Archive for December, 2007

A little ShopFileR history

Posted on December 5, 2007. Filed under: ShopFileR |

I mainly wrote ShopFileR for my personal use to solve a couple of problems that I was having in my shop with all of the “e-” data that I was collecting.
1. I lost a link to the pins that I bought on the ‘net for the plantation shutters that I had built…that started the ShopFileR development. I also wanted to keep track of the plans that i did for the shutters, plus some very helpful internet links. In the Projects section, this can be done as well as a bunch of other stuff related to the projects, such as finishing notes(etc.). I can eventually go back to a project that I did years ago and still have all of the information I collected on the project…plans, pictures, links, and notes…all together, filed by project

2. I had collected most of the manuals for my tools in pdf format and was having trouble keeping track of them, plus I needed a tool inventory with pictures, serial numbers, history, cost, etc for insurance purposes.

3. I was collecting quite a few forum  messages and pictures on various projects, jigs, hints, etc that I want to save for future use. Organizing and finding them again was beginning to be a real problem. Plus, on many forums, the pictures are not hosted on the forum but other sites and tend to disappear. Messages also are deleted after a period of time.

I started saving the messages (and other important links) that I wanted to keep as web page .mht files, which saves the entire web page, pics and all, in a nice concise format. I added the ability to ShopFileR to keep track of them.

4. I wanted to be able to take all this stuff with me when on the road in case I wanted to peruse a manual, work on some plans for future projects, have all my woodworking internet links available, etc. ShopFileR will copy itself and everything in its subfolders to a memory stick or another PC. It will also zip itself for backup purposes and optionally make the zip file self extracting.

So those were the biggies for me, but I ended up adding a bunch of other stuff as well, with the idea of the program living on the old pc in my workshop, with a backup to my home office pc.

Thanks for taking a look…You are welcome to download and give the program a try.  If you have any questions or comments please send us an email. 

I  am especially interested in hearing your comments if you decide not to download it and give it a try, or if you do download it, and don’t like it.