I can’t decide whether my habit of weaving Emacs—especially Org-Mode—into every hobby of mine is a blessing or a curse sometimes. One of those hobbies I keep coming back to is fragrances. A few weeks ago I started putting all flacons I own on a denote page - after a friend of mine was surprised that I didn’t have a spreadsheet or a Parfumo account. We were sampling fragrances together when they asked how I keep track of the bottles I own and the ones I’ve liked over the years - turns out: I simply didn't!
Could This Be A Capture Template?
Since this is a lisp and emacs focussed blog, and my denote Zettelkasten is already the place where I keep track of my hobbies, like books, recipes, music and pretty much everything else in my life - instead of signing up to yet-another-web-service like Parfumo, I did the obvious thing: I started outlining a capture template to track parfumes with:
("h" "New Fragrance Entry" entry
(file+headline "~/docs/denote/20250315T200825--my-fragrances__fragrances_personal.org" "My Fragrance Collection")
"** %^{Fragrance Name}
<%(format-time-string \"%Y-%m-%d\")>
:PROPERTIES:
:BRAND: %^{Brand}
:PARFUMER: %^{Parfumer}
:TYPE: %^{Type|Eau de Parfum|Eau de Toilette|Extrait de Parfum}
:TOP_NOTES: %^{Top Notes}
:MIDDLE_NOTES: %^{Middle Notes}
:BASE_NOTES: %^{Base Notes}
:ACCORDS: %^{Accords}
:SEASON: %^{Season|Spring|Summer|Fall|Winter}
:OCCASION: %^{Occasion|Casual|Formal|Evening|Office}
:RATING: %^{Rating|10|9|8|7|6|5|4|3|2|1}
:WHERE_BOUGHT: %^{Where Bought}
:END:
\n")which would then result in entries like this:
* My Fragrance Collection
** Barénia
<2025-03-16>
:PROPERTIES:
:BRAND: Hermès
:PARFUMER: Christine Nagel
:TYPE: Eau de Parfum
:TOP_NOTES: Miracle Berry, Bergamont
:MIDDLE_NOTES: White Ginger Lily
:BASE_NOTES: Patchouli, Akigalawood, Oak
:ACCORDS: Woody, Patchouli, Warm Spicy, Oud, Fruity, Floral, Citrus, Sweet, Earthy, Fresh Spicy
:SEASON: Spring, Summer
:OCCASION: Casual
:RATING: 10
:WHERE_BOUGHT: Hermès Paris Sèvres
:END:for each of my parfumes.
Another Thing I Like Besides Fragrances And Emacs: Statistics
Now that we have a capture template and the logged the first few fragrances, we want to define a few helpful functions to make running statistics on this easier. I'm reusing a function here that I use for my booktracking statistics that roughly counts over properties:
#+NAME: my-count-org-property-values
#+BEGIN_SRC elisp :tangle yes
(defun my-count-org-property-values (property)
(let ((notes-count (make-hash-table :test 'equal)))
(org-map-entries
(lambda ()
(let ((notes (org-entry-get (point) property)))
(when notes
(dolist (note (split-string notes ", *"))
(puthash note (1+ (gethash note notes-count 0)) notes-count))))))
(let ((sorted-notes
(sort (mapcar (lambda (k) (list k (gethash k notes-count 0)))
(hash-table-keys notes-count))
(lambda (a b) (> (cadr a) (cadr b))))))
(cons (list property "Count") sorted-notes))))
#+END_SRCAs an example: This allows us to compile a list on whom our favorite parfumers are:
#+BEGIN_SRC elisp :noweb yes :results value
<<my-count-org-property-values>>
(my-count-org-property-values "PARFUMER")
#+END_SRC
#+RESULTS:
| PARFUMER | Count |
| Christine Nagel | 3 |
| Philippe Romano | 1 |
| Ane Ayo | 1 |
| Christian Dussoulier | 1 |
| Alberto Morillas | 1 |
| Maurice Roucel | 1 |
| Beatrice Piquet | 1 |
| Alain Astori | 1 |
| Jean-Claude Ellena | 1 |
| Ralf Schwieger | 1 |
| Nathalie Feisthauer | 1 |
| François Demachy | 1 |
| Calice Becker | 1 |or what accords we like:
#+BEGIN_SRC elisp :noweb yes :results value
<<my-count-org-property-values>>
(my-count-org-property-values "ACCORDS")
#+END_SRC
#+RESULTS:
| ACCORDS | Count |
| Woody | 10 |
| Citrus | 7 |
| Sweet | 6 |
| Fresh | 6 |
| Aromatic | 6 |
| Powdery | 6 |
| Musky | 6 |
| Floral | 5 |
| Amber | 5 |
| Warm Spicy | 4 |
| Green | 4 |
| Fruity | 3 |
| Earthy | 3 |
| Fresh Spicy | 3 |
| Vanilla | 3 |
| Balsamic | 3 |
| Aquatic | 3 |
| Rose | 2 |
| Smoky | 2 |
| White Floral | 2 |even though this seems to give away that woody and citrus notes are present in many fragrances, as they seem to be some of the most common base notes.
I also wanted to see which brands rate the highest for me... even though I think there would be a smarter way and more terse way to do this:
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :results value table :exports both
(defun wilko/fragrance-brand-ratings (key value)
(let ((brand-ratings (make-hash-table :test 'equal)))
(org-map-entries
(lambda ()
(when-let* ((brand (org-entry-get (point) key))
(rating (org-entry-get (point) value)))
(cl-destructuring-bind (sum count) (gethash brand brand-ratings '(0 0))
(puthash brand (list (+ sum (string-to-number rating)) (1+ count)) brand-ratings)))))
(cons (list key "Average Rating")
(sort (mapcar (lambda (brand)
(cl-destructuring-bind (sum count) (gethash brand brand-ratings)
(list brand (format "%.2f" (/ (float sum) count)))))
(hash-table-keys brand-ratings))
(lambda (a b) (string< (car a) (car b)))))))
(wilko/fragrance-brand-ratings "BRAND" "RATING")
#+end_src
#+RESULTS:
| BRAND | Average Rating |
| Acca Kappa | 9.00 |
| Dior | 9.00 |
| Essential Parfums Paris | 9.00 |
| Hermès | 9.80 |
| Jil Sander | 8.00 |
| Kenzo | 8.50 |
| Nautica | 7.00 |Agenda
I decided to add my fragrances note to org-agenda-files, this not
only allows me to see the date where the fragrance was added, which in
most cases is approx. the purchase date, so I can keep track of when I
buy parfumes:
Friday 14 March 2025
20250315T200825--my-fragrances__fragrances_personal:The Musc :fragrances:personal::
20250315T200825--my-fragrances__fragrances_personal:Sakura Tokyo :fragrances:personal::it also opens up the possibility of introducing agenda commands to run specific filters:
(setq org-agenda-custom-commands '(("l" "Top-Rated Scents" tags "+RATING>9")))which would compile me a list of all fragrances I rated 9/10 out of 10:
20250315T200825--my-fragrances__fragrances_personal:L'Ombre Des Merveilles :fragrances:personal::
20250315T200825--my-fragrances__fragrances_personal:Eau des Merveilles :fragrances:personal::
20250315T200825--my-fragrances__fragrances_personal:Barénia :fragrances:personal::
20250315T200825--my-fragrances__fragrances_personal:Terre d'Hermès :fragrances:personal::I consider adding another capture template for samplings/potential future fragrances to buy in the future and would probably also want to toy with the idea of tracking when and to what occasion I wore which fragrance in my journal entries and run statistics against that. I think this was an evening well spent and way more fun than creating that Parfumo account.