Keeping Track of Your Things - Desktop Customization & Workflow

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venam
Administrators
z3bra
Grey Hair Nixers
(02-04-2019, 09:57 AM)thuban Wrote: Most mail server allow you to pipe incoming envelopes to a script in aliases file.
i.e. on openbsd smtpd, you can write in /etc/mail/aliases something like
Code:
toto: |/path/to/the/script

The envelope is like a file passed as argument ($1)

I'm bumping this thread, because I just found out that thuban ended up implementing this idea for his own blog: https://prx.ybad.name.

The software is named prose, and is written in C (pledge'd and unveil'd).

Good job buddy ! I'll give it a shot, and see how I can use it myself :)
venam
Administrators
Yet another knowledge base software came out in the news lately kb. It seems these are getting popular.
jkl
Long time nixers
Your link is broken.

--
<mort> choosing a terrible license just to be spiteful towards others is possibly the most tux0r thing I've ever seen
venam
Administrators
(30-09-2020, 03:52 AM)jkl Wrote: Your link is broken.
Fixed, thanks for pointing this out I didn't notice.
jkl
Long time nixers
Seems like I'm the only one here who actually reads your posts. :p

That kb tool looks fine, I would have had a use for it if I wouldn't have seen org-mode first. Thank you!

--
<mort> choosing a terrible license just to be spiteful towards others is possibly the most tux0r thing I've ever seen
eye
Members
just found this: https://github.com/logseq/logseq

Syncs with GH. I don't think it's encrypted tho.

Best for me is: https://joplinapp.org/ encryption, sync through Nextcloud, Android App. It's perfect IMHO
pfr
Nixers
(29-09-2020, 08:34 AM)venam Wrote: Yet another knowledge base software came out in the news lately kb. It seems these are getting popular.

"kb is a text-oriented minimalist command line...tool oriented toward software developers, penetration testers, hackers"

Be sure to see plenty of Kali Linux Screenshots on r/unixporn featuring this new tool for HACKERS! Seriously though, it looks like a neat little utility.

(15-11-2020, 05:36 AM)eye Wrote: just found this: https://github.com/logseq/logseq

Syncs with GH. I don't think it's encrypted tho.

Best for me is: https://joplinapp.org/ encryption, sync through Nextcloud, Android App. It's perfect IMHO

These also look cool. Ahhh which one do I choose!? I never knew I needed such a tool but I do have unorganised notes just floating around my ~/Documents folder so perhaps I do!

kb looks to be nice and minimal and for someone like me with just a bunch of cheatsheet notes perhaps that's the go. Plus, hacker cred.

EDIT: Ok, I installed kb. It works well and might just help e keep my notes in check. cheers for sharing!
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
“Maybe you have some bird ideas... Maybe that's the best you can do.” - Terry A. Davis (R.I.P Terry & Percival)
venam
Administrators
Yet another knowledge manager mentioned here, todotxt.
venam
Administrators
Someone is overdoing it, take a look. They call it digital gardens, which is the first time I hear this name for knowledge wikis. Others call it "knowledge hoarding".
neeasade
Grey Hair Nixers
I stumbled upon that person awhile back when a blog post I made got scooped up into their MEMEX

----

for tracking things, I mostly rely on the tools within orgmode emacs. there are a few parts to my system. For context, org mode is a markup languages that focuses on headings with metadata attached to them, and they may be nested (an outliner).

- Project outline: I maintain project structures within org -- nested headlines for "tasks" "notes" "captures"
- Capturing: generate capture targets to the above locations, so that filing something away into an appropriate location is a few keystrokes away
- Status: Headings may have various statuses, I primarily use TODO and DONE
- Scheduling: I schedule headings to have reminders popup at dates, my current "heads up" is 3 minutes before (for appts and such)
- Habits: A heading that is TODO and with a repeating schedule is a habit -- These cannot be set to DONE, instead a note with a timestamp is made everytime.
- Clocking: You can clock time to headings with emacs timers -- I ensure that all time I spend at a computer is clocked under a heading, although I do have some "misc" headings (for browsing or netflix)

With the above concepts, I can do stuff like "check for outdated habits that are marked TODO" and annoy myself into doing them. I can review where my time goes (with clocking visualizers), and jump to referenced/captured notes. I send things scheduled in the future to my phone with syncthing, so that I get notifications there for stuff as well, via an org-mode android app. It's an ongoing process, but I think org is flexible enough of a playground to make what I want happen (provided you are already sold on emacs).

External to org I've been keeping an eye on: wallabag (track read position of articles), miniflux (rss aggregator), anki (flash cards on the go). There's just so much out there -- I prefer to find self-hosted solutions where I can, ideally with a plain-text interface.

