Maybe a little too meta

[kestrell]

I just went to read a book which I recently scanned but suddenly realized that, while I remembered the title of the book, I couldn't remember the author's name. It turns out that, when one is a bibliophile, searching one's hard drive for the etext of a book titled _Book_ is no simple task.

Oh well, I remember which directory it is in...

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Better than _scan04_, perhaps?

[kestrell]

The friend who encouraged me to get my first computer with TTS showed me, very early on, how to rename a file and save it to a specific directory, and I still think this was probably one of the most useful things anyone ever taught me about using a computer. I'm always amazed when I hear computer users describe the unstructured nature of their computers (best system I've heard--from a guy, of course--was two directories: "smut" and "not smut.").

[jesse_the_k]

Indeed. Mac OS lets you create infinite folders almost infinitely deep, and I try to take advantage of this. That's why I'm enjoying Quicksilver so much: I can select a file by name or contents, and then "drop" it into a folder (by name or contents) and do it all from the keyboard.

The most challenging issue is photographs. Digital tech permits us to take scores of shots, in hope of "picking the best one later." But every camera I've had numbers the picture files serially, with no breadcrumbs like the date. (Lots of info — date, exposure, camera settings — is stored in the file's metadata, but that requires opening each file's metadata individually.) I bet that higher-end photo handling software provides easier control, but for us groundlings it's no so easy. Which is why my photo folder is a crash site.

/geek