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Living Room / Re: How do you tag (or even organize) your files?
« Last post by Armando on November 08, 2007, 12:38 PM »I see...
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axing questions-tomos (November 08, 2007, 11:52 AM)
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BTW ralph, do you completely discharge your battery before putting it in the freezer, or do you instead charge it ?
Thanks in advance...
bumpy bumpy bump.
Darwin? Ralph?-Armando (November 03, 2007, 12:13 AM)
Sorry, been out of town. Shouldn't matter -- charged or uncharged. Just enclose it in a ziplock to prevent condensation, throw it in there overnight, and let it warm up a bit the next day before charging.
The warm-up, as I understand it, isn't strictly necessary but kinder to electronics that you want to keep for awhile. Kind of like starting your car on a sub-zero day. In the case of a sticky harddrive as described above, I'm guessing you probably WANT the induced hyphothermic shock to wake things up.-Ralf Maximus (November 06, 2007, 05:53 AM)
Armando, thanks for sharing your system.
My file name tagging differs a bit from yours:
- I use around 20 intuitive (self-constructed) subject matter abbreviations like "tv", "todo", "note", but mostly for different academic subjects.
- I use no tag indicator string apart from a "-". Instead I tend to put all tagged content in a few basic folders and then do searches on those folders. I have no problem finding things without such indicators.-Nod5 (November 06, 2007, 04:55 PM)
Armando: do you know why ADS doesn't work for some file types? Is it than that programs that open them strip the ADS out?-nontroppo (November 06, 2007, 03:30 PM)
So When to Use Alternate Streams?
Certainly you should not use alternate streams for storing any critical information. Older file systems are still widely used, and they don't support the advanced NTFS features. If you copy an NTFS file to a USB drive, flash card, CD-R/RW, or any other non-NTFS drive, the system will copy the main stream only and will ignore all the alternate streams. The same is true for FTP/HTTP transfers. No warning is given, and a user, relying on alternate streams, might get a nasty surprise. So the Microsoft reluctance to provide user tools for alternate streams is not all that unfounded.
However alternate streams are still extremely useful. There is a lot of non-critical information that alternate streams is the most natural place to store to. Examples are thumbnails for graphical files, parsing information for program sources, spellcheck and formatting data for documents, or any other info that can be recovered easily. This way the file can be stored on any file system, but keeping the file on an NTFS drive will greatly increase processing speed.
Is that why Tag2Find stores tags in both a database and the ADS?Well, yes., it seems like it. But I can’t speak for the developers. Like I’ve posted elsewhere, I asked questions to the developer about the tagging system and here’s what on of them answered to me :-nontroppo (November 06, 2007, 03:30 PM)
At the moment, to prevent you from losing your hard work, we provide one basic backup possibility: export to a plain text XML file. The schema of the XML is very basic simple and will for sure prevent you from a "vendor lock in", which we understand nobody really wants. The backup has some downsides at the moment, as the files are stored with absolute path, but it will always allow recovery in case of a disaster, maybe requiring a little bit tweaking with a text editor in case the location of files has changed.
We do not really make a very big secret out of how our tags are stored: at the moment they are stored in two locations: a system-wide tag-database (SQLite) and attached as Alternate Data Stream to the file itself (which is the reason why we can only support NTFS at the moment). Tags can be recovered from backup or the NTFS Alternate Data Stream in case the central database corrupts (which is highly unlikely). Alternate Data Streams are copied together with a file by Windows Explorer, as long as the target volume supports them.
...a major brand name on it. Microsoft, Google, Adobe, you get the idea...-Edvard (November 05, 2007, 12:17 PM)
Ideally I'd have liked something a little smaller, too-rjbull (November 05, 2007, 10:39 AM)
What ever happened to EverNote Plus and EverNote Basic?
EverNote no longer offers Plus and Basic versions of its software. We now have a single product, known simply as EverNote. When you download EverNote, you have access to all of the advanced features that were formally only available in EverNote Plus. These features are active for a period of 60 days, at which point they become disabled. If you wish to continue using the advanced features, click on the Help menu and then click on “Purchase EverNote.” EverNote will continue to work with advanced features disabled, similar to the EverNote Basic functionality
I do use filing cabinets. They are for a) storing finished things that one plans never to look at again and b) putting things that one would feel bad about throwing away but has no intention of reading. Say an old colleague sends you a long boring paper that she has just finished. It would be unfeeling and mean to throw it away; one would no doubt have to lie the next time one saw the person. But if one puts the essay in a filing cabinet one can say, "Yes, it's in my file of things to read this summer". All this implies is that one has a file labeled "Thing to read this summer" and that one put the paper in it, so one is not really telling a lie, even if the chances of reading the paper this summer (or any summer, fall, winter or spring) are nil.
My wife decided the issue. She saw the beautiful but admittedly large black vinyl case setting next to the rest of my luggage. She picked it up. "Isn't that your computer?" she asked. "Yes it is," I replied. "You're not taking that heavy thing on the plane with you are you?" she asked. "Well why do you think I got the thing in the first place," I replied, a tad defensively. "I don't want to waste the four hours on the plane. I can get a lot of work done on my computer this way," I added. "Well, you know best," she replied in a way that meant roughly, "Well, you don't know what you are doing."
Of course, she was exactly right. I couldn't really get the thing fully open in my economy seat. When the passenger in front lowered their seat back I almost lost both of my hands. During the brief periods of time when I could type on my computer, I mainly thought wistfully of the mystery novel I would have been forced to waste my time on, if only I had left my computer at home.
my system. think of something that needs doing. now think of something else that needs doing that doesn't seem as bad as the first thing. do the second thing to take your mind of the first thing. repeat.
what happens when you need to get the first thing done that seemed so bad? think of something even worse that needs doing. problem solved.
okay, i have no system. i think goals are very important but sometimes they can seem a bit pointless like app recently mentioned. when my goals seem to lose their sparkle i try to remember what the alternative is going to be if i don't realise these goals. the alternative often seeming like a living hell that i must avoid at all costs. this usually puts me back on track and fills me with the desire to get on with things.
i recently read something in a book about research into motivation that i found quite illuminating. the research concluded that 'will power' pretty much doesn't exist so just forget about it. don't expect to accomplish anything using 'will power'. it might work for a short period of time but you are very likely to fail if that is all you are relying on.
instead, you need to put yourself in an environment that will make it difficult for you to do the thing(s) you are wanting to avoid. maybe not very practical but it appears to be the successful way to achieve something.
have i put this theory into practise? nope.-nudone (November 04, 2007, 03:08 AM)
No, I tried that... to the point of inducing brain ache. No luck, I still can't remember the simplest things (like the point of this follow-up post).
Oh yeah, don't forget to seal the battery (or harddrive for that matter) in a ziploc or something before you toss it in the freezer!-Darwin (November 03, 2007, 03:21 PM)
armando, Dormouse, yksyks:
Maybe some misunderstanding, I do not want to specifically look for folders (which is the case if I revert to a different app like DOpus Find, Locate32 etc. just for a search containing folder names) or use some of the procedures described for X1 or Exalead.
I just want folders to be treated like files or file contents: One search over everything (isn't this what desktop search is all about?), and it will find the a folder with the keyword in its name just like a file with the string in its name or its content.
I read from your replies that almost all programs won't do that.-alxwz (October 31, 2007, 03:48 PM)
