Goodbye, Google Photos
5 things happened over the last few months -
- I ran out of Google Storage. It happened sometime last year, but I didn't give it much thought since there was always enough junk I could delete to free up space.
- Eventually, I ran out of junk. I had to unwillingly start deleting videos and large sized pictures that I actually liked. Today, Google told me that I will stop receiving emails next week if I don't sort my sh*t out.
- A few weeks back, while I was going through a particularly tough time, Google Photos' smarta*s algorithm sent me a random collage showing "How things have changed then vs now". A harmless notification that just made me even more frustrated.
- I saw this scene in the movie Three of Us (2022).
- Vishnu gave an amazing talk on "preserving memories" at MangaloreFOSS. He talked about his relationship with pictures, why and how he started self-hosting, and talked about his Immich setup. I had been coaxing him to give a talk for over 2 years now, so I was hoping at least some people will get inspired from the talk. I ended up being one of them.
So, I finally decided to listen to Google and sort my shit out. Like every other sane person, I decided to purchase a Google One Account move out of Google Photos and self-host a FOSS photo storage app.
I've been trying to get into self hosting since the day I first heard the term (which was 3 years ago), but it always felt too difficult, messy and frankly unnecessary. So I never really bothered doing much except watch a few videos and read some articles every now and then.
Vishnu, the creator of Ente wrote in a blog post that "the nice thing about the world is, with time, you are surrounded by more who share your delusions".
The stupid thing is that you may start sharing other delusions they may have too. It's difficult to escape the self hosting virus if you are part of FOSS communities, that are often infested with "homelabbers"!
So with a lot of help from Claude, an old laptop and a lot of time I could've spent elsewhere, I've managed to setup my personal museum of memories. Here are some from the last year.
The "museum"
