family | At Home with Tech

June 23, 2024

4 Helpful Tech Packing Hacks for Vacation

Here are a few ways to help ensure your tech stays safe, organized and fully functional throughout your trip for a more seamless travel experience.

Taking all your tech with you on vacation comes with inevitable risk. But if you’re committed to your decision, you should take these few extra steps while packing to help ensure both your gear’s safety and maximize its functionality during your trip.

Set up a Charging Station
Many hotel rooms don’t have enough convenient outlets or USB ports to charge all your gear. Instead of spreading your tech around the room to tether to the few available outlets, it’s much better to centralize and create an organized charging station of your own.

The trick is to bring your own mini power strip. Make sure it has a long cord so you can snake it from a wall plug to a table or dresser where you can construct your charging station for your hungry tech.

Yes, it may seem counterintuitive to weigh down your luggage with a power strip, but there are a variety of travel-worthy models out there that are relatively light.

Believe me… It’s a game changer.

Bring a Dedicated Camera Bag
If you’re a photographer with a larger-profile camera and lenses, you don’t want to throw all that delicate gear randomly into a piece of luggage. You need a dedicated bag to properly protect it.

A few years back, my family and I took a vacation to New Orleans, and I purchased a Peak Design Everyday Backpack 30L for my camera gear. I carried it onboard the plane with me. Its dimensions are right on the edge of being too big, but I did successfully squeeze it under the seat in front of mine. That said, it would have easily fit in the overhead bin, but I already had my suitcase there. (My family and I had challenged ourselves to not check any luggage on that trip.)

My Peak Design backpack performed absolutely great during our time in The Big Easy. It even housed my little Manfrotto travel tripod.

Pack your Apple TV
If you‘d like your hotel room television to have the same streaming options as your home TV, packing your little Apple TV puck could be your solution. Just connect it to the hotel’s Wi-Fi and the TV’s HDMI cable. (You may need to bring your own HDMI cable.)

This type of MacGyvering works best with less advanced hotel Wi-Fi systems that don’t require signing in with anything more than a password. If you need to first navigate through a hotel’s web portal to sign in, your Apple TV won’t activate.

If it all works, it’s a nifty trick.

Stash a Portable Bluetooth Speaker
Sure, you can play your tunes from your smartphone’s speaker, but it you want to really bathe yourself in the goodness of your playlists, you’ll need to bring along a dedicated portable Bluetooth speaker.

They’re so small these days. Why not throw one in your bag?

Travel Ready
By incorporating these simple packing hacks into your vacation-planning routine, you can ensure that your tech remains safer, organized, and fully functional throughout your trip. From setting up an efficient charging station to protecting your camera gear and enjoying your favorite media, these strategies can enhance your vacation experience and keep your tech running smoothly.

Happy travels!

June 16, 2024

How to Connect Fathers and Sons with a Clock, Watch and a Compass

This was my father’s captain’s ship clock. I can remember the sounds of its chimes from when I was a young boy. But after he passed away, I couldn’t find the winding key.

Our son has graduated from middle school. I can’t believe it. Yesterday, he was in diapers. Today, he’s as tall as me. Tomorrow, he’s off to high school.

I wanted to get him a little gift to commemorate this achievement in his young life. I thought back to some of the presents my father had given me, and I remembered an engraved pocket watch when I graduated from high school.

I was a bit confused by it at the time, because nobody used pocket watches. Maybe certain people did when my father was growing up. Certainly, I wasn’t going to carry a pocket watch around. Still, I liked it. And it’s turned out to be a keepsake, which I’ve held onto across the decades since.

My Son’s Engraved Compass
Still, I figured a pocket watch would make even less sense to my son. But it got me wondering. What object or tool could I engrave? And then I thought about a compass. That carries some meaning, right?

Perhaps, an old compass with metal plating that would allow for an engraved message. But where could I buy something like that?

As it turned out, I found it at a local watch and clock repair store. They didn’t officially sell compasses, but the owner happened to have a few from a collection he had purchased.

Clearly, fate wanted me to find my compass. The one I chose had a removable dark metal top cover, which I used as an engraving surface. It was perfect.

Our son liked his gift. But I know its true value as a memory capsule will only reveal itself in the years and decades to come. So, you can check back on this blog in June 2064 to see if he’s still got it. (Apologies in advance that generative A.I. Barrett will obviously be pumping out these posts at that point.)

My Father’s Ship Clock
While I was in the clock repair shop, I took a moment to look around. I spotted two brass captain’s ship clocks. They were just like the one my father had on our living room wall next to his desk when I was growing up in our New York City apartment. It was mounted there for as long as I can remember. He wound it dutifully every week, and it chimed with its confusing nautical ‘chime-the-watch’ design.

The chimes blended into the day-to-day city background noise, and I barely noticed the little ‘bongs’. When I was a teenager, my father eventually stopped winding the clock (I guess he lost interest), and it transitioned into a silent piece of wall art.

