Do I still care about the same things?

Go back a few years, and it was easy to realise how much I cared about certain things.  I worried about how girls were always the first to suffer in any culture experiencing war or extreme poverty.  I was angry that a day’s work was not always rewarded with a fair wage.  I was repulsed at any form of discrimination.

I still care about the same things, you may be pleased to know.

Nowadays, I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve so much as before.  I don’t have a sob story about why this is – I just approach life a little different.

I don’t want to go on about how great a human being I am.  I’m as flawed as most people.  I’ve come across numerous people of integrity who care about their fellow human beings.  It’s always good to have faith renewed in the humanity of others.

I still care about drinking whisky

One other thing that I also care about is free and open source software (FOSS).  I will use proprietary software, but prefer to use FOSS if it is available.  I won’t choose FOSS if it means compromising on functionality, I will add.  For example, I prefer using GIMP to the proprietary alternatives I have tried.

I don’t like excess data being collected about myself and others, and this is a major reason why FOSS is so important.

Everyone needs privacy.  Those who say that they have nothing to hide must be happy to shower in the middle of town in a see-through bathroom whilst having everything that they say reported on the news.  And if your data is on a server somewhere, it’s only a data breach away from appearing in your next door neighbour’s RSS feed.

I do like using GNU-Linux.  Why so?  Well, not to prove how great I am at fiddling about with software.  I am at ease with doing command line stuff but you can use GNU-Linux and never touch the command line should you wish.

Windows is a horrible operating system to use in that it is so rigid in its implementation.  It can be so very clunky.  And the update process for Windows is so painful!

Some people love Windows, and I won’t try to convert them – that’s their preference but not mine.  It was using Windows in my younger days that led me to swapping my operating system because of its limitations.

The start of my transition was dumping Internet Explorer and using Opera.  Opera isn’t the browser it was, unfortunately, and today I am very much a Firefox and Chromium user.  But, anyway, it was using Opera that led me on the road to the choices out there.

My first jump into using GNU-Linux was setting up a dual-boot on a Windows laptop I had.  I first used Linux Mint as my main workstation before going to Ubuntu and now to Ubuntu-Mate.  I’ve used a few other GNU-Linux distros in VM machines – it really is a case of using the best distro for you depending on your fiddle level and your knowledge of computer programming.

I’ve never used a BSD based distro or used an Apple Mac in anger.  Maybe one day, but at present everything is working for me as I want so all is good.

So, I still care about the same things in general.  I wish that I was able to save those subjected girls around the world.  I wish discrimination was a thing of the past.  I also wish for less collection of personal data and more usability in major operating systems.

I also wish that sandwiches were the secret to losing excess weight – but sometimes I wish for the impossible.

Clearing up that clutter

I am going to be bold and suggest that everyone reading this post will be able to relate to what I am writing.

Have you ever opened a drawer in the kitchen or the lounge and been confronted with numerous receipts, letters and guarantees that you should have filed months ago but not find the instruction book that you are looking for?

This clutter is a symptom of not filing the documents in the appropriate place at the right time and is the default behaviour for most people, or so it seems to me.

Nowadays, it’s easy to replicate this problem on your computer or your smartphone.  With the amount of emails and applications that are made online, it’s possible that the clutter and junk awaiting sorting on your desktop and within your Documents and Downloads folders will quickly achieve a worse state than your kitchen or lounge drawer.

I kept telling myself that I have to tidy the files and folders on my now effectively deceased old budget laptop.  I had photographs and files that were sometimes even triplicated in various locations.  I also had problems locating the file that I had been searching for amongst the unsorted junk across my laptop.

Filing systems are useful for finding what you need (incidentally, I grabbed this image from Negative Space)

With being forced to buy a new laptop, I have taken the opportunity to sort the mess that was my chaotic filing system.  I restored my backup into a folder named ‘!to restore’ on my new laptop and have since been filing its the contents into appropriately named folders and sub-folders on my new Hard Disc Drive, as well as being able to rid myself of triplicated files within my backup.

There were also some files that I definitely no longer need so I have deleted them completely, such as purchases from several years ago for small ticket items that I no longer possess.

One thing that I had been doing properly was backing up my files and so I was able to restore everything from my external Hard Disc Drive before grabbing any updated files from my SpiderOak One cloud backup account.

Please don’t get caught out without implementing a 3-2-1 backup strategy or the death of your device could leave you without a vital file or set of photos.  Use the DuckDuckGo search engine and search for 3-2-1 backup.  (Feel free to use your preferred search engine. I plug DuckDuckGo as they don’t collect any of your browsing information, search data or track your internet journey for advertising or any other purposes).