Christy's Five Questions for August 2023 gopher://sdf.org/0/users/christyotwisty/phlog/2023-August-Five-Questions.txt It's been a long time! I've missed two Christy's Five Questions this summer, but it's time to get back in the saddle with August's questions! 1. What, if anything, do you try to commit (or limit) to an hour per day? I'm trying to commit my self to a sporting activity (even soft) for at least an hour per day. But I have to admit that, even if I try, I don't always manage to motivate myself. 2. Have you met your elected representative at the council, mayor, regional, or national level? Did your representative address you by name? In my previous job, I had the opportunity (if I can call it that way) to intervene quite often at my city's town hall. So I met the mayor when I was in charge of the administrative access (a large, medieval-style gate at the back of the building). Ok, I admit, I'm trying to be fancy: cutting the crap, I was the door-opener :] In short, I was here every time he passed through this entrance (especially in the evenings when the building was closed to the public). Since we always greetd each other, he must surely recognize me. On the other hand, no, he certainly doesn't know my name. Does it count as "met your elected representative"? 3. If you had the opportunity to attend any concert or music festival, past or present, which one would you choose and why? Well, Woodstock in 1969 I guess? Fifty years later, we're still talking about it; it must have been something. A night, on TV, I saw this very long video about it: and I can say it does seem to have been something! On a different note, even if it's not really music festival (although there must have been a lot of music everywhere), I'd have liked to see what tournaments of chivalry were like. As a child, I lived for several years in Dinan, Brittany, France. Every summer (in June), the town celebrates its medieval past with the "Fête des Remparts" (Remparts Festival). With hay in the streets, street performers, music, everyone (or almost everyone) dressed as they were back then, with tournaments, and so on. It was really great. I can imagine that the tournaments of yesteryear must have been really big parties! 4. What's the dumbest thing someone ever lied to you about? I can't recall of any specific lie, but every lie where the other person knows perfectly well that you know the truth, but insists on it all the same, strikes me as dumb. And it's fair to say that this kind of thing happens quite often (at least to me), especially when the other person has a superior position over you: a boss, an administrative, etc. They know, you know, but they keep lying for whatever reason, and there's nothing yo can do about it. In my opinion, it's really dumb. 5. How often do you declutter the electronic media and files on your devices? Actually I take a fairly proactive approach to this issue. First, every single files are organized in specific folders. In other words, nothing is just lying around. That said, I have four folders in my $HOME. The first one (named "x") is for files I'm "using" actively (e.g. personal notes on a various of subjects, lessons, mails, administrative documents, etc.). Somehow it's my working directory. So here, I create, move, delete files, according to the tasks I perform. As of today, its size is 5.4Go (most of the size is from all the mails and pdfs documents/books for my current studies). [Addendum: if anyone wonders why "x", it's because in it I have a "files" folder where I keep most of my text files (including a copy of this document). This just gives me the opportunity to type x/files when I go into it, which, as a big X-Files fan, fills me with little strange joy.] The second one (named "a") is an archive folder, where I keep things that I don't use anymore (or very rarely) but intend to keep (for instance, documentation on household appliances, old lessons from my previous studies, etc.). Technically, it should contain a good part of my administrative documents but I'm exhausted just thinking working on that... As of today, its size is 561Mo. Now those two folders are enough for me, but in pratice I have a third folder in my $HOME (named "m"). It's a mount point for my 500Go external drive where I keep all my "media" files: my digital books, as well as some games, movies and shows that I want to keep. Finally, the fourth one (named "b") is the download/temporary folder, where everything that comes from the "ouside" goes (Internet, files copied from USB, etc.). This folder is special because, each day, my system checks the timestamps of the files inside it. If they are more than six days old without being modified, they are automatically deleted. So for instance, if I download something from Internet, it goes to the "b" folder. If I have a long term use of it, I will move it to "x", "m" or "a" folder. If not (maybe it's just an image I wanted to see), it'll stay in "b". If I think of it, I'll delete it myself. But in any case, if I forget about it, it'll be deleted automatically after six days. Put in another way, I've got six days to decide whether or not to keep a file from "outside" (which, in my opinion and my experience, is for me more than enough time to make such a decision). To achieve that, I'm simply using a cronjob which look like this: ---8<--- # daily purge files older than 6 days in ~/b @daily find /home/f6k/b/ -depth -type f \ -mtime +6 -exec rm -rf {} \; > /dev/null 2>&1 && \ find /home/f6k/b/* -depth -type d \ -mtime +6 -exec rm -rf {} \; > /dev/null 2>&1 --->8--- (it start to delete files _before_ folders to avoid any conflict). I'm using that "b" folder too when I write some drafts, test some applications or what not, etc. If I'm happy about how it is/evolve, it'll be moved to "x". Otherwise, it will disappear six days after my last modification of it. But I have to say that, most of the time, this folder is empty. Finally, to answer the question, I don't actually declutter from time to time, since my workflow prevents clutter. f6k, 2o23/o8/28