When Red Sonja, my beloved first laptop (a Dell) was beginning to fail I dumped the data files onto an emergency external hard drive without using the attached (awful) Maxtor One Touch back up program.  Then when the laptop formerly-known-as-(I forgot what it was called) started to have problems I began trying to back up my data in the manner of a very confused, unknowledgable luddite.

So now I currently have a faltering laptop named FooKitty and a Maxtor external drive with both restore points and random archive folders on it.

The goal here is to make reinstallations of the operating system and drivers CLEAN and easy (meaning without out all the bloatware that gets put in when you use the Vaio Recovery Wizard) and to have a mostly logical data storage and backup system in place.  God, I can’t believe it took me so long to do this.  I was so organized a few years back and had logically split programs from data both at work and at home but somehow in the past few years with the bike trip and the not so challenging work I slipped into an apathetic daze.

The data clean up before recovery attempt are:

1. Review standalone data dumps from previous computers and incarnations of computers
2. Review all restore points and create a stand alone dataset
3. Combine results from 1) and 2) so that there is one copy of data on the Maxtor external hard drive
4. Run a single data only backup of current data on computer
5. Combine data from Maxtor and data from Vaio to get a final copy of all data
6. Copy that dataset onto brand spanking new LaCie drive so that there is a back up copy of data.

File organization - this is something that I have been picking at for years.  At my old job I was sort of ridiculed for being the folder structure nazi but I have to say that having a specific place to store projects isn’t a bad thing and sure as hell helped me keep track of production.

Some problems do occur when you are reading basemap data from one place and storing files in anothter and when the basemap data changes links are broken everywhere and chaos ensues.  I let my organization go at home, jumping on the “go with the flow” mentality of these times of copious storage space.  While tagging and word recognizition functionality works for the internet and application launchers (like Launchy!) work for starting programs - random searching for crap on a computer filled with 100s of thousands of files isn’t cutting it - there needs to be some heirarchy.  My computer can’t read my mind…yet.

But no longer is the just save it mentality goint to work - if you don’t know where it is, you can’t back it up and you will lose it.  This all became very apparent when my camera was stolen (from my luggage at JFK by JetBlue luggage handlers & yes I was stupid to pack it).  I wasn’t sure if I had downloaded photos from my vacation in Barcelona earlier in the year.  Precious memories to be jogged by an image in my future role as an oldster - lost (or so I thought).  It was then that I realized that I really needed to get my shit together.

File folder structure:

C: drive - XP crap only

D: drive - data and “Program Files”

• Remapped “My Documents” folder
• _basemaps (GIS basemap data)
• _downloads (program files split into “testing” and “using”; also the registration info)
• _finances (quicken files & spreadsheets)
• _gtd (gtd program files - Thinking Rock & UltraRecall)
• _images (non-my camera images)
• _misc_documents (not writing stuff more like pdfs, e-receipts, misc stuff)
• _misc_folders (I have a million misc folders usually Project Gutenburg books and stuff that doesn’t have a place to live)
• _originals_gps (original gps downloads from Garmin - to be permanently archived)
• _originals_photos (original photos - to be permanently archived)
• _misc_spread (non categorized spreadsheets)
• _music (all that cd, itunes and amazon mp3 music)
• _SASG (project files for travel stuff - edited gps/photo files)
• _web_crankybunny (crankybunny backups, css, settings, data, etc)
• _web_northarrow(northarrowguides backups, css, settings, data, etc)
• _web_SASG(steady-as-she-goes backups, css, settings, data, etc)
• _words (writing)
• _work (projects from work)
• Program Files (the install place for all that crap I run)
• SANDBOX (working area for misc projects, programming exercises, etc)

It seems like a lot but I think that being able to find stuff is a big problem.  This way even if you have misfiled you can search a much smaller set of folders to try to find what you are looking for.

The next problem is how to create that Recovery Disk without the bloatware.  Next post…

I am using the Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML book.  I really like the series and am learning some good stuff.  I have 4 more chapters to go and then I will attempt to set up my php/html and css.  I will probably start a little primitive and then refine.

The focus and drive is something that has been lacking for awhile and I enjoy having it back.

The Minus

I spent much of yesterday plodding through html and css trying to cram it all into my brain in, oh, a day as opposed to a few weeks or a month. For some insane reason I feel stupid for not knowing everything about everything and, silly me, I get frustrated and angry with myself when I can make things do what I want in a short period of time.

