When I was young, I had all the time in the world for hobbies, but for some reason I was never really into photography. Then when my first son was born, I suddenly discovered what busy really means. Overnight my life went from what I now look back on as a life of leisure, to barely having enough energy to change diapers and sleeping two hours a night if I was lucky. I had no time for current hobbies, let alone picking up a new one.

It’s beginning to sink in. You just lost access to all the files on your hard drive. Your Quicken financials, all those letters you wrote. You rack your brain trying to remember what the PDFs and other documents were. Tax returns. You can get copies of them again, but how many hours will you need to be on the phone with the IRS? Wait. Pictures. All of those pictures that were saved on the computer.

Conceptually, Apple Photos in the Cloud is great. In reality, it results in a lot of problems, and sometimes it results in photos being deleted by accident where even professional data recovery isn’t possible.

But before you disable Apple Photos in the Cloud, there are some steps you should take to make sure you don’t lose any of your photos and videos.

In our new self-isolation reality, Zoom, Skype and Google Meet are where we meet up, hang out, do business, teach/learn, and even party (responsibly). Social distancing keeps us apart, tech has brought us back together, and life goes on. Which brings up an important question: Does how you look online matter?

My wife and I used a pretty structured approach deciding where we wanted to live in Japan. We started with several blank whiteboards and a big wall map of Japan. Then we methodically homed in on where we wanted to live, using a list of our priorities to systematically eliminate options and ultimately find one or more ideal places to live, study, work and play.

Today, the reasons for losing all your photos vary, but almost all of them happen in a matter of seconds, and happen every day, every hour, even every minute, all around the world: Accidentally dropping a phone, kids getting a hold of your device, or just spontaneous failure, like not booting past the Apple logo.

In this article I’m going to share a process for protecting all your photos and videos, no matter how many you take or how many you have, and regardless of whether you use a Mac, a PC or even if you’re mobile only.

What if you had a simple, easy opportunity to extend your life, right in front of you? You’d take it, right? An opportunity to live longer. More time to enjoy something in life that you care about, whatever that may be. Traveling. Hobbies. A cause. Time is the one metric for measuring a life that is universally applicable regardless of income or any other inherent advantage. When I discovered a simple and effective way to live a minimum of 30 more years if I don’t die prematurely, I thought, this is worth taking seriously.

Today, Japan, with a population of 126 million people, reported only 14 new reports of COVID-19 infections. It’s the ninth day of double-digit new cases reported.

On the surface, Japan appears to have beat COVID-19. What’s more interesting is that it appears to have been accomplished without lockdowns and mass testing. In fact, Japan plans to completely end the state of emergency related to the virus today.

How this has happened range from explanations about Japan-specific hygiene to ingrained cultural compliance, all the way to practices conspiracy theories of cover-ups and even fringe ultra-minority right-wing assertions of racial and cultural superiority.

I get asked this question all the time now. The fact that I'm not a college student and I'm not an corporate transfer to Japan seems to increase curiosity. I'm a father, a husband, an entrepreneur and a technologist in my day job, managing the IT systems of individual and business customers around the world, mostly in North America, right from my home office in Kobe, Japan. I lived in Southern California before this, and today I live in Japan by choice. There are a number of reasons for it, and this post hits some of the big ones.

There are four specific reasons I believe learning Japanese and even demonstrating it with a degree is still valuable and worthwhile. And I think it will likely be more valuable in the future.

As a Californian tech entrepreneur living in Japan, I have some pretty good reasons for my opinion, but first, I think some context is important so you know where I'm coming from.