Last year, the server with my Subversion repository on it died suddenly. I’ve made several attempts to revive it, none of which have worked. I tried to get the data off of it, but had trouble doing this as well. Having been frustrated a number of times, I gradually got used to not having it… which is something I should have fought harder against.
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Since last Thursday I’ve essentially been in the the grip of a compulsion to enter data into Freebase.
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Despite having worked at Metaweb for almost a year, and despite my OCD tendencies, I had avoided getting sucked in by the allure of correcting/completing/entering data in Freebase, the web frontend to our attempt at structuring all the world’s information. I had avoided it until today, that is.
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I know that this was on BoingBoing so everybody’s probably seen it already, but I thought it was good enough to highlight. (For the record, sometimes I obsessively check to-do lists, and sometimes I ignore them completely.)
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Since I started this incarnation of my blog (either about two or about one-and-a-third years ago depending on your criteria) I’ve mentioned quite a few projects, and thought it would be worthwhile to look back at them and check their status.
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Starting at Metaweb, I had to set up a new machine, something I haven’t done in a while. One thing that made it a lot easier this time is that I have a lot of my config in my Subversion repository, which saved me quite a lot of time. This also reflects some changes I’ve made since writing Essential Windows Software last year. (Oh, and all the software is Free Software.)
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I’ve been doing well in eliminating “time-wasting” activities. The main one that remains is still web surfing. I’ve managed to get rid of a lot of that at work, which is good, but still do it at other times. Especially in the morning.
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Organization makes a lot of things an awful lot easier. This is pretty obvious, but what’s been surprising to me are two ancillary points: small amounts of organization can make a big difference, and small amounts of disorganization can terminate entire projects.
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As I’ve been continuing the process of moving files into my Subversion repository, I’ve decided on metadata to use with each file.
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I spent a significant chunk of the weekend getting files into my Subversion repository. As I was trying to recreate historical versioning from a a bunch of files that weren’t in version control, it took rather a lot of time to do this. I’m rather happy to finally have all my personal stuff under version control. However, there’s a lot of cleaning up left to do.
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For years I’ve had no coherent backup strategy. For someone who does so much on computers, that’s rather insane. It’s been a project of mine to have a comprehensive and regularly-executed backup plan for about a decade. I’m not quite there, but I think that it’s finally within my grasp…
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I’m gradually moving more and more of my personal files into my various Subversion repositories, and figuring out how to organize those repositories. I highly recommend Subversion (or some form of version control, but Subversion is free (and libre)) to anyone who uses computers to create documents that they consider important.
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I created a very hacky plugin for TiddlyWiki that will place a node titled with the date at the top of the page if you open the page on that date. In other words, you can create a node with a specific date, and when you open TiddlyWiki on that date you’ll see that node.
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I’m on a heavy organizational kick right now, especially concerning digital information. I’m using lists more, and I’m digging up archived stuff from way back because I want to put it into a rational and unified structure.
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