ASCII Art: A Cure for Amnesia?

We have all had the experience of walking into a room and forgetting why we went in the first place. Recent work from door scientists suggests memory takes context into account, dumping short-term items when the setting changes, like when one walks from one room into another.

Likewise, when doing project work, I often forget why I bothered to ssh to some machine or other. The solution I found was to put some ASCII art into the MOTD, giving an instant reminder of the machine’s identity. Furthermore, different classes of pictures can be used to identify different functions: animals for one project, aircraft for web servers, boats for databases, etc.

I know, I know, we should all stop making snowflake servers, and treat them like food, not pets. But when juggling multiple projects for multiple clients, you are going to end up doing work in situ, and you are going to forget where you are and why you are there in the first place.

Join us next week when we take a look at how to migrate from web applications to open finger.