Sadia’s Blog

Let’s Get “Deduped”

Recently I had an email from a friend who claims that she has well over 50,000 designs and is afraid that more than half are probably lost or cannot be found due to her poor organizing. Sound familiar? I’m sure everyone of us downloads a ton of freebies or has done so, I certainly did in my early years. As the freebie comes in so many different formats,there is a chance that duplicate files of formats can be using up your valuable computer space. My sincere thanks to the designer who first thought of this method. It is excellent for so many who do not have software to convert. I took the cue from this and have tried to give the ability in all formats that are possible for home embroiderers. There is  however, a downside to this….your hard drive becomes cluttered and bogged down with literally hundreds of files that are duplicates and in formats you probably will never use.

Some while back, actually a few months ago, when I was in Atlanta, Cookie Gaynor of Cookie’s Creations had mentioned Clay Stovall of Gran’s Workroom and his super duper software called “Deduper”. Personally I have a wonderful husband who devised my work design filing system for me and I use it still. All my work files are saved on an external hard drive updated and backed by the week and cleaned as well. However, not all of us can be as strict and disciplined as I am with myself. As my friend’s email and recent discussions on this very subject on the Martha Pullen board deduced that  friends are indeed having a problem  maintaining some sort of a filing system, where they can keep files that are going to be used, but not keep the duplicates and also find the ones that by chance they may have unzipped to some certain “special” place that seemed the right one at the time they were unzipping.

I decided it was time to find out for myself what this software will do. Actually it is quite an ingenious software and is a lifesaver for many. It is not to be confused as a filing system for your embroidery files, that is a personal preference of how you do it. What the “Deduper” does is that it is a cleaner for multiple files of the same design leaving you the ones that are in your preferred format. If  you had unzipped the same file somewhere else on your computer, it will go and find the duplicates and allow you several options of whether to delete, or keep. What impressed me is that it will create a report allowing you to save it so you can have a look at it at your leisure to see what files are duplicate and whether you want them or not before you delete. You do have the choice of setting up your preference of levels of cleaning within a certain folder. I found this to be extremely helpful as well as the choice of moving duplicate files to a specific area so you may peruse. I highly recommend this wonderful software to any one who would like to have a “grip” on the designs and have an idea of what all is in their stash. Do have a read on Clay’s website to read the FAQ to see more of what I’m talking about. The price is affordable and will make a wonderful present for the holidays.

“Off the Cuff”-Caught in the Middle.

Impressionmag.com is an interesting online apparel industry magazine which I read now and then. Recently  I came across an interesting article relating to unknowingly infringing copyrights. You can read the article here:

http://www.impressionsmag.com/impressions/content_display/decorated-apparel-business/high-volume/e3i881df4a9cec6226654f60e7575fbe558

I was extremely impressed with the copyright indemnification clause that can be used to safeguard those of you who are in the machine embroidery business, whether digitizing, selling embroidered items etc. Have a read and do bookmark the magazine, it has some very interesting articles.

Our Words and what they mean….

I’m usually a very calm and collected person, at least I think I am but recently when not one but several instances started to happen where my words were misinterpreted to be something that was never intended, I had to sit and talk to myself. I take pains in my writings and speech so it was a further shock when I was bombarded with emails about a comment in my previous blog about coming up with an idea that would be “non-religious”, I had to take notice. Friends, I have never ever promoted any one religion or said anything that would be hurtful to any religion. Religion with me is a personal thing and therefore in all my designing I take pains that it be portrayed in such a way that all would benefit and not just any one religion. My comment was merely to further this thinking and in no way reflects anything else. Please rest assure that it is meant in a good way and not to be hurtful.