Progress has been rapid on my little "personal log" (plog?) project, Captain's Log. I can log email entries with a link to the specific email automatically included with whatever my thoughts were that prompted me to log it.

I've learned some things about Mail URLs or URIs - the bits of text that become links to the email in your Mail app.

Much of that has been documented in the Tinderbox Forum, and I figured I needed to get some of that recorded here. At least a link to the forum.

The advantage of Captain's Log over the marmot, is that Captain's Log isn't intended to be published (or exported, in Tinderbox terms). It functions best as a Tinderbox file and so I can take advantage of every feature Tinderbox offers without worrying about how it interacts with html export, specifically links to other notes.

Similarly, I can record things far too trivial to mention in the marmot, which is not to say that the marmot isn't filled with trivia.

I have a lot of ideas that I kind of think of and then forget. That's probably a feature and not a bug, as I'm sure I have far more ideas than I have time or ability to implement. But some of them re-occur to me at intervals, and so they must be something I want to do, so I should find a way to kind of help resurface them instead of just relying on some random external prompt.

Captain's Log is, itself, one of those ideas. I'd started similar efforts before, and got quickly discouraged and they fell by the way. It was working on the marmot and the Blog Test Platform in preparation for the Blogging With Tinderbox meetup that made me realize Captain's Log was achievable.

Right now I'm in the process of building the basic functionality of Captain's Log. The key feature was learning how to let Tinderbox take care of all the basic structure. It builds the outline by itself, once I created all the prototypes. So there's less infrastructure maintenance I have to perform (or recall), less chance for frustrating errors that have to be chased down, corrected and, hopefully, re-learned.

The other key element was getting information into the appropriate day's container automatically. The chronological structure of the outline makes that simple. Each log entry is identified by this present moment, and so it goes into "today's" container, which made it relatively straightforward (I had to have some help) to create an AppleScript that would create a new log entry.

So I can be in a completely different app when an idea occurs to me, and I can quickly add it to the log without leaving that app.

(I just added one right now, here in the marmot, without leaving the marmot. It occurred to me that I could have a "midwatch" entry automatically created each day. It'd have a "run command" action that would query some AI service for a knock-knock joke, or something. Maybe an inspirational quote. Who knows? Just a silly feature. I'd probably forget it if I didn't log it.)

If I was working in email or browsing the web, an idea would occur to me and I'd kind of make a "mental note" to do something with it, and then promptly forget. There must be some corner of my brain just filling up with forgotten mental notes.

Once I get functionality to an appropriate level, then I'll be working out the process. The most elementary function is as an aide memoire, to help me recall things like the last time I replaced the filter on the air handler.

But there will be some "review" process, where I look at ideas I've recorded and then think about next steps, if any. If there's an idea I want to pursue, that effort doesn't take place in Captain's Log apart perhaps from some long-form, journal-type entries where I "see what I think" about the idea. But I do need to identify a practice and periodicity of review. I'm not there yet, and it's secondary to getting the file and the supporting scripts tuned up — "Running light without overbyte," to quote a certain fictional orthodontist.

But there is an emotional component, a "sparks joy" element to having this come together with relatively little difficulty. And the help and suggestions from the community add a welcome social dimension to the effort.

Pretty cool, I think.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 05:23 Thursday, 7 March 2024