After my dad passed away in 2022, I took his captain’s clock home with me. I felt a strong connection to it (in some ways, more than my pocket watch).

But I couldn’t find the winding key. So, the captain’s clock remained silent.

The Key to Lost Sounds
So, I asked the owner of the clock repair shop if he might have a replacement key to my father’s clock. The owner told me to bring it in when I came back for my son’s engraved compass. He would see what he could do.

When I returned, I handed over the clock. He took it over to a big drawer of keys. And then he began trying them out… one key at a time.

He was at it for five minutes, and I was sure he was going to run out of keys. But then I saw one twist that generated the “click, click, click” sound.

Whoa! It was actually working!

He wound the clock, and then he wound the chime mechanism. (They operate separately.) He moved the clock hands about. And then I heard it.

“Bong, bong. Bong, bong. Bong.”

The sounds of those chimes pierced through my body like a wave of temporal energy.

I almost had to take a step backwards. It felt so visceral. I hadn’t heard those chimes in decades. Was I suddenly in a different multiverse or had I time traveled?

Then, I regained control of my senses, and I simply applauded the store owner’s accomplishment.

Holding onto Distant Memories
I walked out of the store with my son’s compass, my dad’s functioning captain’s clock and the key.

In that moment, I recognized that I had crossed into a nexus between three generations. Fathers and sons. I had tethered the past to the future. It felt significant.

I had my old time-keeping devices from my father. Now, our son has his old compass from me, which should hold up just fine (unless unexpected future solar flares or alien invasion mess with the Earth’s magnetic field).

It’s nice that all this old tech still functions, but it’s not really about using these tools. (Digital versions took over years ago.)

It’s about the important memories they help you hold onto through their visual, tactile and audio cues.

Your Message in a Bottle
As a father, I think about this a lot. Usually, my digital family photo archiving is how I direct this energy. My need to document family history.

But photos fade, and digital files may not last into the distant future.

Turns out the engraving on a pocket watch or compass effectively becomes a message in a bottle, floating safely in the ocean to the future.

Yes, it’s old school… but it works.

April 28, 2024

How to Solve the Jigsaw Puzzle of your Parents’ Family Photos

What are you supposed to do with all your parents’ photos after they’re gone? Before trying to integrate any picture into your own digital family photo archive, here are the three most important details to consider.

My mother curated two massive family photo albums while I was growing up. These visual time machines that held the official Lester record from my formative years always lived in the back of my mom’s linen closet. In hindsight, her process was imperfect, but she kept it up, and she effectively completed it.

Now, I’m finally trying to integrate many of these pictures into my own digital family photo archive. And guess what?

It hasn’t gone exactly as planned.

After I scanned the old originals from the ‘60’s, ‘70s and ‘80s, I found they didn’t immediately fit neatly into one cohesive story, even when viewed in the organizing structure from their original photo album.

So, what’s wrong?

Old Photo Albums are Often Jigsaw Puzzles
Sure, my parents’ vacation photos have been relatively easy to track (though one bathing suit shot by a pool or beach often looks the same as others from different trips).
This happens to be a shot of my father vacationing in Hawaii. But how would you know?

Then there are others that don’t contain any identifying information beyond their relative position in their photo album.
These two friends of my mom (in the center) show up multiple times in her photos during the years before she married my dad. They remain a mystery to me, but you can tell they had a strong connection.

Many photos become a jigsaw puzzle to figure out. And I’ve delayed tackling it for far too long.

Now that both my parents are gone, I’ve lost access to their knowledge. I do know where some of the jigsaw pieces go, but I’m guessing with so many others.

It’s not like I didn’t pay any attention to some of the details in these photos across the decades, but only now have I realized how many gaps exist.

What’s Written on the Back of the Photo?
The biggest problem with archiving physical photos from the pre-digital era is identifying when they were taken. Some film-developing labs my parents used stamped the date on the back of the photos, but not usually.

So, it was up to my parents (actually, only my mom did this) to write down the date and topic either on the back of a photo, in the photo album, or on the front of the envelope the photos came in.

That’s a lot of work. My mother did an admirable job, but it was hardly complete.

The Unknowable Moments can be the Best Ones
So, I’ve been really trying to pull together all these photos and complete the ‘story.’ I’m sure you’re wondering why I just don’t follow the story that’s evident in the original photo albums. Well, that’s because beyond the typical birthday, holiday and vacation photos, the rest of them reflect moments that are often unclear to me.

And these unlabeled photos tend to display more spontaneous and authentic moments than the staged ones. So, I really want to know more about them, though I expect I never will.

This Cobbler Needs New Shoes
Along this frustrating process of being only partially able to unlock and restore the memories from these analog photos, I’ve stumbled across an unexpected and disturbing reality much closer to home.

