Would you place your only copy of extremely important documents on top of a dormant volcano. No indication the volcano will become active.

Logically, I think the answer is yes. I mean, why not? Assuming the documents are protected and surveilled properly, the location being a dormant volcano that has shown no sign of becoming active has no bearing on anything, really. I mean, it’s just a place, nothing’s going to happen. Then again, I feel like that would be very silly. What if the volcano does become active? I can’t afford to lose my documents, so even though I think there’d be no issue with having them there, I will still choose to have them somewhere else, somewhere I perceive to be safer or less risky.

I feel like cloud storage is similar to this. I know that Google Drive isn’t just going to lose my data, neither is Mega or Dropbox. But it has happened. It has happened that a dormant volcano suddenly erupted and it has happened that important data was lost. At the end of the day, the cloud is just someone else’s computer, and I don’t want my stuff on someone else’s computer because I don’t know what the hell they’re gonna do with it.

What’s the alternative?

Have it on your own computer, of course. That does defeat the point though, doesn’t it? I mean, the whole point of having your stuff in the cloud is that you don’t have to have it on your computer. I see two primary benefits in cloud storage: backups and transferability. Backups are great because, sometimes, you want to really make sure you don’t lose something important. Your pen drives can stop working, your PC can get fried, the world can end! That last one would also end Google Drive, I’d assume, but the other ones do have cloud storage as a viable way to backup your data. It’s not really a matter of replacing other backup methods, it’s just something else you can also do to be safer.

Transferability, though, is what I really value. Backups are nice, sure, but I backup things physically anyway. That’s the kind of person I am, and I really don’t trust Google Drive more than a pen drive for backups. Being able to see my photos on my computer and my phone though, that’s the real juice. Oh that’s nice, that’s really nice. I mean, there’s other ways to do this, sure, but usually they’re a pain in the ass and they take a long while. A service that monitors your files and automagically syncs them on several devices is just amazing. It’s so convenient. Not to mention the fact that you can get a new device and the photos are still there. That’s crazy, actually. It’s really good.

But it’s a dormant volcano.

I really don’t want my stuff on the dormant volcano.

SyncThing is probably the most popular alternative to the typical cloud storage services. It’s free and open-source—always a good thing—and it’s actually easy to use, in relative terms. It’s much harder to use than Google Drive but it’s not difficult by any stretch of the imagination. The problem with SyncThing is the same as the problem with Google Drive though: the cloud is just a computer. In Drive’s case, it’s someone else’s (Google’s) computer, in SyncThing’s case it’s yours. That’s good, because you’re not a volcano, but you do also need another computer. Actually, you need a computer and you need it to be online all the time. That’s a pain in the ass for people like me. I like to keep things tidy, I like to have few things, and I don’t have an extra computer lying around to do this. That’s really annoying, but I don’t see any other possibility.

Truth be told, I have a lot of things I want to do. Having a server would be convenient for more than just cloud storage, so I’m strongly considering investing in a Raspberry Pi for this. It’s small, relatively cheap, easy to set up and use… Why not, right? I don’t know. I just might, I just might. OneDrive isn’t enough, Google Drive isn’t enough, and I really don’t want my stuff spread out across a thousand different services. Really, I don’t want my stuff on any “service”. I want my stuff on MY computer. Yeah, yeah… I’ll think about it, really consider it. We’ll see how it goes.

I did manage to read a chapter of Babel, yesterday. It was good, too good. It was almost jolly in tone. I hate that, not because I hate jolly but because I’ve read enough dramas to know what the fuck happens after jolly enters the stage: tragedy. Shit if about to hit the fan, I can feel it. I can’t wait!

TimeSuck was a fantastic discovery, I really wish I remembered where I saw it… I listened to their episode on Elvis Presley. It was great.

Also, I started writing a little document about minimalism. IRL itemization. I’m having fun.

I’ll read more Babel today, I think. We’ll see how it turns out.