Archive your old projects
arne.me
Archive your old projects
1–10 of 63 posts
Re: Archive your old projects
#2I've started tracking an index of projects and their status in Notion. Then I create an extra page based on a template to put things on hold but make them resumable in the future.
In my index, I track: name, status (active, paused, inactive), description, goal and a link to the archive doc if it exist.
My archive doc looks like this (I generally delete any sections that aren't relevant to keep these easy to create):
#
### *Handoff to Future Me: *
### *Snapshot Date*:
---
### *Project Summary*
- *Objective*: Briefly state what you're trying to achieve.
- *Motivation*: What drove you to start this project?
- *Current State*: Is it in the ideation phase, research phase, or have you already built something?
---
### *Essential Context*
- *Related Projects or Dependencies*: Are there any other projects or tasks that are connected to this one?
- *Technical Specs*: For example, in your lamp project, what type of metal, what voltage for the lamp, etc.
- *Non-Standard Tools & Environment*: Any unique or specific tools you're using. For example, a specific code IDE or a special type of screwdriver.
---
### *Progress and Milestones*
- *Last Completed Milestone*: What was the last significant thing you accomplished?
- *Next Steps*: Like you said, for your lamp: research, clean metal, buff, etc.
- *Stumbling Blocks*: Any challenges you foresee or have encountered?
- *Any Experiments/Tests Conducted*: Brief on what you've tried and the outcomes.
---
### *Resources*
- *Important Files & Locations*: Where are the project assets or codebase stored?
- *Reference Material*: Links to guides, tutorials, or papers that are crucial.
- *Key Contacts*: Who can you consult about this? Even if it's an online community.
---
### *Handoff Summary*
- *Why Stopping*: Why are you pausing this project?
---
### *Notes to Future Me*
- Personal notes, reminders, or advice to your future self about the project.Re: Archive your old projects
#3> compiled .exe files
> Not sure what to do with these besides deleting
I was recently digging through some old backups for fun, and have so many little exe's I built in highschool and college just laying around.
I moved to Mac shortly after college and made the questionable decision to back up my old hard drives as Mac .dmg files before getting rid of the computers, so getting the exe's into a running version of Windows to even test is a pain.
A lot of the older ones are pretty neat little games and graphics demos made for DOS. Be neat to get a little VM up on my site running some of these but I suspect it might be a pretty large undertaking.
Re: Archive your old projects
#4I've started tracking an index of projects and their status in Notion. Then I create an extra page based on a template to put things on hold but make them resumable in the future. In my index, I track: name, status (active, paused, inactive), description, goal and a link to the archive doc if it exist. My archive doc looks like this (I generally delete any sections that aren't relevant to keep these easy to create):…
A closed source app like that seems like the worst choice for an "archive". Better to use a format that you can easily backup and that will still be readable in many years like a simple text file.
Re: Archive your old projects
#5A few months ago I went through my repos on GitHub and marked everything I built with Vue as “archived” which is nice as it prevents any new issues being opened and very clearly indicates the project is no longer maintained.
I think it would have been a bad idea to simply outright delete them, though I did delete a few.
Re: Archive your old projects
#6If 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 found it a bit unreliable with the connection failing, mountainduck causing finder to crash, and the website getting quite sluggish when I upload a bunch of photos.
Re: Archive your old projects
#7> compiled .exe files > Not sure what to do with these besides deleting I was recently digging through some old backups for fun, and have so many little exe's I built in highschool and college just laying around. I moved to Mac shortly after college and made the questionable decision to back up my old hard drives as Mac .dmg files before getting rid of the computers, so getting the exe's into a running version of Win…
Not that hard with dosbox look at what Archive.org has done.
Re: Archive your old projects
#8> compiled .exe files > Not sure what to do with these besides deleting I was recently digging through some old backups for fun, and have so many little exe's I built in highschool and college just laying around. I moved to Mac shortly after college and made the questionable decision to back up my old hard drives as Mac .dmg files before getting rid of the computers, so getting the exe's into a running version of Win…
> Be neat to get a little VM up on my site running some of these but I suspect it might be a pretty large undertaking.
It might not be too bad. I feel like there are a lot of little web assembly projects running on various sites that you could easily use. For a retro project I am working on I needed the MASM 5.00 reference manual and the site had PCjs running on it. Archive.org has there own web assembly emulator as well.
Re: Archive your old projects
#9If 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…
The key is multiple copies everywhere. Storage is cheap these days, so you can keep more than one copy - and digital hoarding doesn’t take up much space at all.
Re: Archive your old projects
#10My corollary axiom: “always be documentin’”, or, “document or it didn’t happen”.
I’d say easily 3/4 of the best stuff I’ve ever done was never bounced from the DAW/NLE, turned into a non-realtime/static artifact from code, or otherwise made archival, and far fewer projects / prototypes / physical experiments got the respect of any capture of any kind.
On a certain level I like the wabi-sabi nature of that. On another I wonder how many opportunities to converse or collaborate about mutual interests or future opportunities went by the wayside because I ‘labored in obscurity’ for so much of my life.
I’ve been doing some coaching for folks coming up in my industry recently and this has been an idea I’ve tried to convey early and often - “always be documentin’”.