When I first started my photolog in July of 2002, I had a Ten Years of My Life kind of strategy in mind, limiting myself to just one photo a day. I’m not sure why, but I got it into my head to simply use a modified Movabletype template date tag to call the images, so all I would really have to do was post a caption and upload an image with the filename format “YYYYMMDD.jpg” or something, and that’s what would come out, without needing to type out a filename.

Bad move.

Somewhere along the way, I lost my archives, and now, rebuilding the old photolog entries one by one, I have a directory full of cryptically numbered images staring at me in the face, none of the filenames telling me anything about their content. I’m renaming them as I upload them, but this is going to be a long, slow process, during which I face a difficult abstinence from taking any more artsy photos to keep the photolog backlog to a minimum.

Use descriptive filenames, my child, or else take better care of your archives than I did. Your photolog will thank you for it.