A little script for making daily writing really easy.

daily.sh

#!/bin/bash

# <CONFIG>

# set to non-null to allow any user to read your dailies
# if you don't set this or daily_group, only you can read your dailies
public_dailies=

# set to a group name to allow that group to read your dailies
# (this is ignored if public_dailies is set)
daily_group=housemates

# set this to non-null to put your dailies in git
use_git=y

# set this to non-null to use automatic generic commit messages
# (this is ignored if use_git is empty)
auto_commit=y

# don't forget to set this in your .bashrc (but here is ok too)
EDITOR="$EDITOR"

# </CONFIG>


# stop executing after any error
# (avoids squashing but may leave entries uncommitted etc.)
set -e

if [ -n "$public_dailies" ]; then
    daily_perms=644
    dir_perms=755
    daily_group="$(whoami)"
elif [ -n "$daily_group" ]; then
    daily_perms=640
    dir_perms=750
else
    daily_perms=600
    dir_perms=700
    daily_group="$(whoami)"
fi

if [ -n "$EDITOR" ]; then
    # user-configured preferred editor
    editor="$EDITOR"
else
    # this is what you get for not setting your editor
    editor="$(which nano)"
fi

if [ ! -d ~/dailies ]; then
    mkdir ~/dailies
    chmod $dir_perms ~/dailies
    chgrp $daily_group ~/dailies
    cd ~/dailies
    if [ -n "$use_git" ]; then
        git init
    fi
fi

old_dir="$PWD"
cd ~/dailies
today="$(date +%F)"
touch $today
chmod $daily_perms $today
chgrp $daily_group $today
$editor $today
if [ -n "$use_git" ]; then
    git add $today
    if [ -n "$auto_commit" ]; then
        git commit -m "Commit automatically generated by daily writing script."
    else
        git commit
    fi
fi
cd $old_dir

Of course the actual right place for the configuration stuff is in a ~/.dailyrc or something, but I'm not worried about that while I'm just running it out of my ~/bin.