davidpesticcio/bashlog

A stupid-simple bash logging utility

Bashlog

A simple, directory-driven logging utility for CLI for quick notes, long journals, or bullet-style todo lists.

Setup

1. Get the repo:

git clone [email protected]:jodavaho/bashlog.git ~/.config/bashlog

2. Add some magic to your ~/.bashrc:

source ~/.config/bashlog/bashlog.sh

From anywhere on your machine, just type log, to be taken to a date-stamped file that contains whatever you need to record.

Easy intro

Need to keep track of something you just thought of?

Just type log<enter> and you'll have a terminal with all of today's notes that were stored in the specified directory.

What did you write yesterday? log yesterday<enter>. Easy peasy. Same for tomorrow, a month from now (log 1 month), last week log last week etc etc. Bashlog uses date and sometimes dateutils, so it gets a lot of flexibility.

Todo lists

While logging, just use the handy bullet-style todo items:

- [ ] An unfinished todo item (github markdown compatible!)
- [x] A successfully finished item
- [-] A failed, but finished item
- [>] A delayed item
- [v] A dropped item, no longer required

To spice it up a bit, I added the color-highlights in vim_log, and they are added by default when you type log.

(otherwise, Just add to your .bashrc: export LOG_EDITOR=vim -S vim_log`)

Or, just add it to .vimrc forever if you really like it.

cat vim_log >> ~/.vimrc

See image:

Getting todo items on CLI

To see the todo items in your directory, use lstodo.

I usually do this:

lstodo -nl | vim - to get a jump-list for VIM.

My daily morning ritual to prioritize is to scroll through list, using gF to jump to the todo item, mark it, and b# jump back. Vimrc settings to help with this are set autowrite

Weekly

However, for most todos, I set weekly goals. For this, I use week. This creates files like 2019-week-X where X is the current week. Ticking off weekly goals leading up to the weekend is quite rewarding.

You can view last week with week -1 or next week with week +1, or arbitrarily week +/-X to jump around.

Log tips

the log command uses date and dateutils to form the filename. SO you can do nifty things like:

• log tomorrow
• log yesterday
• log last monday
• log 1 month

etc

Journaling

I like to write my daily thoughts (e.g., journal), using log and re-read yesterday / the before by using log yesterday and log last wed for example.

I've been using this system for almost a decade. As of the time of this commit ...

:~/journal$ ls -l | wc -l
1461
:~/journal$ cat * | wc
  33948  298680 1642722

Reading journal entries from when my wife and I started dating is a real treat. My health has been easy to track. I have a greppable archive of my hourly thoughts in plain text. I've given real thought to applying some analytics to this dataset, including sentiment analysis. Though I go on and off with the habit of journalling, lowering the barrier of adding an entry has significantly helped.

Different log directories.

Sometimes I change projects. e.g., when moving between python environments, catkin workspaces, etc. In the setup.sh or activate.sh, I like to add:

export LOG_DIRECTORY <the project workspace>/notes

This means that for each project, you will definitely have a consistent set of notes and todos, which will not overlap.

Base workspace

For things like journalling, I also alias home='export LOG_DIRECTORY=~/journal'

Git integration

I don't recommend this for all logs, but to remove all possible workflow barriers, I have a convenience vim command so that I can keep my logs in github easily.

command Lw w | !git add % && git commit % -m "Checkin %" && git push

If you set up a github repo to store your logs. Then the workflow becomes:

• from the command line: log<enter>
• record your notes
• :Lw to push this new entry to github
• :wq to exit, and you're back.

This has the advantage of not requiring any directory changes, looing away from your screen, etc.

Configuring

By default, we use environment variables, which can be over-ridden as you see fit, by exporting the variable in .bashrc before source bashlog.sh

• LOG_DIRECTORY, Default: ~
• LOG_EDTIOR, Default: vim; For best effect, the bashlog.sh will actually set LOG_EDITOR to vim -S <this directory>/vim_log, where <this directory> is, where you put this repo

You can always adjust these environment variables on the fly as you change working contexts or project workspaces, to keep a consistent pointer to the log directory.

Help

These scripts were yanked from my ever-growing dotfiles repo. If I messed something up, file an issue and let's chat. Also good for suggestions.