Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Wednesday 25 February 2009

Remember thou art ether, and to ether thou shalt return

When I first had regular access to a home computer, I enraged those more knowledgeable than I, (and those forced by bonds of blood, charity, or similar level of academic achievement; to work in the messes I created,) by bookmarking everything, by putting so many links on the desktop it was cluttered beyond any hope of actual utility, by downloading stately-mansions-libraries-full of information and saving them to disc, and worst of all --- by making hard copies.

Shudder.

Imagine so sinful a thing, not just wasteful of paper and printer ink, but all but slapping technology in the face!

Perhaps some of you did as well -- suppose you couldn't find your way back to some webpage of importance, suppose you lost internet access, suppose links were broken, suppose material was re-formatted in a way that made it less convenient for your purposes, suppose the USCCB issued a cease and desist order, suppose the Master Cylinder or the Vogons destroyed Deep Thought....

I must have printed out a thousand plus pages from CPDL. The Chabanel Psalter, (every page the day I learned of it lest the copyright police or their jackbooted thugs came a-calling in the night.) Episode guides to beloved canceled television shows. Directions and diagrams for French-beaded flowers. Entire books.

Well, I mostly got over that, (though you can't tell from the mounds of paper which I force Himself to live surrounded by....)

But every once in a while something I love or "need", (really, want,) disappears into the ether.

Gone. Without a trace, or worse, with traces that taunt me.

What has happened to the scriptural allusion, metrical, and other indicese my Cyberhymnal???????

I can't find anything I need.

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