[Blog] My method of hyperfocus deep dives, supporting tools, methods, etc #77

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1. 0xdevalias

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   blog-ideaAn idea for a blog post and possibly related references/materials (use deep-dive if no blog planned)An idea for a blog post and possibly related references/materials (use deep-dive if no blog planned)

   on May 12, 2020
2. 0xdevalias

   self-assigned this

   on May 12, 2020
3. 0xdevalias commented on Jun 11, 2026

   

   0xdevalias

   on Jun 11, 2026

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   Some notes I wrote today about the history and various forms my notes / etc have taken over the years; which will likely be useful for consolidating them all at some point; but also seems somewhat relevant to the topic here, so seemed as good a place as any to leave them:

   In the past, I used to write blog posts as a way of documenting / remembering things I learned; which went through a few iterations on different platforms over the years, but eventually all got migrated into:

   • https://github.com/0xdevalias/devalias.net

   After a while, I noticed that the 'overhead' of writing up my notes led to me avoiding it, and not capturing as much as I would have liked; which at first seemed to lead to many unfinished drafts:

   • https://github.com/0xdevalias/devalias.net/tree/master/_draftsOldTumblr
   • https://github.com/0xdevalias/devalias.net/tree/master/_drafts

   Another issue I found was that sometimes I didn't really want to write up a full 'verbose' worded blog, I just wanted a 'reference list' of relevant links I found related to a topic, and snippets of context from them for why it seemed relevant / useful / etc; and this also didn't seem like it would map well to a blog post format (often these 'deepdive references' was the first form my notes took, that I would then later 'write up properly' into a blog post)

   From there I think I started just taking more local notes, which went through various iterations such as BoostNote, and Obsidian (with Obsidian being my preferred modern choice, even though I haven't actually used it for a long time now); and storing them on Dropbox:

   • ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/Notes

   While this worked quite well, I found it annoying that they were sort of 'higher friction' to access / update, particularly when I was away from my main computer (eg. at work); and also when I wanted to share them with someone, as there was no good 'accessible online' method for them without extra effort each time. I also didn't like that this method didn't really give me a good 'edit history' to see what changed when I updated things, and made me never want to delete content from the notes because then it was 'lost forever'.

   This led to me starting to create 'DeepDive' GitHub issues in my blog repo; and just edit the main description/comments, which maintained an edit history, and made the notes available online; as a bonus, this also let other people leave comments on them, which has been an interesting way to connect with likeminded people:

   • https://github.com/0xdevalias/devalias.net/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20(%22%5BDeepDive%5D%22%20OR%20label%3Adeep-dive)

   At some stage I sort of stopped doing that as much (maybe forgot it existed); and/or found the effort of editing very large markdown notes in GitHub's UI (without any syntax highlighting/etc) to be annoying; and I bounced between local Obsidian notes, or just not capturing things as much.

   Then at some point I wanted the online shareable aspect again, and started using GitHub gists for my deepdive notes; which also had similar benefits to the older GitHub issues method, in that they were linkable, maintained an (arguably better) edit history, and people could still leave comments on them:

   • https://gist.github.com/0xdevalias

   These GitHub gists are still my main form of capturing these deepdives today; and I usually refer to them as 'deepdive gists' as a general concept. Because these deepdive gists have become my main method, it's the first place I look for notes / references I wrote; and I have some helper scripts / etc to make it easier to quickly jump to them. Because of that, and the added friction of looking in other places like my older style GitHub issue deepdives, sometimes I have not realised that I already had relevant content, and ended up creating a new/repeated deepdive gist for that topic.

   Because I have used so many different methods over the years, things have become a bit scattered / outdated overall, and it's hard to know where 'all of the things' are in a useful way. I have thought about trying to consolidate them all into a GitHub repo (quite likely my blog repo itself, if that wouldn't end up too scattered, otherwise maybe an Obsidian notes repo or similar); but I have never quite got around to it because of the 'perceived effort' of doing so properly.

   Similar to my deepdive content, there is also a bunch of more generic / non-tech 'writing' / 'musings' that I have done over the years that is scattered around places like:

   • '~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/! Docs !/!Personal!/! Glenn Created !'
   • DeviantArt
   • Apple Notes
   • Facebook Posts (which I have tried to start tagging with #writing #musing or similar + saving to a 'writing' collection to try and make them easier to find)
   • https://github.com/0xdevalias/devalias.net/tree/master/_writing

   I started to consolidate some of that into that _writing folder in my blog repo; and the eventual plan is to continue/finish doing so, but again, the 'perceived effort' has made me not get around to it yet.

   There are probably things that might be worth capturing into a single canonical GitHub repo as well too at some stage; eg. some Twitter tweet threads or similar.