The One-Line-Per-Day, One-Page Plain Text Daily Journal

I discovered the perfect solution to keeping a digital daily journal: one plain text file, with one line per day that sums up the most significant event(s) of that day.

Read on to learn how I use it, and how it fits into my plain-text journaling system.

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Yearly Recaps: A Monthly, Contextual, Plain-Text Journaling System

While I regularly maintain a daily journal, and do so in plain text (while also keeping a concurrent journal in the Momento app on my iPhone for the search and tagging features), often I find that I never actually read any of the old entries. Which is fine, as I mostly just like the habit of recording the information. Recently, I developed a system that is proving to be immensely useful.

Append Text File With Hazel, Automator & Shell Scripts

I love the Drafts app for the iPhone, and I love automating stuff. The downside to using Drafts is that the workflows I’ve set up aren’t possible with any software on the Mac. I cobbled together some methods to achieve at least the one most common task I have, appending info to a master plain-text log file on Dropbox. Here’s how I did it.

[UPDATE 2017-12-30: here’s the companion article on prepending text files]

nvIt: Chrome & Safari extensions for nvALT

Since the recent update to Drafts with the expanded URL Scheme functionality, I’ve been monkeying around with nvALT plaintext journaling and note taking. There’s a cool browser extension for snagging text and webpages in plain text format and adding them as new notes to your nvALT folder.

It’s on the main nvALT page, but it’s easy to miss.

nvIt — Chrome and Safari extensions for nvALT – elastic threads

I plan on posting about this plaintext approach in detail, but just sharing the bookmarklet for now.

Advanced Tips for Drafts App

Often advanced features in my favorite apps are tough to explain because they are so open to customization. Examples usually help. Here are some handy Drafts tips I’ve either discovered or created that might give you some idea on how to take advantage of Dropbox actions, URL Actions, and email actions.

– Use date stamps to create a scratchpad text dump file

– Log your tweets

– Log your Google searches

– Log everything!

– Use IFTTT and email action to subscribe in Google Reader

– Use date stamps for an auto-created monthly journal text file

– Use bookmarklets to log webpages or send to Reminders

Drafts URL Action: Search Netflix Instant

Simple URL Action for Drafts to use your text to search on Netflix Instant. Visit this page on your iPhone/iPad and click the following link to install in Drafts: Drafts URL Action: Search Netflix Instant

Seems WordPress.com strips out the part of the URL that allows importing Actions via a simple click to work, so you’ll have to copy and paste the following and add it to a URL Action in Drafts yourself, unless I can find a fix:

http://movies.netflix.com/WiSearch?raw_query=movie&ac_category_type=none&ac_rel_posn=-1&ac_abs_posn=-1&v1=[[draft]]]&search_submit=

Quickly Launch Drafts from Notification Center Via Launch Center Pro

I’m always looking for more ways to use Drafts on my iPhone, as well as more ways to access it. I discovered a way to have access via the Notification Center list using Launch Center Pro. I doubt I’m the first to write about this, but thought I’d share anyways.

Create Simple Amazon Affiliate Links on iOS with Launch Center Pro & Drafts

Taking the info from Bob Lee on how to create simple Amazon affiliate links, I created a companion Launch Center Pro/Drafts action to generate these links on the iPhone and the iPad. 

iTunes Affiliate Links on iPhone with Launch Center Pro & Drafts

Quickly create iTunes Store affiliate links on the iPhone using Launch Center Pro and this tip from David Smith (via Dr. Drang).

Control Your Mac Remotely with Drafts, Hazel, Dropbox & AppleScript

I wanted to set up a way to to toggle my Mac’s system volume setting from the iPhone. But this technique could be used for any AppleScript you’d like to trigger remotely from your iPhone. Here’s how I did it.