Miles. Blog.

Command-line Journaling

I wrote in my journal 338 days over the course of last year. Not bad, considering that my previous record was about 5 days in a year. What made the difference? Trying to make the act of journal writing as painless as possible.

I created a simple command-line program and made this my ritual:

1. Run jr
2. Write in the file it creates
3. Save the file

That’s it.

#!/bin/bash
# Journal by Miles Pomeroy
# v1.0 2010-01-06
#
##Setup##
# Change $DIR to the directory you want to store your journal entries in.
# Adjust $CMD to call your editor of choice.
# Adjust $EXT to your file extension of choice.
#
##Usage##
# Run the script, `jr`, and it will create a file in the directory you 
# choose with today's date. Then it will open that file in your editor.
# If you provide a date, `jr 2009-10-21`, it will open that file from 
# from your journal. If it doesn't exist it was ask if you want to create
# it.
#

## Variables 

DIR="/Users/pants/Documents/journal/" # directory to place files
#DIR="/Users/macglab/LabData/Miles/labbook/" # for my work computer
#DIR="test/" # test directory

CMD='mate -l 1000' # use TextMate as editor
#CMD='vim +' # use vim

EXT='.md' # file extension

## Functions

# make the file with the date
makeIt ()
{
    echo -e "\n"$pretty_date"\n-----\n" >> $filename
}

## Code

if [ -z $1 ] # if there is no argument
then
    short_date=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d") # date format for filename
    pretty_date=$(date +"%A, %B %e, %Y") # date format for header
    filename=$DIR$short_date$EXT

    if [ -f $filename ] # if file already exists
    then # open it
        $CMD $filename
    else # make it and open it
        makeIt
        $CMD $filename
    fi
else # there is an argument
    if [[ $1 =~ .*-.*-.* ]] # basic validation of date format
    then
        short_date=$1
        pretty_date=$(date -j -f "%Y-%m-%d" $1 "+%A, %B %e, %Y")
        filename=$DIR$short_date$EXT

        if [ -f $filename ] # if file already exists
        then # open it
            $CMD $filename
        else # ask to make it
            echo "Entry does not exist."
            echo "Do you want to create an entry for $1? (Y|n)"
            read input

            if [[ $input != "n" ]] # yes they want it created, default
            then # make it and open it
                makeIt
                $CMD $filename
            fi
        fi
    else # wrong date format
        echo "Format the date thus: YYYY-MM-DD"
        exit 1
    fi
fi

Repository

Which one would you prefer?

Magic Mouse

OO Mouse

Michelle’s Birthday Slideshow

She makes each and every day of my life happy. (Safari 3+ needed for playback)