Quick Report> More Fun With Tablets

Well, one tablet and a laptop. Not a lot to report this week, but the goal is to declutter or find uses for what I own, not to be a master blogger. I just really like writing stuff and giving people something to enjoy.

This week’s project involved the one Android smart device I didn’t finish last week, the tablet. My goal was to set it up as an assistant to my other projects. To that end I put in my prefered word processing software and taking out the stock one, adding YouTube studio and a teleprompter, both of which have a benefit for my video content, and even a free art program called Ibis Paint just for the heck of it. I have one game that easier to play on the tablet, Angry Birds Seasons, but I’m not going to put a lot of entertainment options. I do want some, in case I’m doing something away from the studio, but the focus is working on scripts or formatting them for the teleprompter, which doesn’t replace learning scripts but is still a good option to have. Trying to have a script near me just doesn’t cut it.

I also worked a bit on my dad’s laptop. I have a colonoscopy coming up and I set up a bit of entertainment while he’s waiting to drive me home from the insides scanning place. I was hoping to test my new video drive with the tablet, as there is a plug that came with it to do that, to see if I need to add a video watching program or anything else. I may do that during the week as I continue to reorganize that drive. That’s coming along slowly but pretty well. Finally, did some going through of old videos and emails. That one may never end at this rate.

So that’s all I have to report for this week. How’s your projects coming?

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Organizing The Video Project Drive

This is not the messed-up menu for the video drive. This is my back-up drive…where I learned a number of things about organizing and decluttering that I could bring into my physical decluttering and vice versa. This week I wanted to organize my video projects drive. For my other site I do articles, comics, and videos. I’ve even done some videos for this site, like the Parblo A610 graphics tablet review and the Godzilla Stomp card game. Time and life events prevented me from doing a lot of videos lately, and then my old video project drive when crazy when I tried to organize it like I did the back-up drive. A friend of mine managed to save the footage and transfer it to a NEW video project drive and this week I finally was able to go through it and being organizing.

Yes, begin. I did the heavy stuff this week but like before further organizing and deleting is in my future. This week was about getting the essential organizing going, creating a place for everything like I’ve started doing for the physical clutter and deleting multiples and unneeded files to take up less space. Virtual clutter is almost as bad as the realspace stuff for the same reasons. It takes up room you could be using and makes finding what you want a mess. So here’s what I was able to do in this round.

The Back-Up Drive Is Organized!

Well, it’s taken a few weeks but I finally took all the files, dumped the duplicates and other files I didn’t need, and put them all in an order where I can find them. Along the way I figured out an directory system I can use in the actual backing up (which I probably won’t waste your time with) that works for me and I can find stuff in. I used techniques I learned from physical record and media organizing, and some things I learned here will work in future stages of those projects.

Now I just need to do the same with my project drive, but that’s for the future. Additionally I managed to get myself to work on something that may not be the most interesting articles, and I apologize for that, but decluttering isn’t just about doing the pretty projects, or the parts of your home/office that you can see. While you don’t have to drive yourself mad with compulsive organizing, which also ruins any spontaneity and would be hard for the less rigid-minded types, a good system is a good thing to have. Just know that as times change and things are both acquired and unacquired, as the paths of your life take a new course, a new system may have to be created. My problem was lacking a good starting point to build off of. Now I have that so if anything changes in the future, hopefully I’m ready to change with it.

Next time I may be ready to do a more interesting project to discuss, but this was something that needed doing. If you stuck it out with me then thank you and I hope you learned something from this project like I did.

Quick Report> Back-Up Drive Almost Done (or phase 1 anyway)

 

I’m starting to get as bored with this project as I keep imagining you are. I also keep forgetting to update the images of this project.

Still, I pushed through on this one. Yesterday I went through my old videos, which like with the photos was a nice trip down memory lane. There are duplicates I’m going to have go through in the future, as well as compare with my video project drive but that’s for some later project. This is about organizing the back-up drive so I can start backing things up again. I did a good number on this one. Additionally I managed to go through the leftovers from my first PC (my first actual computer was the Atari 800, the first PC was an AST Adventure 200), a lot of which were files for whatever version of Windows I was running at the time. There were audio and image files that I can use elsewhere, back-ups of sample footage from video editors that I can use in other videos and audio projects, and clip art for days. New folders were created, too.

