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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?

#84

Post by haberman »

I've wanted this for a while. For example, every time I have a conversation with a contractor, CS rep, etc. I wish I could add a quick note about what was discussed and attach any supporting documents.

I want to enter these chronologically, as they happen, but then have them viewable like email threads (like the main GMail view) grouped by business or general topic (like "House Maintenance"), with the most active threads shown first!

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

#85

Post by was8309 »

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…

not sure if this is what you mean, but Voice2Mail lets you send email with mp3 attached and (I think) geotag.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.abelssoft....

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/voice2mail/id533391644

a big ask but would love for this to do speech to text also.

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

#86

Post by dynamic_sausage »

gen220 wrote: post #54

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…

Speaking of vim, vimwiki [1] is a really nice plugin similar to orgmode. It uses markdown-like syntax and has a diary mode. It also supports cross-file and in-file links, tables, formulas in latex, exporting vimwiki pages to html, etc.

[1]:https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki

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

#87

Post by jaipilot747 »

hprotagonist wrote: post #30
keeptrying wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Org mode has a diary feature so the git repo not strictly necessary.

well, it makes for real simple backups... and you have magit right there just a C-x g away, too.

With git-auto-commit [0], you can define a hook that commits and pushes to a private repo every time you save your note. Set this up after a HDD crash wiped out 6 months worth of notes.

[0] https://github.com/ryuslash/git-auto-commit-mode

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

#88

Post by OrgNet »

accrual wrote: post #20

This is my solution but it may not be best for everyone. Notes: # .profile function note { mg +-1 "/home/.../notes/$(date "+%Y-%m-%d").txt"; } mg is micro emacs, +-1 opens the file with the cursor at the end. Transactions: I record my transactions into ledger[0]. I wrote an auto-complete wrapper in Python to help speed up entry and another to keep the formatting consistent, but otherwise it's a manual job. It helps k…

an alternative:

    # .profile
    note () {
      echo $@ > ~/Backup/Notes/$( date '+%F_%H:%M:%S' ).txt;
    }
usage example: ~$ note this is my new short note

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

#89

Post by batt4good »

I just keep a git repo of raw text files with dates. It's dead simple and I usually just do everything via cli with vim.

Maybe some day I'll get around to developing a simple markup scheme so I can parse and search my logs by #ideas #opinions etc.

I'd use a python tool like jrnl, but vim, text files and git are just too simple to complicate with tools that don't really offer that much more functionality.

I had a less technical friend who used to obsess over software to manage bookmarks, notes, etc and it drove me nuts how over-thought / contrived his approaches were.

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

#90

Post by dbieber »

Love this question. I've written up part of my strategy for doing this here:

https://davidbieber.com/post/2019-12-29-track-your-life-in-a...

The short version is: (1) I manually enter the activity(s) I do each day in a spreadsheet, one row per day; (2) the spreadsheet automatically figures out how recently I did each category of activity; (3) [bonus] a chat bot uses this data (and much more!) to help me keep my life on track.

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