A little while ago, I began to try to organise my life using plain text files instead of proprietory systems. This basically comes down to 3 things: a calendar (calendar.txt), a to-do list (todo.txt, surprisingly) and a Notes folder. That's easy enough to do on my laptop, but what about when I don't have my laptop with me?
I manage these files through a Raspberry Pi which hosts them as a git repository. As the day unfolds, I push changes to the repo. At the beginning of the day, I pull from the repo. This means I'm not tied to just my laptop. I have a couple of bash scripts to handle the pulling and pushing and warn of conflicts. So far, so good.
The weakness in this system is how I deal with it on the move.
I've already described my pseudo-cyberdeck, DeckZero-Alpha [1], but it isn't exactly convenient to get out of a pocket or bag to set up just to look at my calendar or enter a quick note. (Once set up, it's great and I love it but that's not the issue.)
I've tried getting my phone into the workflow using termux and it works in theory, but practice is a bit too clunky to be useful at a moment's notice, much like DeckZero, but for different reasons.
I very nearly spent far too much money on one of the successors to the Psion Series 5 from Planet Computing the other day. I just about convinced myself, when I noticed that their pricing doesn't include VAT at 20%. An expensive indulgence I could just about justify turned into being completely out of the question. So what to do now?
I'm going to try a small android tablet in a keyboard case, again running termux. My hope is that the bigger screen size will help overcome the friction that comes from trying to use this system on a phone. It won't look as cool as the sleek clamshell of the old-school PDA, but it might just get the job done.
I'll let you know.
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richard <AT> deckzero <DOT> uk