Instant recall

Photographs have a wonderful way of jogging the memory and enabling us to recall long-ago events and experiences. Perhaps that is why, in the event of a fire, it is said that photographs are the things that should be saved first. Nowadays, with everything being digital and stored in cloud computers or scattered around via social media, flash drives, etc., there is little need for panic in that area. In fact, we possibly have so many photos now that it would be better to only keep the really meaningful ones and go back to using our minds for recall.

Some years back, we girls made a disc of all the photos Dad took from when we quite young, which he had in slide form. Alison projected the slides onto a white wall, took digital photos and stored them on the computer, distributing copies to all concerned. It cost absolutely nothing to recapture these photos from our past, and the quality couldn't be better. So if you have old slides that you want to convert to digital, this is the way to go.

Of course, when saving them to a folder on the computer, pressing the wrong button means that they get saved somewhere where you cannot retrieve them. I am referring to myself here. I have been searching for years for the place I stored them, and late last night eventually worked out that they were hidden in a folder totally unrelated to the subject - it was like opening a filing cabinet, taking out a folder, finding three smaller folders inside and then inside one of those was the folder where I stored the photos. Talk about technologically challenged!

It all seems so obvious in retrospect and I have learned more about folders and files, and how to use them to best advantage - exactly as old filing systems worked. In my days as a private secretary, I always took pride in the fact that I could always retrieve a letter with maximum efficiency, and all I have to do is learn how to file on a computer to achieve the same results.

The first task is to delete the unnecessary photos - I currently have more than 10 000 photos on my notebook computer and many are duplicated on the PC. This could keep me out of trouble for years!