I have almost always had a wiki in one form or another to help me keep track or remember things that I just don’t use everyday. It’s been a very useful tool for me, not only at home, but also in the work place. TiddlyWiki stands out as one of my better wiki experience as I could just keep it on a thumb drive in my pocket.
My thoughts on keeping data in a manageable wiki have changed recently. This is due to a post I read at mnmlis titled: Store everything in text files.
The argument it is that text files are not only faster to open, but if you have a modern operating system the contents are completely searchable. On my Mac for example, I can be almost anywhere and press Command + Spacebar and I am presented with a search field. I can just start typing whatever it is I am looking for. If I am looking for my Corned beef recipe I just have to type “Corned beef” and my text file with my corned beef recipe comes right up.
I do keep all my text files in a directory called “Wiki” located in my Documents directory. I also try to keep the titles of my documents somewhat standard. For example, the title of my Corned beef recipe is “Recipe – Corned beef” so if I search for the name of my recipe only Corned beef will show up. If I search for just “Recipe” I get a nice list of every recipe I have saved on my computer.
The whole thing is a lot faster than any wiki I have ever used and has been working out just great for me so far.
Comments are closed.
[…] recently wrote about keeping a simple wiki with just text files. Text files are fast to open and easy to work with. In fact you can open a text file on any kind of […]