Two stories of something nice coming out of something not-so-nice for the holidays.
Story the first: The Gift That Kept on Giving
I have a Patreon account that is a significant chunk of my funding to do what I do. Patreon has really pissed off a lot of people this week, and people are leaving it in droves. My Patreon funding is down 25%.
This is an opportunity for Liberapay, which is run by a nonprofit, and avoids Patreon's excessive fees, and is free software to boot. So now I have a Liberapay account and have diversified my sustainable funding some more, although only half of the people I lost from Patreon have moved over. A few others have found other ways to donate to me, including snail mail and Paypal, and others I'll just lose. Thanks, Patreon..
Yesterday I realized I should check if anyone had decided to send me Bitcoin. Bitcoin donations are weird because noone ever tells me that they made them. Also because it's never clear if the motive is to get me invested in bitcoin or send me some money. I prefer not to be invested in risky currency speculation, preferring risks like "write free software without any clear way to get paid for it", so I always cash it out immediately.
I have not used bitcoin for a long time. I could see a long time ago that its development community was unhealthy, that there was going to be a messy fork and I didn't want the drama of that. My bitcoin wallet files were long deleted. Checking my address online, I saw that in fact two people had reacted to Patreon by sending a little bit of bitcoin to me.
I checked some old notes to find the recovery seeds, and restored "hot wallet" and "cold wallet", not sure which was my public incoming wallet. Neither was, and after some concerned scrambling, I found the gpg locked file in a hidden basement subdirectory that let me access my public incoming wallet.
What of the other two wallets? "Hot wallet" was empty. But "cold wallet" turned out to be some long forgotten wallet, and yes, this is now a story about "some long forgotten bitcoin wallet" -- you know where this is going right?
Yeah, well it didn't have a life changing amount of bitcoin in it, but it had a little almost-dust from a long-ago bitcoin donor, which at current crazy bitcoin prices, is enough that I may need to fill out a tax form now that I've sold it. And so I will be having a happy holidays, no matter how the Patreon implosion goes. But for sustainable funding going forward, I do hope that Liberapay works out.
Story the second: "a lil' positive end note does wonders"
I added this to the end of git-annex's bug report template on a whim two years ago:
Have you had any luck using git-annex before? (Sometimes we get tired of reading bug reports all day and a lil' positive end note does wonders)
That prompt turned out to be much more successful than I had expected, and so I want to pass the gift of the idea on to you. Consider adding something like that to your project's bug report template.
It really works: I'll see a bug report be lost and confused and discouraged, and keep reading to make sure I see whatever nice thing there might be at the end. It's not just about meaningless politeness either, it's about getting an impression about whether the user is having any success at all, and how experienced they are in general, which is important in understanding where a bug report is coming from.
I've learned more from it than I have from most other interactions with git-annex users, including the git-annex user surveys. Out of 217 bug reports that used this template, 182 answered the question. Here are some of my favorite answers.
Have you had any luck using git-annex before? (Sometimes we get tired of reading bug reports all day and a lil' positive end note does wonders)
I do! I wouldn't even have my job, if it wasn't for git-annex. ;-)
Yeah, it works great! If not for it I would not have noticed this data corruption until it was too late.
Indeed. All my stuff (around 3.5 terabytes) is stored in git-annex with at least three copies of each file on different disks and locations, spread over various hard disks, memory sticks, servers and you name it. Unused disk space is a waste, so I fill everything up to the brim with extra copies.
In other words, Git-Annex and I are very happy together, and I'd like to marry it. And because you are the father, I hereby respectfully ask for your blessing.
Yes, git with git annex has revolutionised my scientific project file organisation and thats why I want to improve it.
<3 <3 <3
We use git-annex for our open-source FreeSurfer software and find very helpful indeed. Thank you. https://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/
Yes I have! I've used it manage lots of video editing disks before, and am now migrating several slightly different copies of 15TB sized documentary footage from random USB3 disks and LTO tapes to a RAID server with BTRFS.
Oh yeah! This software is awesome. After getting used to having "dummy" shortcuts to content I don't currently have, with the simple ability to get/drop that content, I can't believe I haven't seen this anywhere before. If there is anything more impressive than this software, it's the support it has had from Joey over all this time. I'd have pulled my hair out long ago. :P
kinda
Yep, works apart from the few tests that fail.
Not yet, but I'm excited to make it work!
Roses are red
Violets are blue
git-annex is awesome
and so are you
;-)
But bloody hell, it's hard to get this thing to build.git-annex is awesome, I lean on it heavily nearly every single day.
