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I do have a deep fondness for logging / tracking information in my life, and currently use several disparate tools for the purpose and am trying to consolidate
by hildebrand_rare 4y ago
I do have a deep fondness for logging / tracking information in my life, and currently use several disparate tools for the purpose and am trying to consolidate much of it.
On one hand, I have my "lazy trackers", or things that are recorded automatically. Last FM for music history, the health info that gets aggregated into the Apple Health app, etc... These are things that get collected automatically, and I have scripts to automatically back them up to CSV format every so often. The collection tools themselves tend to have all the analysis features I care for, so I haven't done anything major with the CSV backups at this time. I'm generally cool with the automated collection stuff and have no interest in changing that dynamic while those methods remain available. I outsource what I can.
And then there are the things I log manually. The catch-all here is a personal journal that I do with daily markdown files with a timestamp for each time I write something in them. Over time, I have decided to break out specific things into their own markdown files rather than the catch-all journal. These include media notes, where I now capture thoughts on books / movies / games / etc in their own markdown files; and contact notes, where I write down memorable notes on interactions with my friends / loved ones so I can be the best friend / family member I can for those people. Those are all encrypted markdown files. The one spreadsheet I manually keep tracks the hours that I spend playing individual video games over time, which I've always found interesting even though I'm not a huge gamer.
As for the things I have chosen to break out from the catch-all journal, that has come as a result of querying those things so often that I find it easier to make purpose-designated areas for them. That's worked well for me up to this point, but in the future I want to have a catch-all text input area that collates everything into a timestamped "database" and then automatically scripts out appending those things to the appropriate place. I normally wouldn't bother with so much development overhead, and I did start out light; but this is a huge passion in my life that makes it worth the effort.
My current notion is to use the Drafts app for this, since I operate within the Apple ecosystem and that is a fully scriptable cross-platform text notes app within that ecosystem. I can enter whatever input parameters in plain text as a passing note, and that output can be automatically parsed into a master JSON or SQLite file or whatever that can then be parsed to output everything to the appropriate markdown files automatically. This is something I plan to mock up a test version of soon. I want do keep the markdown files up to date like I always have, mainly so that I can reference notes via mobile, which is a major review and consumption platform for me.
- ramn7 4y agoSuper interesting! Sounds like a very well thought system. May I ask how do you use some of these outputs? Is it mostly for the action of journaling itself? do you feel like it helps you optimize yourself/ your day to day (referring to the stuff you didn't mention the functionality of such as lazy tracking of health data, personal notes that don't relate to human relationships etc)?