I switched over to Day One for journaling at the start of the year on a lark, and its become a core part of my process.

Here are three things I do with it:

1. Bread crumb blog posts

I have updated the Octopress rake file for new_post to also bread crumb the new post in Day One (and launch Byword for editing).

Place this at the end of the :new_post task (see below for details on the LogToDayOne.rb script)

  # Log to Day One and open it for editing
  %x{~/scripts/LogtoDayOne.rb "@blog #{title}"}
  %x{open "#{filename}"}

The first line runs the LogToDayOne.rb passing in the blog title. The second line opens the generated markdown file using the default editor (of course Byword is it).

Here it is in Day One:

2. Log all commits

I have created a shell macro to log all git commits such that the project and commit message is also logged to Day One.

In .bash_profile:

function gca(){
  msg=$*
  path=$(pwd)
  ~/scripts/LogtoDayOne.rb "@${path##*/} $msg"
  git commit -am "$msg"
}

Now all I do is type gca "The commit message" and its both logged to Day One and saved in git.

Here it is in Day One:

3. Use the annoying reminders

I have enabled the reminders function in Day One so that 3 times a day, an annoying gray box comes up asking me to journal something. So I do. And its been totally worth it. There is always something to note, something to remember, something to write about. Even though I have only been doing this a month, I can already see a clear journal of my activities in Day One.

The script

Logging commits was not my idea. I got the LogToDayOne.rb script from Brett Terpstra in Logging with Day One, Geek Style - and removed the dependency on chronic since I do not need it and it was conflicting with the RVM in Octopress. I though it was so cool, I added the blog bread crumb myself in Octopress.

The result

As a result of these, I have a comprehensive journal of what happened each day over and above my project and coding notes.

Anyone else got some cool scripts for Day One? I’d love it to become more like Momento for the Mac.