Funny You Should Mention…..

The Odyssey of my recently shared Christmas photos.

One of those who commented on the photos I posted of the illumination, as they call them in Japan, displays in and around Tokyo, said that “I hope you enjoyed finding and posting at least as much as I enjoyed seeing. “. Well, there is a story behind this. One that touches upon several of the themes I often post about in my stack.

It starts with a great Christmas gift from my wife, an awesome piece of state of the art technology, a digital frame. Not being facetious here, it was all this at the time. It accommodated both CF cards, which my DSLR uses and the newer SD cards. Despite CF cards supposedly being the more stable storage medium, SD cards are a lot less expensive. So, I bought a lot of SD cards and filled them with pics on various topics, usually holidays, seasons, and various trips we took together. I even found SD card cases the size of CD jewel cases.

Interestingly, I have found in only one place, one specific Bic Camera carried them. None of the many other such stores, including other Bic Cameras did. Was lucky to stumble across these.

There were some pictures I wanted to post in my last that I could not find. I searched through each year’s folder in case I miss dated them, something a reader’s comment led me to discover that I had done so with other Christmas photos. Couldn’t find them in any of my photo app’s folders. Having strictly followed my protocol for deleting photos from my CF cards which is to upload them to my photo app, save them to an external hard drive and burn a photo DVD before deleting, I went through my dvds and realized that my earlier ones were still at the house. Made a trip over to the house to fetch at the earliest opportunity, a day or two later.

Spent much of New Year’s Eve looking through these. Not there. How do I not have them saved to neither my photo app’s folders nor DVD? Hopefully they are saved to a hard drive but it would be one for my windows computer, all of which are still at the house.

“Now where did I last see them? Wasn’t THAT long ago….AH! The digital photo frame. So I began looking through my CD case sized SD card albums. Problem, I am still in the midst of moving and these did not make it across town together. After a lot of searching, I find the CD case album with Christmas written on it! The slot is empty. “That’s right! There was a SD in the album when I moved it! Oh! Hope it wasn’t that one. Probably was as I am sure that the last photos I played on it were Christmas pics.”. The reason I hoped that the SD with the missing Christmas photos was not the one I removed from the album was that when I did, I put it in the breast pocket and forgot about it until I washed and dried the shirt when I felt it in the pocket. The first several SD card readers gave a message that the data on the card was unreadable. Many others have had the same result with various readers but they did not go through the wash. My newest reader, made for field use for photographers read it! Those pictures, all of them, are now saved to my photo app. Will burn them to DVDs ASAP.

Had I not had the appreciative audience in you folks, I would not have had the reason and motivation to track them down and they may have been lost forever. Thanks to all of you, they have been rescued.

Sadly, the digital photo frame no longer functions, CF cards are hard to find and are expensive, and even devices purchased within the past few years are no longer usable. It has been a time consuming trying to get my new CD/DVD reader and MBA to read these Photo DVDs. Looks like I need to once again save them all to my MBA and burn them onto new DVDs again.

The above photo is a representative collection of the various readers I used. 1. Is one of several I used of this type, can’t find the others at the moment, that connect SD cards to my various iPads. Nos. 3 are two excellent devices that still work despite the rubber parts they have disintegrating and the fact that you can no longer get batteries for them. Combined, I spent more than $1000 on them. They pre date iPads and are vastly superior to iPads of all makes and models as they can both download and entire 32 GB CF card in like 30 seconds. Takes my iPad Pro about a day and half to perform the same. Okay, probably a wee bit o an exaggeration, but not as much as you think. When I first fired up the Canon device, it requested that I set the date. The latest year I could choose was 2024, to give you an idea of how old this is. Yet, apart from the fact that batteries are extinct for it, it has all the data I stored in it a decade or so ago and can’t still read at least some of my SD cards. Same for the Epson, which holds more data and which I found to more useful. However, none of devices 1-3 could read my washed and dried SD card with my Christmas photos from 2009 on it. No. 4 did. It does not accept CF cards though.

Still at the house are daguerreotypes from the 1840s that can still be viewed with out needing to fork out huge sums of cash and time every few years to be able to do so. Is this progress? OH! I scanned some.

Daguerrotype c.1840s

Very interesting Ambrotype with Diamond Head in the painted backdrop. C.1850s-60s.

And one more. The photos that lead me on my odyssey were not the ones I posted, but in the folder with them were the ones of Omotesando and others. Here is one of those I left out as I focused on the lights.

This in the lobby of the concert of a Christmas Jazz Concert the wife and I went too years ago. It was awesome. These guys are a Dixieland Jazz ensemble who were as great as showman as they were as performers, and they were first class performers. Only one of many acts. As we strolled the Tokyo during Christmas season we would sometimes stumble upon Christmas performances in shopping areas and other public venues. Was quite magical.

FYI. Just had the first snow fall of the year near Tokyo and it has actually accumulated.