Geeky Yet Waterproof

In the old days, people used paper.



Let’s travel back in time to the year 1007…



Somebody writes in his journal. 50 years later, he dies. Fast forward 1000 years, some bored kid digging in his back yard finds a square rock in the ground that turns out to be a journal from 1000 years ago. It’s dirty, but the pages are intact and all the information has been preserved.



The year is now 2007, and somebody is writing in his blog. Three years later, he moves to a new blogging system and deletes the old one.



What happened here? He just deleted the past.

Now, let’s say he didn’t delete his old blog. Resume the timestream.



50 years later, he dies. Fast forward to 3007, some excavator is clearing to make room for the new spaceport. He finds a square rock in the ground, which turns out to be an ancient hard drive. It’s covered with dirt, the disk is completely destroyed, and it is soon moved to a new home: the dumpster.



Now what? Hard drives don’t last. They usually live for about 100,000 hours of use, because they have moving parts, which makes them not very durable.

The solution: better storage media. This could mean phase-change memory, or PRAM. PRAM is a type of non-volatile memory which makes use of heating and cooling chalcogenide glass to store data. This means it would last longer than Flash memory, which can only do about 100,000 writes per sector. PRAM is still a developing technology, but it could be very useful in the future.

Another option is Kodak Ultima: a CD-R composed of gold-fortified silver alloy. Whereas normal CDs are expected to last nine years, this is expected to last 5083 years.



So, let’s get back to our excavator. He finds a flat object in the ground which turns out to be a memory storage chip, in perfect working order. It has obsolete connectors, but technology doesn’t move backward; an adapter can be made so the data can be extracted.

The chip is full of what historians call photos and videos — an ancient 2D method of depicting visual images. The files are in an obsolete format, but like with the physical chip, software can be made to read these files.



3007…

3006…

3005…

…

2007… stop.


How was your trip to the future? What did you learn? If data is to be preserved for posterity, it needs to be saved, not deleted, and it has to be on a medium that lasts.



Our time travels show that it will be harder to for data to be saved to the future and then extracted than it was 1000 years ago, but if it can be done, there will be a lot more information than back then. Remember, if a picture is worth 1000 words, then a video is worth 1000*numberOfFramesInVideo words.



Now let’s see if someone digs up this article in 1000 years.

We had morning swim practice in Corvallis today, and we got to swim in the outdoor pool (named “Otter Beach”). Natascha and I did the breaststroke set, but with butterfly instead of breaststroke. The set was this:



2×200’s free @ 3:00, 3×200’s fly @ 3:30

2×200’s free @ 3:00, 3×200’s fly @ 3:20

2×200’s free @ 3:00, 3×200’s fly @ 3:15

2×200’s free @ 3:00, 3×200’s fly @ 3:10



We ended up doing about a mile and a half of butterfly. When I first saw what the set was, I was actually asking Kate if I could just do breaststroke. But the set turned out to be a lot more fun than I had thought, and not nearly as hard as I was expecting. I think the 200 butterfly releases endorphins or something. But one thing’s for sure: I’m never going to fear a 200 fly again.



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Later today, Eric had a party at his house. So, of course, we played Guitar Hero II for two hours, pausing only to eat a hunk of steak.

Music, games and food… the only combination you need.

My cousins Jacob, Colton, and Aunt Diane came to visit from Alaska on Wednesday, and they also brought Grandpa Dick down from Port Angeles.


While they were here, we officially initiated the Swimming In The Lake season and had a game of “Let’s Exceed the Weight Limit” in the boats. I didn’t know we could so accurately reenact the Titanic.



We also went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which was awesome. It was a little confusing because almost all the characters had already died at one point, so you probably won’t understand it if you haven’t seen the first two movies. But it was full of action, and, as you probably guessed, Captain Jack returns — only this time there are about 10 of him.

I suggest you go see it.