Note: a lot of this mindless rambling may or may not be interesting to anyone; I apologize for not being an interesting person who writes about drama and the spices of life on her blog, but I do not apologize for being the nerd that I am. Thank you.
Well, it’s summertime once again, and everyone knows that summertime is the best time to do some experimentation and organization with computers (what, you mean that’s -not- what you do every summer vacation?!) Fortunately, computer organization also requires an inherent level of time and/or priority organization, so to make things easier for myself in the long run, here are the items I need to complete before the summer is over:
1) Organize external hard drives
I realized yesterday that my current method of organizing my hard drives is erroneous and confusing. Thus, I’ve asked my father to go out and buy my a couple of those 150gb ones that fit in the palm of your hand. If I can organize my files in a strategic way between them - for example, one external solely for music, one solely for web design, one for schoolwork, etc. - then it would make life so very much easier. In addition, of course, I’ll have to clean out all the crap that I don’t need (chat logs, for example).
2) Retag and reorganize music
Yeah, I’ll admit it. Before 2007 (when I started using Last.FM, haha), I didn’t care about how my music was tagged or how it was organized, I just kind of threw it all in a folder and was able to find what I needed when I needed it. However, nowadays that I’ve gotten more anal about virtual organization and modularity, I really want to have an organized structure for my media files.
3) Find a Linux distro that suits me and start using it
I keep on procrastinating on this one, but it really frustrates me because none of the distributions I’ve tried thus far (Ubuntu + its variants, PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint, Mandriva) have really been satisfying to me. Not to mention that my sound doesn’t work nicely on ANY of them. If I had to pick the nicest one I tried, it would be PCLinuxOS, actually, but to tell the truth I feel as if a lot of the distributions I’ve tried are just a pretty mask to the great things that the OS is truly capable of. I don’t want something that’s for the “typical” desktop user who only wants to read e-mails, play games, and listen to music. I mean, seeing as how I’ll be a future major in Computer Engineering, I really want to have a more - pardon the tackiness - “hardcore” distribution. None of that sparkly bells-and-whistles crap that Mandriva throws at you, none of that (as someone called it on a forum) “hand-holding” that Ubuntu does. I want something that -forces- me to go and figure things out; I want something that will frustrate me and make me ask questions and find answers. I’ve done my research (i.e. Googling) and thus far the only things that I can find on forums and the like are people asking, “What is the easiest distro for newbies?” And of course the answers that crop up are Ubuntu/PCLinuxOS/Mandriva/openSUSE. I don’t want something terribly intimidating and stripped-down like Slackware or - god help me - LFS, but at the same time I don’t want something whose GUI and methods of usage are perfectly reminiscent of the Windows OS I left behind.
4) Complete more freelance web design projects
I really want to get my freelance web design services out there and noticed, but at the same time I don’t really want to do it for a job at the moment, you know? I feel like my knowledge of PHP and MySQL is still way too limited for me to construct powerful server-side scripts and backend designs for professional companies. I can, however, easily create XHTML/CSS-based designs for personal websites or small companies run by individuals (ex. startup companies, self-managed services by young adults, etc.) so that’s what I really want to do this summer (since I wasn’t as fortunate as someone and am not being offered $360 a week to work for the technology department of our school district =P)
Speaking of which, I need to finish that design for K-Meleon..