Organizing the Detritus of Life

I am on a quest to find the optimal to-do list and the perfect organizer for my pack-rat nest of quotes, figures, writing conventions I like, vocab to learn, McSweeny's lists to plagiarize, etc. To-do list be damned, but I feel that I have finally worked out a good work-flow for an organizer. It finally gelled tonight!

I found TiddlyWiki while searching for wiki software that I could host locally. Throw in a better skin here. Then get a Firefox add-on that basically makes this notebook your clipboard.

I am stoked that:

• TiddlyWiki is not a wiki at all--no configuring SQL databases, managing Php installation, etc. Everything required to run the little bugger is included in a ~300k html file.
• My crap will be consolidated into one place, searchable, taggable, linked back to its internet source, easily backed up, and easily brought online should I chose to do so later.

I feel like I finally found something where I can easily build my own internal reference desk--quotes from books and articles I have actually read, rather than a flood of info off the net. The marginal effort to organize it all seems only slightly above writing it down by hand (eg tagging quotes) but makes the resulting info ten times more useful.