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I might have to finally try it if so many people are claiming life-changing effects! I don't create or edit code for a living, for the most part, but I do use

by luxpir 11y ago

I might have to finally try it if so many people are claiming life-changing effects! I don't create or edit code for a living, for the most part, but I do use vim to edit workstation/server files and side-projects as well as a fair bit for notes and todo lists. I share the notes with an always-on raspberry pi via syncthing, which I can SSH into to check in a pinch. There isn't much incentive in this case to switch to emacs, then (although the idea of a wearable rpi with emacspeak instead of a HUD has always intrigued). My current todo list for keeping organised, after recently moving off of Trello, needed to be reasonably smart to replace it. I think the solution is smart yet simple enough to work long term. It has been OK for a month or two now, at least, but I'm still open to improvements. It's basically a vertical kanban board, instead of the usual horizontal one. I don't need time tracking, as I don't bill that way (but if it were automated, again, I'm open to it - could be interesting) but it would be nice to have alerts and reminders. For those I set reminders in tkremind for the important stuff - also copied and synced to the pi. The workflow is this: - Tasks are entered into the relevant folding section, prepended with a timestamp [F5], with a #tag. - As tasks complete, I delete/paste [dd/p] into the invoicing section, if required. - Then [key binding] moves the item to 'the last line of the file' where a log has built up in roughly chronological order, returning the cursor to the same line. This basically replicates Trello locally, but with the advantage of speed, grep-ability [grep -m 10 '#projectX' todo.txt] and privacy. The other open source kanban options looked good, but I am a big fan of text files, as org-mode users probably are too. I'm now wondering if org-mode would be an upgrade or an over-complication... acutely aware of the irony of spending all this time on getting organised in order to be more productive.

npsimons 11y ago
> I might have to finally try it if so many people are claiming life-changing effects! Org, much like emacs, is like catnip to a certain minded type of individual. This might stem from both being written in lisp (http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html). Both are infinitely malleable to your needs, yet surprisingly effective out of the box for their intended use cases; the tweaking only comes later when you go "I wonder if I can do this." It also opens your eyes when you realize it's all just text (http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3996068979/the-levels-of-emacs-proficiency http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3996068979/the-levels-of-em...). Beware though: you can go pretty deep down the rabbit hole, it can be made over complicated, but if you KISS and keep disciplined, both emacs and org are powerful tools.
- luxpir 11y ago
  Your point could still partially apply to vim. But my main train of thought on reading this, as well as the sample configs offered above[0], is that it really is much too complex for my needs. The amount of configuration and maintenance required, shuffling todo items around, filing, refiling - even the person whose setup is mentioned elsewhere[0] admits he had 373 tasks at that time - that doesn't sound organised to me! I'll most likely stick to developing my 'plaintext vertical kanban' system, unless I dabble with the vim clone of org-mode. I do however get the ethos of the thing, and happily encourage it. I saw a fun quote at the top of one of today's HN front page articles: Laziness is a virtue as it “makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure.” — Larry Wall, founder of Perl [0] http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html --- PS - slightly off topic, but saw in another comment here you still use org-mode on an N900 - I need to de-brick mine, but that involves splitting a USB cable and soldering it onto the test pads under the battery. It lasted for 5 years, performing brilliantly, and I was just about to put the easychroot Debian back on when disaster struck. With that phone/device I had an SSH shortcut on the desktop to my various servers and also ran syncthing on it directly, barely affecting battery life, to keep phone and laptop notes in sync. I can still do most of that on the Ubuntu phone, but can't help feeling restricted. Sure I can enable write access to the system files, but then I forego the updates. Not ideal.

by luxpir 11y ago

npsimons 11y ago

> I might have to finally try it if so many people are claiming life-changing effects! Org, much like emacs, is like catnip to a certain minded type of individual. This might stem from both being written in lisp (http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html). Both are infinitely malleable to your needs, yet surprisingly effective out of the box for their intended use cases; the tweaking only comes later when you go "I wonder if I can do this." It also opens your eyes when you realize it's all just text (http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3996068979/the-levels-of-emacs-proficiency http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3996068979/the-levels-of-em...). Beware though: you can go pretty deep down the rabbit hole, it can be made over complicated, but if you KISS and keep disciplined, both emacs and org are powerful tools.

luxpir 11y ago
Your point could still partially apply to vim. But my main train of thought on reading this, as well as the sample configs offered above[0], is that it really is much too complex for my needs. The amount of configuration and maintenance required, shuffling todo items around, filing, refiling - even the person whose setup is mentioned elsewhere[0] admits he had 373 tasks at that time - that doesn't sound organised to me! I'll most likely stick to developing my 'plaintext vertical kanban' system, unless I dabble with the vim clone of org-mode. I do however get the ethos of the thing, and happily encourage it. I saw a fun quote at the top of one of today's HN front page articles: Laziness is a virtue as it “makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure.” — Larry Wall, founder of Perl [0] http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html --- PS - slightly off topic, but saw in another comment here you still use org-mode on an N900 - I need to de-brick mine, but that involves splitting a USB cable and soldering it onto the test pads under the battery. It lasted for 5 years, performing brilliantly, and I was just about to put the easychroot Debian back on when disaster struck. With that phone/device I had an SSH shortcut on the desktop to my various servers and also ran syncthing on it directly, barely affecting battery life, to keep phone and laptop notes in sync. I can still do most of that on the Ubuntu phone, but can't help feeling restricted. Sure I can enable write access to the system files, but then I forego the updates. Not ideal.