Note Taking

I have long had an interest in documenting my life.  However if you went searching for any personal diaries or journals you'd come up blank.  They don't exist.  The reasons are many.  They range from my minimalist lifestyle (if I ever had anything it's now in a landfill somewhere) to privacy concerns (what if someone discovered what I'm really thinking?).

However I'm starting to see the practical aspects of life documentation.  I could form an idea, but can't think of an immediate application for said idea.  If I document it I can come back later and see if I have a use for that information.  I need to capture thoughts that aren't actionable, but are valuable pieces of information nonetheless.

I have two obvious choices: paper or plastic.  I could buy a traditional paper journal or I could record my thoughts electronically.  The pros and cons should be obvious.  A paper journal is cheap, easily replaced, easy to use, and less conspicuous.  On the other hand with the electronic version is compact, searchable, geekier, and a little more secure.  Given my bent towards technology, a digital journal is ideal for me.

But my journey has only just begun.  What is the best electronic journal out there?  First, my requirements.

1. Easy to use.  It should have a familiar look and feel.
2. Portable.  I use Mac OS X, Windows, Unix, and Linux.  Don't tie me down.  I want to be able to edit and read my data on any platform.
3. Searchable.  Pretty much any computer format is searchable.  I want "Google-like" searching on top of being able to search the document itself.
4. Secure.  I don't mean rock solid military-grade encryption that would take government computers 1 million years to crack.  I just want something to keep casual eyes away from my notes.  
5. Date and time stamps, preferably in the Unix date format: Thu Jan 10 21:48:35 CST 2008.

I gave Tiddlywiki a test drive last year.  It meets all of the above requirements and I haven't 100% ruled it out.  What has stopped me from adopting it is it's a little clumsy.  I have to open the file, wait for the web browser to load, click around, etc.  My Nokia N810 should be here late next week.  I am going to test out Tiddlywiki on it to see how it works.  

I "grew up" using the vi editor.  I started it using during my first year of college in 1987 and have never stopped using it.  So when I decided to investigate emacs, I felt like I was cheating on my wife.  I read on a mailing list recently that emacs is a great operating system, but it lacks a decent editor.  You have to know a little about emacs to appreciate that statement.  It'd be easier to list the things that emacs doesn't do.  It has a diary and calendar.  A few things became clear to be however.  The editor is very bloated.  It's not on many systems I use.  It doesn't date and time stamp quite how I'd like.  And last but not least, I just don't have time to learn it.

I discovered a cool feature about Windows Notepad.  If you add ".LOG" as the first line of the file, every time you open it with Notepad, it's date and time stamp the last line in the file.  I've been using this at work and it's working well.  The downside is this doesn't work with any other editor.

Back in the days before Microsoft Outlook, email was stored in a plain text format.  I wrote a small shell script that allows me to type up notes in any text editor and save them in this plain text format.  What's more, since it is in a valid mail format I can upload my notes into my GMail account making them searchable.  

I leaning towards options 1 and 4, that is Tiddlywiki or the mailbox file.  What are you using for an electronic journaling application?