dispatches from the file archives

August 16, 2022

I discovered this lovely blog last night and have subsequently been compelled to get all techy on my devices (read: maaaaybe use Linux to (attempt to) revive an old laptop that’s otherwise fated for… whatever we do with old technology in this house, it’s been so long). Before tackling any of that I decided to finally go through my backups, which I have definitely not been putting off for ages.

Some notable finds!

Screenshot of a rudimentary JavaScript game site, a side-scrolling shooter but with dragons. — “Vaib’s Game” links to the teacher’s site, which isn’t online.

↑ This relic of a game from its original file from 2013. Insanity. Insanity!!! I could not explain all that JavaScript code to you nowadays if I tried!!!!!
- Between this and p5jsomething I am very overdue for a “portfolio”/Things I Made In Relation To Real Actual Physical Life repository, but for now you get a non-interactive screenshot.
On the same flashdrive, my whole-ass Documents and Pictures folders, unzipped, from my first laptop and they are a whopping >2.5GB in total. What the fuck.
- Typed versions of some of my very first stories Evar, which were basically a Warriors ripoff but with dragons. I’m not publishing these (for now, anyway) but I didn’t realize I’d ever typed them up and that makes me smile a lot. (Never throw away your old work, kids!!)
- I was kinda forgetting I ever did a NaNoWriMo but those projects were also in this gem of a drive.
Some 2018 code tests that I thought had been completely lost to time, which are also not public but it’s very very cool to know they are not, in fact, lost to time. (This drive also had a complete Documents + Pictures backup, including iCloud stuff I forgot I’d backed up in the first place and (throwback to mp3 players) music. Sum total? >18GB.)

Current unzipped folder sizes, including redundant backups-in-zipped-backups:

Documents: >335GB (includes vast majority of uni work aka Giant Fucking Files)
Pictures: ~55GB
Videos: >95GB

I don’t save music to my hard drive anymore, but that’s really not a bad habit to get back into….

Also, let it be known that this was an all-day affair, with no thanks to one (1) photography class and its absolute fuckload of Camera RAW files. Protip to other people who have lots of big files: quarantine shit liberally, zip files in zip files, copy them over in parts not in full!! Your disk usage will thank you.