Sunday, November 30th, 2025 - TrickJarrett.com: Be excellent to each other.

Of Arthur and Pictures

11/30/2025 10:30 am

I ended up taking advantage of a Black Friday deal for a new personal laptop. I've been using one I got from Costco for a few years, but there are a few issues with it (predominately relating to the keyboard) which has run fine (mostly) and so with the new job and a deal on Wirecutter's top recommended laptop - it was time.

Enter: Arthur.

I ended up going for a Lenovo Yoga laptop and after a short outing this morning, I've collected it from Best Buy and am back home where it is currently installing updates. I'm writing this via the older laptop, for likely the last entry on the blog from this computer.

Though it likely isn't the end for this machine. Since most of its issues are laptop based, I think it's possible that this laptop gets repurposed as some technology tool in the house.

After the recent family gathering, we were again struck by a need for a centralized family photo archive. As of last night, while sitting in the airport on our way home, my proposed solution would be to stand up an instance of Immich for the family to use. I could make use of this laptop for that purpose. However, there are issues with this idea as the laptop also has an issue that I hadn't found a good Linux compatibility early on when I bought it, and I'd need it running Ubuntu (preferably.)

The ultimate goal is a tool that the family can and will use, preferably one of low tech know-how requirements for the rest of the family. I don't want them to have to copy photos to the computer and then upload in the browser. In an ideal solution, it's an automatic backup on mobile phones, etc.

Also, this morning, I came up with a new feature idea which I don't think any existing tool can support, even Google Photos, supports - I want the ability to have not just text comments but also video comments so we can record people talking about these pictures. Whether audio or video, but an easy way to record and capture these stories for future generations. I am sad to be thinking of this now, after so many of my family's elders are gone, but that also helps me feel the urgency in this idea more clearly than I did when I was younger.

For now though, I'll focus on getting my new laptop set up and then I'll put more focus on solving the photo archive need.

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