This little ‘BLOG’ is called “Memory” and its lack of mental and physical space. Yes, mental because after some 12 years since I last worked on the names of SPURGEON and DISS, it is hard to remember what I did, what information I had to compile whatever I did, and due to economics, and to lack of knowledge of the computer market what memory was available. Twenty plus years ago the memory available for computers was limited and any available to use as accessory back-up –expensive. Remember the 16K plug-in for the Sinclair ZX81 (where I started) and we thought that was fantastic. Now you can get hundreds of Gigabytes on a minute memory card the size of your little fingernail. So, lacking finances needed for memory add-ons all those years ago, I hoped that I could cope with what I had in whatever computer I had at the time and could cope. How wrong can one be.
Over the years I changed computers through their failure or ‘greatly’ improved benefits of more modern technology. Yet, I failed to notice how much info I had for my Family History work had suddenly disappeared from my then current computers. I used ‘Brothers Keeper’ for storing my related families. This appeared to work well for many years. ZIP disks to replace 3.5in floppies. New names came and went. I was helped by generous friends in Australia who had also done their family history, so I had records of their related families too. But, the files began to look ‘heavy’ with mixed copies and names spreading over from original start files to later new information coming in. I think I tried to sort them out and it failed miserably. Now files disappeared and I did not have the back-up to try and ‘clean-up’ the problem.
After the ZIP files?/disks came CD disks WOW!! 4.5GB!!. Then small USB sticks of varying capacity eventually going to 128 GB? and stand alone Hard disk drives (HDD’s) upto4 Tera bytes (TB), Eventually these Terabyte size drives became standard in the newer computers in the form of solid state disks (SSD). All of the above would probably have sufficed if I could have trained myself to keep a grip on how I used them and what I put them on. So now we come to the mental bit of memory control which must have gone wrong somewhere along the line. How I came to have several files of my DISS and SPURGEON relations I cannot recall all these years later. But they disappeared from my BK records somehow. Only my own family name seems to stay complete, that is until I came across a file listing marriages. A name I knew well, seen recently in the local newspaper, but not found in my BK listings. HOW did that happen? I am mystified. I did find two SPURGEON GED FILES so I can resurrect those and rebuild the family trees which had been completed about 2006, but somehow went walkabout never to be seen again. To sort out all the last thirty years of records, memories (photos mainly) I.G.I.; Census, parish records (B.D.M’s), Microfiche (too late – eyes now fading, would take more than the patience of Job, it would need a total reincarnation of body and soul as I enter my tenth decade).