Over the past couple of months I've been scanning hundreds of photos, and recording most of my favourite music.

All this has gone onto my laptop, a whole life of memories, converted to 1's and 0's and stuffed onto a hard disk.

This is good from a storage point of view, in theory I could convert all my music and photos and ditch the originals, thus saving a lot of space. But what if the disk crashes (and I've been my usual slack self when it comes to backups). What happens when the technology changes and the files are no longer readable? Won't happen you say, CDs will be around for ever. I used to keep information on 8-inch floppies, have you any idea how I could retrieve that data these days?

One answer is to migrate the data to the new technology every few years. As long as you're willing to do that, and to put in the hours to record it in the first place, I think it's a good way to go.

This data migration problem is a big one, one that the National Library of Australia has to face regularly, because they archive "documents of national significance" to "ensure that Australians have access to their documentary heritage now and in the future."

In the past this has meant traditional printed material. These days however so much information is only available electronically that they have implemented PANDORA, a project to save "electronic publications of lasting cultural value".

They maintain the hardware and software required to allow these electronic documents to be accessible in the future, when we've all forgotten what a JPEG file or a CD is.

I hope they get it right, because I didn't bring the subject up by accident. You see they've archived robgray.com.

That's right, robgray.com is a "document of national significance" with "lasting cultural value".

Your grandkids will be able to read my stories, and look at my photos, just as you are. Now that's a scary thought :-)

Till next time then, and remember,

don't dream it, be it!