important enough to keep, which just turned up randomly in a box. These things serve to make their descendants feel as if they are part of something bigger. Just think of the ways in which we now catalog, record and archive our lives – Chrome's "Dear Sophie" commercial is a prime example of how modern technology has changed the ways in which we chronicle our lives.
What follows is our take on seventeen ways to get your life archived, in order, and ready to pass on to your kids/nieces/nephews, etc. We're pretty sure there are more than sixteen ways so let us know what we've missed in a comment after the article.
Get Your Stuff Together
After reading the whole article, you'll have an idea of the kinds of things that you've already got that would be a great archival legacy. Some of it is yours, but other parts might have been supplied by your parents and other relatives. If you've got a box of 8mm film, old negatives, war medals, deeds, wedding certificates and so on, gather them all up and figure out how much work you've got ahead of you. Some families save every bit, bobby, part and parcel from the past while others have pretty slim pickings when it comes to memory bins. Collect what you can and ask around for the rest. You have to start somewhere, right?
Write/Record/Film Your Own Recollections
When you've got all your items in one place, describe everything you know about each one. Where did it come from? Who had it before you? Tell every detail you can think of, enlisting other members of your family if needed. This will create a kind of family saga that you will add to with your own things. Write it out, tape it or record it on video. Do it now. We'll wait. OK, now we can begin the seventeen step process.
For around $100.00, you should be able to pick up a scanner that will scan 35mm negatives and slides as well as full size pictures and documents. If you've got the negatives, scan those instead of the photos themselves, since photos will obviously deteriorate over time. Canon, HP and Epson each make decent scanners. We've used the HP G4010 with great success. If you have 2 1/4 negs or larger, check out the HP G4050. The HP software works well to make sure you get a good image on average but you can adjust the settings for individual negatives that are under or over exposed.
Numbering the negative sleeves according to scheme you are using to save the images will help you organize the negatives for the future. Itemize everything, save it all to multiple DVDs and remember to write down everything you know about each picture, most importantly the date the photo was taken as well as who is in each one. HP has tips here and here for basic techniques. A resolution of 300 or 600 dpi is perfect for 35mm negatives.
If you've got some old home movies, you're in for some fun when you try to digitize them. Bonus points if you've got a projector! Transferring 8 or Super 8 film to digital video involves a good deal of trial and error. If you don't have a whole lot of material, you can project onto a small white piece of cardboard or your old screen, if you still have it. Use your camcorder to capture the image, checking the result on a monitor. What you will have to tweak is the shutter speed of either the film projector or your camcorder, if possible. Getting rid of the flicker is what it's all about.
If you've got lots of material, consider paying someone else to do it. Prices run up from around thirty cents a foot with volume discounts. You might be able to find a basic telecine unit at a thrift store or garage sale. These use a mirror to project the image onto a ground glass screen. Capturing the image from the screen results in a very bright and perfectly square image. Again, DVD it with as much information as you can. Do a director's commentary by adding an audio track in your editing.
If you've been computing for a number of years, you're sure to have some of your memories on floppies. If you can print your words out, that's great. Scan the pages then use the basic OCR software that's usually included with scanners to read the printed pages. If you've been using PCs since the start, adding a disk drive to your current computer is easy. If you have a Mac in your past, check out Transmac which will read Mac disks on your PC. It's free to use for the first 15 days. If you have other disk formats, check out some of the conversion tools here.
None of these are free but you can try them to see if they can read your files before you buy them. If all else fails, search for support groups for your old computer type. The antique computer community is pretty good about helping people out.
Since vinyl records deteriorate with use, now is a good time to archive both your old and new LPs to digital. With a good turntable and Audacity this is a reasonably straightforward, though time consuming, experience. Pro-Ject and Stanton make good quality USB turntables for under $500 but if you’re planning to use your older unit, remember that you need a preamp between the computer and your turntable.
A quality receiver will work well in lieu of a standalone preamp. You'd use the 'tape out' to feed directly to your computer. Make sure you ground the turntable to the receiver to eliminate any hum. Set up Audacity to use your line-in as a recording source and monitor the input on your computer speakers or stereo speakers. Make sure you have the correct .dll files for MP3 or AAC conversions. You can adjust the volume and remove some of the scratches in Audacity as well.
Much has been written about tweaking LPs in Audacity but the main principle is to archive the best quality recording in a lossless format, FLAC for example. Then, if you have to convert the original recording for other uses later on, either for file size or compatibility, you can relax knowing your original is safe. We prefer FLAC which creates a substantially smaller file when compared to a standard WAV file.
There are companies that will create a pretty cool piece of wall art from a graphical representation of your very own DNA, DNA 11 being just one example (althought it'll cost you roughly $200 plus shipping). While you're at it, get a little box and put some of your own DNA sources in it. Hair roots, bits of skin, blood are all good sources for it. Yes, it's gross but your roots may be important to someone down the road. We can envision a DIY kit for DNA retrieval in the near future. The little box of you might become a science experiment for your grandchildren!
If you've got a double jointed thumb or crooked front teeth, or some other unique physical aspect, take some photos and include a description. Some of what you record is for fun (green eyes, for example) but you should also let your descendents know if you have any ailments which might affect them. A full medical history would be a great resource but, for now, write or record as much as you can about yourself and your ancestors. Include types of cancers, heart disease, anything that you know. When genetic profiling becomes more mainstream, this information will help your children’s children’s children.
If you've got family movies on any kind of video tape, start the transfer now, again - before the tape deteriorates. VCRs are disappearing rapidly, as are 8mm and VHS/VHS-C video camcorders. One of the quickest and best capture tools is the Diamond One Touch Video Capture unit (which goes for under $50.00). All you need is the audio/video source and a USB port. Play the tape, record what you want and then edit it with the Ulead software that is included or DIVX/MKV it and make a data DVD. You can also output directly to DVD. Remember to record dates, places, names and events in a text file that you burn to the DVD. Once you're finished archiving, you can use the capture unit in lieu of a monitor for retro computing or analog game units, anything that has a composite or S-Video out.
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BAMT
June 03, 2011 at 3:16pm
Note for old Mac floppies, hard drives ZIP disks using HFS: you can use Linux to mount them or image them. I imaged both my Mac disks and some floppies originally formatted and used by System 7, later Systems 8 and 9. Mounting ZIPs or floppies is also useful for patching games (err, transferring documents).
Mount disk: "mount -t hfs /dev/fd0 /mountpoint"
Image disk: "dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/output/file"
If you want to be able to read them in your Mac again I strongly suggest keeping an image and mounting the image when you need the files. (The mount command can be used on an image.) Most of the time transferring files to an HFS floppy will make your Mac see them as "DOS Files" which it doesn't like.
