The Perfect Program
A joy to read, but difficult at times. 100 Years of Solitude is very non-linear with lots of flashbacks and fades. It makes it difficult to focus on the plot. But ultimately, the details of the plot turned out to be less important than the prophetic and recursive theme.
I have to admire Marquez's style of prose. First, his balance of plot, theme, and detail. Second, his ability to really touch your humanity and even primality with the calibar and breadth of his characters. Finally, and in my opinion most admirably, he conveys so much depth of interpersonal relations with so little dialog.
This is my first read by Marquez. I think that Marquez's writing is very similar to that of Anne Proulx author of The Shipping News (which is coming out as a movie!). I've since aquired books by both authors (thank you dad). I look forward to reading them.
I used to pamper each image with a name, a description. Heck, I might even give each picture it's own date and author tag in the JPEG info. Then I reduced that just an aptly named file. Well that gets real tedious with any file browser (explor, finder, nautilus etc.). So then I started collecting my pictures in sets. Named buckets of nameless unexplained pictures.
Have the pictures lost their value? I'll bet other people with digital cameras have this same sentiment. It should feel strange. If one spends exactly as much time fiddling with pictures as taking pictures. That's two moments of time spent on one moment or archival. No wonder I'm hesitant to burn time on them.
If you think that is tough try video. It takes equal amounts of time to take a video, review a video, and digitize a video. So, It takes 1 moment to record; one moment to review the tape at your computer; and since the computer rips the video only as fast as the play speed of the camera it also takes on moment to copy the video onto the computer. So, 3 moments of one's life to archive 1 moment, and that's a highly conservative estimate. Now if you process from a disk consuming DV codec to a more web worthy codec like Sorenson QuickTime or MPEG then production could takes many moments. I'm lucky to have a fast dual processor computer. So, it takes me about as long to process/compress the video as it does to record it. Now, we're at 4 moments of work per moment of video. Want to add an audio track and a fade effect yet? You probably don't have time.
Don't be disheartened. Just because my pictures don't get the lavish descriptions of old, doesn't mean that they aren't important. Remember that God likes motion and not position, It's not the destination it's the journey. The only constant is change. Get you're 'δ' on! You see in the end when you're reviewing your media, whatever medium you chose, the important thing is not each picture. The real meaning will be gleaned from the story they tell from the differences between the pictures.
I think the real feng shui of personal archiving comes in using your time wisely. And finding a happy minimalist compromise that still retains the spirit of my story. Remember I'm out to be doing, not watching. PS This same principle goes for spelling errors ;-)