Better Accumulation Contains Knowledge Until Perfection

There's safety in numbers, always has been. And data on a computer is no exception! The more backups you have of a piece of data, the less risk you run of losing that piece of data. This of course is not entirely true for computer files: the more backups you have, the more risk you run of accidentally taking the wrong version of the file. So the trick is to have a strict sequence of backups. I myself work mostly on my PC's desktop, dumping all files there that I am actively working on. The permanent folders and files get placed along the top edge, so I can reach them easily and keep them separate from the rest. Windows, and almost all other operating systems sequentially dump the new folders and files from top to bottom, and left to right.

And then there is the small backup program I wrote in Go with some assistance from ChatGPT. It takes all files from a list of folders, and when they were modified in the last thirty days, copies them to a timeline structure that holds folders for each date. If multiple different versions of a file with the same name end up on the same day, the name is appended with a small part of the hash, thus allowing both files to be stored in the same folder. Usually, I run this program at the end of the day, and then remove all stuff from the desktop except for the top row. I rarely need the second row on the desktop, because then I do too many things at the same time!

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