I’ve been (recently) taking my little Scan-a-thon farther, and scanning in all of my photos.

It’s not really that I want to get rid of ALL of my photos per se, but I wanted to keep a digital copy (just in case.. fire and water damage, you know), and I wanted to only keep the photographs that mean the most to me.

I also wanted to make sure I got the old photos in there before they faded away in time.

I decided to take the Wave approach, by sorting them in what I ended up calling waves with a focused goal in mind at each wave.

Wave #1: Sort & Destroy the duplicates

(I am such a geek…. did you catch that? All your base are belong to us.)

This was… not such a bad task.

I spent a lot of time reminiscing, showing BF pictures of me as a baby and a little girl and so on. It was kind of fun.

I sorted them with only this criteria in mind: Group together & get rid of the duplicates.

I had a LOT of duplicate photos. This was back in the day before digital cameras, so when we printed photos, we printed 3 sets of each photo roll.

What a headache.

Once I was done, I had trimmed down the stack almost by 35%.

Wave #2: Sort into major categories with a rough timeline

This was a bit trickier for my mind to wrap around. I wanted to sort them in a way that it would make sense to me (or in an album) and in some sort of chronological order.

I thought about it, and decided on sorting them by:

Dates (Not exact dates, more like “Around 5 years old”, “High School”, “College”

Events (Birthdays, Christmases, Vacations)

Then within each category of “College + Birthdays”, I arranged the photos so that they were sorted by each birthday.

Wave #3: Start scanning & as you’re doing it, toss the uglies

I scanned them all in. Mass scanning.

Sat in front of my scanner, popped in some addictive Law and Order: Criminal Intent and scanned 4000 photos.

I haven’t gone through THOSE scans yet, but at least I have them.

I scanned 4 or 5 photos per round, and since they were already sorted by Date and Events from Wave #2, I won’t have to hunt and peck for similar photographs.

This was decidedly the most boring part of the task, but I was just NOT willing to fork over $200 to pay someone else to do it for me.

HALE NO! Fugg that. I be scanning them myself, thankyouverymuch.

Ahem.

As I was scanning, I also re-evaluated the photos after they were scanned, and started chopping down the pile by another 30% to have a “final” batch of photos that I am going to keep physical copies of.

Anything of me as a kid from the age of 10 and below was an automatic keep.

Any older, and it was a bit easier to keep just 6 photos of my 16th birthday instead of 25.

Wave #4: Find the right photo albums

This was the step that was the hardest for me.

To find out how many photo albums you need, you need to count your photographs.

But count them by Date & Event!!!

You DO NOT want to run into a situation where you put in your 15th birthday, and you just have 3 photos left over that you CANNOT toss, that will have to go into another photo album and leave blank spots all over the place.

I wanted a cute photo album (silk cover), with a lot of space, and with acid-free plastic pockets.

I was hemming and hawing over the idea of scrapbooks but decided they were too much work and would cost me a fortune in the end.

My other option was to buy those sticky plastic flap photo albums that you pull over the photos like plastic wrap after you arrange them, because it’s a lot easier to arrange photos that are portrait style (upright) instead of forcing them into landscape style (horizontal) pockets.

But can I find these easily? Not really. So I was stuck at this level for a while.

Wave #5: Arranging the Photos & Making Notes

I had 2000 photos in the end, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but is a huge amount for me especially with how much I got rid of in the end.

I sorted them into piles that roughly ended up being:

- Before I was born
- When I was born until the age of 7
- Age of 7 to end of Grade 8
- High school
- College
- After college (not many here, they’re all digitized now)

I grouped events together (birthdays and vacations), and since I had counted the number of photos within each category, I could easily group together those piles and not have any spill over into another album.

I arranged the photos with some of them portrait style beside landscape styles on the same page, and tried to do it in chronological order of how it would have happened at that event.

I also made detailed notes in shorthand on the sides to help me jog my memories before I get too old and the memories are long gone!

I was just thinking about passwords and security the other day, and I got a little electric jolt.

“What if my Gmail accounts got hacked?

How in the world would I get them back?“

My accounts are my identity and lifeblood online.

If they got hacked, I’d have to call Google, for sure.. but how would they know it’s me and not someone posing as me?

