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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?

#53

Post by cpbotha »

The Signal private messaging app has a built-in dedicated "Note to Self" contact which you can text, send photos to, send voice notes to, or share anything with via your mobile OS of choice.

I should have added: The idea is that you use Signal only for quick low friction capturing.

In my case, I later process these messages during my daily input review, at which point they mostly end up somewhere in my Emacs orgmode-based system.

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

#54

Post by gen220 »

For journals, I use Vim with a ton of snippets, and write in markdown, using a lot of lists. The snippets are the biggest win. I have daily, weekly, monthly, and various ad-hoc templates that I basically just fill in. When I pick up a new journal, I usually begin by writing the templates.

For accounting, I’d recommend taking a look at gnu ledger. I don’t record any financial stuff in my daily journal, it all goes in the ledger repo. The value of snippets applies equally here. I use a crazy set of awk scripts to ingest transaction logs from my bank, etc. but I recorded manually for about 6 months before making them, and I’d recommend anyone else do the same.

I’m not a mobile power user, and have almost no tolerance for typing on my phone (I view it as a read-only device for the most part), so phone-laptop syncing isn’t a requirement for me. I just carve out 15 minutes before bedtime.

Programming your environment is the theme to all of this. IME vim/emacs are the best applications for these kinds of tasks. They’re superior to anything “purpose-built”, because everyone wants to do things slightly differently. They’re more intimate and grind-y to begin when nothing is automated, but it’s trivial to add incremental automation as you get bored of the toil. The early toil is as important as the later automation though, IMO it gives me an appreciation and understanding of the tools I’m later dependent on.

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

#56

Post by vidanay »

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...

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

#57

Post by gen220 »

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.

SQLite is an underrated interface for this kind of stuff.

Do you support things like nested categories (Expenses:Food:Groceries) and budgets? If so, do you keep them in your data model, or do you construct them in the queries?

Also, just curious, have you considered using gnu Ledger? If so, what prompted you to choose SQLite over it?

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

#58

Post by tonymet » 

  - Google Keep ( chronological, good search, hashtags, simple, fast)
  - Evernote ( more features)
  - MS OneNote — Comparable to Evernote but free. 
  - A github repo + `ack|grep|fzf`
  - Apple Notes (only if you exclusively use iPhone
  - Keybase Files + Encrypted Git repo (an encrypted alternative to github)
  - Moleskine pocket notebooks
My breakdown is 80% keep, 15% moleskin (then I transcribe to keep) and 5% Keybase (for off-the-record journaling)

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

#60

Post by Havoc »

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

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