Back to homepage Keith Solomon

Memory is weird. This morning, as I emerged from a vivid dream about my first encounter with what we might call the "proto-internet," I found myself marveling at how some memories fade within minutes while others resurface with stunning clarity decades later. The dream transported me back to the summer of 1989, when my mother had just begun her undergraduate studies at the University of Southern Mississippi, and I was about to stumble upon a connection that would change my life.

After losing two hard drives in rapid succession, I figured it was time to start giving some serious thought to my backup plan. I have been rsyncing my documents, pictures, and active projects folders to my local Debian server for a while now so neither drive loss was that critical, but it drove home the fact that while I like to think my systems are bulletproof, there's no such thing.

I've been on a black and white photography kick lately. I don't know what triggered it, but I can't get enough of well-done monochrome photos. I did this one tonight based on a photo I took of a Lilac shrub in my front yard.

I did quite a bit of manipulation in Photoshop to the original shot to get this output, but I think the results are worth it.