They’d need personal information, right?

So here’s the MINIMUM of what you should do with your Gmail account.

There is much more of course, like making all your emails copy over to another email address as safekeeping, but here are some quick essentials.

It takes about half an hour for each email account, and 20 minutes thereafter as you start to get quicker at it.

1. Associate a phone number with your Google Account

If you use Gmail and don’t know how to get to your Google Account:

Settings (Top Right) > Accounts and Import > Google Account Settings (At the bottom)

Select: Password Recovery Options

Enter in a mobile phone number so that you receive an SMS text with a password-reset code on it to your cellphone.

This way, any time someone tries to reset your password (and it isn’t you), you will get texted.

2. Set up another Gmail account JUST for a password reset

I had to do this for all my email addresses.

You can name it something similar so you remember it.

So if you have an email address called: ilovegmail@gmail.com

Then name your password reset gmail account as: ilovegmailpasswordreset@gmail.com

Or something to that effect.

What to remember:

DO NOT use this email address for anything else.

Give it an entirely different password.

For each email address that was a password reset one, I gave them each a different password from the rest.

Just log into it once in a while, manually with a wired internet cable to keep it fresh, but leave it be.

Do not forward those emails from your Password Reset account to your regular account. It just defeats the purpose of having it there.

Set up in your Google Calendar a reminder to log in every 3 – 8 months so you don’t miss the deadlines and your account won’t be deleted.

Note: It’s really 9 consecutive months, but I like leaving a month out just to be sure.

3. Record down these 4 important bits of information:

This is just in case you need to call Google and they will have to  verify you are who you say you are.

Your first email ever received

• Sender
• Subject
• Date
• Time

To find your first email do the following:

All Mail (Under Labels) > Oldest > Scroll to the bottom

…And your first email ever sent

• Sender
• Subject
• Date
• Time

Click on Sent Items (Under Labels) > Oldest > Scroll to the bottom

Your list of personal Labels

If you use this function, you probably have something like:

• Friends
• Work
• Family
• Project A
• Event B

Write them all down, and keep them safe for just in case something happens. Google will want that info.

Your top 20 contacts

Click on Contacts (On the right) > Export (Upper right of the box) > Select: Most Contacted

And export it in whatever format you’d like.

Re-label it, and store it in a safe place so you can refer back to it just in case you need to.

4. Don’t record questions or answers that are easy to find out

Such as mom’s maiden name, your high school, first pet, favourite colour… you get the drift.

Pick something totally, utterly random and obscure, WRITE YOUR OWN QUESTION, and make sure that only you would know what you are referencing.

Examples of Random “Write your own Questions”

• Colour of that sweatshirt I stole from Linda the night we both fell in the pond
• Place where I danced to the tune of that old Audrey Hepburn movie I like

TOTALLY RANDOM things.

5. Do the same info recording for your other Google Accounts

Most notably Feedburner, Adsense, Orkut..

Anything that is linked to your Google Account in some way, that you will need to verify.

Write down specific information from each account and store it.

6. Set your Gmail to always use https

Click on Settings > Always use HTTPS and Save.

It’s a secure connection, and may take you longer to navigate and use Gmail but is well worth it

7. Check out your Activity Details Log at the very bottom of your Gmail screen

See what IP addresses are accessing your mail.

Click on Details and a window will pop up:

The window should only show ONE IP address — yours.

(Not my IP address shown below)

Passwords can be hacked, but don’t be an easy target

Remember: do not use passwords like “God” or “password” or “qwerty”.

They are easily hacked and guessed.

Do a twisted combination of UPPERCASE, lowercase, numbers, and symbols if you can.

If you have a hard time remembering passwords, think of a sentence that means something to you, and take the first letter of each word, and substitute words like “for” or “to” with numbers instead.

Feel like doing more?

Check out these sources for more paranoia:

• Labnol.org: This is where I got most of my wonderful info above.
• Little Miss Moneybags: A wonderful overview of security in general for 2010

I am no amateur photographer by any means, but I am someone who loves to use her digital camera on vacations, around family, friends…

And I don’t like fiddling with buttons or settings and I just want it to WORK.

