Keeping a plaintext “did” file • Hacker News Board

Re: Keeping a plaintext “did” file

#181

Post by dmortin » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

theptrk wrote: post #175

dmortin wrote: post #40

For quick notes the most important for me is as little friction as possible. Having to switch to a terminal and using an alias is too much friction. So I have a global hotkey which I can press anywhere on my desktop, regardless of the current application and if I press it it opens an editor window with the current timestamp already added, so all I have to do is type and press a key to finish the entry. This way I don…

Hm, that’s cool. Is your note taking an app part of the menu bar (if you’re using Mac) If so which is it? Agreed on the global hot key. I use iTerm and it has a global hot key so you can bring it up with a shortcut and then hide it with the same shortcut.

I don't use Mac, but the actual note taking app is not important. The important thing is the global hotkey, so you can make a new note trivially when this global hotkey activates your favorite note taking app.

My hotkey software can also send keypresses to running apps, so beside bringing the note app to the foreground it also starts creating a new note automatically.

Re: Keeping a plaintext “did” file

#182

Post by sciurus » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 4:14 PM UTC

theptrk wrote: post #170

sciurus wrote: post #137

For a decade or so, I've been using `vim -o ~/{todo,progress,done}` That gives me vim with three splits. Every day I add a new heading with the current date in the bottom split, then in the top one I list the things I plan to do that day. As new urgent work comes in throughout the day, I add it to the top split too. When I start working on something, I move it to the middle split. If I have to shift between tasks, I'…

This is so funny. It’s almost like a kanban board in vim. What’s your strategy for saving the files?

Nothing fancy. I keep this vim window permanently open at a fixed position. Roughly once a day I remember to save them. I archive the files and start fresh every time I switch jobs.

Re: Keeping a plaintext “did” file

#183

Post by alexeiz » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:26 PM UTC

ocharles wrote: post #27

For those who use Emacs, org-capture is probably the way to go: https://orgmode.org/manual/Capture.html#Capture

You can combine org-mode with deft for quick note organization and lookup. https://jblevins.org/projects/deft/

Re: Keeping a plaintext “did” file

#184

Post by theptrk » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

JdeBP wrote: post #30

No need for "normal Go". ex commands like r take addresses. vim +'$r!date' did.txt

this doesnt seem to work in the same way for me, it doesnt print a timestamp to the file

Re: Keeping a plaintext “did” file

#185

Post by theptrk » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

gemma wrote: post #89

I love how many ways there are to do this. My version uses empty Git commits: https://github.com/ellotheth/dotfiles/blob/master/bash_funcs...

projects/done is a directory?

Re: Keeping a plaintext “did” file

#186

Post by foobarchu » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

I found that using this snippet leaves the cursor at the start of the date string, so I have to shift+A then enter to get to the next line to start typing. Adding +'put _' to the command inserts a newline so that you can immediately switch to insert mode and start typing.

Re: Keeping a plaintext “did” file

#187

Post by theptrk » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

foobarchu wrote: post #186

I found that using this snippet leaves the cursor at the start of the date string, so I have to shift+A then enter to get to the next line to start typing. Adding +'put _' to the command inserts a newline so that you can immediately switch to insert mode and start typing.

I type "o" (lowercase o) to start the cursor on the next line.

Re: Keeping a plaintext “did” file

#188

Post by theptrk » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

foobarchu wrote: post #186

I found that using this snippet leaves the cursor at the start of the date string, so I have to shift+A then enter to get to the next line to start typing. Adding +'put _' to the command inserts a newline so that you can immediately switch to insert mode and start typing.

ooh i get it, `alias did="vim +'normal Go' +'r!date' +'put _' ~/did.txt"` and this starts in insert mode. I like this. I think ill change mine to this.

Re: Keeping a plaintext “did” file

#189

Post by theptrk » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:53 PM UTC

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #112

supremeApy wrote: post #110

I would recommend, http://jrnl.sh it's made for the purpose described but in a much better and simpler way (also allows tagging and searching in a simple way).

It's interesting that they boast "256-bit AES" on the Github README, but when I look at the source code, they're not doing authenticated encryption: https://github.com/maebert/jrnl/issues/549

Which part is the offender?

Re: Keeping a plaintext “did” file

#190

Post by explainplease » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:55 PM UTC

thenobsta wrote: post #130

maxtaco wrote: post #93

Cool! I would store this file on keybase’s KBFS so it’s available on all of your machines.

I do that with my org files. It's great. Keybase is great.

IIUC, Keybase does not cache files locally (in contrast to Dropbox), so doesn't that mean that you can't access your Org files offline? Also, how does it handle latency, broken connections, etc? If the Keybase fs returns from a write call, is the file actually saved to anything? What if I save a 5 MB file over a slow connection--does e.g. Emacs block waiting for fsync?

The apparent lack of info about this (short of reading the source myself), and it still being in "beta" makes me very reluctant to trust it with my important data.