[opensuse] (offtopic) how do you organize your data?
I will try to keep this short, but I just wanted to ask if somebody had seen something or knows something that I might have missed. First of all this question is about textual or informational data. Just as you can keep e.g. newspaper articles in a folder, and notes in a notebook, and addresses in some address book, so too can you organize the same kind of data digitally. There are three categories of information: - personal (information pertaining to your person and your life) (first level) - notition (self-generated data that you maintain in order to remember things) (second level) - knowledge (archived articles, may included "bookmarks" as well) (third level). In Dutch I call these "personal", "data" and "knowledge" (or persoonlijk, gegevens, kennis). now of course you can just keep collections of text files interspersed with scanned images, saved photos, and so on. The user experience won't be that great, but it is resilient. We can call the three levels: self, group and world, or as it may related to Unix permissions: user, group and others. Typically the closer it is to yourself, the more likely you are to be the producer, and the more it relates to the world, the more likely it is for you to be a consumer, of the information. "projects" for instance may be personal, and private, but they may also be, and typically are, stuff that you show to others. You may not show it to everyone, so projects often fall into the 2nd group, or level. ---------------- but speaking purely of personal data, contact details (address book), notes you intend to keep, etc., we are speaking mostly of textual data at this point not excluding images or scans or photos, but still centered around 'knowledge'. In general, the format that lends itself best to these kinds of things is a WIKI ---------------- The problem with wikis is not only that they are often rather poor in terms of user friendliness or power (underdeveloped programs), the issue is also that you need to run it as a server. There are two classes of wikis that I know of: - runs in a browser as a self-contained system (TiddlyWiki) - requires a server to run ---------------- As a result: - either you store the data locally on your devices - or you use a web service ------------------ The best cross-platform web interface that I know is EVERNOTE. Evernote is available on every platform except Linux, and then you can still use the web interface. It is a proprietary solution but your best bet if you want your data to be easily accessible on mobile devices, although the Android version caused data corruption (corruption of spacing in text). In the past at least, not sure if still. As a personal device (that you might sync to the cloud) the concept of "wiki on a stick" becomes interesting. In order for personal data to be resilient, you need to be able to use it on any device. Unfortunately I know of no "wiki on a stick" solutions that are portable across platforms, and unless files are saved in regular formats (text and jpg,/png) they won't be much use on a cloud. Moreover this will never be really useful on a mobile device unless you have an application the equivalent of Evernote. So there are really two solutions for storage: ------------------- - Keep it on a stick that you keep synced to your regular computer(s) - Keep it on a cloud sync that you keep synced to your regular computer(s). And third: use an integrated solution centered around note-keeping, like Evernote. All of this seems rather poor to me. Currently I'm doing two of the following: - I have a slightly reasonable wiki solution called DokuWiki that I run on a personal VPS server (but I worry about security) - for larger data sets (software, manuals, multimedia) I maintain an OwnCloud server on the same VPS that functions as an online collection and data organisation. Of mostly software (for Windows), music, a bit of video, etc. In principle I could easily link the dokuwiki files to be accessible through OwnCloud. You could even imagine writing a plugin for owncloud to render the wiki files. But as most wiki solutions, DokuWiki is rather poor (so I don't use it much) and OwnCloud itself has an excellent file manager but other than that it is rather poor also. It's the best I can do at this point, although I still have old TiddlyWiki files lying around that contains an older addressbook etc. TiddlyWiki is actually quite userfriendly and also powerful, but in the end you need to do a lot of programming yourself to make it useful, and you are dependant on the thing never to get corrupted. Plus it is hard to run it with all the Java restrictions these days. So the question is really: has anyone done work in this area, and have you accomplished anything beyond what I have now? What I am doing (running my own VPS) would not be feasible for anyone else (everyone else) but you could consider yourself a provider of these things to others (friends, colleagues, etc.). If something like OwnCloud were sufficiently developed, it could start approaching the level of Dropbox or Synology NAS cloud solutions, but it's not really there by a far margin, and of course I made myself unwelcome with one of the authors as I couldn't achieve something that should have been ridiculously simple ;-). Synology has a well-developed platform (and you can run DokuWiki on it) but it requires running an appliance in your home and I require 'outsourcing' it to a VPS. A VPS solution is in-between personal local storage and anonymous/large scale cloud storage. A VPS really falls a bit into the 2nd level. It is not as personal as a stick, and it is not as world as a DropBox or whatever. Currently I only use OwnCloud for non-personal data and anything that is remotely secret/personal I encrypt individually. I also don't use it for anything requiring real filesystem support since I couldn't get WebDav working and it doesn't play nice with permissions if I were to share the filesystem where it stores its files. ================================================== So my question is: have you tried anything in this direction, and where are you now? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 04/01/16 05:28, Xen wrote:
I will try to keep this short, but I just wanted to ask if somebody had seen something or knows something that I might have missed.
First of all this question is about textual or informational data.
Just as you can keep e.g. newspaper articles in a folder, and notes in a notebook, and addresses in some address book, so too can you organize the same kind of data digitally.
There are three categories of information:
- personal (information pertaining to your person and your life) (first level) - notition (self-generated data that you maintain in order to remember things) (second level) - knowledge (archived articles, may included "bookmarks" as well) (third level).
I'm not sure this *is* offtopic. I use dedicated applications for specific files, eg. Digikam for photos, Thunderbird address book for contact details, etc. However, that still leaves a lot of uncategorised stuff, useful snippets, etc. For this and all the personal stuff, I use Leo <http://leoeditor.com/>. Actually, it is much more than an organiser, and I also use it, alongside Kate, to write python code. Bob -- Bob Williams System: Linux 4.1.13-5-default Distro: openSUSE 42.1 (x86_64) with KDE Development Platform: 4.14.10
On 04/01/16 05:28, Xen wrote:
I will try to keep this short, but I just wanted to ask if somebody had seen something or knows something that I might have missed.
