New File Format

The history of digital photography is rife with the introduction of new file formats for the storage of information – it is almost as bad as the days of music storage on discs, tapes, and cartridges, but at least digital files do not unwind out and get wrapped around the stick shift of the car.

Not that they do not try – I have watched files on my computer system migrate mysteriously from one folder to the next, seemingly without human agency. I suspect the cat of turning the thing on and then dancing on the keys when I am not there. I would not worry about this, but who told him my administrator’s password?

In any case, those who are sick of jpeg and psd and RAW and TIFF and all the other alphabetical soup that we have had to put up with will welcome the introduction of the newest file format – The HOK file.

The HOK contains all the answers that any digital photographer needs – like the business of how to down-size room-size panoramas to up-store on cloud servers and synchronize with your bedroom clock. Or how to convert degrees Kelvin for white balance to degrees Melvin for off-white balance. You’re going to get that anyway so why not get it the first time...

Do you need to store your images in the order in which they were taken? Or where they were taken? Easy with any number of other files and their programs...but only the HOK file can tell you the most important thing; What were you thinking at the time? Who are these people? I don’t remember eating that...

The HOK file is accessible through any major computer system – Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Atari, Pokemon, Wii. It is even back-compatible with IBM punch-card machines and abacuses. Abacii? - Chinese bead machines. In some cases it can be adapted to counting on your fingers.

HOK files are robust. You can’t accidently delete them or lose them. You can’t move them inadvertently. You can’t avoid them – they sneak around the edge of anti-pop-up programs and jump up and down in front of you. They cannot be deleted. They are the electronic equivalent of horse poop on a blanket.

As a matter of fact, you’re soaking in one now.

HOK files. (And in case you were wondering, it stands for Heaven Only Knows)