[dba-Tech] 1000-year DVD

I just checked the local Best Buy and a Pioneer 15x Internal BD/DVD/CD
burner is a palty $94.99 CDN. An ASUS 12x external writer is $146.99. The
only discs that store offers are 25Gb, in 15-packs for ~$85. or slightly
more than $5 apiece. (Pause for quick calculation... current space occupied
is less than 1 TB, but that's because I removed some old client databases,
and also because I typically burn my movies to DVDs; therein lies a
problem: I have approximately 400 movies on DVD -- that would demand some
significant investment in Blu-Rays, even at the most-condensed layer
storage. OTOH, several other factors present their pretty heads:

a) why do I think that it is my responsibility to preserve cinematic and
musical works? I like to think that my collection reflects my good, albeit
decidedly offbeat, taste, but I'm also sure that millions of other copies
exist elsewhere. I choose only to record those DVD movies that meet my
standards, the principal one being that the film must withstand repeated
viewings. Unlike many and perhaps most viewers, I tend to regard movies in
the same light as I do classical music -- it only becomes interesting when
you've memorized it, once you can do a complete scene including all its
characters, and emulate their voices and sarcasm and glances askance and
subtle bristles at offence taken, the adjustment of the hat or collar, the
curl of the lip, the abrupt military-style turn on one's heel, and of
course the obligatory pause just prior to the exit at the doorway, when
s/he turns around and says something hurtful. That's when you know a movie!
And I know a few hundred movies that well. And I'm also promiscuous as
hell: I love School of Rock almost as much as Miller's Crossing and
Bergman's Persona, and hell, I even love Overboard, which is clearly a
ripoff of Lena Wertmuller's classic Swept Away. But that's where being a
cine-slut gets you LOL.

b) When I die, someone will inherit a most idiosyncractic collection of DVD
movies. Probably there is little or no need to record these on
1000-year-MTBF discs; copies will be available elsewhere.

c) Same thing goes for my CD collection, which numbers into at least a
thousand, and is equally promiscuous. I file those objects strictly
alphabetically, without regard to genre. This is a simple solution
regarding most music: if you want a collection of Tibetan regligious music,
look under T. If you want an overview of Punk, that takes more work --
you'll have to look up The Clash, Ramones, Rough Trade and Sex Pistols
separately, and you'll find adjacent to Sex Pistols Schubert's works, and
shortly afterwards, Scriabin, Shostakovich and then Stravinsky, and shortly
after that, the collected works of Talking Heads, Problems arise when a
given CD (for example almost anything by Kronos), which could have anything
from Monk to Satie etc. on any given disc. In that case, I file them by
artist rather than composer.

d) And finally we come to the stuff that I deem Truly Important, and I
remain unsure how to file this stuff. Examples include Jacqueline du Pre
playing Beethoven's Cello Sonata Op. 66 No. 3, with Stephen Bishop NOT that
atrocious other recording she did with Danny Barenboim, her then-husband,
YUK! Another: Miss America, by Mary Margaret O'Hara (sister of SNL's
Kathryn and also of brother Marcus, who is a genius at founding trendy
night clubs in Toronto); her recording transcends genres -- it's rock,
jazz, country and a few others by turns, and IMHO stands as one of the
greatest records ever made in Canada, ever. Another example: I have about a
dozen recordings of Igor's Rite of Spring, and to my mind there's only one
conductor who truly understands the music, and that is Igor himself,
conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. He makes everyone else look
foolish, IMO. So, just to file him under "S" or to include that recording
on some special shelf and special Blu-Ray of "Musical Essentials, as judged
by Arthur"? Perhaps the best solution is Both.

And finally, we come to the most difficult problem. Years back, I had a
collection of books numbering into the thousands. About a dozen years ago,
faced with the prospect of moving them all, and also the fact that I hadn't
even glanced at my copy of Joyce's Ulysses since reading it in university,
I decided to purge my collection, and donated about 95% to the local
library + St. Vincent de Pauls charitable second-hand store. I imposed a
brutal rule: either I'm guaranteed to read it again, or it's a signed first
edition. That reduced the number to several hundred, and since then it's
grown to at least a thousand. Why does it matter than I have just about
every book that Orson Scott Card wrote, signed in first edition? And same
for William Gibson and Neal Stephenson? And even a couple signed by Le
Carre (well, Cornwell)? In the big picture, who cares? Just me, I guess. So
I suppose that attempts to record them via OCR are pointless.

Come to think of it, perhaps all this stuff is pointless to collect and
preserve, and that I should just flog it all on eBay and spend the money on
lobster, wine and hookers. Himm. I grow old, perhaps it's time to Act!

:)

A.