Organizing Files
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
A good email reader
Mutt is a fast, customizable mail-reader with lots of features:
- color support
- message threading
- MIME support
- various features to support mailing lists, including list reply
- an active development community
- POP3 and IMAP support
- full control of message headers when composing
- support for multiple mailbox formats (mbox, MMDF, MH, and maildir)
- configurable key bindings and macros
- automatic configuration changes based on recipients, current folder, and more
- good search capability
- Delivery Status Notification (DSN) support
- easy inclusion of attachments when composing, even from the command line
- multiple message tagging
- replying to or forwarding multiple messages at once
- ease of installation
- translation into at least 20 languages
- small and efficient program
My setup is almost identical to that of Dave's mutt config. Figure 20 shows message 1 of 27 from my inbox. My screen displays 47 lines at a time, and most of my email messages are shorter than that, so I rarely have to scroll through multiple pages to see if I need to keep or act on a message.
Figure 20. Reading my inbox
Templates
Most wheels aren't worth reinventing. If you find yourself constantly rewriting the same code snippets or email, it's time to pick a language and a template setup.
Perl and the Text::Template package suit me fine, but if push comes to shove, any decent scripting language with variable substitution can serve as a template engine.
Here are some of the better articles I've seen on choosing (or writing) a template system.
- Painless Functional Specifications by Joel Spolsky, about when not to use templates.
- Choosing a Templating System by Perrin Harkins.
- Bricolage: A Good Open-Source Option by Jim Rapoza. This is good if you want to see something a bit more large-scale.
- cmTemplate: A Template-Based Content Generator for Python by Chris Monson.
- Ludicrously Simple Templates with Python, from Simon Willison's weblog.
- How We Wrote the Template Toolkit Book Using the Template Toolkit by Dave Cross.
- Introduction to Template Toolkit by Randal L. Schwartz.
- Structured journals on the Portland Pattern Repository wiki. A structured journal is a journaling technique in which the writer employs a template or questionnaire to help capture information. The Journal Writing Resources site has example structured journals templates.
Code fragments or cliches
If you spend more than five minutes figuring out how some language function or WordSmasher-2000 utility works, write it down. I have a directory called ~/cliche that holds things that held me up, things I don't want to lose, or things I don't feel like typing in again (Figure 21).
Figure 21. Snippets I'll use again
I called it cliche because most of the snippets are the moral equivalent of "I'm just here for the team"; people expect them, and I'll probably end up using them sooner or later. For example, the file ~/cliche/ASCII/alphabet simply keeps me from having to stumble all over the keyboard if I need to loop through the alphabet for some reason:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y zThe file ~/cliche/perl/yesterday is a four-line function in the Perl language providing the time 24 hours ago, and so on.
Useful Links
- Getting Things Done is my favorite site for GTD and productivity tips.
- Ramblings from a CTO is a dandy weblog on tech management issues, getting rid of appraisals, and more.
- Jon Udell's Weblog talks about groupware, online communities, and collaboration.
- Lifehacker has the occasional good article, though the ads and sponsorships turn off some people.
- Productivity and organization lists is a useful "getting things done" page, but like most stuff on del.icio.us, it's all over the place.
- The office weblog discusses planners and groupware.
- Working Smart includes categories on GTD, email tips, and workflow.
Karl Vogel is a Solaris/BSD system administrator at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
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Showing messages 1 through 7 of 7.
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Problems installing xalarm
2005-12-21 15:48:57 KarlVogel [Reply | View]
A buddy of mine who uses Linux had a horrible time trying to get xalarm installed, which really surprised me. If I can get something running under both BSD and Solaris, Linux is usually a breeze.
However, xmessage makes a perfectly acceptable substitute, and should come with most X-windows distributions.
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Is your office organized?
2005-12-18 16:31:56 petrologist [Reply | View]
This is a subject I seldom see addressed.
System designers had to compromise several factors when organizing the original Unix filesystem (cf hier). System files that were always loaded were placed together, then they started to spread apart (relying on the fact that computers are fast when they know where to look).
Sadly, my father organized our house this way. All pencils were in one drawer, all scissors in another. He ran about the house just to send a package, but he wasn't as fast as a computer. Even the Mac's interface is designed this way (Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures), though no one organizes an office according to the medium the information is stored on.
When asked once to design a computer system for a law office that could be used by temps immediately, I chose OS/2 to create a green desktop that represented the lawn outside, two doors (icons), one for the staff and a back door for me (pun intended). The doors led to the office's rooms (icons), desks, cabinets, tools (printers, &c). One ususally opened a client's folder, unless one had a new client. Then one opened the startionary cabinet and dragged & dropped (carried & placed) a template of a client's folder to the deskpad. In it were standard templates, to be taken to the typewriter, which simply edited the blanks. The filecases were two: open cases and close. The closed were folders sorted by name. The icons on the computer screen matched objects in the office, in appearance and relative location.
The MacOSX has some spiffy links called 'aliases': you can move the original without breaking the link. In any case, I keep Apple's arragement (except that I have a common 'Download' folder), but I otherwise organize by project.
A folder 'Mail to Grandmother' may have alias to Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, and objects in any other 'standard' folder. Mac has helped by adding an optional column of little icons to their standard folders on the left of each folder you create. That way one can quickly open 'Pictures', grab the latests of Miffy, and close it again. My problems occur when I fail to attend to 'Downloads' nightly.
Office computers could be really easy to use, for offices are oganized. A home computer, as we've read, is another matter. -
Is your office organized?
2005-12-19 10:16:48 RCH [Reply | View]
Confusion of roles here.
Better to centre the whole effort on a database; e.g. Rapidfile http://www.mwenterprises.co.uk/E/RapidFile/
etc
Essential details of every new action, every incoming email requiring reply, are captured in the database, and appropriate templated text is output.
Needs a database template for each type of email you write, one for each perl/ruby/awk script; etc
A little script gets the output, massages it appropriately, names it, saves it, and opens the IDE.
Database records have as unique key a 5 digit number (00001, 00002 ...);
File names are Number_Mnemonic.extension e.g. 00001_Dupont.txt,
00002IncomeTax.xls ...
Replies get filed similarly
00001_Dupont_Reply.txt,
00002IncomeTax_CourtOrder.msg ...
Files are assigned to directories in batches of 100.
First hundred go in directory ..\00000_00099, second in directory ..\00100_00199 und so wieter
Proof of concept - this has worked for me since the early 1990s. I now have more than 15500 entries. Colleagues routinely ask for stuff that they cant find in their system
Recent records easily found either by eyeballing dir list for a mnemonic, older ones by database boolean search. "Dupond NOT Dupont AND before 2003" returns the record number(s) of what you are looking for instantaneously.
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Apple's Spotlight
2005-12-16 09:15:05 inetwsnet [Reply | View]
Spotlight (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/spotlight/) is unbelievably helpful. Type in what you are looking for and it generally finds it. For those unfamiliar with spotlight it indexes the content of multiple file types in a database and then when you search presents the results.
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