1776 - I Took A Trip On A Gemini Spacecraft

2011-08-31

Well, things are back to normal. My desktop computer here in Vienna is working again. I have a new graphics card (Nvidia GFX 560), memory is up to 8 GB, and instead of one almost full 2 TB drive for my images I have now two with plenty of space. Feels good 🙂

The image was not really taken in space and the rockets are not really rockets but rather dirt on the backside of a frosted glass pane. Still, the Song of the Day is “I Took A Trip On A Gemini Spacecraft” from the 2002 David Bowie album “Heathen”. Hear it on YouTube.

There are 10 comments

John   (2011-08-31)

A pleasing image to be sure! Thanks... John

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Paul   (2011-08-31)

Wow! 2 terabytes! 2 x 10^12 or 2^40 that is INCREDIBLE! 2,000,000,000,000 bytes of data or so. Yikes! I've not even filed up my 1/2 TB drive. But then again, I shoot lots of JPG. Cool shot, there. I like it! Glad to hear that you got your computer back together, upgraded, and running again.

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Did you say 4 TERAbytes? » Paul Lester Photo   (2011-08-31)

[...] was just over at Andreas’s site and read his post, I took a trip on a Gemini spacecraft. In the post he mentions the fact that he has a 2 terabyte drive, almost full, and another new one [...]

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Roland   (2011-09-01)

I get that really uneasy feeling... sitting in a gemini spacecraft and seeing daisy flower petals sticking on the outside of the windows... really uneasy feeling. 🙂 cheers ®

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Roland   (2011-09-01)

Ah... and btw: buying 4 TB isn't hard. Filling 4 TB isn't really hard either. BUT... imagine how you will keep those 4 TB picture data backed up on a second drive AND make sure you can still read the data in a few years... this gets creepy. Data maintenance takes time and harddisks aren't meant to be long term storage. How easy was it, to archive a film strip, compared to make sure your archived digital files can really (!) be accessed in a few years.

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andreas   (2011-09-01)

Not that hard either. I have two computers in two places, Vienna and Carinthia, currently with 4 TB each, and I keep them in sync by carrying incremental backups on a 500 GB USB drive. If the hardware in one place fails, I always get nervous though, and I try to get to safety as soon as possible. Sure, freak accidents could happen in two places, but I guess I can live with that risk. If I wanted to, I could add a tad more safety by buying two additional drives, mirroring the two drives in one place, and storing the two extra disks at work. By doing this every few months, I could bring the risk down even more, at least for everything older than a few months. Hmm ... not sure if the paranoia is warranted though.

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Roland   (2011-09-01)

The mean time to failure isn't measured in many years, Andreas. I have quite some experience in trying to use hard disks as long time archival. And "long" means 5 to 6 years. Many drives fail to even start, if you let them lie for two years. If you use them all the time, you should get used to copy the WHOLE shebang every few years. And if you keep them as RAW files, make sure you can still read those files in lets say, 10 years... meaning you need a software that can read them. There's no guarantee in that.

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andreas   (2011-09-01)

Which is certainly true. I could convert my Nikon RAW files to DNG, thus making long-term accessibility slightly more likely. If only DNG had loss-less compression like NEF. My LX5 RAW files convert from 10 MB to around 30 MB. Yikes!

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Myn.pheos   (2011-09-02)

Interesting. But I think the DNG converter compresses files it creates. And it can also encapsulate the original file and generate a thumbnail. I've tried to convert compressed .PEF to .DNG and the new file is a few kB smaller.

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andreas   (2011-09-02)

The result may depend on multiple factors. One may be the actual camera. Some may compress, some not, for whatever reasons. The other thing may be the version of DNG. I require it to be compatible with Camera RAW 4.6, because that's what I have with PS CS3. The compatibility requirement may inhibit compression. In any case, I do not embed the original RAW.

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