I have a couple of repositories atm, one with my music, another that backs up our family pictures for the family and uses Amazon S3 as a backup.
Yes! It's by far one of my favorite apps! it works very well on my laptop, on my home file server, and on my internal storage on my Android phone :)
Yes! I've been using git-annex quite a bit over the past year, for everything from my music collection to my personal files. Using it for a not-for-profit too. Even trying to get some Mac and Windows users to use it for our HOA's files.
I use git-annex for everything. I've got 10 repositories and around 2.5TB of data in those repos which in turn is synced all over the place. It's excellent.
Really nice tool. Thanks Joey!
Git-annex rocks !!!!
I'd love to say I have. You'll hear my shout of joy when I do.
Mixed bag, works when it works, but I've had quite a few "unexplained" happenings. Perservering for now, hoping me reporting bugs will see things improve...
Yes !!! I'm moving all my files into my annex. It is very robust; whenever something is wrong there is always some other copy somewhere that can be used.
Yes! git annex has been enormously helpful. Thanks so much for this tool.
Oh yes! I love git-annex :) I've written the hubiC special remote for git-annex, the zsh completion, contributed to the crowdfunding campaigns, and I'm a supporter on Patreon :)
Yes, managing 30000 files, on operating systems other than Windows though...
Of course ;) All the time
I trust Git Annex to keep hundreds of GB of data safe, and it has never failed me - despite my best efforts
Oh yeah, I am still discovering this powerfull git annex tool. In fact, collegues and I are forming a group during the process to exchange about different use cases, encountered problems and help each other.
I love the metadata functionality so much that I wrote a gui for metadata operations and discovered this bug.
Sure, it works marvels :-) Also what I was trying to do is perhaps not by the book...
Oh, yes. It rules. :) One of the most important programs I use because I have all my valuable stuff in it. My files have never been safer.
I'm an extremely regular user of git-annex on OS X and Linux, for several years, using it as a podcatcher and to manage most of my "large file" media. It's one of those "couldn't live without" tools. Thanks for writing it.
Yes, I've been using git annex for I think a year and a half now, on several repositories. It works pretty well. I have a total of around 315GB and 23K annexed keys across them (counting each annex only once, even though they're cloned on a bunch of machines).
I only find (what I think are) bugs because I use it and I use it because I like it. I like it because it works (except for when I find actual bugs :]).
I'm new to git-annex and immediately astonished by its unique strength.
As mentioned before, I am very, very happy with git-annex :-) Discovery of 2015 for me.
git-annex is great and revolutionized my file organization and backup structure (if they were even existing before)
That’s just a little hiccup in, up to now, various months of merry use! ;-)
Yes. Love it. Donated. Have been using it for years. Recommend it and get(/force) my collaborators to use it. ;-)
git-annex is an essential building block in my digital life style!
Well, git-annex is wonderful!
A lil' positive end note turned into a big one, eh? :)
All seems good now - https://blog.patreon.com/not-rolling-out-fees-change/
P.S. Some of the login/auth methods don't work, namely: email (seems broken) and Verisign (PIP doesn't exist any more).
Sorry that comment is off-topic for this post but I just found your interview at https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/. I was wondering what your current development set up is? Are you still using a little netbook?
I currently use a recent MacBook Air to develop Haskell but it can be fairly slow. I've recently set up a Ubuntu-based server on GCE which is quite nice to use (preemptible i.e. cheap) and their network is heaps faster than my network at home (ADSL2+). I'm unable to use local SSDs with preembible GCE instance and the performance of persistent SSDs isn't really as fast as I'd like. Therefore I'm considering buying a workstation (tower/server) to put on my local network with latest Intel i9, lots of ram (32/64G) and fast SSD(s), probably running linux or freebsd with ZFS but wondering if it might be overkill. I've gotten used to remoting-in (ssh) to my GCE server, so remoting in to a local workstation would present little problems, workflow-wise. I tend to use tmux and spacemacs (with intero). I like Atom and it's haskell-ide plugin but luckily I switched to Spacemacs a few months ago now. I still occasionally use Atom-Beta on my local MacBook and haven't tried X11 forwarding yet to see if that workflow would still be useable. I've got a bad back — from too much time crouched over a keyboard — and it's nice to be able to use a laptop (or network) as my primary interface to my workstation (or server-in-the-cloud) so that I can mix up my work environment i.e. stand up desk with large monitor, sit down desk (aka dining room table) or couch/sofa.
Appreciate any advice!
I've recently got a 2017 Lenovo Yoga 11 inch, which is actually a pretty sweet little netbook, fanless and light and a lot smaller than older 11 inch screen computers.