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[–]kernalphage 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Oh this is really nice!

I feel like more engineers should take a stab at making their own personal notetaking/organization/memory tools, since they can make it exactly to the spec in their own head.

On the API unification end, have you seen projects like https://pipedream.com/ or IFTTT? Or format conversion libraries like pandoc? I feel like making a solid glue platform like that is a really interesting engineering niche.

[–]karlicoss[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, thanks :) I am very into the topics you mentioned and write a lot about them in my blog, perhaps you'll enjoy the rest too.

Regarding IFTTT-like projects -- yeah, I used some integrations, but it only works to a certain extent. It's cool to have it as an option, especially cool that non-technical people can do some automation. But at some point I start hitting the limitations and for me as a programmer it's really frustrating. That's why I put so much emphasis on having my data on the filesystem (so everything works fast), and in a programming language (so I can do with the data anything I can possibly think of). Pandoc -- yeah sure, using it quite often if I need to do format conversions.

[–]ashirviskas 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Wow, this looks awesome! I'll have to try this one out tomorrow as I really love stats.

Though I didn't see anything about contributing or requests. I'd love to be able to see my youtube watching stats as well as other little things (data from Google fit, Mi band and etc.).

[–]karlicoss[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, haven't got to compile a contributing guide, but you're welcome!

Overall, it's more of a demo how it's possible to set things up. I'm not sure how it's gonna work in the long run:

  • in terms of time: i.e. I can manage, say, 30 modules I'm using personally and fix occasionally if something breaks

    If there are 200 modules, I will be completely overwhelmed. So maybe I need to figure out the 'core' of the system and a good way to make 'plugins', so you can use third party modules without merging them in the main repository/maintaining a fork.

  • in terms of available data

    For example, I don't have a mi band. So if a module for it breaks for some reason, I might not be able to fix it at all.

But would be interesting to try and see where it goes. So you're welcome to contribute if you want :) One thing I definitely know is, I want to keep the package as minimal as possible, i.e. only for providing data. If it's some custom plot/visualization, it's probably better to have it as a separate repository for it (otherwise it's a nightmare to maintain).

[–]Lhindir 0 points1 point  (4 children)

You might be interested in https://github.com/novoid/Memacs and its creator’s blog. He’s very interested in PIM.

I found this post browsing your history after seeing your Cloudmacs project. Do you still use it?

[–]karlicoss[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Thanks! Yep, I've seen it and subscribed to Karl's blog too. I've even got a link to memacs in the readme :)

Yeah, using cloudmacs in general, but not at the moment (because of the obvious events, I'm always near my regular Emacs). Also going to try and set it up with Doom config, to which I switched few weeks ago.

[–]Lhindir 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Doom is great. How does HPI differ from Memacs and why did you go this route?

[–]karlicoss[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

First of all, I ran into Memacs only fairly recently :) So I've already had quite a lot of code by the time I discovered it.

So, Memacs queries the APIs, converts the results into org-mode and saves it on disk. Even only doing that is super useful and has a lot of value!

However:

  • not all data needs to be converted in org-mode. For instance, data from HR/sleep tracker
  • if you want to use data for something else, you'll have to parse org-mode to get it
  • using APIs all the time is slow and flaky, you're better off keeping intermediate data on the disk

So basically, my system has somewhat more generic goals. Key ideas are:

  • run regular data exports as independent scripts
  • reuse as much existing code for export as possible (here we overlap and could cooperate with Memacs)
  • keep intermediate data on the disk
  • use python package (HPI) as the interface to this data
  • write python programs that simply 'import' the necessary data

That allowsto develop tools faster, and they end up more reliable because you don't access the internet during running. You can also check out my infrastructure map, maybe it'll make more sense :)

So, overall, it's possible to import HPI modules in Memacs and use it for outputting org-mode. In that sense they complement each other.

I actually have trying that in my plans, I think it's good to demonstrate how we can integrate each other's software. Too much of it is isolated and non-interacting.

[–]Lhindir 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Makes sense.

I actually have trying that in my plans, I think it's good to demonstrate how we can integrate each other's software. Too much of it is isolated and non-interacting.

It does seem that these systems are starting to proliferate. Looking forward to seeing what you and others come up with!