For the most time I just kept tabs open or used the post save feature in Reddit, Mastodon and Lemmy. That way I collected dozens if not hundreds of things that were vaguely interesting but I never got around to looking at them anyomere and when I was looking for something specific I had to check multiple places, each with less than optimal search functions.
Last year I decided to just create a personal wiki. MediaWiki is FOSS, easy to set up (especially with docker), accessible from all my devices and has a huge community because of Wikipedia. I have specific articles for different topics:
a list of things I might want to buy at some point
lists for books, movies, shows and games I want to read/watch/play in the future
a whole category of cooking recipes in a format that’s more readable than the original versions where you have to scroll through ten pages of the author’s life story, translated into my native language and with notes on what I changed from the original
articles for projects or questions that I never quite solve (“Where to buy custom printed LEGO minifigs?”, “What scripting languages are easy to embed in a C# project?”, “What’s that weird bug that causes zfs to throw errors when my HDDs take a bit too long to wake up from sleep?”) with partial answers.
articles about my friends with some basic facts like birthday, favorite color, favorite animals, allergies and things we’d like to do together at some point
and many more
Whenever I find an interesting link, I check if I already have an article that it fits into and if not, I create one. That way everything is roughly grouped by topic, I can leave notes and I have a nice search function and even a history that keeps references to stuff I edited or deleted.
Edit: the downside is that saving a link takes a bit longer, especially when I’m on my phone. Because of that I occasionally still save links the way I used to and if I still think they’re relevant after a few days, I move them to the wiki.
I also run a personal wiki, but instead of MediaWiki I chose DokuWiki as it’s much lighter and uses plaintext instead of databases for storing information. It fits me well and there are plenty of plugins as well.
The personal wiki idea is so insanely nerdy and obsessive and might just be the thing that pushes me to start self-hosting stuff. That’s such an amazing idea.
Even more so when you consider that my initial impulse to set it up was to be a better host when my friends visit. Like the stereotype of staff at high end restaurants and hotels taking notes on their guests’ preferences. I kept forgetting important stuff like allergies and now with the wiki, I have everyone’s favorite drinks and snacks ready, plan dinner that everyone likes, that kind of stuff.
From there it was just a tiny step to use the wiki to keep track of other stuff that would otherwise sit in the back of my brain or in some badly-maintained list until I forget.
For the most time I just kept tabs open or used the post save feature in Reddit, Mastodon and Lemmy. That way I collected dozens if not hundreds of things that were vaguely interesting but I never got around to looking at them anyomere and when I was looking for something specific I had to check multiple places, each with less than optimal search functions.
Last year I decided to just create a personal wiki. MediaWiki is FOSS, easy to set up (especially with docker), accessible from all my devices and has a huge community because of Wikipedia. I have specific articles for different topics:
Whenever I find an interesting link, I check if I already have an article that it fits into and if not, I create one. That way everything is roughly grouped by topic, I can leave notes and I have a nice search function and even a history that keeps references to stuff I edited or deleted.
Edit: the downside is that saving a link takes a bit longer, especially when I’m on my phone. Because of that I occasionally still save links the way I used to and if I still think they’re relevant after a few days, I move them to the wiki.
I also run a personal wiki, but instead of MediaWiki I chose DokuWiki as it’s much lighter and uses plaintext instead of databases for storing information. It fits me well and there are plenty of plugins as well.
The personal wiki idea is so insanely nerdy and obsessive and might just be the thing that pushes me to start self-hosting stuff. That’s such an amazing idea.
Even more so when you consider that my initial impulse to set it up was to be a better host when my friends visit. Like the stereotype of staff at high end restaurants and hotels taking notes on their guests’ preferences. I kept forgetting important stuff like allergies and now with the wiki, I have everyone’s favorite drinks and snacks ready, plan dinner that everyone likes, that kind of stuff.
From there it was just a tiny step to use the wiki to keep track of other stuff that would otherwise sit in the back of my brain or in some badly-maintained list until I forget.