A year in pixels - Part 1

Times goes fast, they say, but it’s only an opinated thought.Time goes at its time, what had been setted and whether we feel it quick or slow depends on ourselves, what we do with it and how we register it. Probably.

Anyway (at least in my case), when I look back I realise that many things have passed: travels, high-school years, a memorable summer, the ending of a relation, new borns, the start of a new relationship, a loved persona that has passed-away, learnings, university, revealings… and is in that moment I try to sort cronologically when I am trully aware about all these things and becomes an avalanche, and is in that moment when everything turn into caos.

Luckyly or not, today we have tons of pictures (that we own and others shooted by those that soround us) that had a vast amount of metadata, the total or partial register of our activities on multiple social networks (built by ourselves or by our friends) that give us some key points that let us compose the map of our path, a draw after joining the dots or the @ keyframes that defines our animation if you prefer.

Time blurs our memories and recap is always hard and (SPOILER ALERT) it will be harder each year in advance (just because many more things had happend). So if we want to preserve our memories from being taken with the wind seems to be a great idea to taking notes of our present. Now is a good time (as any time) to remember that all the systems fails and trust in the technology is a risky option as any other option could be, because from time to time it fails as the other day the Google services did. Sometimes persons are the threat like when thousands of criminalistic files were deleted by an human error. So, no, I am not suggesting that the register should be manually.

In fact, this prelude guide me to think that we should keep a diary of our lifes and that is why I am writing this article.

The solution is to own (and fill) a diary, which is not a real new idea, in addition it is not very attractive, we should say. Curious, doesn’t it? A diary is always shown as a kind-of-stupid and fussy thing, related to the most early youth and almost exclusive for women. Always infravalorated although its own value and its potential power that hides inside. However, the diaries of Captain Nemo, Captain Kirk, Jonathan Harker or Tom Ryddle are different. All these diaries are attractive, sourrounded of intrigues and mistery. What a surprise, isn’t it?.

A year in pixels

I remember the first time I saw the initiative in a social network that today doesn’t exist, and I remember to think “Oh man, that is huge!” be able to summarize in a piece of paper the path taken in a year. Needless, to say that the information that it gives is not very detailed but very valuable and rich. They are metadata, breadcrumbs to rebuild the route.

I think it is ideal for those whom doesn’t know how to start a diary, those who are not used to write or for kids because it is very visual and funny.

And that is my bet. The fact of remember what happened the day before, checkout the events, evaluate them and look our feelings (how a situation make us felt this or that emotion) gives us the ability to take consciousness, helps us to take better and more smart decisions for the next day and force us to remember that we are not here to burn days after days in the same way we listen music on a streaming platform, track by track, list followed by another list… Do you remember when you could sort the tracklist of your favourite cassette or CD?

Where the hell is the code?

Not in this article but I invite you to wait until the demo, which is the part two. It will be a simple anual calendar to register an emotion in each day. The initiative a year in pixels but in a web format. But since we won’t have backend neither session, we will store everything in localstorage

How to know more

• A Year in Pixels examples
• Mood trackers with Bullet Journal
• For this and other philosophical issues get in touch