Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Archive your old projects

arne.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 63 posts

Re: Archive your old projects

#31

Post by andai »

LVB wrote: post #13

My main, albeit simple, local organizational pattern is: 1. everything under ~/dev 2. all projects are their own folder under a year folder. And if I ever restart work on something older, I move it to the current year. I have hundreds of project folders and it’s helpful day-to-day to just be able to look in ~/dev/2023 for current stuff. But it is also relatively easy to find older things since I have a sense of rough…

>it is also relatively easy to find older things since I have a sense of roughly how far back they are

I have a ~/dev/file_list.txt, generated by

    find . > file_list.txt
(I think I might have added a flag to exclude node_modules...)

I drag the output file into Sublime Text, so I can search the entire directory instantly. (It also works for entire hard drives!)

Re: Archive your old projects

#32

Post by hypertexthero »

logifail wrote: post #28
hypertexthero wrote: post #12

Create a folder on your computer or get a sturdy box made of good cardboard with a lid. Name the folder “Process”. Write the word “Process” on the box. While working, occasionally take photos or screenshots of what you are doing showing your workspace, the computer desktop, the desk with pencils and papers and cables everywhere, the wall or piece of string with notes. Show the messy process of creating something. Typ…

> Practice writing down notes on a piece of paper in the dark > Thank yourself later, in years to come I only found out about this many decades after it happened, but on the occasion of my grandfather's 60th birthday, way back in 1980-ish, my mother presented with him a large bound empty notebook labelled with his name, and explained that the purpose of the gift was that he was to start making notes about his life. I…

Thank you for this idea.

I’ve given notebooks to my mom to encourage her to write, but don’t think I ever wrote her name on the cover. The next one will have it.

Also, consider recording a conversation between you and your loved one with the voice recorder on your phone. I have one brief recording of my dad’s voice in an old VHS tape that I burned to DVD and copied to the computer, and that’s it.

Memories.

Often the most powerful objects in films, to me, are photographs. Like the polaroids in Thelma and Louise and both Blade Runners.

Also old school VHS footage, like in Bassackwards by Kurt Vile — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOFWHty4XFQ — and What About That Day by Jenny O. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxCBnKu5jyk

Re: Archive your old projects

#33

Post by calamari4065 »

raybb wrote: post #6

If not putting them online publicly how do you store / organize them? I just recently bought a NAS for 20 euros and have been thinking about setting it up but am skeptical of relying on it for anything too important. But then again don't feel I can really trust anything too important to be in google drive either. I also even have a hetzner nextcloud instance that I use for most low/medium importance stuff but I've fo…

As everyone else said, redundancy equals reliability. You can automatically sync to AWS or backblaze for offsite backups. Locally you'll want a second and/or third backup. My proxmox server syncs to a USB hard drive locally, then I manually take that to the office now and then to sync to a different drive I store in my desk. Critical stuff is also stored in a third drive I keep in a firebox at home.

You can automate as much or as little as you want, but you have to keep multiple copies around. You can't trust any single source. Individual drives fail, tapes go bad, cloud storage can disappear or become corrupt.

The 3-2-1 rule is a good place to start. Three copies on two different media, and at least one copy off-site

Re: Archive your old projects

#34

Post by Izkata »

I copy my entire home directory across to every new computer, so I have a lot of random crap laying around in random places that I occasionally rediscover by chance. The oldest stuff I have is from ~15 years ago, when my hard drive died in the middle of a semester in college and I hadn't yet started making backups.

Re: Archive your old projects

#35

Post by ohdannyboy »

I really regret not archiving my projects as a kid. I didn't care to save much of anything back then so they got lost to various HDD crashes and migrations to other systems.

I started programming at 11 and don't have anything I made before I was 19. Mostly video games in C++ and small PHP projects I did for money in high school. It's fun looking back at what I have so I really wish I had the stuff from way back in the day.

My oldest program of any significance, a console based poker game, was lost with Planet Source Code and isn't in any of the publicly available archives. I started looking for it maybe 6 months after the site went down.

