Hack 88 Keep a Digital Diary

Diaries enable us to document the big and little moments in life. And your pocket digital camera might be the greatest journaling tool of all .

Life moves so quickly. Before we know it, an entire year has raced by. Sometimes, we have difficulty remembering what we had for dinner last night, let alone what we did last month.

Keeping a diary helps give life perspective. Not only can we look back and appreciate the richness of our existence, but a diary can help us remember the specific dates that events happened . Many people don't want to take the time to explain, in words, the big and little moments as they occur. That's understandable. But our pocket digicams and camera phones can help us document our lives, and computers make organizing those images easy.

I'm going to walk you through an easy and effective way to keep a photo diary. Once you get a feel for the workflow and the types of tools you need, you can create a system that works better for you. Here are the necessary components :

Digital camera

You can use a pocket digicam, camera phone, or both. The key to a photo diary is having a camera available when events happen. It's not going to work if your only camera is a bulky digital SLR. In this case, portability is more important than image quality. Not only does your camera record the images of your life, it also captures when they happened. Every picture you take is timestamped. For this to work properly, be sure to set the correct date and time on your camera.

Digital shoebox

As you record the events of your life visually, you need a place to store the images. In this hack, I use Apple's iPhoto (http://www.apple.com/iphoto). I can upload my images, write comments about each one, and output the diary to paper, CD, or even a web site. Other great digital shoeboxes, such as Adobe Album (http://www.adobe.com) and iView Media Pro (http://www.iview-multimedia.com), work just as well.

Taking a picture every day is a good habit to acquire. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece, just something to show what kind of day it was. If it's autumn, a simple picture of colorful leaves will do. Caption it, "The maple trees in the front yard are in full color today and look beautiful."

Seems kind of boring, doesn't it? You'll be surprised that, over time, those images are anything but boring. Have you ever wondered, in hindsight, when the trees in the front yard turn colors? You'll know the exact date by referring to your digital diary.

Once a week or so, upload the pictures to your digital shoebox. All shoeboxes allow you to create custom albums, so you'll want to make one exclusively for your diary, as shown in Figure 8-7.

Figure 8-7. A photo diary using iPhoto

The date and time are embedded in the image file itself, so you don't have to worry about when something happened; the software will display that information for you. But you might want to add a few words about what was happening when you took the photo. Don't worry about writing an essay here; just use a few words to describe where you were and what you were doing, as shown in Figure 8-8. This whole process should take only a few minutes. The idea is to make this easy; otherwise , you won't do it.

Figure 8-8. Add a few words to each image to complete the record

Over time, your digital diary will grow and become quite interesting. Even after only a couple of months, you'll find that looking back is more fun than you would have imagined when you started the project. But there's more.

A great benefit of the digital approach is its archiving ability. At the moment, optical discs, such as CDs and DVDs, are the best bet for preserving a diary. But what about software compatibility? I don't necessarily want to burn an iPhoto library onto a CD, because my nephew, who works on a PC, won't be able to read it.

To archive your diary, export it as a web catalog that can be viewed on any computer with a simple web browser. Any good digital shoebox allows you to do this. In iPhoto, make sure that the album is selected and choose File Export. You have some basic options to choose from, as shown in Figure 8-9. Most important is the "Show comment" box, which ensures that the text you've included with each photo is transferred to the web catalog.

Figure 8-9. Include photo comments when exporting

After you click the Export button, the digital shoebox will assemble your web pages and place them in the folder you designated. To check your work, simply open that folder and double-click on the index.html file.

Your web browser will open and you'll see a page of thumbnails with the date beneath each, as shown in Figure 8-10. The highlights and mundane events of your life are there before your eyes.

Figure 8-10. Your diary, transformed into a web page

If you click on any image on the thumbnail page, the full version will open with the comment text below it, as shown in Figure 8-11. This is nothing like the diaries from the days of old. You have full-color images that capture the moments of your life with the precise dates and comments about what happened. Your diaries can be viewed on any computer by anyone you want to share them with.

Figure 8-11. The full version of an individual day

At this point, I recommend you burn the web version of your diary to at least two CDs or DVDs: one to keep on hand at home and another to store offsite, perhaps at your office or in a safe-deposit box. This will ensure that your memories will be safe for years to come.

One last thought about sharing your memories: you might want to post your diary on your personal web site [Hack #50] or even make a hardbound photo book [Hack #86] . This is the great advantage of digital storage: once you have the information neatly tucked away in your computer, there are countless ways to share it with others.