What I forget (or perhaps never really learned) is that people tend to only use minimal levels of things as tools to get the job done. For instance a photo album blog. Most people would have researched different photo album plugins for WordPress, installed the chosen one, maybe changed the color in the “options” tab and have been off and running uploading photos to their website. If I’m to be completely realistic, many of them would have just put their photos on some file sharing site like Flickr or Google Web Albums and looked for a plugin to either show photos on their site or link the site to their photos.

But me, I would like the photo album integrated with the blog header AND I absolutely have to have maps in the page. I like maps - so I want maps - I think it’s important. But no one does maps the way I want my maps done so I have to learn (on top of general Wordpress knowledge) 1) php to screw with the maps display function, 2) html/php/css to put the maps on the page the way I want, and 3) Javascript and Google Maps code. It sounds so simple, but it’s not. I’m not even learning how to create php code, but I’ve managed to get my way through enough of it that I actually understand the sections to the page now. And let me tell you - web design has come a long way baby - structure and style are separate.

So yesterday, after trying many, many things to try and get a map to show up on my page, I gave up. Later in the evening I began flicking through the theme options in a half hearted attempt to jog my brain to “be smarter” and lo and behold something sunk in and I remembered that I hadn’t re-entered my Google Maps API keyafter updating WordPress. Such a small thing, so stupid. Hours of flailing about blindly, ready to give up - for a one second epiphany. Now there are maps on my individual image page - I’ll worry about the style later.

The Plus

After a day of flailing and failing it was time to return to the house/dog sitting locale that had just been extended two additional days due to a changed flight. But first, because of these additional days I needed additional food and decided to head to the Whole Foods at Union Square. I was listening to Balkan Beat Box in an attempt to forget about my failings of the day but headphones and a crowded food store after work is not really the best mix - so I listened to the people around me instead.

“It probably tastes like any other chocolate”- a twenty-something female referring to Les Vosages Tibetan goji berries,pink Himalayan salt,deep milk chocolate bar. I can vouch that chocolate and salt is a great combination and it unlike any other chocolate combination, but hey it is an overpriced candy bar. And then there was the metrosexual man behind me saying in a petulant tone to someone on the phone, “I’m boiling water right now, Dad just wanted some pasta but I’m stuck in this hideous line. (I can only assume his father was visiting) … I found some sauce that is probably crap and it’s so expensive, but it’s not like I’m going to start from scratch and chop tomatoes.” OK - so you went to the most centrally located Whole Foods in the city during the after work hours and left water boiling on your stove at home? And then to complain about the quality of what you are buying - you know you could just go across the street to one of the crappy other grocery stores in the are and buy some Ragu. They may be losing their hippy, granola ways, but Whole Foods, if nothing else, has decent brands and tasty fresh foods.

Anyway - after the quickly moving express line I headed off on a subway adventure. Long story short, I just kept taking trains, express trains at that, and got home via 4 different trains - 2 of the express trains. I could have ended up headed back up town but by luck I had taken and express 4 (that wasn’t making all of it’s stops including the one I needed to transfer to an F) and then an A train that was apparently heading to Brooklyn (I though it was heading uptown and was going to make the F transfer at West 4th). Imagine my surprise when I was at Jay St-Borough Hall, right where I needed to be and faster than I had expected. Yippee - flailing about blindly got me home faster - all while listening to some kick ass gypsy music.

1. Don’t worry about header integration.
2. Alway have a functioning theme in place when done with the experiments
3. Continue learning about html/css by using the Stopdesign theme as a guide.  I like a lot of things about this theme, but it has a complicated css and uses a lot of image files that I don’t want.  I’m not sure whether I should be just starting from scratch or continue using this one.
4. Put the map functioning into the individual image pages.

The difficult part is really trying to learn css.  I just can’t seem to leave well enough alone and use someone else’s theme.  No, I have to customize and make on all by myself.  But at least I’ve learned to have something clean at the end of the day so I can start uploading all of my photos.

I struggled with the idea of posting the kml files too and I just don’t know why I should.  No one is really interested in seeing my personal photos geocoded - my friends can just look at the photo pages.  Why force anyone to download a kml?  If anyone happens to read this and can convince me why I should post kmls with photos I’d love to hear it.  Believe me, I’ve obsessed about it enough but have come to the conclusion that it isn’t that important.  On the other hand, my photos will all be geotagged

Image from: http://www.contrex.ca/coffee/img/stovetop.jpg

I just had to share.