Do It Right the First Time
There’s never time to do it right but always time to do it over. Meskimen’s Law
Welcome to Control-Alt-Backspace, a place for collecting ideas on regaining control in an increasingly complex world. Check out the manifesto to learn more about the purpose of this site or the sitemap for an overview of series and topics, or jump right in with recent posts below.
Control-Alt-Backspace updates every Monday. Got questions about something you read or suggestions for new posts? I love hearing from people – shoot me an email!
Recent posts
Dealing With Duplicate Files
In the physical world, we encounter much difficulty because it’s hard to create copies of things: objects use finite resources and are expensive to produce, ...
When to Delete Files
By now we’ve studied a variety of organizational questions relating to filesystems in detail. But here’s a seemingly foundational one we haven’t touched ...
Just Get Started
If you like reading Control-Alt-Backspace, I expect there’s a decent chance that you also like doing things right. Maybe you’re not a perfectionist, but you ...
Why I Don’t Worry About Most Health Advice
Take one look at the news nowadays and you’re likely to see a heap of headlines proclaiming that you should or should not do or eat some thing be...
Why I Hate Texting
Except perhaps for the fax machine, texting is my least favorite extant form of communication. (Come to think of it, fax machines seem kind of cool and r...
Edit Week 1
This is the first occurrence of an institution on this blog that I’m going to call Edit Week and hope to repeat every few months. As you might have f...
A Blizzard Postmortem, Part 2: Analysis
As the title suggests, this is part 2 of a two-part post which began last week with my story of getting stranded in a blizzard. As discussed more ful...
A Blizzard Postmortem, Part 1: The Story
You may have noticed, if you read Control-Alt-Backspace regularly or if you pay close attention to the dates on my posts, that there was no scheduled...
Dreamdir and the Unix Philosophy, or Likable Software
This weekend I released version 2.0.0 of my open-source Dreamdir file format and associated application, termed dr. Dreamdir is one of my tools for keepi...
Managing Temporary Files
So you’ve followed the tips in the design section of this series, and you have a nicely laid out, organized filesystem. That’s great when you know where ...
Why and How to Follow Websites with RSS
How do you get most of the news and other material you read nowadays? If you’re like most people, a lot of it comes from social media of one type or anot...
Less-Quantifiable Benefits of Automation and Process Improvement
An engineer is someone who will spend three hours figuring out how to do a two-hour job in one hour. Anonymous
Scripting as Effective Communication
Take a moment right now to recognize how amazing a device a computer is. That little hunk of metal on your desk or in your pocket or in a vast se...
Spaced Repetition From The Ground Up
Last week we looked at three principles that combine to create an extraordinarily effective, scientific study method called spaced repetition. You ce...
Spaced Repetition
In today’s fast-paced, information-driven world, everyone must constantly learn new things. While learning itself can be challenging at times, rememb...
Why and How to Focus on Requirements
I got in an argument at work during a meeting last week. It was one of those annoying arguments where you’re sure you actually agree with your opponent, ...
The Art of Naming Files: Naming Conventions
In the previous post, we focused on the mechanics of naming, things like what characters we should be using and how we can make files sort appropriat...
The Art of Naming Files: Mechanical Considerations
There are two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors. Anonymous
Filesystem Links: Practical Advice for Design
In the previous post in this series, we discussed what links are, why you would want to use them, and what kinds of links are available. This wee...