PSA: Back Up Your Shit
jwz.org
PSA: Back Up Your Shit
1–10 of 137 posts
Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit
#2"You don't just throw your letters in the trash. You might want them some day."
Maybe it's just me, but I actually /do/ throw my letters in the trash. I /do/ treat Twitter, etc. as ephemeral and passing. I don't care about saving those messages. Am I the only one?
Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit
#3Thanks for this. The SMS export from iPhone is something I've been looking for. One of the most important relationships and experiences of my entire life has been documented (trapped) in my phone and it's backups ever since.
I'm looking forward to seeing how well it works, specifically whether it can pull photos/videos as well. If it doesn't yet but it wouldn't be too much trouble to add, I'd be willing to literally pay you to add that.
[Edit: Since a lot of the other comments are questioning the value of saving this stuff I figured I'd share my use cases. It turned out when I thought about it I have at least three:
1. I effectively met my wife on myspace (believe it or not a pretty nasty software bug led to our relationship) and an enormous amount of our initial friendship and courtship ended up documented there. Years ago I painstakingly clicked through for hours and copy-pasted the conversation to a text document.
2. I had a close friend die very suddenly and at a young age. My memory generally kind of stinks and I hated that there were conversations with him that I half-remembered. I went back through social media conversations with him (again, mostly on myspace) a lot in the years that followed. It helped me piece together memories that are very important to me now.
3. This past year my wife and I adopted our daughter. Our relationship with her birthmother has primarily been via SMS and the months that followed were a really exhausting and beautiful blur. It's really important to us that we're able to share that thread with our daughter someday.
In none of these cases did I see it coming that these services would end up having such valuable content in them for me. I didn't know I'd meet my wife. I'll never know when the last time I talk to someone is, and I would have never guessed that one of the most important things I'll have to give my daughter about her birth story is an SMS conversation.
So yeah, having access to this stuff is important to me. Thanks to jwz for pulling these resources together. ]
Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit
#4"You don't just throw your letters in the trash. You might want them some day." Maybe it's just me, but I actually /do/ throw my letters in the trash. I /do/ treat Twitter, etc. as ephemeral and passing. I don't care about saving those messages. Am I the only one?
I don't care about SMS, because it's mostly just my girlfriend asking what time my train gets in every day. But if I were ten years younger, it would totally make sense to save them, in the same way that I currently have archives of all my email and AIM conversations.
Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit
#5PSA: This guy's nightclub makes a really mean meatball sandwich.
Make sure that recipe is backed up.
Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit
#6"You don't just throw your letters in the trash. You might want them some day." Maybe it's just me, but I actually /do/ throw my letters in the trash. I /do/ treat Twitter, etc. as ephemeral and passing. I don't care about saving those messages. Am I the only one?
Nope. I too treat some conversations as ephemeral. Chats mostly fall in this category. Lengthy letters fall in a different category which is stored and backup.
Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit
#7"You don't just throw your letters in the trash. You might want them some day." Maybe it's just me, but I actually /do/ throw my letters in the trash. I /do/ treat Twitter, etc. as ephemeral and passing. I don't care about saving those messages. Am I the only one?
Yeah, I don't save or back up anything; but I accept that I'm in the tiny minority. When I see how much anxiety it causes other people to have to keep track of their stuff, I'm thankful though.
Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit
#8"You don't just throw your letters in the trash. You might want them some day." Maybe it's just me, but I actually /do/ throw my letters in the trash. I /do/ treat Twitter, etc. as ephemeral and passing. I don't care about saving those messages. Am I the only one?
Not at all. By default, all online conversations/letters/etc are trashed. Occasionally, if I have a technical conversation with somebody I will save it for reference. I may also save a letter from somebody if it has sentimental value.
Life is too short to be overly concerned with (most) old conversations/letters/etc. when you could be out engaging in new conversations and creating new memories.
Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit
#9"You don't just throw your letters in the trash. You might want them some day." Maybe it's just me, but I actually /do/ throw my letters in the trash. I /do/ treat Twitter, etc. as ephemeral and passing. I don't care about saving those messages. Am I the only one?
Not at all. I suspect that I'd want to save:
- 50% of photos
- 5% of emails
- 1% of chats
- selective tweets and links I come across.
Definitely not everything.
Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit
#10"You don't just throw your letters in the trash. You might want them some day." Maybe it's just me, but I actually /do/ throw my letters in the trash. I /do/ treat Twitter, etc. as ephemeral and passing. I don't care about saving those messages. Am I the only one?
Nope. Unless it's something I need to keep around (taxes, insurance, usual "business of life" things,) I don't keep any of my email, messages, etc. for more than a few months at best. Nostalgia can prove to be an enemy of progress, and not having a lot of things to look back on keeps me focused on the future.