Taking my thoughts from yesterday’s post I decided that I wanted to make a blog ideas database. This post will go from start to finish on how to make this database. After the break.
I used to used Things for my ideas database, but that seemed a little inappropriate to me. This database is going to use rtf documents to store blog ideas in EagleFiler. What kind of information to i want to store, and how do I wish to organize it?
I want to try a couple of things. I don’t want to physically organize it. Rather I am going to use smart folders to gather these ideas. I also want to indicated when I have used an Idea. This organization is where the power of tags will show itself. I’m giong to use three tags to provide the organization I want. Two of the tags will be blog and idea. The third tag I will use when I use the idea. That tag will be “used.” I will build two smart folders one will find every document that has the two tags blog and idea without the used tag. The second folder is going to remove the blog and idea tags and add the used tag. The name of this rtf document is going to be Blog Idea.rtf.
The kind of information I want to store is date of the idea, the name of the idea, a small precis of the idea. One good thing about these kind of databases is that I can add any other information that might be germane to the discussion. So I create a stationery document as I showed you in this post. I added one more item an apple script with the file name of Blog Idea.efmeta.scpt. The code listing is below
on metadata(_context)
set _title to "Blog Idea"
set _base to do shell script "date "
set _systemInfo to system info
set _from to long user name of _systemInfo
set _tags to {"Blog", "idea"}
return {title:_title, basename:_base, |fromName|:_from, tags:_tags}
end metadata
When you create an idea using this form you will automatically have the tags applied to the documents as well as the unix timestamp as a file name. Now create a smart folder that finds all of the tags with Blog and idea. Then make a smart folder that finds records with just the tag “used.” In the actions tab of that folder set the action to remove blog and idea tags and add the “used” tag. When you use the idea, just drag the idea from the listing of the idea folder to the used folder. The used smart folder will remove the tags and set the used tag. The used idea is no longer visible in the idea smart folder and is listed in the used folder.
And there you have it. Feel free to copy the script above if you find it useful. I admit I stole it from Michael Tsai, who develop’s EagleFiler.(Thanks Michael) I just made the script do what I wanted it to.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I think I fall into the niche/specialize this product camp with Eagle FIler. I’ve only ever used it to store stuff from my ScanSnap S510M.
I use other tools like Journler, Mac Journal and even Notational Velocity for quick note taking. I’ve also started using Yojimbo to do web research, though I’ll have to try Eagle Filer again.
I guess my big complaint is the concept of a “library”. I feel I need one for my scanned stuff, then I had one for “research”. It just doesn’t feel natural enough (yet?) to making libraries. Maybe just one giant inbox and sort it out later?
Interesting idea, they had a similar article about doing this with MacJournal. I cam from windows to mac and absolutely loved One Note. Nothing compares, in my opinion, to something like OneNote on mac.
Then you might like Circus Ponies’ Notebook which, in My opinion, comes closest to a OneNote look and feel. I know how you feel. It’s taken me a long time to get my head around this library idea. Now this tool is indispensable.