Tech Notes - how do you store/organise yours
 

Hi Everyone, I store my tech notes in a text file, I've ended up with many text files over the yeras with all sorts of tips and so on gleaned from sites like this and others.


At work I just have one large doc with usefule notes.


How do you store yours, one big file, a folder/sub folder organisation, by app/technique/ or something else?

I have bookmarks

thanks, I use raindrop.io for bookmarks
I keep useful tips in a text file on my desktop
Other things I keep in a number of text files

I use some directories with some subdirectories. I like to keep them visible in the file manager which mine can show 18 items. If I go over that amount I create more directories or subs. I move things around according to how many they are and if they can afford their own directory; usually three files about a subject earn their own directory. No bookmarks, I just frequently go around the directories to remember what I have.

I usually start by creating a file. If the file gets too long and can be split into two files, I do that. Short files are better, less messy and easier to follow. And I have directories like, DebianStuff, Computer1, Computer2, LinuxStuff, InternetStuff, PersonalDocuments, StorageInformation, etc.

OneNote

Most of my notes, when learning something or designing something, are written by hand. When I type new information with keyboard, it just doesn't register for me, but when I write it - I remember it. And when designing architecture or quick UI - nothing beats good old [strikethrough]pen[/strikethrough]Apple Pencil and [strikethrough]paper[/strikethrough]iPad Pro.

I rely on redundancy to store my documents. My folder structure starts with each year. Within each year I always include a folder for each item, and within each item the same subfolder structure:
DAT for documents I take, DOC for documents I draft, for example. The names of the documents should also contain the name of the main item and the year I took/drafted them, and any significant description or abbreviation.

Con: There may be documents that may belong to several items and be common to several years: I always have to place it in some reference item in some year. For this kind of documents or notes I usually use Cherrytree, a kind of notes and documents aggregator. In the words of the author, "it can store text, images, files, links, tables, and executable snippets of code".

I'm always tweaking it, but basically it's my method :)

Every project has a "Captain's Log," updated every "stardate." I have some in spiral-bound or looseleaf notebooks; more recent ones are text files. But by whatever means I keep a daily diary, and there have been many times when I referred back to it to "recall" something that I no longer remembered. I have those records going back over twenty years. Sometimes, it's fun to re-read them over a glass of fine wine.

When you're doing technical work, there is always some moment in time when "you have figured it out and right now you understand it clearly." You know what to do and are prepared to do it. First, and right now, write it down!

Save the record, and do not subsequently edit it or remove it. (Except to add an annotation, if something actually turned out to be wrong.) Those were "the words of the moment," and they must stay as they were written.

In larger projects, I make all the staff record daily entries in an on-line log which everyone can see and share. I patiently explain to them, "no, this isn't a time-sheet, although you need to fill out a time-sheet for the accountants, too." I make sure to use software which has an excellent "search" feature. And, soon enough, it becomes self-evident to the team what an important and time-saving resource this actually is. As the credit-card ads used to say, "Priceless.™"

Some projects create an "internal blog," but that's never quite the same. "Blog entries" are always written well after the fact, and as a separate step. It's fine to have a "blog" or "project knowledge-base," but also(!) have each person's "Captain's Log."

SimpleNote

I like the look of simplenote

Generally in online documents.

At my last workplace I moved current and urgent ones to a WIKI, and made it available to the entire corporation. After six months I discovered that the other SYSADMIN crew were not using it, always going back to my online word and google documents and spreadsheets. There were four engineers who were VERY good using my WIKI, but no one else. I assume that it vanished as soon as I was out the door.

Since starting to learn Linux back in the late 1990s, I've kept a note of things that I thought would come in handy, in small hard covered bound notebooks - still use them today, when I've forgotten something. :)

Like so. This laptop is not as crowded as the motorcycle shop desktop though. Which is organized a a bit better with bike and linux folders located outside of documents folder.

I also have a 1TB external that has my backups on it. It is mostly a mess like most external drives.
Since over time many backups start to clutter up things.

Being a bit old-skool, I keep it simple just using text files. No websites that might disappear one day, and no app I need to remember to install.

If you're interested, there's an app called Obsidian, which has all sorts of note-taking and task management stuff. Only heard good things about it.

I never clear my browser history, so if I remember there was some good tip concerning NFS, I just type 'nfs' in the URL bar and more often than not the useful web page comes up.
Then, bookmarks.
Also text files.
The most precious ones I blog.

I put the really interesting ones on my Blog, others are in a locally hosted Zim Wiki. It has the advantage of storing data in plain text while still giving basic formatting tools.
The issue with bookmarks is that the target site might go down and then you are left with a hanging link. If you are lucky you might find a copy of the site on Internet Archive but if not...