5typos.net
debugYYDDD Obsidian Notes
Currently, anytime I get a bug report, or something not working, I create a note with the following naming format debugYYDDD Short Description. For examples, if I was trying to figure out why the feed to mastodon wasn’t working, I’d create:
debug23177 Social tag to mastofeed fail.md
While I abandoned using day of year as a way to track my daily notes, it works great for sequential files likes this. Specially for looking back — I won’t remember the day/month something failed, but I do seem to have a notion that it was the first quarter of the year, so a file called debug23090, gives this context.
More important, this habit helps me in two ways:
- Keep a log file of my debugging process: Which is an amazing way to stay focussed, and return to where I was if interrupted.
- In days/weeks/months be able to remind myself what was the issues: Old systems break in known ways, and this practice really saves a log of time in the long run.
I now want to experiment with using Peek and Poke as prefixes for items that aren’t related to something broken, but to denote iterative work session on ongoing projects.
You’d think it would be better to manage these top-down: open projects view and start from there — but realistically, I tend to simply start with some atomic note, and go from there. Usually from some prompt like an idea (internal), or communication (external). Only deadlines seem to force me to look at projects as the starting point of the day.