Mar
14
Organizing Files?
Filed Under technology
Bigger hard drives, of course, means bigger messes. It doesn’t seem that my own memory is what it used to be. Yet, as the hard drives get bigger I keep trying to enforce my own personal lack of organization on ever bigger drives. How do you keep track of what is on your new, huge, hard drive?
In a pinch, and many of us are in a pinch regarding time, money and organization, protocol will stand-in for organization.
There is something about my creativity which inhibits organization, and on a computer this is suicide. So, I am substituting protocol for organization. I now, as of today, don’t allow a space in MP3 or web file names. This beautifully eliminates a really broad range of possible file names. I put an underscore where I might have placed a space. While this may not sound like a break through, I have already saved myself at least fifteen minutes while searching through files today. Fifteen minutes saved and the day is still young.
This probably doesn’t make sense to you if you are already organized, and if so, bless you and ignore me, or better yet, HELP ME! But if you are organizationally challenged this might be just the ticket. Naming a file is a creative act, and standardizing in ways that leverage without limiting can simply make life easier.
Passwords that are supposed to make us feel all warm and safe and fuzzy inside drive me wild. The only person they protect me from is myself, keeping me out of files and programs regularly. How do you standardize them?
When I think of file names I ponder OCR. Optical_Character_Recognition. I love the process of eliminating the most letters with the least effort. In other words, OCR uses the qualities of the letters themselves to identify them. So, only closed loop letters need apply? That eliminates all letters without a closed loop: “o” and “a” are in, while “r,” “t,” and “v” are out. Naming your files today in such a way that the name makes sense to you tomorrow can exhibit this same process if done consistently. While creativity has a lot to do with spawning or utilizing possibilities, finding your car keys or an MP3 file has a lot more to do with eliminating possibilities. As a card carrying member of UnOrganized Anonymous (UOA), I wish to have the greatest degree of organization without it impinging on my creativity. I don’t want to buy a new pair of pliers just because I have misplaced my other ones, and I don’t want to have to write the same code or document just because my previous one is hiding somewhere on my computer with a really creative but non-pragmatic name. While I advocate people creating spaces between their thoughts, between their breaths, and nearly everywhere in their lives, the simple addition of a space in a file name seems to make finding that file much more difficult. Which_means_that_I_shouldn’t_probably_lose_all_the_spaces_in_my_life. But I can find ways that protocol can help with organization, and enjoy the rewiring of my brain as I typed the sentence with underscore in place of space. I want more spaces in my life, and if using underscore in file names makes that possible while still finding files, I say, “Go_underscore.” I would really appreciate your suggestions for handling passwords, gigabits of MP3, word documents, spread sheets and more. How do you do it?
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3 Responses to “Organizing Files?”
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Hi Jerry,
Pa55wordz sure can be a pain! It depends how secure you want them to be though. You could use a piece of software to store all your different passwords encrypted on your machine, but then you have to look it up each time.
The method I use is to create one strong easy to remember password generated from my families initials, nicknames, dates of birth, or other memorable things, plus one non alphanumeric, and then to add a prefix or suffix related to the website or software I am using, or even the current year/month. So my main strong password could be cr312EF?G which is initials, date of birth (12th March, or 3rd Dec, or 31stFeb!), family initials plus one non alphanumeric placed anywhere.
An example prefix or suffix could be ‘a’ for the Amazon website.
So I would end up with cr312EF?Ga or acr312EF?G.
If using this method, then make up your own personal variation on the above as this is being posted on the web on your blog. I’m sure you would have anyway!
The key thing is never to write it down anywhere on paper or computer, or tell anyone. If you sometimes have to give others access to your account or have shared accounts, then use a different password, or change it before you give them access. Using it for everything will make sure you remember it, whilst making it different for each logon in case your password is intercepted/key logged. The downside is if someone gets 2 of your passwords then they can guess the rest. However it is fairly easy to remember 2 or 3 different base passwords depending upon how likely you are to need someone else to login using your account. So maybe you could have a super secure random generated one for financial websites for yourself only.
I now find I have a harder time remembering all of my user logon names, because I don’t usually get free choice of those!
Colin
I realize this is an old thread, but I’ll add a comment.
Probably, you mostly want to manage documents.
Document management software aims to improve on
Windows Explorer or Mac Finder by allowing you to add
meta-tags in an effort to assist you to figure out what
they are long after you’ve recorded them.
If you use a Mac (like that shiny airbook you use in one of
your videos) you might want to check out something
like “yep” (free trail period) or the whole package at
http://www.ironicsoftware.com/ .
I have no affiliation with those folks — I stumbled on their
software at Apple’s downloads while I was searching for
my own answer to my own version of your problem.
-Bob
I’ve been using PersonalBrain for a year. It has become the central organizing tool for any files, ideas, and thoughts on my computer. However, I’ve discovered that discipline is required to throw away as much as possible. PersonalBrain makes it too easy to collect and organize massive amounts of information and I want to save everything. I find so many interesting topics I’m not able to spread myself thin enough. Ruthless purging of anything not useful in six months is my rule of thumb, exceptions for reference items but error in favor of deleting.
-Harry