The Complexities of Digital Organization

Current mood: aggravated
Category:Web, HTML, Tech

I have always been, well, disorganized. In my physical surroundings, in thought, and in my digital world. It’s usually not such a big deal until I finally get frustrated enough that I decide to attempt to make sense of the disaster I have neglectfully created. Compounded further more by my completely disorganized manner I attempt to organize myself. Am I making any sense here?

I am a packrat. Physically, mentally, and digitally as well. I save everything. I hate to throw things out. This goes with my digital files as well. Even if it’s a shitty picture, I keep it. Even if it is a duplicate song, I typically keep it. What if one is better than the other? What if I decide I like that picture?

My latest adventure stems from finally filling up all of my memory cards with pictures. Realizing I know for a fact I have not copied all of the images to my laptop that I use most often, and then being completely uncertain whether or not I had removed any images from the memory cards I have been using. Plus, the images I have put on my other computers, and finally to what I am attempting to make my back-up drive. Luckily I have not yet started this with my Nikon images. My mp3’s, well that is an entirely different clusterfuck.

Now I have approximately 1 year of images, taking up approximately 6 gigabytes in memory cards, 3.5 gigabytes of HDD space on my laptop, god knows what on my other computers all further convoluted with a haphazard failure of a system. I had originally decided to organize by a range of months, kind of like a business quarter year. i.e. Jan – Mar, Apr – Jun, Jul – Sep, Oct – Dec per year. Well that failed with the further complication that I mis-understood my camera, and I failed to use my system properly and was just downloading files to whichever folder upon need of use.

I THOUGHT my camera had an automated system of ensuring no filename will be re-used until I told it to. WRONG. It recycled the file names with each new card I put into the camera. So I have several images with the same fucking file name. It never came up until now due to my complete failure at using a system.

Thankfully, with my new system this proved not to be a problem. My new system is years, then months. So I have a 2008 folder, then a January, February, etc.. folders. Due to how much fit on each card SO FAR I haven’t had a duplicate file name come up in my attempts to arrange and back up. However, this is only organizing what is on the laptop. My next step is to back up the memory cards with the same system, and then go through to be sure I haven’t recycled any cards this year. I am pretty sure that I haven’t but I’m not 100% sure.

After I complete this task, I need to back everything up to DVD’s just to be on the safe side. I am hoping to fit at least a year on each DVD. We shall see. Then of course comes the task of well, keeping up with my new system for 2009 and then beyond.

The next catastrophe I foresee is maintaining my backups. I need to back-up to my backup drive, and then to DVD’s, and I should really be doing this on a more consistent basis. This has already bitten me in the ass with my mp3’s. I have NO clue which albums have been backed up, and which have not. I know there is auto-backup software available, but I like to manually do it to be sure, maybe this is my downfall?

Not too long ago I had the same problem at work. I don’t delete anything, even if it is obsolete and old. I finally just managed to arrange everything by dept I was in at the time. This, unfortunately has not worked for emails. I have every email ever sent to me from within 6 months of working there (when I finally realized how important having a record of all emails is important) even though, the likelihood of me needing an email from 2006 is almost null, it has come up. But with my flawed system, it takes me a minute to locate it. Hehe.
This sucks. And it is completely reminiscent of my attempts to organize my house. I go though and create piles to be dispersed into the appropriate sections of the house, then to where they should go. I create to go boxes, and then store them. I fail at this organized world bull shit.

What I really need to do is make my desktop a file server, and then create an auto back up system with that. I just haven’t managed to find the time to do this. Physical life just seems to be more important.

How do you all fair in the digital organization world?