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How I Manage My Random Daily Notes

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Re: How I Manage My Random Daily Notes

#141

Post by richardliutl »

pdx_flyer wrote: post #132

I have been struggling to keep notes effectively. A lot of my notes "expire" a few days after taking them, but others I will need years later. For most of my job I take physical notes. I don't love it but it's easy for me to grab a pen and paper just about anywhere I am. Where I struggle is doing something with those notes after the fact. When I am at my computer, I usually just keep a plain text file going for the d…

Physical notes are great for the reasons you mention - I tend to transcribe my physical notes into e.g. Google Docs/Dropbox which seems to make it easier to refer back to them. Of course you run into potential privacy issues for sensitive notes; on that front, pen and paper notes (or an offline machine) are hard to beat.

Re: How I Manage My Random Daily Notes

#142

Post by notetaker »

gravitas wrote: post #81

I use markdown + git as the core note components (organization methodologies layered on top, dealer's choice), wanted to share this Android neat app for those who do the same: https://github.com/GitJournal/GitJournal

Thanks for GitJournal. Will try it out.

I have been thinking of converting from OneNote to markdown. One thing that has been keeping me from making the switch is search, especially from mobile. Any one knows of any solution that is capable of searching through all the markdown notes similar to how OneNote does from mobile? I am thinking of hosting the notes in a RPi with Gitea or Nextcloud and access it using VPN (using Rpi as a trial and later move on to a dedicate mini PC if I end up liking this setup).

Re: How I Manage My Random Daily Notes

#143

Post by jxy »

varrock wrote: post #138

Does anybody have a counter argument for just using macOS notes if you exclusively use Apple products? They sync nicely with my devices and make note taking pretty simple for me.

Proprietary format. Difficult to link (or backlink) to other notes. Difficult to export, index, or analyze with other tools.

Re: How I Manage My Random Daily Notes

#144

Post by richardliutl »

kovek wrote: post #135

For me, I'm an avid browser, lurker, reader of HN, Reddit, and when I come through an interesting paragraph in an article, or a comment in a thread, I screenshot it. Next step will be to automatically move the screenshot from iCloud onto a computer, run OCR on the screenshots, index them, and make it possible to search through their text with near-equal search terms (eg "cute dog" would match "cute puppy" as well) An…

Screenshot + OCR seems tough, but sounds like it could be your preferred workflow. More robust will always be 1. a link to the article/thread and 2. a transcription of the content (esp. tailored to you [1]) imo. Your search term idea is interesting, I know Google is/has been doing this.

[1] https://zettelkasten.de/posts/collectors-fallacy/

Re: How I Manage My Random Daily Notes

#145

Post by dredmorbius »

k_sze wrote: post #64
nicbou wrote: post #16

I use paper. Digital notes are great if you need them to be available everywhere, or edit them time and time again, but paper is still significantly better for me. I keep my recipes in Keep and on my personal website, because I often amend them. However I discovered that printed recipes are much more pleasant to use. Likewise, I'd much rather have a dirty notebook to sketch and write on when I'm working in the garage…

I can’t use pen and paper because I’m surrounded by nosy people who don’t know to respect my privacy. And if I put some kind of lock on a physical diary or something, they complain that I am hiding something.

Privacy and integrity in your own thoughts and explorations is a valid concern and basic need. You have every right to say "this is mine and does not concern you".

Establish limits and set boundaries, if you have to. If that means a locked room, desk, trunk, or other means, then do that. Often the best way to establish boundaries is to assert them.

You situation sounds intrinsically toxic. I understand you're married with family --- if that's where the privacy issues are (rather than at work), you might want to consider family counseling. A lack of basic trust or respect is a bad sign.

Meantime, digital encrypted systems may be more appropriate, though personal notations and code can help with paper --- you're not the first person to have nosy neighbours.

Re: How I Manage My Random Daily Notes

#147

Post by jdillaaa »

varrock wrote: post #138

Does anybody have a counter argument for just using macOS notes if you exclusively use Apple products? They sync nicely with my devices and make note taking pretty simple for me.

It's a proprietary note ecosystem, so if you ever try to leave (or not use iCloud, which iOS/macOS note syncing depends on), it will be very difficult to regain control of your notes. I did this and it took a lot of effort, involved parsing out some protocol buffers, and losing a lot of formatting. I now just use markdown text files, never going back to that.

There are iOS shortcuts now which can let you do this programmatically, but you also lose formatting, and its a hack.

Re: How I Manage My Random Daily Notes

#148

Post by blandflakes »

kovek wrote: post #135

For me, I'm an avid browser, lurker, reader of HN, Reddit, and when I come through an interesting paragraph in an article, or a comment in a thread, I screenshot it. Next step will be to automatically move the screenshot from iCloud onto a computer, run OCR on the screenshots, index them, and make it possible to search through their text with near-equal search terms (eg "cute dog" would match "cute puppy" as well) An…

I've considered similar but thought that ingesting the actual text from a link would be easier.

Re: How I Manage My Random Daily Notes

#149

Post by donaldihunter »

varrock wrote: post #138

Does anybody have a counter argument for just using macOS notes if you exclusively use Apple products? They sync nicely with my devices and make note taking pretty simple for me.

I’ve been using macOS notes for a couple of years for daily note taking, because it is just so convenient with cloud sync. I have been planning to transcribe everything I want to keep into a git repo of .md files, for exactly the lockin reasons the other replies have mentioned. I hope to settle on macOS notes for daily stuff and transcribing to a repo for long term.
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