My nvAlt setup

Introduction

My workflow for taking notes is based around nvALT, a fork of Notational Velocity with several additional features - most usefully, a preview window which renders Markdown formatting.

I make several changes from the default configuration:

To allow immediate access to my notes, I leave the application constantly running, and set a 'Bring-To-Font hotkey' (nvAlt -> Preferences -> Notes -> General)
To allow additional formatting in the preview window, I use dg2's fork of the nvalt-prime theme
To facilitate the use of Git for version control, I store notes as 'Plain Text Files', rather than in a 'Single Database', and use with the extension .md (options to enable both of these can be set in the Preferences: nvAlt -> Preferences -> Notes -> Storage. Click the plus sign to add a new extension, then the tick/check to make it the default).
To allow quick capturing of image files or screenshots, I have automator actions that quickly move screenshots or image files into an archive folder (with subfolders for year and month), and copies the markdown needed to display them to the clipboard
To allow indexing of my notes, I have a script which automatically scans through my notes, extracts metadata in a a particular format and converts it to an index
To allow access to my notes from anywhere, I git push to a repository on a VPS running Gollum

Scripts

The files in this archive provide several functions. The first (nvALT archive.workflow) was originally written by mjpost, and only slightly modified by me.

nvALT archive.workflow is an Automator workflow implementing a Finder service that moves image files to a canonical location and copies a Markdown-formatted image URL to that image, enabling each incorporation of images.
nvALT archive screenshot.workflow is An Automator workflow implementing a service that takes a screenshot, moves it to a canonical location and copies a Markdown-formatted image URL to that image. Before taking the screenshot, a dialog box appears to ask for the desired file name. Initially crosshairs will appear, allowing selection of the area to be screenshotted; pressing the space bar toggles between selecting an area or whole window. Prssing the escape button cancels without saving a screenshot.
nvalt-index.rb is a ruby script which scans through a directory of notes, and does one fo two things, depending on the arguments it receives: either it emits Markdown formatting for an index page (--tabulate), or a Grapviz DOT language representation of links between notes (--links). The index is constructed based on metadata at the top of a note in the format 'Key: Value\n' above a hashtag - for, example:

Title: An interesting talk

Speaker: Someone Famous

Location: A large lecture theatre

#talk

would be parsed, and appear as a row in a table under the subtitle 'Talk'. The order of the keys does not matter, and a key will appear as a column in a table even if it does not appear in every note containing the corresponding hashtag. Note that a table will not be listed if it contains only a single row. I have three hashtags: talk (title, speaker, venue), book (title, author, date read, genre), recipe (name, meal, source).

noteSync.sh is the script that I run with cron: it automatically re-constructs the index page, produces a PNG diagramming the links between notes, commits changes to Git, and runs a Git push/pull with a remote repository (providing both backup and scryonization between my desktop and laptop). It contains hard-coded paths that you will need to change for it to work.

Installation

Download and install nvALT.
Install the Automator workflows by double-clicking on the filse nvALT archive.workflow and nvALT archive screenshots.workflow.
Decide the path in which you want images to be stored. Save this path in a file in your home directory called .imgdir (eg. by running something like echo "/Users/post/Library/Application Support/nvALT/Media/" > ~/.imgdir at the Terminal)
Install a keyboard shortcut for the workflows. Place them under System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → App Shortcuts → All Applications. The name should be "nvALT archive" and "nvALT archive screenshot" (exactly). I use ^⌘a as my shortcut for the "nvALT archive" workflow.

Now, on any image file in Finder, you can click this shortcut (or select it from the Finder Services menu. The image will be copied to a directory within /{YEAR}/{MONTH} under the directory specified in .imgdir, and a Markdown-formatted relative path to this file will be placed on the clipboard, to be pasted into your nvALT document.

Preview template

You may also wish to enhance the default template by installing a theme such as dg2's fork of the nvalt-prime theme.

Whether you do this or not, you will need to set an all-purpose base path to the template in order to have images displayed in the preview. This path should be to the directory you set in your .imgdir file.

Git

To initialise a Git repository, open a terminal, cd into the directroy containing your notes, and run git init && git commit -m "Initial commit".

You could use a private github repository could be used as a remote, or run a Git server yourself.

Cron

Cron is a tool that runs jobs at scheduled times. To run noteSync.sh every 20 minutes, open a terminal, run crontab -e, and add the following line

*/20    *       *       *       *       ~/code/backupScripts/noteSync.sh >> /dev/null

(changing the path as necessary)