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Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

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Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#71

Post by Havoc »

erichurkman wrote: post #62
Havoc wrote: post #60

On a side note - why are bank apis so sht? Would love a clean read only way to http api my 3 banks. I don't even care if the security is rubbish for read only. Csv imports are bullshit. There is no reason why this can't be live and clean So hard to keep track of things when it's spread over multiple banks & jurisdictions

If you don't mind a third party having access to your bank, you can use Plaid. Last I knew they supported free accounts with basic balance + transaction support and the first 100 accounts were free. I've definitely seen some home spun personal finance apps using Plaid for free.

>If you don't mind a third party having access to your bank, you can use Plaid

I'm down with read only access. Full access.. Fk off

But even that is a shit show. Eg a major card provider might push a api... But sorry not in your jurisdiction..not EU so you don't get EU benefits

As best as I can tell not one of the half a dozen cards I carry can do a credible read only api of any sort

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#72

Post by jpeeler »

decasteve wrote: post #50

All of my banking transactions get put into a sqlite database, imported from csv monthly, and I have a python command line utility that lets me categorize and add notes to each transaction. I have a new sqlite file for every year. I have a number of SQL scripts that do most of the work. The amounts I need for tax returns are generated by SQL queries. Most of my general note taking is done in emacs org-mode.

I'd love to see what your schema looks like, assuming it's beyond what you mentioned (and obvious items like date and transaction amount).

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#73

Post by MaulingMonkey »

I'm a desktop only kind of guy, and have taken to just logging/journaling in markdown via VS Code - which is what I'm most used to for code documentation and the like, so why not reuse it?

It sounds relatively easy to generate a .md table from a .csv file which could have an annotations column for any additional custom notes to be added to if desired. While I haven't done so for logging/journaling, I'm doing basically this for my rust crate reviews/audits, which have the benefit of being public: https://github.com/MaulingMonkey/rust-reviews . That autogeneration code can be found in 'src', but it's throaway gross badwrong code, so don't expect much ;). It pulls metadata from the yml-ish preambles of reviews/*.md, and from `cargo crev` commands.

The .vscode/tasks.json file in the repository means I can just Ctrl+Shift+B to regenerate the index. In a journaling context I could see adding more tasks - perhaps one to, say, create a new journal/log page - pre-populated with whatever auto-injested information you might want.

Returning to my journaling - I keep it as simple as:

    C:\home\notes\journal\old\...
    C:\home\notes\journal\old\2019-05-26.md
    C:\home\notes\journal\old\2019-06-07.md
    C:\home\notes\journal\old\2019-06-13.md
    C:\home\notes\journal\...
    C:\home\notes\journal\2019-12-02.md
    C:\home\notes\journal\2019-12-03.md
    C:\home\notes\journal\2019-12-21.md
    C:\home\notes\journal\2019-12-24.md
With the old folder serving as a dumping ground to keep the root folder managable at being just the most recent 10-30 entries or so. A page generator could easily create pages in a convention that allows stable linking between them:

    ...
    journal\2019\12\21.md
    journal\2019\12\24.md

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#74

Post by kirubakaran »

whalesalad wrote: post #26

Very interested in this as well. I use Notion for more in depth notes but I also want a very low friction way to stream thoughts out of my mind and into an organized place. I built a prototype that does this. It’s got a UI very similar to twitter but organized by day. Special hash tags on a messages at the end of one day appear front and center on the next day so you can get cached in on what you were doing. I gave u…

You might like my https://histre.com/ It (optionally) connects to Telegram, so you don't even have to install an app to quickly save your thoughts. They all go into a "notebook", ready to be organized later (if you so choose).

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#75

Post by gaza3g »

I think a to-do list of some kind would be a good place to start.

I personally have been using Dynalist to keep track of of my daily log. With it, I am able to tell you what I roughly did anytime in the last 2+ years(on a working day).

Here's my current list for 2019: https://imgur.com/a/ZDy4Ydv

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#76

Post by subaru_shoe »

vidanay wrote: post #56

Honestly, I've gone back to paper and pen. It's not searchable, it's not sharable, and it's not elegant. It is private, it is secure, it is unobtrusive. My preference is Field Notes https://fieldnotesbrand.com/ and a quick drying gel pen https://www.amazon.com/Zebra-Sarasa-Retractable-Point-12-Cou...

being a lefty i would love to use a gel pen but smearing is an inevitability. even the one second dry time seems to high. i love the field notes . thank you for sharing

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#77

Post by mendelmaleh »

mongol wrote: post #70
tlack wrote: post #7

I've taken the odd approach of messaging myself in chat software.. in my case, I have "conversations" with myself in Telegram. I feel like I journal more when it's just text and unstructured, rather than, for instance, a detailed form. It's not exactly what you are looking for, but has some good properties: - Always easy to jump in to, since I use TG to chat with people all day long; works on all devices (I need to j…

Maybe related: I have been looking for a way to EASILY record voice notes in a geotagged and timestamped format. Easily here means with the touch of a button, anytime. I think an app by itself can not achieve this, because it requires too much attention. Ideally I would want to use a physical device remotely connected to the phone. Something like this: https://www.aina-wireless.com/shop/aina-ptt-voice-responder/ But…

I'm pretty sure Telegram doesn't geotag voice notes, but I think bots can ask for your location, so it could work.

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#78

Post by mendelmaleh »

tlack wrote: post #38
bnj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think of using telegram, and that has easy arbitrary file attachments to go with it. I wonder how easy it is to grab the transcripts and transform them, I'll have to check it out!

It's really easy. In the chat context menu, go to Export Chat History. You can then pick what kind of media to export (aside from just the messages themselves). It produces semantically tagged HTML (mostly divs with .date, .from_name, .text, etc, wrapped in a basic head/body tag) in a folder of your choosing which you can then parse with Cheerio, BeautifulSoup, etc.

Another option is the MTProto API, it's pretty powerful, skip the middleman xD
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