Keeping a Tarot Journal

[Chiriku]

Originally Posted by Carla

If you really want a completely secure journal, why not just use Microsoft Word and save it to a memory stick? Then you could tuck the stick in a little box or somewhere between uses. Or if you have your own personal laptop, save somewhere that is password protected directly on the computer.

Well, the thing is that I do like the all the visual layout options and perks provided by online blogs and so forth. I always have multiple images in an entry--both scans or photos of the cards and readings, and various other images I find online.

The other thing I greatly value and don't want to do without is a tagging system. Right now, I have a tag for each of the 78 cards as well as a tag for each deck I use, plus thematic tags about my life ("career," "religion," etc).

If there were some sort of system that does all of this without being online/hackable, I'd switch to that. Anyone know of anything? Is Evernote online or is its own software?

Then there's always the valid point that storage on hardware, whether flash drive, external hard drive, or computer, is always subject to physical damage, loss, theft.

On the other hand, I feel ambivalent about exclusively online things like blogs or cloud drives because I'm not in control of that and who knows what could happen in the future? I picture all sorts of apocalyptic scenarios such as major Google/Penzu/Cloud Drive hacks or loss of data due to technical bugs. Another problem is that I'll never have a printable record for myself (printing blog pages with all their pictures and backgrounds and links is just impracticable), and I have found that I greatly enjoy and learn from flipping through my old journals.

I don't know yet what I'll do. As of this past week, my tarot blogging is halted due to my security paranoia and this year I have gotten so much in the habit of writing up each self-reading I do that this has put a hold on my self-readings as well. I don't feel right doing a reading and not recording it somewhere.

I feel the same way as you about writing with pen and paper, now. It's almost physically uncomfortable to write for more than a few minutes. Very great shame, in my view. I lamented it in one of my first threads here, in fact.

[a_gnostic]

Originally Posted by Chiriku

...The other thing I greatly value and don't want to do without is a tagging system. Right now, I have a tag for each of the 78 cards as well as a tag for each deck I use, plus thematic tags about my life ("career," "religion," etc).

If there were some sort of system that does all of this without being online/hackable, I'd switch to that. Anyone know of anything? Is Evernote online or is its own software?...

Evernote has full tagging support. You can assign as many tags as you want to each note, and you can select notes based on whether they have one or more specific tags. (You can filter notes by notebook, groups of notebooks, tags, and text within the note: any or all of these criteria at the same time.) You can create new tags at any time -- while tagging -- including at the point in time when you create a new note using the Evernote web clipper.

I also tag extensively. For example, I can select only those notes with the tags "tarot-trump-Death" and "tarot-deck-RWS" which shows only those notes having both of those tags assigned. The attachment is an image showing my Tarot-related tags within Evernote. (The numbers after each represents the number of notes having that tag assigned.)

Evernote stores everything on your device (computer, phone, tablet, etc.), however, you can optionally synchronize your notebooks on their servers. The advantage of that is that everything is available on each one of your devices: add or make a change to a note on one, and the addition or change appears on the others.

Even if you do use their (free) synchronization service, when you create a notebook, you can choose whether the notebook is stored exclusively on your device or whether it is synchronized with the others.

Also, you can choose to share notebooks with other people on an individual basis. I do that with several groups of people: whenever any of us adds, removes, or modifies a note in one of these shared notebooks, the change appears on all of our devices as a group.

(BTW, I have nothing to do with Evernote other than being a very happy user.)

[Chiriku]

a_gnostic, thanks for that information about Evernote, and the helpful attachment showing the tags.

I downloaded the free version and will give it a whirl.

I like the fact that we are not forced to have information stored online (i.e. that we can choose a local notebook instead of a synchronized one). And it appears that there is no limit on the size or number of local notebook files because they are not being uploaded and thus not taking up space on the server (correct me if that's wrong).

I'm not crazy about the fact that, as in other programs like iTunes, the data can be backed up only in a file proprietary to the program and thus cannot be accessed later (on a new computer/hard drive) without importing back into the software and running the latter. I'd prefer there to be an additional option of exporting to PDF or exporting the text/charts or numbers to Word or Excel; we would lose the formatting and so forth, but at least we would have the text we authored.

Also, I can't seem to find a way to edit (resize, etc.) images after I've dragged them into a Note. I looked through their Help desk/Knowledge Base and couldn't find anything on that. If I have to size images to my specifications in some other program before I drag them into Evernote, that will severely limit my ability to use images and thus to get the most out of a tarot journal.

