The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share the method that I use to back up Google Photos to my laptop and ultimately to an external drive. I've spent the better part of the last week and a half trying to figure out how to properly back up from Google Photos.  I spent a lot of time doing the wrong thing, so I'm hoping to help YOU avoid wasting that time. First of all, let's cover why I'd want to back up my photos anyway.  After all, Google's servers are presumably redundant (meaning the information is stored in multiple places), so I wouldn't lose my photos even if Google had a fire or other catastrophe at a single server location.  So, this goes to the paranoia most of us feel about photos.  They are precious and irreplaceable.  They are the 2nd thing people would save in a fire, right behind money -- and to be honest, I would save them before money -- if I didn't have any other copies.  And even

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I use Google Drive to backup the files from my computer. I just spent the most exasperating week and a half trying to use the built in Windows tools to backup the files on my computer to a 2TB external hard drive.   Just bear with me a second for this short rant.  Microsoft really could not make this process more confusing if it tried.  First of all, the back up tool on Windows 10 is now called File History, which allows you to set the files you want to save and the place where you want to save them, but I could not under any circumstances get it to run automatically with any reliability.  I set it to run every 10 minutes, which resulted in several backups throughout a day, but definitely not on a 10 minute schedule.  AND because you couldn't specify when you wanted it to run, it seemed random and unreliable and then it quit working altogether without notifying me.  Which I

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in this video I'll talk about the benefits of block scheduling and show you the tool that I use for it -- WeekCal -- an app for the iPhone and iPad. Block scheduling is one of the hot productivity ideas right now.  Basically, it refers to the idea of blocking time on your calendar for specific tasks, projects, or themes and then following that schedule by actually shifting focus when the block changes just like you are changing classes in school -- even if you haven't entirely completed the task you were working on.  Your block schedule usually recurs either daily or weekly, but you can always change it up based on what you have going on that particular day.  So, your weekly block schedule might look something like this with each block representing a specific task, activity, project, or theme. Block scheduling is particularly good for people who don't already have a ton of structure built into their day.  S

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today's video, I'll share the 2nd part of my favorite games to play remotely with friends and family.  In this video, I'll talk about games you can play over Zoom. In the last video, I covered 2 popular game platforms -- Jackbox and the HouseParty app games.  In this video, I'll share some of the games you can play remotely over Zoom -- the video conferencing app.  I'm going to go from my favorite to least favorite games.  First, Codenames Codenames is a really fun board game where you split everyone up into 2 teams -- red and blue.  You need at least 4 people to play.  The game board looks like this and each card is a spy code name.  Each team elects a spymaster who has access to a card that shows which of these cards are red spies, which are blue, which are casual bystanders, and which is the assassin.  Essentially, spymasters give the rest of their team one-word hints, that could indicate more