I think once I’ve finally gotten this stage done I’m going to do something else for your sake as well as mine. This is something I needed to do, though when I go to actually back things up I can always do some further sub-organizing then. I have other things I want to do, some physical clutter to clean or things to review that will be far more interesting than these quick reports. So for any of you still reading I’ve hopefully encouraged you to get a back-up drive, organize the one you have, or start doing back-ups before your current computer gets the drop on you like my last computer did to me. Otherwise, we’re almost through this project and it’s still shorter than the comic mega-project.

Quick Report: The Back-Up Hard Drive Organizing’s Bonus Benefits

Nobody’s commented on the gag folders. Either I’m that uninteresting or nobody caught them. Or maybe the image is too small. I don’t know.

In this week’s chapter in the back-up drive reorganizing project I came up with a good idea. Every unorganized folder is marked with a plus, meaning I still need to do those. I only have to do this on the main list of my computer’s backups so I know which folder to do next. The plan with each project is to do at least one of these main folders a week, more if possible. The ones already organized were left without the plus sign and the ones I do from here out will have it removed. This makes it easier for me to remember what I’ve done and how much further I have to go.

This week it was the files tied to my other website, BW Media Spotlight. All of my banners, comics, and other images were resorted, duplicates or no longer needed files removed, and some other files put in completely different files that I’ll be sorting in the future. Further sorting may occur later, since I’m doing what I do with physical paperwork: larger organizing, sub category organizing, and so on until I only have what I need better sorted without a headache. Longer time but worth it in the end if I can put future stuff right into the proper sub category. It’s all about getting my files straight, and I may use the new system when reorganizing the files on my computer once this is all done and the actual new backing up begins.

I know these may not be the most interesting projects but letting these larger projects go has been a big mistake and the source of my disorganized…nearly everything. That’s why Operation: A Place For Everything exists and in a way this is an extension of that. Every file in a proper place so I can access it later and lose the files I don’t need. That clears up a lot of virtual space just as the other projects I’ve done has cleared up physical space in my living area. The battle continues, and I’m actually learning from this project how to go forward with other projects just as some of the past projects have taught me tricks for this one. So I’m cleaning AND learning. Neat!

Quick Report: Back Up Drive Organizing Continues

I didn’t have a lot of time this week but I did squeeze in a little time to do some reorganizing on the back up drive from last week. The audio files were easy because the directory I already had was easy to work with back in the first phase only some minor fixing and deleting of duplicates had to be done this week. The fonts folder is also fine the way it is though at some point I do want to make a list of all my fonts for use in other projects. I don’t need them all installed, but it’s nice to have them for other projects.

In the other folders I made up two new subfolder: old directory and new directory. In keeping with last week’s organizing all the old subfolders in the remaining categories were transferred to “old directory”. In the new one I’ll create a new directory and organize all of those items into it. Due only to my schedule I’m hoping to do at least one main directory a week. One week it’s videos, another it’s downloads…I imagine some folders will need longer days and maybe even multiple project days while others I may get through quickly and start work on other folders. The goal is to be done by the end of September but hopefully it won’t actually take me that long.

Not much to report but slow and steady wins the race. I just wish there weren’t so many races.

Cleaning Up The Back Up Drive

This week I go to work on the project I didn’t get to do last week. I don’t back up my stuff enough, and this came back to bite me a few years ago when my computer died. I’m not sure how much I really lost but I’m sure I lost something I wanted. Thankfully a lot was backed up to my back up drive. The back up program that came with the drive doesn’t work on Windows 10, but that may be a blessing in disguise.

