4 ms·

Awesome! If you're like me, you'll go through these steps. 1. Use org-mode in one file for a few years to track all of your todos. You can make a good David A

Awesome! If you're like me, you'll go through these steps. 1. Use org-mode in one file for a few years to track all of your todos. You can make a good David Allen GTD system this way. Headings for Inbox, Projects, Someday/Maybe, Tickler. 2. Discover https://www.orgroam.com/ https://www.orgroam.com/ as the best note taking and personal knowledge system you've ever seen. 3. Obsess about backing up all of your org files because if you ever lose them you will literally have lost half of what you know.

nasdack 6y ago
> 3. Obsess about backing up all of your org files because if you ever lose them you will literally have lost half of what you know. Do you use version control to backup org-mode, or opt for some Google Drive/Dropbox/Nextcloud scheme?
- kreetx 6y ago
  Although git works great, there is some double-duty regarding history: there are both the git history of the .org files and also the.org_archive files. I wonder if people opt for one or the other and not both?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    I've been using Org Mode for close to 10 years now, and I never grokked how the archiving is supposed to be used. You can browse the archive files for your data, and the automatically added metadata give some context as to where it was located, but AFAIK you can't rebuild an old version of an .org file from the archive. So because of that, if I care about the whole structural history of an org file, I stick it in a git repository.
    - forevernoob 6y ago
      I made a thread about this on /r/Emacs, perhaps people here might chime in too: https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/jiyn4n/orgmode_archiving_a_mirror_of_your_existing_org/ https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/jiyn4n/orgmode_archi...
- thespoonbends 6y ago
  I don't trust myself to remember to commit changes, so rely on regular btrfs-based snapshots via http://snapper.io/ http://snapper.io/ .
  - kstrauser 6y ago
    For other uses, I’ve defined cronjobs similar to: 0 0 * * * cd /foo; git add -A && git commit -m $(date) && git push Voila! Nightly snapshots pushed to another server.
- nackjicholson 6y ago
  I use syncthing on a NAS device in my house. That's a 2-bay NAS in RAID 1 configuration. All machines I want to use the files from need to use syncthing pointed at the NAS folder. The NAS basically becomes my central repository of files.
  - nackjicholson 6y ago
    TODO! Backup the NAS to somewhere offsite. Maybe an S3 bucket or google cloud storage or something.
didibus 6y ago
> 3. Obsess about backing up all of your org files because if you ever lose them you will literally have lost half of what you know. I guess this is where the original roamresearch.com is hoping to make their money.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Having checked out both Roam Reserach and org-roam, I'm still surprised by the existence of the former. The core idea is literally bolting backlinks on top of Workflowy. How is it you can make a business out of that? How is it that the idea is only now reaching viral popularity, even though its a rather obvious concept that had various well-known incarnations in the past (e.g. automated "pingbacks" on blogs in the 2000s), was fully conceptualized into an even better idea all the way back in the 1970s (Xanadu's transclusions), and probably traces its lineage all the way to ancient Sumeria. I sometimes don't understand the lifecycle of ideas and tools in our reality. (That's not a jab at Roam Research folks. I congratulate them on building a successful piece of software. Though I'm not going to use it anyway, because I like to own my data.)
  - dewey 6y ago
    I think if you look at the landing page of Roam Research and org-roam you already know why the first one is popular with regular people and not the latter one. On org-roam there's also no quick way to get started and the install instructions look like this: https://www.orgroam.com/manual/Installation.html#Installation https://www.orgroam.com/manual/Installation.html#Installatio... so it's not really a surprise that's it not going viral and being used by everyone.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      I'm not surprised org-roam isn't going viral (and actually it is, within the population of org mode users!). I'm surprised you can make a startup out of a single, simple idea that is automatically tracking backlinks. To borrow a phrase from discussions around Dropbox, this most definitely is a feature, not a product.
nunodonato 6y ago
> 3. Obsess about backing up all of your org files because if you ever lose them you will literally have lost half of what you know. all my org files are inside an org folder in Dropbox :) instant sync of my org system between computers :)
- jsilence 6y ago
  That is only a storage system. DB backup only covers the last 30 days. Storage != Backup
  - nunodonato 6y ago
    True! I don't worry much about backup, I do a copy once in a while of the whole folder to a different place. But those who care can automate that easily with a script and cron. When it's just plain text files, everything becomes easier :)
    - jsilence 6y ago
      "I do a copy once in a while of the whole folder to a different place." Yeah, that is a backup. But I totally agree, it becomes much easier when stuff is plain text files!
- immigrantsheep 6y ago
  That's exactly what I have. And then I use Orgzly on my android phone and beorg on my ipad :)
  - ungamed 6y ago
    I've got webdav export, it seems to be the sane way to sync with orgzly, what are you using ?
    - immigrantsheep 6y ago
      I used to have my files stored on iCloud while it was only my Windows Desktop and my iPad but when I threw my Android phone in the mix I switched to Dropbox. edit:spelling
obelos 6y ago
It's not perfect because the wrong keystroke sequence can cause you to lose a chunk of information in a way that goes unnoticed for a long period of time (or is just never noticed), but I run a cron job that just blindly checks in any new files and diffs into git every few minutes. It assuages at least some of my concerns about org-roam's many ways to cut myself with its magic.

