How does she find stories so fast?
Oct. 13th, 2009 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danceswithgaryOh, the benefits of obsession and the compulsive need to organize.:-D
When you've collected over 4000 files with Clex stories and 3200 McShep, then it gets a little hard to find what you're looking for. Sometimes I even make it a little harder on myself because I collect multiple stories by an author into a single file (example - NotTasha's gen stories have a logical progression).
When I first started copying stories down to be able to re-read them later, I would use File->Save Page As in my browser and select Type Web Page, HTML Only. As the files accumulated and I started re-reading, I discovered saving that way not only ate up disk space (this was before 100 gig drives were commonplace), but the page would launch in my browser and it wasn't always a pretty sight.
Next I tried highlighting and pasting to a Word doc, which worked a little better. What I then found out was a Word doc ends up being about twice the size of a text file and also didn't display as well on the palmtop I'd started using to read offline.
I finally settled on copy/paste to text files (and isn't that a pain when there are twenty short chapters, which is why I have my multi-chapter stories all-in-one on my website). I knew I was losing any italics or bold, but by the time I'd hit the 2000 files mark it was worth the tradeoff. An interesting side effect is that I think really hard about using italics myself. :-)
Along the way, I also learned that, along with the name of the file, I needed 'by authorname.' I'm still tracking down the authors for some of my earliest saves as I'm revisiting my CLex recs lists. *smacks self in head*
Until earlier this year I was on Windows XP, but my computer fell victim to malware and now I'm on a new laptop running Vista. After a little trial and error, I soon decided that Vista's search engine rocks. In XP, I was limited to a single search string in Explorer. Vista lets me use AND, OR, NOT and multiple strings that allows me to narrow a search down to a lot fewer files I then scan through. Example search: "grabbed his laptop" AND ZPM AND "hazmat suit"
Sorting the files into folders on my drive also helps. I originally added a suffix like (mpreg, hc, redk) to a file name, but they were still hard to pick out of thousands of files. Here's a snapshot of how I now have my SGA files organized with a combination of prefixes and folders(and will have my SV files sorted when I'm done re-reading and reccing).
Hmmm. I see I'm still missing some authors on that list. One of these days, I'll have it all cleaned up. *head desk*
Click for Fullsize
Obviously a story can possibly fall into more than one category. I label it with the one I'd likely search in if I'm looking for a particular fix. Example: A fic set post-S5, Atlantis is still on Earth and Rodney breaks up with Jennifer to end up with John. It could be in the After-Earth-Pegasus folder with a TMP (for only on Earth for a while), but I'd more likely put it in the Episodes-Tropes-Whump with a label of KELLER.
Unread and unsorted files stay in the top-level folder for the fandom. A trick I use when I've fallen behind reading new stories is to copy the URL to the end of the file so I can use it to go back and leave a comment.
I hope that helped. I know there are likely clever add-ons and tools people use to organize the files on their drives, but I subscribe to the KISS principle and I limit the number of programs and add-ons I install.
A final note: BACKUP YOUR FILES. I was truly ready to scream and cry when I thought I'd lost all my stories and screencaps during the malware fiasco. I had the stories on my palmtop, but the last backup had been over a month previous. I managed to retrieve them, but I've been working with computers for years - most people would have lost them permanently.
I have a 32-gig and an 8-gig thumb drive along with a 1-gig card on my palmtop. I try to copy my Stories folder (which includes my own fic) to one of them at least every two weeks, the pictures less often. I don't do it more often because it takes a couple of hours to transfer that many files.
Have fun reading!
When you've collected over 4000 files with Clex stories and 3200 McShep, then it gets a little hard to find what you're looking for. Sometimes I even make it a little harder on myself because I collect multiple stories by an author into a single file (example - NotTasha's gen stories have a logical progression).
When I first started copying stories down to be able to re-read them later, I would use File->Save Page As in my browser and select Type Web Page, HTML Only. As the files accumulated and I started re-reading, I discovered saving that way not only ate up disk space (this was before 100 gig drives were commonplace), but the page would launch in my browser and it wasn't always a pretty sight.
Next I tried highlighting and pasting to a Word doc, which worked a little better. What I then found out was a Word doc ends up being about twice the size of a text file and also didn't display as well on the palmtop I'd started using to read offline.
I finally settled on copy/paste to text files (and isn't that a pain when there are twenty short chapters, which is why I have my multi-chapter stories all-in-one on my website). I knew I was losing any italics or bold, but by the time I'd hit the 2000 files mark it was worth the tradeoff. An interesting side effect is that I think really hard about using italics myself. :-)
Along the way, I also learned that, along with the name of the file, I needed 'by authorname.' I'm still tracking down the authors for some of my earliest saves as I'm revisiting my CLex recs lists. *smacks self in head*
Until earlier this year I was on Windows XP, but my computer fell victim to malware and now I'm on a new laptop running Vista. After a little trial and error, I soon decided that Vista's search engine rocks. In XP, I was limited to a single search string in Explorer. Vista lets me use AND, OR, NOT and multiple strings that allows me to narrow a search down to a lot fewer files I then scan through. Example search: "grabbed his laptop" AND ZPM AND "hazmat suit"
Sorting the files into folders on my drive also helps. I originally added a suffix like (mpreg, hc, redk) to a file name, but they were still hard to pick out of thousands of files. Here's a snapshot of how I now have my SGA files organized with a combination of prefixes and folders(and will have my SV files sorted when I'm done re-reading and reccing).
Hmmm. I see I'm still missing some authors on that list. One of these days, I'll have it all cleaned up. *head desk*
Click for Fullsize
Obviously a story can possibly fall into more than one category. I label it with the one I'd likely search in if I'm looking for a particular fix. Example: A fic set post-S5, Atlantis is still on Earth and Rodney breaks up with Jennifer to end up with John. It could be in the After-Earth-Pegasus folder with a TMP (for only on Earth for a while), but I'd more likely put it in the Episodes-Tropes-Whump with a label of KELLER.
Unread and unsorted files stay in the top-level folder for the fandom. A trick I use when I've fallen behind reading new stories is to copy the URL to the end of the file so I can use it to go back and leave a comment.
I hope that helped. I know there are likely clever add-ons and tools people use to organize the files on their drives, but I subscribe to the KISS principle and I limit the number of programs and add-ons I install.
A final note: BACKUP YOUR FILES. I was truly ready to scream and cry when I thought I'd lost all my stories and screencaps during the malware fiasco. I had the stories on my palmtop, but the last backup had been over a month previous. I managed to retrieve them, but I've been working with computers for years - most people would have lost them permanently.
I have a 32-gig and an 8-gig thumb drive along with a 1-gig card on my palmtop. I try to copy my Stories folder (which includes my own fic) to one of them at least every two weeks, the pictures less often. I don't do it more often because it takes a couple of hours to transfer that many files.
Have fun reading!