Congrats to slugmax on his new house! It's nice to hear 
about things working out like that. 

lntl, I hope you've made it into the new place safely after 
the great tire 'adventure' (right before moving no less)!

               *          *          *

Tonight, my wife and I are making some kind of Thai chicken 
soup. I'm sure she'd kill me for that description. I'm just 
the sous chef, washing and cutting vegetables. The soup 
tastes amazing already. It goes over rice or vermicelli, and 
I can't wait, but I have a feeling that it needs to cook for 
a while. Sigh. Still, all in all, a nice way to spend a 
Saturday evening. I'm sitting in the kitchen, phlogging away 
on my phone.

I read some old phlogs yesterday and one of them (can't find 
it now, despite some serious searching[0]) made referenece to 
'life in a single text file'. So I started looking into the 
concept: the idea of having all of your PIM in one text 
file. Years ago, I used to keep my schedule and notes at 
work in a single Word document, but it never occurred to me 
to have my contacts in there too.

I think I'd prefer to create three separate links on the 
desktop. One would be to the calendar, one to the contacts, 
and one to a folder full of notes in individual text files, 
sorted by last saved. The latter would replicate the 
behaviour of most notes apps I have used.

The calendar as a text file makes a lot of sense to me. I 
always switch my calendar to agenda mode anyways, so I could 
put the repeating events in a weekly format, and either add 
non-repeating events in temporarily or have a section below 
for non-repeating events.

Something like this seems reasonable:


DAY	TIME		EVENT		LOCATION

M	10:30-12:00	xxx		xxx
	12:00-13:00	xxx		xxx
	16:00-19:00	xxx		xxx
	
T

W

T

F


ONE-TIME EVENTS

DATE		TIME		EVENT		LOCATION


The idea of using text files like this really appeals to me 
because proprietary formats annoy me and I try to avoid 
anything that a thoughtful person can't understand with a 
reasonable amount of attention and effort. That's why I 
liked Slackware so much with its editable init and config 
files. I also want the portability of being able to take 
the files anywhere, to any system I choose.

Another thing that has my interest these days is the 
possibility of an 'actual Linux' handheld device, preferably 
with phone capabilities. I'm waiting to see what the Pine64 
phone will be like. It was announced a couple of months 
ago.[1] There are others in development too, but they look 
cost prohibitive. I've never been one to throw insane 
amounts of money at individual pieces of tech. I've also 
been looking at the Raspberry Pi creations at n-o-d-e.net[2] 
If the version 2 device had calling, SMS, and GNU utilities, 
you'd be set. There are modules that add 3G to the pi, and 
videos of people who have working setups on youtube, so it's 
definitely within reach.

Speaking of n-o-d-e, some of you have discussed 
decentralized networks in your phlogs before, and the 
n-o-d-e site has an interesting link to a decentralized 
browser-based project called VoluntaryNet[3] that may be of 
interest. Certainly the philosophy espoused in both 
places[4] reflects some of what I've read in gopherspace.


[0] Edit on January 11, 2019: It was tengu's phlog at 
    gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~tengu/Low_Tech_Pim_s01.txt

[1] https://itsfoss.com/pinebook-kde-smartphone/

[2] https://n-o-d-e.net/zeroterminal.html
    https://n-o-d-e.net/zeroterminal2.html
    https://n-o-d-e.net/terminal_3.html

[3] https://voluntary.net/

[4] https://n-o-d-e.net/dc02.html