nasdack 6y ago

> 3. Obsess about backing up all of your org files because if you ever lose them you will literally have lost half of what you know. Do you use version control to backup org-mode, or opt for some Google Drive/Dropbox/Nextcloud scheme?

kreetx 6y ago
Although git works great, there is some double-duty regarding history: there are both the git history of the .org files and also the.org_archive files. I wonder if people opt for one or the other and not both?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  I've been using Org Mode for close to 10 years now, and I never grokked how the archiving is supposed to be used. You can browse the archive files for your data, and the automatically added metadata give some context as to where it was located, but AFAIK you can't rebuild an old version of an .org file from the archive. So because of that, if I care about the whole structural history of an org file, I stick it in a git repository.
  - forevernoob 6y ago
    I made a thread about this on /r/Emacs, perhaps people here might chime in too: https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/jiyn4n/orgmode_archiving_a_mirror_of_your_existing_org/ https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/jiyn4n/orgmode_archi...
thespoonbends 6y ago
I don't trust myself to remember to commit changes, so rely on regular btrfs-based snapshots via http://snapper.io/ http://snapper.io/ .
- kstrauser 6y ago
  For other uses, I’ve defined cronjobs similar to: 0 0 * * * cd /foo; git add -A && git commit -m $(date) && git push Voila! Nightly snapshots pushed to another server.
nackjicholson 6y ago
I use syncthing on a NAS device in my house. That's a 2-bay NAS in RAID 1 configuration. All machines I want to use the files from need to use syncthing pointed at the NAS folder. The NAS basically becomes my central repository of files.
- nackjicholson 6y ago
  TODO! Backup the NAS to somewhere offsite. Maybe an S3 bucket or google cloud storage or something.

didibus 6y ago

> 3. Obsess about backing up all of your org files because if you ever lose them you will literally have lost half of what you know. I guess this is where the original roamresearch.com is hoping to make their money.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Having checked out both Roam Reserach and org-roam, I'm still surprised by the existence of the former. The core idea is literally bolting backlinks on top of Workflowy. How is it you can make a business out of that? How is it that the idea is only now reaching viral popularity, even though its a rather obvious concept that had various well-known incarnations in the past (e.g. automated "pingbacks" on blogs in the 2000s), was fully conceptualized into an even better idea all the way back in the 1970s (Xanadu's transclusions), and probably traces its lineage all the way to ancient Sumeria. I sometimes don't understand the lifecycle of ideas and tools in our reality. (That's not a jab at Roam Research folks. I congratulate them on building a successful piece of software. Though I'm not going to use it anyway, because I like to own my data.)
- dewey 6y ago
  I think if you look at the landing page of Roam Research and org-roam you already know why the first one is popular with regular people and not the latter one. On org-roam there's also no quick way to get started and the install instructions look like this: https://www.orgroam.com/manual/Installation.html#Installation https://www.orgroam.com/manual/Installation.html#Installatio... so it's not really a surprise that's it not going viral and being used by everyone.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    I'm not surprised org-roam isn't going viral (and actually it is, within the population of org mode users!). I'm surprised you can make a startup out of a single, simple idea that is automatically tracking backlinks. To borrow a phrase from discussions around Dropbox, this most definitely is a feature, not a product.

nunodonato 6y ago

> 3. Obsess about backing up all of your org files because if you ever lose them you will literally have lost half of what you know. all my org files are inside an org folder in Dropbox :) instant sync of my org system between computers :)

jsilence 6y ago
That is only a storage system. DB backup only covers the last 30 days. Storage != Backup
- nunodonato 6y ago
  True! I don't worry much about backup, I do a copy once in a while of the whole folder to a different place. But those who care can automate that easily with a script and cron. When it's just plain text files, everything becomes easier :)
  - jsilence 6y ago
    "I do a copy once in a while of the whole folder to a different place." Yeah, that is a backup. But I totally agree, it becomes much easier when stuff is plain text files!
immigrantsheep 6y ago
That's exactly what I have. And then I use Orgzly on my android phone and beorg on my ipad :)
- ungamed 6y ago
  I've got webdav export, it seems to be the sane way to sync with orgzly, what are you using ?
  - immigrantsheep 6y ago
    I used to have my files stored on iCloud while it was only my Windows Desktop and my iPad but when I threw my Android phone in the mix I switched to Dropbox. edit:spelling

obelos 6y ago

It's not perfect because the wrong keystroke sequence can cause you to lose a chunk of information in a way that goes unnoticed for a long period of time (or is just never noticed), but I run a cron job that just blindly checks in any new files and diffs into git every few minutes. It assuages at least some of my concerns about org-roam's many ways to cut myself with its magic.