My back up drive has a lot of stuff I don’t need anymore, either because what was backed up has advanced well past that or certain things don’t work anymore. There are even a few things that came up in multiple copies for different reasons. So this week the first step in organizing this drive so I can back up my computer was the project of choice. Lucky for me since starting this de-cluttering project I managed to develop a system for organizing files and collections that I was able to translate to this project, and one I should be using to further organize my various files in the future. Maybe this will work for you as well, because this can seem as insurmountable as organizing your records or your (insert really big collection here) as well as trying to cut them down to something more manageable. However, my organizing system may take more time but it’s less headache inducing and the small victories can pile up almost as much as the small clutters. 🙂

Quick Report: Burning Through E-Mails

Taking time off from the other site to get rid of some distractions came with mixed success this week. The goal was to get caught up on my e-mails. I managed to get my personal box cleaned out recent, which was a nice victory, but the one I use for most of my projects still had a huge build-up from my 2016 medical crises (yes, sadly more than one) that I’ve been fighting to keep out of the 1000s for a while now.

Added to the problem is that for some reason I didn’t sleep well this week because I had…well, some of you might be eating. Suffice it to say my waste disposal issues came into play. It cut the time that I had to go through the various virtual letters, newsletters, and advertisements, and there were a lot of them. Losing part of a day to a brief power outage thanks to a storm that hit the state didn’t help any. Adding to the time issue was that some of them were rather long videos, some as short as 4-8 minutes or something but others reaching almost a half hour. That’s in addition to the YouTube backlog I barely scratched the surface of, and some of them that were YouTube hosted videos I shoved into my ever expanding “watch later” list, which means the other backlog that I’ll have to burn through if I ever get the recent videos backlog dealt with. I’m still trying to catch up with May on that one. More advantageous was anything that was outdated or wasn’t something I was interested in among the other things in the newsletter I was just went away while I focused on evergreen stuff or things that I really wanted to check into. Hopefully I haven’t missed anything interesting, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything important.

As it stands however, as I write this, I did manage to get up to 2020 in the project-tied e-mails, so while not a complete victory it’s certainly better that I had. With luck I can polish this off after you read this and get on to the last thing I wanted to do before resuming my other website. Whether that will be both things I wanted to do or just one depends on how long those things take plus an event that probably won’t let me work on the computer at all for a day, so I already know I’m going to lose a day. Still, the most distractions I can get rid of the sooner I can stop holding ground and finally move forward. All the medical issues (save Crohn’s and allergies) are dealt with and it’s time to finally get rid of the rest of the garbage 2016 saddled me with and get on with what I really want to be doing. I’ll take the light though I’d really like to get out of this @#$# tunnel now, thank you very much.

END OF THE DAY UPDATE!: I am now completely caught up with my emails! Now there’s just YouTube, the DVR, the RSS feed…

Quick Report: Trying To Bust The YouTube Backlog

My YouTube backlog is becoming a distraction. Being as sick as I’ve been this year has kept me from keeping up since if I was home I was still too tired to keep on it. Add to that running a website and trying to get other projects done, including this de-cluttering project and it’s just getting to be a bit much. So this week the goal was to cut through the backlog with the must-watch shows. I should also be taking stock at what is just curiosities and lightening my load that way. Just keeping up with what I want to see has been hard enough.

As it is I’ve only gotten as far as mid-September, and I’m posting this in early November. That’s how bad it is so I’m doing the best I can. This year my best hasn’t been good enough but factors keep getting in the way. Short version: I hate this year. I need to figure out how to get caught up, some of these channels used as research for the other site, not only with this backlog but what’s on the DVR. I’m trying to figure out how other reviewers and creators have time to do anything because I certainly don’t know the trick.

Quick Report: Wasting Time On Software

I am not a happy person right now. This week I went to install some of my art programs in the “artputer” and none of it wanted to run, even if I got it to run on the desktop. I got security messages or “check with the publisher for a newer version” messages. I basically wasted this week trying to get it to run. At some point I just stopped altogether. I need a new version of my photo software if I want it to run on the artputer even though it runs fine on my regular computer. I don’t get it!

It’s the waste of time that could have been put to other projects that ticks me off more. Yes, I wanted to do all the art stuff on the laptop in my art corner and the heavy lifting on the desktop but I have to spend money on a new version I don’t feel I need in order to do so. However, I could have been cleaning something else, doing something else that would actually be effective. Instead I wasted it on Windows’ inability to be backwards compatible and I hate wasting time on stuff, made worse by how much time I’ve lost this year thanks to getting sick.

Like I said, I’m not happy.