I’ve been blogging for the past twelve years about the importance of good digital photo organization. But if you can believe this cobbler, I actually haven’t done a great job documenting my own story in photos.

There’s irony in this truth as I’ve regularly invested countless hours in digital photo organization since 2000. Yes, many thousands of photos are properly organized chronologically with their native digital time stamps and in good folder structures, but that’s only the start of any storytelling process.

Plus, there are my own pre-digital photos. Some made it into albums. Others didn’t. Some were labeled. Others weren’t. (Sensing a pattern?)

That Linen Closet Photo Collection wasn’t All I Neglected
And of course, there’s my mom’s linen closet photo library that remained hidden after she passed away back in 2006. The photos stayed in their New York City apartment for the next sixteen years. When my father died in 2022, I, finally took over all his photos from his travels as well as those linen closet albums.

When I began reviewing all of it for digital conversion, I thought I would focus on my mother and father. But I realized how many of these photos were also key to my own story (not surprising).
Here’s baby Barrett in Central Park with my mom and grandfather.

And when I turned to my existing digital photo archive that I thought I’ve meticulously maintained in Adobe Lightroom and looked back a few decades, it was only then that I saw major gaps in my own photo history from those years.

I think I always knew the missing chapters lived in that linen closet, and I had just kept kicking the can down the road.

The Importance of Tending to your Own Timeline
So, I’ve temporarily paused my broader family photo history project to fill in the gaps on my own visual timeline.

Here are the three key insights I’ve learned along the way that you should first consider before embarking on this type of photo-archiving work.

#1
Get the Time Stamp Right
The ‘when’ doesn’t tell the whole story, but without it, an old paper photo is effectively unbound in time. Sure, you can probably estimate it within a couple years based on visual cues. However, locking it into the correct year or even month will better fit it into that jigsaw puzzle. Maybe a perfectly accurate date is not so critical to that individual picture, but it could help clarify other photos.

Plus, without this important marker, you won’t be able to sort your digital versions chronologically.

So, when you digitize or scan a photo, you do really need to take that extra step (I know it’s a nuisance) and immediately modify the ‘creation’ date away from when you scanned it to your best guess on when it was actually snapped.

Taking that critical step will instantly place that photo into its correct position on your sacred timeline. (Yes, that’s a “Loki” reference.)

#2
Your Best Photos Should Independently Tell their Own Stories
Then comes the ‘what.’ The who may be obvious (hopefully), but what’s going on is usually the whole point of any photo.

Of course, you can write a caption into a photo’s metadata field to explain the image, but ideally, a great photo that can stand up against the future will speak for itself.

I’ve come to realize that pictures that can’t tell their own story simply aren’t as valuable as archival tethers to your past.

This may be common sense, but as I’ve gone through many of my own 20th century photos, I’m shocked by how many have effectively lost their archival value, because I can’t tell what’s going on.
Look at me. I’m a kid swimming somewhere in a pool. Does anyone care?

Here’s another photo from the same family trip to Puerto Rico. It’s certainly more interesting, right?

It’s all about the details in a photo. That’s what really matters. Sure, how you look as a younger person may be interesting, but that’s not truly the point of a great archival family photo.

#3
Assume a Stranger is Holding your Photo
Yes, this is similar to #2, but #2 applies to you. #3 is for everyone else!

I think the biggest mistake when building out a collection of photos that represents your family history is to think that the viewer knows what you know. Always assume that nobody will have any knowledge about you or your family. (I know that’s harsh, but that’s the real key to future-proofing your collection.)

You may intuitively understand a grouping of photos, and they may make sense to you, but the truth is nobody else will.

Who is this All for?
Which begs the question… Do you even care if your photo collection makes little sense when viewed by the future? Perhaps all you care about is enjoying your photos in the now. (I think that’s how my father experienced his own photos.)

But I’m talking about your kids… and their kids. Or maybe distant relatives… or even strangers (back to #3).

Do you want your photos to have some level of enduring impact as opposed to dissolving into an anonymous digital oblivion?

Yes, now this is all about legacy. That you were here. And you lived.
This is one of just three photos I have of my great grandfather and the oldest picture of any family relative. I’m so glad it somehow survived.

Legacy
I didn’t used to think about any of this. And now I’m beginning to. (Yes, I know this is connected to Father Time.)

And who knows if there’s really any way to preserve your digital photos into the future any better than a precious photo album in the back of a mother’s linen closet that’s ‘forgotten’ for decades.

But I’m determined to complete my multi-generational family photo archiving work started by my mother. (I’m just currently focusing on the ‘me’ part.)
Here’s a cool photo of me visiting the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles during college.

It’s Not too Late
For those of you who will eventually face a similar archiving project, I can offer this piece of advice:

Don’t wait to get started. It’s much easier if you truly tackle this immense task years earlier, finish it and then simply add to your family photo collection throughout the journey of your life.

Doesn’t that sound so much less stressful?

Good luck.

Category: family

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