Re: Software to handle bits and pieces of information.
Gary Roach wrote:
> Hi;
> I could use some suggestions. I seem to collect a lot of snippets of
> information scribbled on pieces of paper, old napkins, etc. Examples are
> notes on harware, sources for stuff, notes on possible projects, book
> that I might want to buy in the future and on and on. This has generated
> numerous scraps of paper and sticky notes with the result that chaos
> reigns. I recently tried knotes which helped a lot but didn't cover
> tasks. I have now switched to Kontact. This takes care of scheduling
> things, projects and short term notes. I still am not sure what to do
> about those notes that could be around for a long time like maybe a
> note on the "proton boron fusion reaction energy" . I may never use it
> but would like to be able to find the information if need be. I guess I
> need a repository for disparate information (how's that for fuzzy). I
> hope this makes some sense.
>
> Any suggestions.
>
> Gary R
I usually have a directory where I keep all the relevant "note" files. If
the information falls into a specific category (ex:- calendar based events,
todo stuff, where you stopped reading a particular book :-) etc.,) I'll
have a separate file.
If the information is a random tidbit (ex:- "Capital of Libya is Tripoli"
and for some weird reason you want to note that down :-)), I just use a
plain text file to jot it down. I normally have some conventions (ex: tags,
delimiters, content separators) within that file, so that I can write a
script to extract all the relevant information as and when needed (ex:-
give me all the tidbits related to Fortran language, all the research
papers written by a particular author). I guess you can use some database
query language if it becomes unmanageable... but I never had to go that
far.
It takes some time to set up this kind of stuff and come up with conventions
that work for your case. But I honestly believe that all you need is a good
editor like vim, grep and sometimes find. I am saying this after having
tried some GUI applications, applications where the information is stored
in a non-greppable format. YMMV.
hth
raju
--
Kamaraju S Kusumanchi
http://malayamaarutham.blogspot.com/
Reply to: