#devonthinkpro

Actually it has been spring cleaning day for the gadgets that I use for work. It all started yesterday when I decided to move my academic literature database from one machine to the next. I use papers for managing the PDFs, keeping bibliographic data on books, and as a style formatting utility (magic citations) when the paper that I am writing is not too long, or for note keeping. I also use it to make notes, search and sort through literature. For writing longer papers, and for book writing I use bookends for citations. This makes me yearn for TeX!

However at the end of last year, my main machine - yes, I call it that - had to have some serious maintenance which amounted to wiping out the disk clean, and do  a clean install of the OS. Finally I have gotten around to install all the programs, enter licence numbers, and move my many databases to it. I am running out of disk space on the MacBook Air, so it seemed reasonable to go back to what is my default arrangement. One academic literature heavy work machine, and one high on poetry machine with no music or photos. Go figure!

Meanwhile papers had a major update, it went from papers 2 to papers3, and the library (database) is not what it used to be; I installed it on the Air and did not give it much thought. While I have no data that is in itself sensitive, I am not keen on using Dropbox for synchronisation, especially if I can avoid it. This time however I got stuck with Dropbox for sync, because I really could not figure another way of moving my papers3 library. This had never been a problem in the past when I switched machines because papers2 allowed for just simply copying the library from one machine to the next, without this hassle of synchronisation. Don’t get me wrong, synchronisation is nice, I just do not need it. It seems that after an eternity of sync with Dropbox, the Pro machine has the complete library. If this avoids some of the PDFs getting corrupted, then it could be that the hassle was worthwhile.