[a_gnostic]

Originally Posted by Chiriku

I'm not crazy about the fact that, as in other programs like iTunes, the data can be backed up only in a file proprietary to the program and thus cannot be accessed later (on a new computer/hard drive) without importing back into the software and running the latter. I'd prefer there to be an additional option of exporting to PDF or exporting the text/charts or numbers to Word or Excel; we would lose the formatting and so forth, but at least we would have the text we authored...

Actually... from within Evernote on your Mac or PC, right-click "All Notebooks", and you'll be able to export everything in either XML or HTML formats.

If you choose "Evernote XML format", everything goes into a single file that looks like HTML with added metadata for Evernote stuff (such as tags).

If you choose "HTML" format, it basically creates a web site of sorts containing all of your content, one HTML file per note with per-note directories to hold each note's media (image, etc.) files. You can then view index.html with a conventional web browser to see a list of clickable links to each note. (Each note gets its own browser/web page.)

I do not believe either export format preserves notebook structure, however, you can export notebooks or any group of notes individually, and if you're meticulous with your tagging (e.g. assign a tag for each notebook to all notes in that notebook), you could reconstruct the groupings later from the tags. (Incidentally, HTML export does record tags as meta keywords in the HTML headers.)

BTW, I just now exported all 5,300 of my notes into a 1.9GB ".enex" (Evernote XML) file. I do that now and then for safekeeping, then compress that .enex file. (A catastrophic sync error could wipe things out, after all.)

...it appears that there is no limit on the size or number of local notebook files because they are not being uploaded and thus not taking up space on the server (correct me if that's wrong)...

That's pretty much the case, however, once, I did encounter a single-note size limitation of 50MB. :-) When you do sync your files, oddly enough, I do not see evidence of a cap on how much storage you can use, overall. What they limit is the amount of data you can upload per month.

Also, I can't seem to find a way to edit (resize, etc.) images after I've dragged them into a Note...

I have a minor problem with that as well, but more annoying to me is the inability to (temporarily) resize and reflow text for reading purposes. The "WSIWYG" note/text editor on the Mac has font size controls, but the iPad version doesn't. Or, on the Mac, you can select text and use the system shortcuts (e.g. Shift-Cmd-+) to enlarge the font in their editor, however, again, that doesn't help on the iPad where you can't do that.

Evernote has been enhancing their product continuously since release, and it's reasonable to expect them to incorporate ways to deal with these issues. (Perhaps we should ask the cards how well they'll address things like this in a timely manner?)

I'm going to sound like a walking advertisement for Evernote, but I should mention one more thing: if you pay for their Premium service, then any PDFs or images in your notes are indexed and searchable -- and that generally includes handwritten text. (Only synchronized notes get this, because the indexing software runs on Evernote's servers.)

[Winterchild]

Had to just let you know that there is a Beta release of Evernote Web Clipper for Firefox which works!!!!

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s13/s...03b1ba47ac29cf

[Chiriku]

a_gnostic, that information about backing up one's notes is good to know; thanks for that.

I like hearing other people's enthusiasm for things. I am pro-enabling. My mind is open to being persuaded and it's the task of the other to do a good job of persuasion. If they succeed, I jump on board.

Something annoying, though...On my computer, I keep getting a little pop-up on the bottom righthand side of my desktop that says "Synchronization complete," even though I am closed out of anything related to Evernote.

[a_gnostic]

Originally Posted by Chiriku

...Something annoying, though...On my computer, I keep getting a little pop-up on the bottom righthand side of my desktop that says "Synchronization complete," even though I am closed out of anything related to Evernote.

Evernote has a "helper" that runs in the background to facilitate clipping things from other apps to Evernote. I believe you can choose whether that launches when you log in... the settings are in Preferences for the main Evernote program on the Mac. YMMV on Windows.

[Radim]

One option for keeping a tarot journal is www.tarotlog.com. It allows anyone to have a free personal tarot journal online.

[Winterchild]

Originally Posted by Radim

One option for keeping a tarot journal is www.tarotlog.com. It allows anyone to have a free personal tarot journal online.

Thanks for this Radim!! I had no idea it existed!

Does anyone know which deck they have featured in the photo on the front page? I like the look of it!

[Sulis]

It's the Hallmark Tarot - if you want to discuss it could you please do that in Tarot Decks rather than here?