If that sounds like your kind of review (I won’t be talking about fancy ISO or aperture settings), then proceed ahead!

These are all the things I look for in a digital camera, in the category of what they call “Point & Shoot”, meaning you point the camera at something and press the button to shoot the picture.

Here’s the rough rundown of what I am going to cover:

• Weight & Size of camera
• Memory Card format & compatibility with your laptop
• Scene Settings for getting the best picture
• Optical Zoom to really zoom in on an object
• Video capabilities
• Size of digital viewfinder to avoid squinting through the peephole
• Batteries used and its charging process
• Ease of use for zooming and adjusting settings
• Menu layout accesibility

How heavy and compact is it?

What you’re looking for is a Point & Shoot Camera.

Mine is a fair weight, and is pretty small. Enough to put in a pocket and go.

It is nowhere as slim as my old Fujifilm Finepix camera, but considering the other features and how easy it is to point and shoot.

Generally speaking, the more features a point and shoot camera has, the bigger and heavier it is likely to be.

This is where you have to bring in your own personal judgment and preferences.

Do you want a small, in your pocket compact camera that is light? Then you might want to look at 4X optical zooms or smaller, but you won’t be able to take beautiful pictures as with a heavier, bulkier camera.

For me, I like something that can fit in my hands, and isn’t SO thin that it looks like a card (those cameras have no zoom whatsoever worth speaking of), and can be held STEADY.

I have small girl hands, but even I have found that the smaller the camera for me, the shakier the picture gets. The heavier the camera, the easier it is to hold, point and shoot. It’s just my preference.

I’d rather have something substantial with features, than something super thin sleek and sexy (a lot of Sony cameras are like this — too sexy without any real features put into it for the price you are paying).

What kind of memory card does it take?

Don’t buy digital cameras with XD memory cards. Bla bla bla, it’s better… but let’s think along the line of practicality.

Almost every single laptop takes SD cards directly into the machine without any extra gadgets.

It’s incredibly handy to just be able to pop out the memory card and insert it into almost any new laptop on the market today to grab all the photos. Even my HP Mini 1000 netbook has a spot for SD cards.

In fact, it was a big selling point for me to get rid of my old Fujifilm Finepix camera because it had an XD card, and to pick up my now beloved Canon Elph 880 Powershot camera that has an SD card.

What size of memory card can the camera handle?

This may not be a big problem for you if you are buying a brand new digital camera. But if you are going to buy one used, I’d suggest Googling or asking the manufacturer what the camera can handle as its maximum.

The reason why I am saying this, is because BF’s HP Photosmart Camera that he bought 6 years ago, only takes up to a maximum of 2GB on his SD card.

In contrast, my Canon Elph 880 Powershot camera, takes up to 8GB and possibly more — I haven’t tried.

Having lots of memory, especially if you are a photographing hog like me, is crucial. I also like to take videos and multiple shots of the same thing.

Granted, I’ve never run out of space on an 8GB card yet, but if you are forgetful like me, you will forget to unload your pictures one night, and curse that your card is only 2GB.

Alternatively, you can just buy a second 8GB SD card as a backup, which is what I did.

How many scene settings are there and how easy are they to use?

I know I said I wasn’t going to get technical, but I had little to NO settings on my Fujifilm Finepix camera to allow me to switch between different scene settings like Beach, Aquarium, Indoor, Outdoor, Kids & Pets (fast action), etc.

You’d be surprised at what a big difference it makes to switch to a different setting based on where you’re taking pictures.

A Beach setting on a digital camera for example, will automatically account for super bright sun, high contrast colours, and do all the fancy technical work that old school photographers used to have to manually adjust.

And for Kids or Pets, the aperture speed will be much quicker, to allow you to capture a kid’s motions clearly rather than just seeing a blur.

Look for USEFUL scene settings that you are going to use. There’s no need to have 50 settings with options for Candlelight or Nighttime Landscape, if you only use maybe 5-10.

It is also important to be able to switch between the settings easily.

On my Canon Elph 880 Powershot camera, I am able to rotate between little icons of each of my settings VERY easily, click on the link to check out the review & see shots.

This saves me the time of having to press a button and then scroll through the 10 – 15 options of scenes, one by one, having to read the titles of each scene I could choose.

