Yearly Tasks

Filed under: Personal | Tags: Tech | December 31st, 2004

Post

As the year draws to a close, and it has been a wonderful year, I find myself drawn to a few tasks that always seem to catch me around this time:

Updating copyright years on sites that don’t use the PHP trick.
Archiving old mail and logs to local server.
Checking none of the low-traffic stuff broke without me noticing.
Backing up.
Cleaning out old/dead accounts, consolidating where possible.
Putting everything remotely versionable into Subversion (new for me this year).
Writing notes to old friends.
Organizing music.
Making lists (much like this one).

What catches up with you at the end of the year?

10 Responses

Roy Schestowitz | December 31st, 2004 @ 4:38 am

Haha, it sounds like an echo of my own Palm records.

The first thing on my list is changing the year on the dot-coms and program splash screens. Then, there’s all the mail archives and greeting card ‘chores’,

Kitta | December 31st, 2004 @ 5:59 am

Email. I’m terrible at replying to email.

Chris G. | December 31st, 2004 @ 6:18 am

The main thing for me is organizing my files on my computer. It seems that every year it looks like a bomb hit the My Documents folder on my computer. It is even worse since I just got my first digital camera a week ago. My photos are everywhere. I plan on doing some of that this weekend.

I also need to make a good backup of everything, which is something I fail to do even once in a blue moon and I really really should.

kitten | December 31st, 2004 @ 7:01 am

I’m just like Chris there… Although I don’t have a digital, so at least one problem less. But then again, looking at my flat… My photos are everywhere too. Not sure what is better… A messy harddisk or a messy flat. At least there aren’t many people who see the contents of my harddisk.

Happy 2005 to everyone!

Brent O'Connor | December 31st, 2004 @ 7:47 am

Photo Matt,

What editor do you use with subversion? I’ve been a PHP programmer for a long time and haven’t started using a versioning system yet. I’ve been told that CVS is good but Subversion is better. I use Dreamweaver as my editor and then have it automatically upload files to the server via SFTP when I save a file. I would like to have something that works just as well and as transparent if I switch to Subversion. I hear that Eclipse is a good editor and even has a PHP plug-in. I hardly ever use the WYSIWYG mode in Dreamweaver so I don’t need that in an editor.

I just haven’t found time to set it up and work with a versioning system. I would on both a Windows machine and my PowerBook so it would be nice to find something that worked on both platforms.

Perhaps if you had time you could write a tutorial or something on how you do things Matt!

Dante Evans | December 31st, 2004 @ 11:08 am

I make grand plans and predictions for the new year and forget to write them down. This year, I posted them on my blog so I don’t forget.

BTW on my blog, Photomatt, I chose you as Person of the Year for your work on WP.

Richie G | December 31st, 2004 @ 1:47 pm

I don’t get why you are going to update copyright years. Isn’t the point of having the year is to say when it was last modified. If you haven’t modified the file recently then why update the year?

Firas | December 31st, 2004 @ 1:49 pm

I spent a couple days this week organizing files in my computer… I wasn’t exactly losing track of documents, but it’s useful to have projects, random lists and notes ‘to organize/use or delete’, backups etc., all strictly arranged in their respective folders in a heirarchy… especially the projects.

Next target: email. Been avoiding that because organizing email is actually a way to have a 2do list (reply, follow through, archive etc.) rather than a way to procrastinate

In the end, the idea is to have a comprehensively systematic way of organizing my ‘digital life’, systematic enough to write down as my model of going about things (including a backup schedule, with core files and folders containing work-in-progress backed up via ftp upload every night..) Also will put all accounts and passwords in a central encrypted file that is accessible from anywhere… deleting unused logins is part of that.

And I should get around to the physical mess in my room. Eventually… sometime. It’s actually interesting to see how (organize: files/email/room) is similar to the other lists above! Also monetary issues, academia, jobs.. time to get life in order.

Roy Schestowitz | December 31st, 2004 @ 6:32 pm

Richie, I believe that most people (including me) do not use proper time-stamping. When modifying a page, or code, one rarely remembers (or bothers) to change the stamp (which is likely to change again the following day, or week…).