This is pretty wholesome. This takes Personal Knowledge Management to a whole other level.
Personal Encyclopedias
151–160 of 197 posts
Re: Personal Encyclopedias
#152My grandfather left five moving cartons of diaries written by typewriter, every single day of his adult life documented, an achievement, to be sure. When he passed away he left them to my mother to be scanned, transcribed and moved online, something that weighed her down for the last 15 years of her life. When he died there was no way of transcribing them automatically (there still isn't really). The boxes stood in m…
I understand there may be an emotional desire to get rid of something unpleasant, but some descendants e.g. 5 generations down the line may feel very differently about this. Given how easy scanning is these days (there are literally companies that will do it for you if you send them a box), and given how good the technology for sifting through mountains of text is becoming, and given that it's literally irreplaceable text, I can't imagine doing this to family records that one of my ancestors specifically wanted to be preserved. Not criticizing your personal decision of course, but just offering a different perspective, i.e. for me it would be unimaginable to do this.
Re: Personal Encyclopedias
#153I did the same thing and came away with a different opinion.
The MediaWiki server died and I had backups, but... literally no one in the family would've tried to resurrect it.
They knew I'd worked on genealogy for a while but I don't think anyone would've thought to rebuild a linux box covered in dust and somehow find an old MediaWiki install on it.
I should've made simple markdown files with images in an image directory and printed out copies. That's a legacy. A consolidated, easy to drag from grandpa's house and throw on a shelf and flip through, even in 2097.
Re: Personal Encyclopedias
#154My grandfather left five moving cartons of diaries written by typewriter, every single day of his adult life documented, an achievement, to be sure. When he passed away he left them to my mother to be scanned, transcribed and moved online, something that weighed her down for the last 15 years of her life. When he died there was no way of transcribing them automatically (there still isn't really). The boxes stood in m…
I understand there may be an emotional desire to get rid of something unpleasant, but some descendants e.g. 5 generations down the line may feel very differently about this. Given how easy scanning is these days (there are literally companies that will do it for you if you send them a box), and given how good the technology for sifting through mountains of text is becoming, and given that it's literally irreplaceable…
I agree. When my mother died I got access to her emails, diaries etc. I read some and as you would expect there are a whole range of emotions and opinions in there, many of which I did not care to engage with. So I asked my wife to read some and she said said she thought it was worth keeping so we do. I will not read it, but perhaps someone else will get some value from it someday. It's no effort to keep (no boxes or terabytes of data).
Re: Personal Encyclopedias
#155I did the same thing and came away with a different opinion. The MediaWiki server died and I had backups, but... literally no one in the family would've tried to resurrect it. They knew I'd worked on genealogy for a while but I don't think anyone would've thought to rebuild a linux box covered in dust and somehow find an old MediaWiki install on it. I should've made simple markdown files with images in an image direc…
Yeah, I think marked down files and a printed version ends up being a good idea. I've never worked with media wiki directly, but I wonder if you could do an easy nightly dump of markdown contents somewhere.
Re: Personal Encyclopedias
#156My grandfather left five moving cartons of diaries written by typewriter, every single day of his adult life documented, an achievement, to be sure. When he passed away he left them to my mother to be scanned, transcribed and moved online, something that weighed her down for the last 15 years of her life. When he died there was no way of transcribing them automatically (there still isn't really). The boxes stood in m…
I understand there may be an emotional desire to get rid of something unpleasant, but some descendants e.g. 5 generations down the line may feel very differently about this. Given how easy scanning is these days (there are literally companies that will do it for you if you send them a box), and given how good the technology for sifting through mountains of text is becoming, and given that it's literally irreplaceable…
I feel the same way, but I think my feelings may change if I didn't actually think the person was a good enough person that deserves to have their writing immortalized, like in this case. Of course, we only have his side, but the GP doesn't seem to think his dad was a good person and wrote some hurtful things in the diary about someone they cared about, which I feel as though is justification for their actions.
Re: Personal Encyclopedias
#157My grandfather left five moving cartons of diaries written by typewriter, every single day of his adult life documented, an achievement, to be sure. When he passed away he left them to my mother to be scanned, transcribed and moved online, something that weighed her down for the last 15 years of her life. When he died there was no way of transcribing them automatically (there still isn't really). The boxes stood in m…
I understand there may be an emotional desire to get rid of something unpleasant, but some descendants e.g. 5 generations down the line may feel very differently about this. Given how easy scanning is these days (there are literally companies that will do it for you if you send them a box), and given how good the technology for sifting through mountains of text is becoming, and given that it's literally irreplaceable…
I totally understand your way of thinking but there's just so much _stuff_, we already kept most of his paintings which takes up a lot of my limited storage space (I do appreciate them though, but it's possible to have conflicted feelings).
It would cost around $3000 to have the diaries scanned today, this number was way higher a few years ago (which my mother didn't have). I know Americans have a lot more storage space in their houses and use storage facilities for a lot of things but there has to be a cutoff point. I have about 6m3 of (already filled) extra storage space in central Stockholm and wouldn't want that much more. Throwing shit away is a part of life.
Re: Personal Encyclopedias
#158Excellent post. Something I think about a lot in this exact context along the same lines as personal/community/local social nets.
The industrial-scale things (manufacturing, content generation, human/world history record keeping ...) eventually shrink down to human-scale things
Re: Personal Encyclopedias
#159I'm concerned about your copy that says "Private by default" and "Your wiki and archive live on your machine. Nothing is stored remotely.", yet you recommend to use Claude, which means your data is being stored remotely in most cases. I do like the idea though! Will try with local models