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Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by latortuga on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:20AM (#22046222)
This used to exist, it was called OhLife. They would email you every day and say "What's happening in your life" and "Hey do you remember this?" with one random email from your history included. I always liked this service and was sad when they shut down. Pretty sure I started using it due to a post right here on HN.
Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by vonnieda on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @12:54PM (#22047280)
I wrote WhoaLife ( https://github.com/vonnieda/WhoaLife ) when OhLife shut down. It's self hosted for privacy and designed for Heroku Free Tier. Takes about 15 minutes and no code to deploy.

I've been using it since OhLife shut down and it completely fills the gap for me.

I recently modernized the code a bit, ported it from Mongo to Postgres and improved the selection of the random entry that is sent to you, but I haven't pushed those changes yet. They'll go out in the next week or so.

Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by seancsnyder on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @03:57PM (#22049170)
I did the same thing, and even called it by the same name...woahlife :-)
Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by vonnieda on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @05:45PM (#22050023)
That's such a strange coincidence! Do you still use it?
Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by masukomi on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @03:17PM (#22048822)
your readme still mentions needing a mongo for scheduling if not on heroku. not sure if that's something that didn't get changed or still true.

Also, for those of us who never used OhLife the readme doesn't really tell me what it does.

Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by vonnieda on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @03:21PM (#22048869)
It still uses Mongo on Heroku for now - the Postgres changes haven't been pushed yet.

And yes, good point on the README not explaining what it does. Thank you. I'll fix that.

Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by Pyrodogg on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:33AM (#22046362)
I also used to use Oh Life and loved it. When it shut down I started using DailyDiary [0] which launched an Oh Life importer on Oct 8th, 2014. That's _before_ Oh Life even shut down on Oct 15th, 2014.

I've been continuing to use DailyDiary since.

I have an apps script that automatically adds a draft response to these prompts, which still starts with an "Oh Life, ...." salutation. The script also adds the day's weather report to the bottom of the draft. My todo list has an item to add top and random tracks from my scrobbled music listening for the day.

In the evening I fill in the body of the response with reflections from the day and off it goes.

[0] https://www.dailydiary.com/

Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by lancer on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:46AM (#22046552)
I have a feature in the fast track queue that sounds like the "draft response" you're inserting with script. Ping me - I'd love to get your input on that. lance at dailydiary.com.
Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by obiefernandez on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:26AM (#22046279)
The OhLife replacement I wrote is called AhhLife and I have maintained it as a personal side project for many years now. https://ahhlife.com
Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by j45 on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:34AM (#22046382)
Ahhlife seems pretty capable except it doesn’t seem to handle photo attachments or logins only via gmail.
Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by obiefernandez on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:43AM (#22046509)
Any google mail works. I'm thinking maybe replacing the whole login system with email-only authentication like DailyDiary uses.
Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by j45 on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @03:03AM (#22052467)
Sorry, typo - I meant to say email logins weren't possible which you picked up.

Email only authentication would presumably outlive any provider.

I bought into the MyOpenID SSO excitement once, it worked pretty well until it went away. After that, back to email accounts, identity providers like Google/MS/Twitter don't end to know everytime you're logging into your app.

Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by the_watcher on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:26AM (#22046285)
The shutdown of OhLife caused the "hole in [his] life" that spurred PG's request.
Re:Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email by BooneJS on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @02:48PM (#22048520)
I exported OhLife l and imported entries to Day One. https://github.com/BooneJS/OhLife2DayOne