Amy’s Journal

Last night I was puzzled as to why Backblaze wasn’t backing up Homura II. But it was late, and I decided to follow up in the morning.

This morning, no backup was occurring, and I forced a Backup Now. After a few minutes of wheels turning, everything stopped again. Backblaze reported 0 files to be backed up.

Backblaze Backup Status • March 6, 2026

But I could see that 7.6TB was selected for backup. Could it be that backup was done?

I began the process to request a data restore so I could see what was in the cloud. Amazingly, all 5+ TB of Homura II was there.

Backblaze Restore Files screen • March 6, 2026

I drilled down into the tree structure and confirmed that both folders from TWICE concerts in January 2026 were there.

It appears that Backblaze was smart enough to connect stored data from Homura (I) with the new Homura II drive. All my Lightroom data is backed up to the cloud – and I even know how to do a restore from that backup!

(They say you should always test your backup with a restore. Consider my backup tested.)

Previously
Well, That’s Not Good...
Home System 2026

My OWC ThunderBlade X12 24TB RAID SSD

What do you do when all your photos, stored and managed in Adobe Lightroom, disappear in a flash? (Besides cry, of course.)

My Lightroom Photo Library has 211,500+ photos from 2008 to 2026. It takes up 5.83TB. Yeah, it’s a lot. And it’s a shock when those numbers drop to zero.

( The Crisis )

( The Scramble )

( Technical Support Fail )

( The D’Oh! Moment )

( Fingers Crossed )

( A New Start )

For a tech person, I’m pretty old school when it comes to certain things. For example, I don’t subscribe to any of the streaming music services (although I do have YouTube Music as part of my YouTube Premium subscription). Apple Music is especially problematic as Apple actually removes your own copies of music from the Apple Music app and replaces those songs with its own master copies – whether you like it or not. It’s possible to lose unique or special versions of songs in your library.

So I’ll never subscribe to Apple Music – and I manage my music library the way I always have since the days of ripping CDs and filling my iPod. I have too much music to download it all to my iPhone, so I sync only selected playlists and albums.

Years ago my playlists started getting corrupted. The songs were correct and played properly – but some (maybe half?) of the song/album cover artwork got randomly replaced by cover art from a different song in my library. It was super annoying – it’s been super annoying for years. But the music played fine, and I largely ignored it.

I had made a couple attempts to research a fix, but what I was told to do seemed like a horrid and dangerous pain – so I didn’t even make the attempt.

Today, though, I decided to research the situation again. I was a little more confident now that I’m armed with Kagi. I did a search for iphone music showing wrong album cover, and the top three results were immediately informative and useful.

So on my iPhone I went into Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Music > Edit > All Songs and deleted all the songs. Then I connected the iPhone to my Mac and resync’d all of my playlists – twice. (I’ve learned that I need to activate the SYNC action two times, and it’s the second time the app Syncs that the music gets transferred.) The Music app informed me that it was downloading 2000 songs to my iPhone.

When that was done, I checked my phone – and all album covers are correct! I’m very happy about this!

A Playlist on My iPhone 13 mini

I’m pretty happy with Kagi, too.

Risk of Change Director Park • Portland, Oregon February 14, 2026 Nikon Z8 • NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S f/2.8 @ 70mm • 1/250s • ISO 6400

Good weather meant I could leave the D810s at home and go with my mirrorless cameras. I packed the same kit I used on Wednesday: the Nikon Z8 with NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S lens for close-quarters work and the little Nikon Z6 with the NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.8S lens for portrait work.

( PDXWLF Second Saturday Below This Cut )

Previously
PDXWLF 2026, Day 1 – Friday
PDXWLF 2026, Day 2 – Saturday
PDXWLF 2026, Day 5 – Tuesday
PDXWLF 2026, Day 6 – Wednesday
PDXWLF 2026, Day 8 – Friday

JaJa Winter Light Jam JaJa PDX • Portland, Oregon February 11, 2026 Nikon Z6 • NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.8 S f/2 @ 85mm • 1/180s • ISO 3200

Wednesday night’s mission was also simple – a single event – the JaJa Winter Light Jam at JaJa PDX. While the event ran from 7 pm to 11 pm, my experience was that I wouldn’t need more than an hour to get enough photos to document the event.

( PDXWLF Wednesday Below This Cut )

Previously
PDXWLF 2026, Day 1 – Friday
PDXWLF 2026, Day 2 – Saturday
PDXWLF 2026, Day 5 – Tuesday