Backup

If you blog* then you will be aware that the Blogger website had a problem this week and was down for quite some time. They recovered the situation eventually by reverting to a backup server holding slightly out of date information. All is well again, but for a while my words of wisdom from Thursday had gone down the great plughole of history.

This makes me consider the transient nature of knowledge these days. With one small digital error your first novel could vanish in a moment. There is, of course a solution, and I am sure you would reach for yesterday's backup, but you know that didn't contain the exquisite final chapter that you wrote just this morning.

I write the software and VHDL code that breathes life into the hardware I design, and I reverted to "yesterday's backup" recently. This, however, was a voluntary action. In the rush to develop a new system, I sometimes lose the plot and my mental pile of spinning plates come crashing to the ground. 

I look at the recent hacks and patches in despair, unable to retrace my steps to the last version that worked. 

This is the point that I reluctantly reach for the memory stick and erase today's work and begin again where I started this morning. 

Ouch.





*Blog has become a verb, along with Leverage and Party and Backup. I guess that's progress for you.

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