You’d be surprised how fast a minute or two goes by, and then the shot is finished — either the wildlife disappears into the forest, or the sun sets completely.

What is the OPTICAL zoom on the camera?

Ignore it when salespeople gush about digital zoom. That is just like going into Photoshop and increasing the size of the photo to “zoom” in. It turns out grainy, blurry, pixel-y and is not a REAL zoom feature to focus in on a part of a picture.

What you want to look for is the OPTICAL zoom. That’s when the camera has a little lens that physically sticks out, and zooms in on the object.

My Canon Elph 880 Powershot camera has an optical zoom of 4. And that’s pretty good for all the other features I got.

If you can get any higher, kudos, but more than likely, you’re going to pay more, or the camera will be heavier or bigger because it needs to have an extra retractable lens put in the camera to allow such a zoom.

The exception was BF’s HP Photosmart camera. It has an optical zoom of 8. It was UNBELIEVABLE. His camera is was really fantastic for close up shots from far away, but that was the only selling point of the camera.

It sucked for everything else.

How easy is it to zoom in and out?

On my Canon Elph 880 Powershot camera, I have a little wheel at the top that allows me to quickly zoom in and out with one finger instead of having to press buttons on the side.

I just put my finger on the little tip of the wheel, and if I pull the wheel to the left, it zooms in and when I switch the wheel to the right, it zooms out, all while looking through the viewfinder and not concentrating on another part of the camera. Very simple.

In contrast, my old Fujifilm Finepix camera and BF’s (now dead) HP Photosmart camera needed me to look at the back of camera and to adjust the zoom functions by pressing on a left or right button.

Kind of annoying, and not as quick as a wheel zoom.

Does it have video? Do you care?

This wasn’t a selling point for me. I don’t really care to take videos with cameras.. I mean, it’s interesting to do so, but when have I ever really shown videos to my family? Like never.

Still it’s a feature that seems to come with all modern digital cameras these days.

And if you want to do a hybrid two-in-one camcorder & digital camera, then this may be more important to you.

How big is the digital viewfinder?

The screen.

How big is the screen?

If it’s too small for you to see anything or the way you are positioning the camera, then you may want to think about buying one with a larger screen.

Mine has a 3″ screen which is GREAT. It’s big & clear enough to see what you’re taking.

Many people think that just looking through that little peephole is enough, but once you go with a picture viewfinder, you will NEVER want to squint through a little peephole and cause wrinkles ever again.

I love being able to hold out my camera, to see the picture before it’s being taken, and snap a shot.

In older or other cameras, a little peephole was necessary to see how the picture was being taken, but that has since become obsolete technology for me.

What batteries does it take?

Hopefully not AAA or AA batteries.

Ancient history!

Those can be handy in the sense that you just need to carry extra batteries to pop in new power, but for me it’s annoying to have to deal with 2 or 3 batteries just to charge your camera.

And it’s wasteful if you don’t use rechargeable AAA or AA batteries.

Enter the Li-ion batteries, or Lithium ion batteries. Fancy way of saying, it’s a battery pack that is rechargeable. You pop it into a charger, and into a wall… and it charges. Simple as that.

And I have 2 Li-ion batteries so that in case one dies, I have the other.

How does it charge?

This is a big deal.

I hate cameras that come with docking stations that not only let you unload the photos, but are NECESSARY to charging up a battery.

I mean, I couldn’t even pop out the battery in my old Fujifilm Finepix camera to put in a battery charger or charge in some other way. I had to literally dock the camera in the station and charge it that way. SO annoying.

On my Canon Elph 880 Powershot camera, I just take out the battery, put it into a separate battery charger and plug it into the wall. When the light turns green, it’s charged.

I also have an extra battery charged in case the power runs out (happens more often than you think, especially if you forget to charge it the night before).

FYI: If you are going to buy new Li-ion batteries, you MUST KNOW THE CODE of the battery.

Not all Li-ion batteries are made or work the same. They have different levels of voltage and you don’t want to buy something that won’t fit in your compact camera because it was made for a larger one.

My camera takes NB-5L Batteries. If I want to buy a third Li-ion rechargeable battery, I go out and look for that code.

