Alright, let’s talk about this “byron barn” thing I messed around with recently. It was a bit of a dive, so grab a coffee, and I’ll walk you through it.
So, first off, I stumbled across this “byron barn” concept when I was trying to figure out a better way to organize some stuff. I was tired of the usual folder-in-folder madness, and I wanted something that felt a bit more… fluid, I guess? It’s hard to explain, but the idea of a “barn” – a central place for everything, where you can sort of just throw things in and then figure out the organization later – appealed to me.
The starting point was pretty simple. I started by creating a main directory, named it “byron_barn,” obviously. Inside that, I didn’t create subfolders right away like I normally would. Instead, I started dumping everything relevant to the project directly into the main “byron_barn” folder. Documents, images, scripts, notes – everything. It was a mess, I won’t lie.
Then came the hard part: figuring out how to make sense of it all. This is where I started experimenting with different tagging and naming conventions. I used prefixes and suffixes to categorize things. For example, `[DOC] Report_*`, or `Image_Screenshot_2024-07-26 [UI]`. I know, it’s super basic, but it was a starting point.
I quickly realized just naming wasn’t enough. So, I introduced a simple text file, `_*`, in the main folder. This was basically my rough notes on the contents of the barn, kind of like a table of contents but way more disorganized. In `_*` I began just jotting down notes, like this:
- `[DOC] Report_*`: Final report on the project.
- `Image_Screenshot_2024-07-26 [UI]`: Screenshot of the user interface on July 26th.
It was still clunky, but better than nothing. The key here was just to get something down quickly, without overthinking it. I could always refine it later.
Next, I tried adding some automation. I knew I could use scripting to generate these `_*` files automatically. I wrote a little Python script that would scan the “byron_barn” directory, read the filenames, and then generate an `_*` file with basic entries. It wasn’t perfect, but it saved me a ton of time. I could then go into the `_*` and add the descriptions myself.
I also wanted to visually “tag” files, so I started using color-coded labels within my operating system file explorer. For example, “red” for urgent, “blue” for completed, “green” for in progress. This gave me a quick overview of the status of each file without having to open it.
Now, here’s where it got interesting. I started using symlinks (symbolic links) to create “views” into the barn. Let’s say I had a bunch of files related to a specific feature. Instead of physically moving those files into a new folder, I created symlinks to them in a separate “Feature_X” directory. This meant that the files still lived in the “byron_barn,” but I could also access them through a more organized view.
The symlink approach was a game-changer. It allowed me to create multiple “views” of the data without duplicating anything. If I updated a file in the “byron_barn,” the changes would automatically be reflected in all the symlinked “views.”
Eventually, I realized that the `_*` file was becoming a bottleneck. It was hard to maintain and search. So, I started migrating the metadata to a simple SQLite database. I created a table with columns for filename, description, tags, and other relevant info. I then modified my Python script to read and write to this database.
With the SQLite database, I could now easily query and filter the files in the “byron_barn.” I could search for all files with a specific tag, or all files modified within a certain date range. It was a huge improvement over the text-based `_*` approach.
I’m still tweaking it, but the “byron barn” approach has been surprisingly effective. It’s not perfect, and it definitely requires some upfront effort to set up the tagging and scripting, but it’s much more flexible and adaptable than traditional folder structures. It’s all about creating a system that works for your own brain, and for me, this messy-but-organized approach fits the bill. Give it a shot, you might be surprised!