First of all this question is about textual or informational data.
Just as you can keep e.g. newspaper articles in a folder, and notes in a notebook, and addresses in some address book, so too can you organize the same kind of data digitally.
There are three categories of information:
- personal (information pertaining to your person and your life) (first level) - notition (self-generated data that you maintain in order to remember things) (second level) - knowledge (archived articles, may included "bookmarks" as well) (third level).
I do a lot of genealogy/history websites. Each site has it's own directory. As I collect tidbits of information I poke them into a sub directory named "stuff". Some, if there's enough "stuff", I put into a further sub-directory. Some are just text files in the stuff directory. When I collect enough about something to make a web page for it it gets moved into a directory under its category on the site. Each site is like it's own file cabinet. There are drawers in the file cabinet for each category, schools, churches, obituaries, cemeteries, etc. Each drawer is full of file folders with the pages in them. For my own genealogy I have my family tree website as above but I also have another directory named "family". In family are sub-directories for all my surnames. As I collect tidbits they go into the proper surname directory. If I want something I use Dolphin to navigate to the proper directory and find what I'm looking for. For other types of information, like our Toro mower. I make a sub-directory in Documents for "toro" and all associated information, service manual etc., goes there. I find Dolphin to be very useful for finding what I'm looking for as long as everything is categorized [ in it's proper file cabinet, drawer and folder ]. -- Fast is fine, but accuracy is final. You must learn to be slow in a hurry. -Wyatt Earp- _ _... ..._ _ _._ ._ ..... ._.. ... .._ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 01/04/2016 05:10 AM, Bob Williams wrote:
I'm not sure this *is* offtopic.
+1
I use dedicated applications for specific files, eg. Digikam for photos, Thunderbird address book for contact details, etc.
True and there's more than that. The *NIX file system fits in with the hierarchical model that our minds so often naturally assume, but also supports cross linking. That being said... I organize my photographs - which take up the bulk of my storage, hierarchically by year & month, but within the applications i use, primarily darktable, i can 'tag' the images in many ways over and above the embedded EXIF information they are already tagged/embedded with. more to the point, i can apply many tags. The downside is that the tags ae only visible within the application. Users of Dolphin might see a similar phenomena.
However, that still leaves a lot of uncategorised stuff, useful snippets, etc.
True and not true. I have my DatabaseOfDotSigQuotes that is really just a random collection of things in FORTUNE format. It is - sort of - searchable by grep. I make use of KDE's BasKet to collect stuff. it great for a grab bag and has a sort-of structure that you can shuffle around. I make use of wikis. On the one hand I use Tiddywiki cos its easy. That doesn't mean its appropriate for everything. There's a plugin that makes the cross linking more automatic and not completely CamelCase dependent, and it you have lots of scientific work that need heavy cross referencing it glorious! It short of full-text indexing, which, lets face it, can be a burden, as balhoo demonstrates. on the other hand I use FosWiki, which is a 5th generation Wiki. The wiki engine behind Wikipedia I'd rate as only 2nd or 3rd generation. Foswiki makes the wiki itself as much or as little of a database as you want. Now the thing with the power of TiddlyWiki and FosWiki is that you'll never see this pweor discussed by reviewers. its not something superficial, out of the box; its something that you have to customise and figure for yourself. That makes it sound like an impediment, but that's the reality of life in so many ways that we don't think about at. We do put a lot of effort into customizing things around us and don't realise that investment. I think that Xen's complaint about wikis need in browsers and/or servers is is a bit self serving. Browsers are standard tools; If I want to maintain my router or various household appliances I use a browser. About the only thing that comes close is an email reader -- for those of us who don't use browsers to read email! As for the server issue, that may matter to those who aren't connected (Go use Tiddlywiki!) but the reality today is that we pretty much live on network services. heck, we're using one right now to communicate wth this list! Email is probably the most fundamental network service with the network of SMTP servers. Setting up a wiki is, while non trivial, not difficult. Or perhaps it is non-trivial. My ISP, Dreamhost, has an option to set up your own wiki, a MediaWiki, with just a click. "Click to Deploy". http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Available_One_Click_Installs It is the customization, the logo, the layout, the horde of other options, and of course the content, that require effort and some knowledge. The same with tagging my photos!
For this and all the personal stuff, I use Leo <http://leoeditor.com/>. Actually, it is much more than an organiser, and I also use it, alongside Kate, to write python code.
Now THAT *IS* interesting! Not to belittle it, but see also Kabikaboo. It depends on what you want to write. -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 1/3/2016 9:28 PM, Xen wrote:
EVERNOTE. Evernote is available on every platform except Linux,
Clearly you've thought more about this than most of us. I do use Evernote, but just for stuff of I might need anywhere. Although its web clipping feature (chromium plugin) is nice, as it runs on all platforms. By the way, have you looked into NeverNote for Linux? Works fine in linux till you turn on two-factor authentication. Other than that, Photos on the NAS, which I can access from anywhere. Music on Google Music which I download the whole thing to the NAS. Critical code bases, Inhouse Code Lib, Copy to NAS, Backup to SiderOak Critical Databases -same. Tax Documents -Same. Personal Documents (scanned to pdf) -Same Forgot to mention NAS has mirrored drives. Hmmm, I think I need a backup NAS for my NAS. I pretty much know where to find stuff. But I've been thinking of mounting the NAS via nfs on my Linux machine and pointing Baloo at it for search purposes. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
participants (5)
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Anton Aylward -
Billie Walsh -
Bob Williams -
John M Andersen -
Xen