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Post by although on Oct 2, 2020 1:20:46 GMT
I just spent about an hour scanning my most recently received letters into pdf documents on the computer. It's a thing that I've often considered doing, but only today actually gave it a try.
I scanned 12 letters. It took me about an hour.
My MFP has a document feeder, but it only scans one-sided. So, I had to scan on the glass then flip pages by hand. It's a little clumsy but not so involved as to be a show stopper.
The scans are in color, but I can only scan in three paper sized (letter, A4, legal). So, most letters have a significant amount of white space around the edges.
The actual pdf files vary between about 900K and 5M in size. So, disk space shouldn't be a major issue for me.
I'm not using any kind of database. I just worked out a file naming convention that should let me sift through the files pretty easily.
Has anyone else given this a try? I wonder how it has worked out for others?
cheers!
mike
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Post by penguy on Oct 2, 2020 2:37:33 GMT
Have you thought of digitizing the letters you send as well as the replies. That way you could check a sent letter and make certain you aren't repeating yourself. Sometimes as I am writing I try to remember if I said said something in a previous letter. Are you keeping a file for each person you write to?
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Post by although on Oct 2, 2020 15:39:50 GMT
I do rather like the idea of scanning outgoing mail. I just don't have any of it to scan at the moment I don't like the idea of throwing the old letters away. I really like the permanence of proper correspondence. But, I find that trying to keep the physical letters sorted and handy is problematic. If I had digital copies, I could just chuck them all in a box somewhere... Then, a century from now, my descendants can sift through them and say things like "geez, great grandad was a bit of a nerd wasn't he?" I'm sure the digitized copies would have long since poofed into electronic oblivion by then
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Post by penguy on Oct 2, 2020 16:06:11 GMT
I imagine historians would love to find a trove of real letters say 100 years from now as apposed everything being in a file on a memory stick or file type that couldn't be read in a current operating system. I went to the site mentioned in the one posting of a trunk of letters found in Belgium that had never been delivered from the, I believe it was, 1600's. It was fascinating.
I may need to only write on one side of a sheet when I write you although to facilitate scanning.
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Post by Mia on Oct 2, 2020 17:19:06 GMT
I scanned in some of the letters I received in childhood, as jpegs and pdfs. But, it was a bit time consuming with paper written on both sides. I have had 3 hard drives crash this year. Only a few files not backed up. What should be done about the crashed disks? Some personal stuff on them so I'll look at some point on how to dispose of safely.
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Post by mrsduffy on Oct 2, 2020 19:36:25 GMT
I don’t scan incoming mail but I’ve started scanning outgoing. Google Drive now allows me to scan from my cell phone directly to folders so it’s easy to be organized. I wish I could have done this when I started pen palling.
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Post by although on Oct 3, 2020 3:08:47 GMT
I scanned in some of the letters I received in childhood, as jpegs and pdfs. But, it was a bit time consuming with paper written on both sides. I have had 3 hard drives crash this year. Only a few files not backed up. What should be done about the crashed disks? Some personal stuff on them so I'll look at some point on how to dispose of safely. I used to pop the covers off of hard drives that we were scrapping and grab the disks (the actual disk) with a pair of channel lock pliers and give it a good tweak. Just bend one edge of it up at an angle. It's technically possible for someone with a great deal of time and really nice gear could get some data off one of them. But, it would take a tremendous amount of effort and expense. Heck we had a hard time getting data restored from failed disks that hadn't been deliberately damaged. If you make the disk no-longer-flat, it's a really safe bet that no one is going to bother trying to get anything useful off it. After that, the super strong magnets are great fun to play with. I also knew a guy that would melt the cast aluminum cases of the dead hard drives and cast new things out of them. I used to give him dead hard disks by the bucket full. He told me once that he would fish the shiny disks out of the melt and hang them from trees near his farm fields to scare the crows off Reduce, Re-use, Recycle !
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Post by allanorn on Oct 3, 2020 16:44:41 GMT
I used to pop the covers off of hard drives that we were scrapping and grab the disks (the actual disk) with a pair of channel lock pliers and give it a good tweak. Just bend one edge of it up at an angle. It's technically possible for someone with a great deal of time and really nice gear could get some data off one of them. But, it would take a tremendous amount of effort and expense. Heck we had a hard time getting data restored from failed disks that hadn't been deliberately damaged. If you make the disk no-longer-flat, it's a really safe bet that no one is going to bother trying to get anything useful off it. I've taken a hammer and an axe to mine. Confirmed; sledgehammer to a bad drive does wonders for data protection and stress relief.
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Post by emeraldscribbles on Oct 5, 2020 11:37:54 GMT
I keep the actual letter on incoming mail, but I used to scan (now I simply photograph) outgoing mail...it helps me remember what stationery I used recently and I also keep track of what pictures or extra items I send along, to help prevent sending duplicates to anyone.
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Post by michelleg on Oct 5, 2020 13:13:47 GMT
I still haven't gotten my printer hooked up to my laptop - you would think I would have after almost 8 months quarantined/working from home. It has a scanner on it as well - for now, I take pictures of my outgoing mail for the simple reason that I can't remember what I wrote when the replies come in! (Apparently, social isolation isn't good cognitively - who knew!?)
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Post by eefa on Oct 5, 2020 16:52:26 GMT
I still haven't gotten my printer hooked up to my laptop - you would think I would have after almost 8 months quarantined/working from home. It has a scanner on it as well - for now, I take pictures of my outgoing mail for the simple reason that I can't remember what I wrote when the replies come in! (Apparently, social isolation isn't good cognitively - who knew!?) I went through a phase of taking photos of my outgoing letters but then realised that I wasn't going to look at them again so stopped. Now I just hope for the best
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Post by distractedmom on Oct 7, 2020 3:30:28 GMT
I have great intentions. My follow-through isn't the best. I was thinking that, when I am gone, my kids will be more interested in the letters I wrote than the letters I received. Once I discovered that I could "scan" using the notes app on my iPhone, I started doing that. And that lasted about two weeks. I'm more like eefa, I hope for the best.
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Post by eefa on Oct 7, 2020 16:43:50 GMT
I have great intentions. My follow-through isn't the best. I was thinking that, when I am gone, my kids will be more interested in the letters I wrote than the letters I received. Once I discovered that I could "scan" using the notes app on my iPhone, I started doing that. And that lasted about two weeks. I'm more like eefa , I hope for the best. Nice to know that i'm not alone distractedmom
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Post by distractedmom on Oct 28, 2020 1:08:44 GMT
I am officially dedicating myself to scanning my outgoing mail. I got a message on Instagram from an international pen pal that one of my letters "got really wet" somewhere along the way and was completely unreadable. The waterproof ink on the envelope was all good, though. Of course I hadn't scanned it before sending. I wrote another letter and scanned it, but I am sure it was very different from the one I wrote three weeks ago.
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