Why a Digital Diary Will Change Your Life | Hacker News Reader

Why a Digital Diary Will Change Your Life

nytimes.com

18 pointstysone11 comments

Nice idea, but not sure why you need a dedicated app like Day One ($36 p.a. for premium) to keep a journal though. You could do the same thing in pretty much any notes app for free, or just keep a Word doc or similar.

Keep a notebook and write.

No one will be able to scan your content and process you/sell you things.

I agree. A journal is supposed to be "your place" usually that no one knows about. When you use apps and note apps to journal in your data is being sent somewhere and the sacredness "your place" idea is gone.

I was debating trying something similar. I have my own domain for use of Nextcloud and my own email, but I have toyed with the idea of making a website similar to a digital journal. Whether its documenting how I figured out something (usually technological), or just some other passing thoughts, or for a way for family to see what I have been up to. I really don't want to monetize it or try to make it popular, but I have mulled it over in my head.

Has anyone else tried that?

Seems like every website in the nineties!

In a good way!

You can see my failed attempt at https://lemanchet.fr/learned-today.html

I say failed because I don't feel very good with writing my findings publicly when other people may find this information trivial. What if people realize that I don't know how to use gdb?

It might be good for other people to realise how few developers know how to use a debugger.

What you had is actually really close to what I was thinking. I like the idea of talking about some technical thing I figured out, and group it with other ideas or interests (like your photo page, I liked the photos!).

I am currently protoyping the idea with my wedding page. I built a self hosted WordPress service, learning how to set it up and maintain it has been an interesting challenge.

And to me, I'd ask why does it matter if you don't know how to use gdb or $TOOLSET? A lot of learning has to start at some point, and for all you know what you figure out either helps someone new or it shows someone else a new way to use it.

Thank you for the positivity, maybe it will make me give it another try.

I always think we are our own worst critics.

I'm a developer so I created my own simple PHP version. The habit-changing feature I added was having the script email me every day. So every day I get an email asking what I did the day before. Like texts, I find it hard to ignore emails, so I actually reply. Previously, when I had to remember to add an extry, I'd go weeks without journaling.

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