This is almost a blog
My first post on this blog in 2022!
I started experimenting with PouchDB last year, more or less just to see what it was, and over time it’s become an important part of my workflow.
Maybe I’ll post more details about how it’s used in my workflow some other time. To paraphrase Ron Swanson, I can’t do it right now because I don’t want to.
The basic idea is that it’s the little items that make my life tough and cause stress. For example, I come across good links all the time. How should I track them? The beauty of the one big text file (OBTF) approach is that it solves exactly this problem. Everything goes into that file and you know where to find it when you need it.
The downside of OBTF is that querying information sucks. I can find a specific link in the future if I absolutely have to find it. As far as reviewing the links on a particular topic you’ve accumulated over the last few years…well, you can forget about that.
So I use a OBTF approach to capture all these little things. I parse the whole file and create an in-memory PouchDB database. Then I query the heck out of all my stuff.
What started as an experiment just to learn PouchDB turned out to be extremely useful. The easy capture of OBTF. The querying capability of a nosql database. The ability to work with my data by doing nothing more than loading an html file in the browser. Nothing to install. No programs to configure or run. Just load an html file in the browser.
This is the first time I’ve ever had the little stuff under control - all the links, short notes, minor tasks, and so on, in one place and ready for review any way my database will allow. All in the browser, zero installation or setup, pure text, version controlled, and completely future-proof.
Post written by Lance Bachmeier