Sunday, May 16, 2010

Echo Lake



"Echo Lake takes advantage of multimedia technology to enable people to record their personal and family stories, complete with text, digitized photos, voice and sound clips, video capture, and other media. Its warm intuitive design makes `story-telling' on the computer truly engaging. Stories can be printed in a book format, or copied to diskette as a read-only version that can be given to family and friends."

Above is a promotional blurb from a program I used in the mid nineties...."Echo Lake". This was of course before there were blogs...as a matter of fact...the internet was mainly text at the time. But this program was my forerunner to blogging with photos. Each time Zach and I have been to Canada fishing...I have often thought of Echo lake...the program. It's user interface was set up as a cabin on a lake with a desk inside and on the desk you had a typewriter, stapler and other tools that you could use to post pictures and then write about them. This is basically what I do now...just on the internet!

Split Rock is the small 3 acre Island that we always stay at when we visit Lake of the woods, Ontario Canada. The campfire area has been there since I started going back in the early 60's with my dad. That same rock has hosted one on one conversations with me and Dad and then later....Me and Zach. There have been numerous discussions about ghosts, aliens, Sasquatch, one legged hatchet murders and Loch Ness monsters told first by my dad to a young impressionable boy (Me) under the bright starry skies of the midnight sun of Canada...later repeated by me to Zach.

When I saw Echo Lake on a shelf years ago...I knew I had to journal these stories and remember with photos. Still today, the site of the picture of an idealistic lake with an old cabin and typewriter on the front of that software box brings a rush of memories that overtakes me like a tsunami.

Have a Great Sunday...take the time to write about it.

Dan











8 comments:

shabby girl said...

Cool! I was so hoping to go to the lake today. :)
What wonderful memories for all of you. Imagine the day when you take a grandchild up there!

Sunny said...

I can hear the crickets and taste the roasted marshmallows. It reminds me of the time when my son was a little boy and we spent a week on Lake Champlain.
I need a vacation!
Sunny :)

DawnTreader said...

The second picture especially is amazing in detail. It's nice to have places to go back to which hold good memories.

Dan Felstead said...

Shabbygirl...I didn't even think about that but I can guarantee you that he/she will see Split Rock.

Dan

Dan Felstead said...

Sunny...those are great memories and I am glad you had the chance to spend the time with your son like you said.

By the way...I need a vacation also!

Dan

Dan Felstead said...

Dawn Treader...you probably have those feelings about the period that you spent in England.

Dan

DawnTreader said...

Well, sort of... except I have not actually been back to England since the 1970s. There are places in Sweden that hold more of the "returning" kind of memories.

Dan Felstead said...

Dawn Treader...I guess I was speaking more for myself and projecting them on you! My time spent in Europe during college was a time that I will always remember with fondness..probably more than anytime in my life.

Dan