3 ms·

Okay, I'm dating myself, but when I was in grad school, there was a campus computer store, and they gave out a little pamphlet: "Do I need a personal computer?"

Okay, I'm dating myself, but when I was in grad school, there was a campus computer store, and they gave out a little pamphlet: "Do I need a personal computer?" It listed a number of pro's and con's, but the message that has stuck with me is this one: Don't expect your computer to organize you. If you have a messy desk, you will have a messy computer. Decades later, I have both a messy desktop and a messy computer. I think there is something about personal organization that, if it eludes you, it will elude your computer too. I've made peace with the fact that I will never be a hyper organized person. The best thing I can do is to put my stuff somewhere and hope that it's searchable.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago
I'm incredibly annoyed by needing to think about where my files are, at all. It shouldn't matter. All I should need to do is tell how many times I want a file replicated on my personal device network, and optionally tag it.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  rsync, Syncthing and Nextcloud all fill various levels of syncing needs you may have
  - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    Just started deploying Syncthing, seems solid so far.
- marrs 5y ago
  So put them in the same directory and be done with it? I’m not really sure what you’re hoping for
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Well, steps were made in exactly that direction, with ReiserFS and Microsoft was working on the same thing around the same time in the Longhorn days (called WinFS). For some reason it never took off. ReiserFS was abandoned when Hans Reiser killed his wife but Microsoft also abandoned it with no (known) killings involved. Something must have not worked out. It's a very interesting idea to revisit though. I do still think there's merit in it. Probably part of the issue was how to make it work gracefully with legacy apps. However in this kind of scenario you totally absolutely want to tag it with multiple tags. Otherwise this'll become a haystack you'll never find anything back in. I bet this was another issue surrounding implementations.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Yes this 100% :D I have all the stuff I work on on my desktop. When that gets full, I move everything into a folder "Old Desktop" which I place on the desktop. Of course this isn't the first time I did that. So this folder contains a chain of many such "Old Desktop" folders :') It leads to interesting discussions sometimes such as "why do you have a 200GB roaming profile???". Organisationally though I can find stuff back really easily. While I traverse the chain of "Old Desktop"s I see other documents from the same timeframe which brings me back really easily. In fact more organised people are often surprised how quickly I manage to dig up ancient stuff for them. They tend to lose track of things over time, probably when they move to a new PC or file hoster or whatever. I've really become the "Do you still have that inventory from 2007?" guy at work. I see no reason to change it at all.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Too funny! I do just about the same. Have plenty of [something]-Desktop directories myself. I use a fast, local search app to find things sometimes. Often, I only need the time, place, project though.
- gyom 5y ago
  I also found that the best system is having the first layer of folder organization be "which period of my time is this from?". Conceptually, it's easier to think of "music from high school" than about the specific mix of subgenres from my playlist back then. Same for documents that I saved. Those ICQ logs from high school are there. They don't belong in the same folder as the stuff I wrote yesterday, even though they could be of a similar nature.
ridiculous_fish 5y ago
I have a command line tool `today` that creates and enters a directory based on today's date. Anything I do today goes in `today`, and I don't have to see yesterday, but it is easy to find. I wish my desktop were like that.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago

I'm incredibly annoyed by needing to think about where my files are, at all. It shouldn't matter. All I should need to do is tell how many times I want a file replicated on my personal device network, and optionally tag it.

smoldesu 5y ago
rsync, Syncthing and Nextcloud all fill various levels of syncing needs you may have
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  Just started deploying Syncthing, seems solid so far.
marrs 5y ago
So put them in the same directory and be done with it? I’m not really sure what you’re hoping for
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Well, steps were made in exactly that direction, with ReiserFS and Microsoft was working on the same thing around the same time in the Longhorn days (called WinFS). For some reason it never took off. ReiserFS was abandoned when Hans Reiser killed his wife but Microsoft also abandoned it with no (known) killings involved. Something must have not worked out. It's a very interesting idea to revisit though. I do still think there's merit in it. Probably part of the issue was how to make it work gracefully with legacy apps. However in this kind of scenario you totally absolutely want to tag it with multiple tags. Otherwise this'll become a haystack you'll never find anything back in. I bet this was another issue surrounding implementations.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Yes this 100% :D I have all the stuff I work on on my desktop. When that gets full, I move everything into a folder "Old Desktop" which I place on the desktop. Of course this isn't the first time I did that. So this folder contains a chain of many such "Old Desktop" folders :') It leads to interesting discussions sometimes such as "why do you have a 200GB roaming profile???". Organisationally though I can find stuff back really easily. While I traverse the chain of "Old Desktop"s I see other documents from the same timeframe which brings me back really easily. In fact more organised people are often surprised how quickly I manage to dig up ancient stuff for them. They tend to lose track of things over time, probably when they move to a new PC or file hoster or whatever. I've really become the "Do you still have that inventory from 2007?" guy at work. I see no reason to change it at all.

ddingus 5y ago
Too funny! I do just about the same. Have plenty of [something]-Desktop directories myself. I use a fast, local search app to find things sometimes. Often, I only need the time, place, project though.
gyom 5y ago
I also found that the best system is having the first layer of folder organization be "which period of my time is this from?". Conceptually, it's easier to think of "music from high school" than about the specific mix of subgenres from my playlist back then. Same for documents that I saved. Those ICQ logs from high school are there. They don't belong in the same folder as the stuff I wrote yesterday, even though they could be of a similar nature.

ridiculous_fish 5y ago

I have a command line tool `today` that creates and enters a directory based on today's date. Anything I do today goes in `today`, and I don't have to see yesterday, but it is easy to find. I wish my desktop were like that.