Re: Archive your old projects

#36

Post by doctorhandshake »

dc96 wrote: post #22
bxparks wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this like 3-4 times and I cannot parse or understand this comment. What does "DAW/NLE" mean? (DDG search says Digital Audio Workstation, and a whole bunch of links to something NLE Choppa). What does "non-realtime/static artifact from code" mean? What does "got the respect of any capture" mean? What does "wabi-sabi" mean? How does all this relate to "always documenting"?

DAW/NLE = digital audio workstation/non-linear editing (you'd have to search both terms in order to get the correct context, especially if used right next to each other). The author is probably talking about video editing of some kind, whereby he either regrets not saving more source code or taking more screenshots of his work if I had to wager a guess. Not sure what the "non-realtime/static artifact from code" refer…

Yeah sorry to be oblique .. you are correct in regard to the intended meaning of DAW, NLE, and wabi-sabi. As for static artifacts, in my case I work with generative systems quite a lot, often durational systems that make image / sound / lighting / movement stochastically or non-deterministically over long periods, and are generally a living thing that has behavior. While a picture or other recording of those things represents a shadow image of what the real thing is, it beats nothing.

In this case, I mention wabi-sabi as the zen acceptance, even beauty, of the transience of all things, because it makes the creative act primary, rather than a very un-zen attempt to hold on to something fleeting, which some would say is the source of all unhappiness.

Re: Archive your old projects

#37

Post by RajT88 »

raybb wrote: post #29
RajT88 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you buy a NAS for 20 Euros? My old DNS-320 was ~100 euro new. And it kind of sucked.

An ancient Synology Disk Station DS112j with a 1TB hdd from fb marketplace. I've never had a NAS before so wanted to play around with it before deciding to invest in a nicer one that can do more like handle Plex.

After my DNS-320 I concluded to make it do everything I wanted, I need to really have a full OS I have control over.

So I built a box from one of those 4 bay Mini ITX chassis'. More expensive but I am loving the FOSS options like JellyFin.

Re: Archive your old projects

#38

Post by brnt »

logifail wrote: post #28
hypertexthero wrote: post #12

Create a folder on your computer or get a sturdy box made of good cardboard with a lid. Name the folder “Process”. Write the word “Process” on the box. While working, occasionally take photos or screenshots of what you are doing showing your workspace, the computer desktop, the desk with pencils and papers and cables everywhere, the wall or piece of string with notes. Show the messy process of creating something. Typ…

> Practice writing down notes on a piece of paper in the dark > Thank yourself later, in years to come I only found out about this many decades after it happened, but on the occasion of my grandfather's 60th birthday, way back in 1980-ish, my mother presented with him a large bound empty notebook labelled with his name, and explained that the purpose of the gift was that he was to start making notes about his life. I…

Tried it with my parents, not unexpectedly did they not want to partake in such overly personal tomfoolery.

Not all people, perhaps not even most, enjoy creating.

Re: Archive your old projects

#39

Post by atum47 »

I once created a simple counter [1]. I used it to remind me of eating every two hours. I thought to myself "it's a good counter, I'll show it to people" then posted it on HN. People were like "that is just a counter, why are you showing us that?" So i kind of stop sharing everything, haha.

But my GitHub used to be a replica of my projects folder, i would upload everything. I don't do that as much now a days.

1 - https://github.com/victorqribeiro/simpleCounter

Re: Archive your old projects

#40

Post by esafak »

ohdannyboy wrote: post #35

I really regret not archiving my projects as a kid. I didn't care to save much of anything back then so they got lost to various HDD crashes and migrations to other systems. I started programming at 11 and don't have anything I made before I was 19. Mostly video games in C++ and small PHP projects I did for money in high school. It's fun looking back at what I have so I really wish I had the stuff from way back in th…

It is ok. Sometimes the memory is better than the reality. How good do you think your code really was?
Post reply on HN