Hacker News Reader

Comment by ironchef | Hacker News Reader

I do the same-ish thing. Main highlights on mine: 1) I start off the day with things I should be working on (samesies) 2) I use ### to demarcate different "working sessions" ... one for each meeting, etc. 3) I struggle with finding something that lets me: encrypt, search, big notes, and use multi platform easily :( Closest I've found was google keep so far .. but i hate relying on it like that. I'm pretty sure "something" plus encrypted sqlite will work once i find it. 4) I name it Today.YYYYMMDD ... I'm trying to get into the habit of retroing once a month, creating a Month.YYYYMMDD to try to be more reflective and understand high level impact I had and systemic issues I'm running into.

The number of times this has saved me time figuring out "Oh .. i saw that error before .. how did I fix it?" and "who did i talk to about X and what did they say" months to years later has proven to be super helpful and I will be continuing indefinitely.

View on HN

I started using Joplin https://joplinapp.org/ some time ago.

Open-source. Encrypted if you want. Synchronized using WebDAV (also Dropbox, NextCloud and OneDrive). Uses markdown. Has tags. And apps for everything (Windows/macOS/Linux/Android/iOS/terminal).

The monthly retro is a great idea. I think I'll be stealing that one, thanks!

I use Zettlr as a markdown editor, with the underlying directory being in git. It's not encrypted, though doing that should be pretty easy with something like EncFS.

Standard Notes is my Google Keep replacement. Fully encrypted, straightforward business model, works great, apps available on iOS and Android.

Thank you for the recommendation. Looks like it has all the security features I’m desperately missing from all Google products and would make their products an easy default go-to.

Thank you for this suggestion. I hadn't heard of Standard Notes before and had stopped using Evernote in 2016 to switch to just Markdown files on disk w/ Git. I've migrated everything into it and this looks pretty much perfect for what I need (better tag management would be my only ask).

Thanks. That was next on my list :)

Vimwiki works great for this! Hyperlinks and diary management, all plain text and able to be opened in anything.

I can second using Vimwiki! I have mine set up to automatically sync with Gitlab every so often too, so it’s automatically backed up.

I use https://github.com/gitwatch/gitwatch to do this.

I'm curious if there is something you are using on mobile for vimwiki? I've been using termux on Android, which works well enough.

Sadly I don’t have a solution for mobile. The truth is that I mostly use it on the computer though so it really hasn’t been a problem.

My backup method is pretty simple but it’s been silently chugging along for months now without a single hiccup. It’s just a git commit via cron job: https://thelinell.com/using-vimwiki/

I've done similar. I used to use Quiver[1] for years. It's MacOS only. Then in October, I was forced onto a Windows machine for work. I tried Joplin as it was the closest in features, and it has built in encryption.

What I eventually ended up doing was moving to vscode. I use it my main IDE for the last couple years. I have a linux vm running for all my development, with vscode remote ssh.

- I keep a folder for each month - I have a file in each month called YYYYMM-dailies.md, level 2 headings for each day - Notes that grow too complex for the "dailies" get their own file in the folder. A number of these might get polished and copied into a document site somewhere. - Sometimes I'll make a subdirectory of "snips" with small scripts or pseudo-scripts (stuff to copy/paste) - The integrated shell lets me paste commands into my dev vm and copy the results back into my notes.

A feature of this is that while it's not really "synchronized", I can vscode-remote-ssh from multiple machines, or just ssh into the vm to get my notes. You can use rclone or keybase+rsync to backup the notes directory (or keybase's git if you want to check notes in).

Another

[1]: https://happenapps.com/

There are many markdown based journal programs, some with encryption. Do these not work for you?

Can you suggest any in particular?

My personal choice for markdown notes is https://github.com/glushchenko/fsnotes

I don't have much experiences with them (flat text files aren't my style), but a friend seems happy with Joplin.

A HN search illustrates the amount of markdown note apps available: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Joplin would be perfect if it allowed quick inter-note linking. Obsidian and Zettlr seem to do this much better. But for journaling I love Joplin.

If you’re a Vim user, Vimwiki is awesome:

- https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki

- https://thelinell.com/using-vimwiki/

My bits were on MacOS, Linux, Win, iOS, and required usage w/o internet (so I could work on airplanes, etc.).. so _something_ was always missing (between those + encrypted + searching).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com