Live data from Hacker News

Tired of note-taking apps

akkshaya.blog

41–50 of 481 posts

Re: Tired of note-taking apps

#41

I gave up with the commercial and open source offerings and instead just wrote my own solution. All notes are markdown, stored in a SQLite DB with full text search. It has a simple frontend and you can drag/drop images onto the editor and it will upload them. To facilitate quick note taking I wrote a FUSE driver for it and have bound CMD+N to open a command line scratchpad window (I use i3wm) where I can write and ed…

> To facilitate quick note taking I wrote a FUSE driver for it I didn't understand this part. Why can't you just write the file and then either manually/automatically trigger an import of the text into the SQLiteDB?

The note taking service is on one of my raspberry pi's and exposes a HTTP API which the fuse driver interacts with.

Could have used NFS or something to achieve what you've suggested, but this is the path I went down and seems to work ok for my needs.

Re: Tired of note-taking apps

#42

Nothing beats plaintext.

I learned that a while ago and settled on notepad++ to organize my daily work. Every new tab opens and without needing to be saved is persisted even if computer restarts. That is a perfect scratchpad for ideas.

What I want to keep gets named and is then classified. For is no longer useful the tab gets closed and not saved.

Notepad++ allows for searching all documents within folders as well.

Another great option is moving lines up and down for prioritizing lists for which there is a shortcut ctrl+alt+up/down arrows.

Re: Tired of note-taking apps

#43

Not so much tired of it as extremely indifferent. I'm simply not the type of person that uses tools like this; at all. I know plenty of people that take notes, use post its, etc. I can't even read my own handwriting and wielding a pen is physically painful for me. So not a thing in my life. I tend to treat written notes as short lived and transient. I'll literally create a new tab in whatever editor, write or paste s…

I'm in the same boat.

Every minute I spend taking notes on something is probably better spent doing the actual thing. I have tabs open until I do the thing, then I just archive them and close them.

Same goes for any to-do list.

Re: Tired of note-taking apps

#44
I believe I shared this once before. After twenty years of trying every possible note taking app from Word 95 to Notion, this is now the entirety of my note taking app:

  #!/bin/bash

  read text
  _date=$(date +'%Y-%m-%d')
  echo -e "\n$_date: $text" >> ~/Dropbox/notes/stream.txt

Re: Tired of note-taking apps

#45
I use a paper A5 atom notebook. You can easily rip out pages and rearrange them. I mostly use it for quick todos, db relation schemas and writing down some logic.

I do take some notes with Apples Notes but I periodically clean them out. I don't see the benefit in keeping old notes. If a project is done the notes are also deleted / trashed.

Why do people keep their 5 year old notes anyway? From a IT programming perspective anything that old is probably out date and not relevant.

Re: Tired of note-taking apps

#46
Note-taking is best served by a system, not by a single app.

I used to struggle with note taking apps until I started to use org-mode on termux. Human interface relies on emacs, syncing and versioning relies on git, agenda and TODOs rely on org. Never needed any other note taking app.

As a bonus, emacs color themes look really nice on a crisp OLED screen.

Re: Tired of note-taking apps

#47
In the early days of blogging, I used to write anything and everything. People read them. If I find a better way to move a sprite on a timeline, I write about it. If I find a way to hack an animation sync with a kicker layered audio, I write about it. People will read about it, discuss on forums, and sites such as Adobe would link to it.

Then, I became smarter. Before writing, I'd then research, ponder, and then find a solution someone did. Awesome, there it goes.

I do still write notes -- Handwritten, erstwhile in Evernote, Apple Notes, etc. Then I wanted to simplify it, in the hope that the notes will likely stay on even after I'm no more. Recently, I chose to stay with plain text, markdown is the next-step up, and then perhaps plain HTML.

Markdown - I write it as plain as possible. It is easily readable as Plain Text, if needed. HTML - I'm pretty confident that HTML as its saner, plain form will remain and live through time.

So, now, I have started collecting, writing pieces of notes in a set of Plain Text Collections - akin to your Org-Mode but much much simpler. In order to publish it[1], I threw in Jekyll for now but I'm not married to that and I'm keeping it such that if I just change a tool the next time, I can do it without much jugglery.

Of course, I still use quite a few Note-Apps but most of them are the tools to my needs. I've stopped looking at Note-Apps that ingest and keeps it there. For instance, I can write in iA Writer and the file stays where it has. I can then continue writing it with SublimeText + Markdown. I will try to write more, be naive all over again. I don't want to know who reads it, how things are -- but just things that interest me.

1. https://oinam.fyi

Re: Tired of note-taking apps

#48

I've tried Evernote, Apple Notes, the Remarkable Tablet, vimwiki, and I keep going back to handwritten notes on paper. My current workflow for notes is: I take notes on the notes app on the iPhone or my Mac if I don't have my A4 Moleskin notebook handy. And then I transcribe the notes on the Moleskin whenever I can. Another recent addition I have to this workflow is a Brother VC-500W label printer. I use it to print…

Yes! The act of transcribing allows for reorganization and better recall. What i find amazing about plain paper/notebooks is that we remember visually where to find info. Manually searching by flipping through the pages also further helps cement the information. Search functionality is useful in some cases but for essential notes it is a bit overrated IMO

Re: Tired of note-taking apps

#49
I've recently started using org-capture and org-agenda (LONG-time org-mode user with a hot-key (Auto HotKey) to bring up emacs). Seems to work pretty well. (I'm always at my keyboard during the work day, and sometimes even when not.)

With just my phone, Google Keep.

If I was back in school, Live Scribe (but only with a pen with a manual on-switch; the Aegir turns itself on too much and the battery drains fast).

Re: Tired of note-taking apps

#50

Not so much tired of it as extremely indifferent. I'm simply not the type of person that uses tools like this; at all. I know plenty of people that take notes, use post its, etc. I can't even read my own handwriting and wielding a pen is physically painful for me. So not a thing in my life. I tend to treat written notes as short lived and transient. I'll literally create a new tab in whatever editor, write or paste s…

I'm in the same boat. Every minute I spend taking notes on something is probably better spent doing the actual thing. I have tabs open until I do the thing, then I just archive them and close them. Same goes for any to-do list.

Except for written dialog with my inner Rubber Duck. But then it's all about process, and the result is not important after a few days.
Post reply on HN