clutter

The Story of Stuff

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

Going Green is a common theme in practically everything these days. Why? Perhaps because consumerism has overrun our society and we’re obsessed with the Stuff. The Story of Stuff is a compelling presentation that describes how the stuff we get makes it into our grubby little hands.

The Story of Stuff

Go Digital with Your Discs

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

Old DiscsThere are several reasons to get rid of your discs. This includes software you’ve purchased, backup discs, games, and even operating systems. I had two reasons to get rid of my discs. One was that the rack of discs was another piece of clutter in my home office. The other more important reason is CD’s and DVD’s have a shelf life. I recently pulled a disc from the rack and attempted to use it. It had no scratches or scuffs but was completely unreadable.

To get go digital with your hard copy discs follow these simple steps:

  1. Take an Inventory
    You can’t determine how to get rid of what you have unless you know what you have. I suggest creating 3 piles.

    • Discs you can easily replace for free. These will probably include backup copies and driver discs.
    • Unimportant discs you haven’t used in the past 6 months and probably won’t use within the next 6 months but need to keep. These most likely include things like Software Installation Discs.
    • Discs which you use occasionally and discs that are too important to lose. These will most likely include things like games which need to be in the drive to play and operating systems.
  2. Throw out your replaceable discs
    They’re replaceable. You don’t need to keep them around. Things like drivers can easily be downloaded and are often well out of date anyway. Backup discs are an old method of backup and should be replaced with off site storage of some sort.
  3. Box up the unimportant discs you haven’t used in 6 months
    There’s probably a reason you haven’t used them. Either they’re for software you keep installed and have no reason to reinstall them or they’re for software you don’t use often at all. In either case chances
    you won’t use it again for 6 months or more. Why keep it around cluttering your office.
  4. Rip the important discs to ISO disc images
    You probably have plenty of storage. Why not use it to store your discs in a reliable way? It also makes accessing them easier as all you need to do is locate the disc on your hard drive and mount it.
  5. Put purchased discs that you can’t part with back in their box
    You’ve already ripped them so you can access them any time you want. Put the discs back in their box and put the boxes on a shelf or in a box.
  6. Throw out the remaining discs
    Clean up your office by getting rid of all the discs and the cd rack itself.

More and more our software is moving to downloadable or even online applications. Get rid of your hard copy media now and stay ahead of the curve!

Keep it Simple Stupid

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

Keep it Simple Stupid (or what’s commonly know as the KISS principle) is something I picked up in my Software Engineering classes during my tour of duty at RIT. It is something I try to carry over into my every day life. That being said I’d like to share a few simple ideas I try to utilize to simplify my digital life.

Your Blog

For those of you reading this directly from the website you should have already noticed a complete redesign. This is only part of my new Zen overhaul. I have taken several points from Skellie‘s post 50 Tips to Unclutter Your Blog. If you’re interested in exactly what I did please check out the article. You may find some additional tips which I haven’t yet implemented as well.

Your Wallpaper
My Simple Wallpaper
A recent simplification I have made is my wallpaper. I was a fan of scenery wallpaper, most often shots that I took were my favorites, but I recently decided that this just adds to clutter. Photographic backgrounds can hide icons and can be a distraction. I created this simple background which provides a central focal point for any icons you wish to display on the desktop. I’ve provided several sizes so feel free to download it if you’d like to try it out.

Your Feeds

Chances are, if you’re like me, you subscribe to a lot of feeds. You probably also generate a lot of content on the Internet and therefor a lot of feeds (whether you realize it or not). If that’s the case why not manage both in the same place? I use Google Reader extensively and this is one of the biggest reasons why. Essentially I maintain two feeds: My Shared Items and My Content. Both are exactly what they sound like. My Shared Items is a feed in which articles, Videos, pictures and anything else i want to share will appear. I do this by utilizing Google Reader’s Shared Items feature. My Content is another feed in which any content that I produce will appear. For example, Any post on this blog, My posts on Randy and Rachel, My Comic Strips and my Youtube videos.

Your Archives

Lets face it, in this digital age chances are you have a lot of digital stuff. Stuff you want to keep. For most people this might just mean photos. For some it means photos, videos, music, software and more. To store all this and keep it organized you need a system. I have dual 250Gb SATA drives in a Raid 1 array which i use strictly for storage. On the root of this array I have the following directories:

  • Files
  • Music
  • Videos
  • Photos
  • Software

Everything I need to store fits somewhere in these 5 categories. Music and Videos are broken down by genre. Files and Software are broken down by category. Photos is broken down by date. This is probably where I’m the most organized. My Photos directory contains photos dating back to the 1950s all the way up to the present. To do this I created decade directories (1950s, 1960s etc) and within that year directories(1951, 1952 etc). Finally within the years directory I list the actual albums which also have a naming convention (MM – DD – name). Because of the shear amount of photographs I store I needed a system and this has greatly simplified things for me.

KISS

Regardless of what you’re doing, when something seems like its too complicated it is. Simplify it. Do whatever it takes to reduce the clutter and the complexity in your Digital Life. I will be making this a recurring theme for this blog so let me know if you have any specific topics you’d like to know how to simplify.