So there are a lot of posts here about personal knowledge databases & note taking apps ... and methodologies. I wanted a way to keep track of info & just as importantly be able to easily see & edit that data from anywhere.
I wanted it to be robust, free, web-based, able to host code examples as actual files (e.g. style.css or script.js), and host images.
Turns out this is all available with Github & Gitlab.
Step 1: Create a Private Repo
Step 2: Hit the . key or use the editor URL pattern: https://github.dev/{{username}}/{{repo-name}}
Step 3: Start using ... you can add sub-directories with Markdown for notes ... you can add all the file types above.
For Gitlab just click "Web IDE" from your project's homepage.
(I made this URL: https://github.dev/{{username}}/{{repo-name}} my homepage, making it super easy to access.)
This is absolutely nothing new; but the epiphany I had a week or so ago about using a repo in this way seems to have really stuck (yes, a week is a short period of time but often a note app or approach sticks for a day or 2 for me).
I'm really curious if others do something like this & what other sorts of practices they might employ while doing this.
Most of my personal notes end up in Google Keep as that has a bunch of nifty sharing/reminder/etc. features built in.
At work I take all my notes in a "diary.md" markdown file in a pinned VSCode tab. I started taking bullet-pointed daily notes to help remind myself about what happened the previous day to make standup meetings easier... it has helped tremendously past that too though, as I now habitually take notes for meetings and other goings-on as well.
To start, the basic process was:
1. Set up a diary.md file in its own folder, open it in my main VSCode window, and pin the tab
2. Set up a VSCode Markdown snippet for "td" (for 'today') -> generates requisite headings, with the current day's date and the first bullet point for note-taking
3. Set up personal private git repository in the diary folder so that my notes don't die if my laptop does
4. Set up bash alias "gpn" (for 'git push notes') -> auto commit my notes with some "automated macro commit" message and push to remote
5. Each year I start fresh and rename the old diary.md file by adding the year number to it and filing it away in the repo/archive folder.
If I'm working on a bigger project I'll set up a separate Markdown file in the same repo and make project-specific notes in there, while keeping the standup bullet points in diary.md - otherwise for message drafts or more general meetings notes I just add them under subheadings inside the day's "diary entry".