OH! I've also been playing with hledger, a plain-text accounting tool recently. The hardest part was internalizing double column book keeping initially, after I grokked the model it was really fun to setup -- seeing where your money goes is a good start for thinking about things you might want to change.


.....


I've been keeping my eye on this thread awhile, it's hard to chip in because "knowledge center" for me, is sort of a shifting target. But it's mainly a big ole org file for me -- I'll do a proper writeup another time.
pfr
Nixers
I'm still using kb, it's the best implementation I've found so far.

But I came back to share a nifty alias that I cannot take credit for, found somewhere on youtube...

Code:
alias h="history | cut -c 3- | sort | uniq | fzf | tr -d '\n' | xclip -selection c"

You'll obviously need to have fzf installed for this to work, and the number of chars you cut at the beginning may differ, but this works really well for remembering those longer commands.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
“Maybe you have some bird ideas... Maybe that's the best you can do.” - Terry A. Davis (R.I.P Terry & Percival)
venam
Administrators
Alright, yet another person overdoing it, some people take self-optimization to the next level.
TheAnachron
Members
So it seems like you're not the typ of guy who would like reddit.com/r/datahoarder :-)

I mostly keep it simple, so I have scripts for:

- notes (sh-script)
- calendar, contacts and tasks (radicale with khal/khard and shell script for tasks)
- reminders (remind, converted from my calendar)
- irc history (just a simple wrapper around ii)
- mails (mblaze + sh-scripts)

My media is seperated from this (like explained in an other post)
- dms is my document management system which lets me easily scan/copy letters and convert them to multipage PDF, run OCR on it and search them for keywords to save them automatically as "<Subject>_<Person>_<Date>.pdf"
- mms is my multimedia management system which lets me easily rip CD/DVDs with all audio and subtitle tracks and convert them to mkv, finally tagging and sorting them. The tagging is manual for now (Say name of Something + Season + Episode to get info from IMDB) because I haven't found a good way to reliably get that from an API that is for free.
- music, images and alike are just stored inside a filesystem tree (for now). I will soon write a system to handle my RAW files from my camera and alike.

Each computing device has a backup which is copied once locally and once uploaded to the internet in an encrypted and deduplicated storage solution (borg).

I might update this post later because I'm pretty tired so I might have forgotten half of it.
venam
Administrators
(26-02-2021, 03:16 AM)TheAnachron Wrote: So it seems like you're not the type of guy who would like reddit.com/r/datahoarder :-)
(I'm not a fan of reddit, the netizens structure there isn't balanced in my opinion)
I think that "data hoarding" might mix the original intent of the thread. It isn't about data/media hoarding but about keeping track of things to reduce friction with the machine. Using the computer as an extension of one-self.
In the recent bumps on this thread we've added memory extensions such as knowledge databases.
It's impressive how much some people are able to store and I'm curious how some of the above solutions help or stand in the way. Like data hoarding, or any hoarding for that matter, some of this can become a disease-like habit done in and of itself. The purpose dying along the way, and letting place to a constant worrying and anxiety about the thought of not being able to gather and store data.
Again, let's not dive in the psychological aspect, but that makes you think that if we're using a machine as an extension of ourself then that's similar to worrying about losing a limb, something that makes you you.

(26-02-2021, 03:16 AM)TheAnachron Wrote: I mostly keep it simple, so I have scripts for:

- notes (sh-script)
- calendar, contacts and tasks (radicale with khal/khard and shell script for tasks)
- reminders (remind, converted from my calendar)
- irc history (just a simple wrapper around ii)
- mails (mblaze + sh-scripts)
Yep, that's more like it!
venam
Administrators
I recently discovered https://www.datafari.com/en/index.html, it's more of an enterprise document management system, which is a whole new domain but I thought it would be interesting to link it with the idea of personal data management.
Such systems could be adapted for personal use.

On that, would you use or are you using such system? Probably your company is using one of these internally, but would you see yourself using that for personal docs, or with media in general. I know there's another whole branch for personal media stores/centers too. What about personal self-hosted search engines.
stratex
Nixers
I keep most of information as org files which I outline, edit and view in emacs orgmode.
I fuzzy search among notes/files using helm-rg (ripgrep for helm).
I use org-fc for flashcard drills.
I use org-habit and org-agenda to track habits and calendar events and display weekly, monthly aggregate from different agenda files.
I usually keep todos.org buffer open to check off current, or add new todo items.
PIM directory structure:
Code:
agenda/
    appointments.org
    events.org
    holidays.org
    tasks.org
    birthdays.org
    habits.org
    meetings.org
flashcards/
    cs.org
journal/
    2021-01-01.org
    2021-01-02.org
    ....
notes/
android.org        finances.org       opportunities.org
arts.org           flashlights.org    osint.org
backlog.org        food.org           people.org
backups.org        games.org          personal.org
bicycle.org        habits.org         pim.org
blog.org           hardware.org       politics.org
bookmarks.org      health.org         presentations.org
books.org          hobbies.org        printing.org
business.org       household.org      privacy.org
cars.org           ideas.org          productivity.org
cg.org             inbox.org          programming.org
cheatsheets.org    knives.org         projects.org
cloud.org          languages.org      random.org
coding.org         life.org           science.org
communication.org  linux.org          security.org
contacts.org       lists.org          shopping.org
database.org       logs.org           software.org
diy.org            manufacturing.org  sql.org
drawing.org        memos.org          tracking.org
dreams.org         misc.org           trading.org
dump.org           modeling.org       workflow.org
edc.org            movies.org         workout.org
education.org      music.org
english.org        network.org
studies/
    cs.org
tasks/
    archives/
         2019.org
         2020.org
         ...
    backlog.org
    chores.org
    done.org
    goals.org
    projects.org
    todos.org
usagelogs/
    2021-01-01.org
    2021-01-02.org
    ....
Most of these files are not edited often, I sometime even forget to update the information, so it really excessive.
Not in emacs: passwords, I use pgp encrypted file,
databases, in which I store some information on which I may want to do calculations later, like total run distance per year or something.
I also have some spreadsheets, for information where I want to use images or graphs.
jkl
Long time nixers
I use [CODE] for indentations.

--
<mort> choosing a terrible license just to be spiteful towards others is possibly the most tux0r thing I've ever seen
srp
Long time nixers
I'm quite a fan of the "overdone" methods, including Devine Lu Linvega's wiki. The whole memex/digital garden/knowledge base/24/7/11/365 really intrigues me, especially with short-term memory issues. I was looking to replicate Nikita Voloboev's method, but I wasn't a fan of how GitBook has a pricing model and being in control of data seems a bit sketchy.

I decided to implement Trilium on a VPS, which the desktop client can sync to conveniently. It's pretty darn customizable, with JS widgets, custom themes, whole nine yards.

I've just implemented it, so I've yet to sift through the demo content to learn how it all works. Eventually, my goal is to have this be a second-brain of sorts to help aid my personal shortcomings. I've been a rather active user and somewhat active editor on Wikipedia (and OrthodoxWiki) for some time, so I guess the logical conclusion of that is making my own personal one.

Screenshot:
[Image: H0t0fdb.png]
~Seraphim R.P.
the artistnixer formerly known as vypr formerly known as sticky
fre d die
Members
(25-02-2021, 11:51 AM)venam Wrote: Alright, yet another person overdoing it, some people take self-optimization to the next level.

Just had a look through this, incredibly intresting how for some people collection of there own data has a political aspect to it aswell. To put all the data that other companies gather about you in one place certainly shows how much these companies know about us. There was also a link to https://www.openhumans.org which is a pretty crazy idea itself.
venam
Administrators
Here's a new one called monocle, a personal search engine. Along with an article explaining the idea.
mcotocel
Members
(25-02-2021, 11:51 AM)venam Wrote: Alright, yet another person overdoing it, some people take self-optimization to the next level.

I have to admit, I'm starting to go down that route.

I mostly use Emacs with Org-roam for taking and organizing my notes, and it feels perfect for me. I also use Org-roam-ui so I can have a graph showing me connections between notes.
venam
Administrators
Bumping this thread with more related content, this time a bit more extended:
Tools for Thinking, not really keeping track of things but more about mind maps, like we did here. There's definitely a lot of those around. Maybe we should summarize all the info in this thread somewhere.
freem
Nixers
Then you might be interested in VYM. It's a tool I've found few days/weeks ago, native program (no scripting involved, neither python nor EcmaScript, which is refreshing), C++&Qt, does not forces the user to have a mouse.
So far, I like it, I use it to note my thinking about few stuff, and it's proving quite helpful to know what I install on my systems, why I did so, what other solutions I evaluated, and how to configure them. I also use it in another, unrelated to nix, context.

[edit]
After having following prev link, it seems that vym is in there. I do share the "all mind stuff can't be a tree", but currently VYM can have 1) multiple trees per doc and 2) link stuff together like if you were "placing ropes between branches", but the UI on that is not really easy to use, unlike for the rest of stuff which is pretty easy to work with.
I'm now using VYM more and more to describe projects as it's much better than a readme.