I’ve been doing some work, cleaning up my Bookmarks files. Technologically speaking, it’s been trying; I’m very lucky that I thought to back everything up prior to attempting to sync anything. This is particularly so, as I had knocked out some broken links, and actually tried to organize things. Then I tried syncing everything, and the sync undid all of my work. But with a couple of clicks, I was able to restore…almost everything (not what I had changed after creating the new Bookmarks backup files).
Anyway…it’s working now.
No, I don’t know what it would be like if I had to do something similar in an employment situation. I guess, “unnerving,” is the word. I haven’t yet gotten to the point where a backup has failed me, though I know, “save it and forget it,” doesn’t necessarily work. Even on solid-state drives (SSDs), files eventually become corrupted, though it generally takes a number of years for that to happen. (I did discover last night that if a SSD is being accessed at the same time as a power surge or power loss, the files could also become corrupted.) This is why one has redundant backups…though I wonder how many of my backups are actually redundant.
The point of my telling you about the Bookmarks, is to introduce the fact that I also found a number of interesting resources hidden in there, related to beadwork. It’s also a reminder to me to look back at the folders; though Charles Lewton-Brain’s Ganoksin bibliography and the Vallejo Gem & Mineral Society’s site are under “Metals” and “Stones”, specifically; not with the rest of the bead-related materials.
For anyone local to the San Francisco Bay Area, I just found that tomorrow and the day after (February 25 and 26), the 2023 VGMS Gem & Mineral Show should be on! I’m not going, but I decided to signal-boost it, meaning that I should get this posting out ASAP. The only reason I even know about the Society is the fact that I took a couple of classes in Silversmithing, and we had been talking among ourselves about the possibility of learning Lapidary skills with them…
I’m thinking it’s going to take a number of posts to get through all of these links (unless I just dump them all here and now; but that would seem irresponsible). This is especially as some of the URLs serve a repository function and grant access to texts one wouldn’t run across easily, otherwise. I haven’t had the chance to read through all of it yet, though I’m certain that doing so will give me more research leads.
I have, that is, seemed to have run across a, “next layer down,” where it comes to jewelry making. I’ve found people who research beads, people who make glass beads, people who do metalwork, a baby forum on beadwork, etc. I’ve also recalled and added to my library a couple of local resources where it comes to hot metalworking and glass art/industrial art classes (where — at least with hot metals — the major issue after one learns the basics, are the details of safe studio practice, and safe studio space).
People are a vital resource, especially within the jewelry arts. It seems that there are so few of us, that it is really a special thing when we find each other!
SpectralBeads 