Is the menu easy to navigate?

How easy is it to delete pictures? To change settings?

Do you feel comfortable with the buttons, moving from one area to another?

That pretty much does it. All you need to know about buying a camera.

I love FireFox. If you haven’t given it a try, you should.

It’s more stable, and less buggy than Internet Explorer, and you can do lots of cool things with it.

I also use Google Chrome.

But Firefox seems to have more addons (is more mature), and my go-to for a lot of things.

But instead of having a boring ol’ regular browser, I wanted to personalize it (of course).

So I installed Personas that lets you install a skin, which is like an image change over your browser window.

Like this for example:

And then I created my own skin for Personas called Minimalist Butterflies.

Which kind of looks like this now:

Check it out here!

I’ve written briefly about it before, but I think it’s time to go into detail on how I lead a 95% paperless life.

1. Ask for everything to be changed into an e-bill

Stop the problem at the source.

Every time a statement floats into your mailbox, call or email them to request an e-bill instead.

By doing this, I’ve cut down on 90% of my recurring paper bills (some still come in like bank statements because they won’t or can’t do e-bills by law).

2. Save a PDF format of the bill

If you get an e-bill that is NOT in an Adobe PDF format, you can put it into Microsoft Word, and use the free program CutePDF to convert it into a PDF.

I suggest PDF formats, so you don’t accidentally delete an important part on a modifiable document.

3. Sort your papers

This is a nasty task if you haven’t been organized with neatly labeled folders and files.

Some general categories to start with:

• Government
• Banking/Investing
• University
• Insurance (e.g. Home, Car)
• Bills (e.g. Utilities, Telephone, Cable)
• Receipts/Warranties
• Taxes

4. Separate the items that NEED to stay in hard copy form

Taxes

Certificates (Birth, Marriage, Divorce, even Death of loved ones)

Wills and Testaments

Use your judgement.

5. Buy/Appropriate the following gadgets:

• Scanner (a $50 one will do)
• 2 x USB Key or Hard drive (I recommend Western Digital, Iomega or Seagate, and you won’t need more than 16 GB at the most)
• Shredder (Optional)

URGENT: I strongly recommend buying 2 or 3 USB keys or Hard drives, because once you scan the papers, the hard copy is lost forever once you shred it.

You do NOT want to lose that data.

Instead of buying a shredder, you can use these two cheapo methods I devised when my shredder conked out on me.

D-I-Y Papier-Mache

1. Rip all your statements up into shreds
2. Fill a kitchen sink with warm to slightly hot water (so your hands won’t freeze)
3. Throw the shreds in there
4. Let them soak until they’re really “done”
5. Ball them up into paper balls, papier-mache style, squeezing out ALL the excess water, really padding it down
6. Let them dry overnight on a rack
7. Throw them out, or use them to play catch in the yard.

This works beautifully because now the pieces of paper are all mixed up, and they cannot be peeled off, or read without falling apart in your hands.

Let it Burn

Just burn it. Grab a large metal can (or if you’re doing a wood fire grill outside), burn the papers.

No one can read ashes.

6. Set up the folders on your Hard drive

Use the categories from before:

• Government
• Banking/Investing
• Insurance (e.g. Home, Car)
• Bills (e.g. Utilities, Telephone, Cable)
• Receipts/Warranties
• Taxes

7. Come up with a file naming strategy

Often overlooked, naming files properly is a lost art in my opinion.

Do something along the lines of:

MajorName/Category_BriefDescription_Year-Month-Day

Name it backwards from Year to Day, so it sorts chronologically by year, and then by month, then by day.

E.g. #1 Driver’s License papers for renewal of plates October 19th 2009

Drivers-License-Bureau_Renewal-Of-Plates_2009-10-19

E.g. #2 Bank Statement for the month of November, 2009

Bank-Name_Statement_2009-11

8. Start scanning and shredding

The worst part of all, and the most time consuming.

I did about 20-30 lbs of paper (guessing here), in 3 months, scanning half an hour each night for 4 days.

It might take you longer, or it might be super quick. But it sure won’t be fun.

9. Have a drink

Smile at your super light load of papers, have a celebratory glass of wine (or huge piece of cake in my case) and keep up on it.