Day One Waffling
Thinking about my journalling in Day One recently and I’m wondering if it’s time to move it off to something else, maybe Markdown files in a Git repository. Still mulling it over but every time I weigh the two options in my mind, the simpler Markdown approach always wins out.
Plain old Markdown files are just way more versatile and portable than what Day One offers. I can put them in a private Hugo (or Eleventy) site and browse them in a web browser, with the backing of a full HTML renderer that offers, amongst other things, figures with captions (yes, I want them that badly). Making them into a book will be more involved than what Day One offers, but I’ve been a little unhappy with how books from Day One are laid out anyway. Doing it from Markdown files will be pricier and more involved, but at least I’ll have a bit more control over how it looks.1
I’ll miss the writing experience from Day One though, especially things like recording the current location and weather for each entry. I’m still wondering what the best substitute for it will be.
I’m toying around with a web-app I whipped up yesterday. A web-app will be fine for those times I’m online, but how would it work if I’m in an aeroplane? I’m also a little worried about trying it for a while, then abandoning it and leaving it to rot. I guess one thing going for it is that at-least it won’t lock me out of any entries, since they’ll just be Markdown files in Git.
I’m also considering iA Writer. I haven’t tried it yet but from my understanding, it’ll just write Markdown files to a directory, which is the goal. But I’m not sure how I can get the posts and media from there to a Git repo.
Anyway, that’s the current thinking. Will keep you posted on what happens.
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Of course, the challenge there will be to overcome the friction involved in doing this work to actually get the book made. ↩︎
Jason Becker I get so much value from things like adding photos from after a trip, getting a solid approximate location, editing if needed to the point of interest where we were, and then having a map view of my travels. For this alone, in a private tool, I’d have a hard time giving up DayOne.
Leon Mika @jsonbecker Yeah, recording the location is a really strong pull keeping me on Day One.
Denny Henke @jsonbecker You could use a simple Shortcut to get the current weather and location that copies to clipboard.
Command-Space, then type name-of-shortcut and paste into your current post. That’s one I use for exactly this purpose.
Jason Becker @Denny Yeah, if I really wanted to get away from DayOne (I don’t), it’d mostly be a shortcut to select photos, then extract the geolocation from the exif data to some degree.
HOWEVER, geo data in plain text doesn’t get me to the interface I like, which is actually viewing a map. And it gets me lat and long not point of interest data, which is what I want.
DayOne is pretty slick.
Leon Mika @Denny That’s a good idea. I gave that a try this morning and it worked like a charm. That’s definitely a viable way to get location and weather into a post.
Jim Willis I’m in the same boat, Day One is the only subscription app that I don’t really hesitate to renew but boy would I love to get out of the subscription lock-in. That, and the fact that there’s no way to get data out of Day One using Shortcuts.
Day One is like a roach motel for data, your entries can get in a bunch of different ways but the only way to access the data once an entry is created is through the Day One interface. I’m waiting to see how well they leverage the new Journaling Suggestions integration before I make any big moves here.