+
+ + Last week, When I was browsing /g/, I stumbled on a thread about taking + notes. This wasn't the first time I had seen people discuss this issue + (mostly on other websites like YouTube). When I happened upon such things, + it always struck me as odd and obnoxious. +
+ ++ My annoyance with them mainly comes from their names (and sometimes their + length). With titles like "Obsidian As A Second Brain", "Hack your brain with Obsidian" or "You're not stupid: How to learn difficult things with Obsidian", it's pretty easy to judge who the audience for these videos (and the + userbase of these apps) are: People who need to take notes to convince + themselves that they are working/learning instead of actually doing action + of working/learning. +
+ ++ Now, I can respect someone documenting actually doing something. + Here's one of my favorite + blog posts + about a guy learning a functional (a paradigm I actively dislike) + programming language I've never even heard of. But none of these + note-taking freaks do anything other than procrastinating! Perfecting + their "note-taking" setup to be just perfect. This is not exclusive to the + note-taking people but, at the very least, when you spend time being a + tinkertranny on something else, like your console emulator, shell, + Vim/Emacs, DE/WM setup etc. you actually gain some productivity. You just + need to be productive enough to offset the time spent being a + tinkertranny. +
+ ++ For me, notes are used for very simple things. I had been using Google + Keep to take/sync all my notes. It's on the of the few Google applications + that I deliberately installed on my old phone, even when I bought a new + one, I also did did the same. I was pretty happy with it, only problem + being Google itself. It didn't have many features (like version control), + but due to the fact it required no hassle to setup or sync, I was happy + with it. +
+ ++ However after, I lurked that note-taking thread on /g/ I mentioned + earlier, an emotion of needing to debloat myself overtook me. Especially + this post: +
+ +
+$ echo "buy milk" >> notes.txt
+$ cat notes.txt
+
+
+ + I needed a way to take plain text and markdown notes, without using + proprietary software with convoluted things I will never use and sync it + between my phone and my computer. The actual note-taking part was very + easy to decide: Neovim. I would be lying if I said, I didn't look for a + solution that contained both note-taking and syncing but in the + end, I decided to trust my gut instinct by going with Neovim. When it came + to syncing, ultimately I decided on Syncthing. It's OSS, it's very + lightweight, it's written in Go - a language I happen to like, it has + version control, it syncs automatically. It has everything I wanted. I + wanted a good mobile experience too, but we can't have everything we want + now, can we? In the end, I settled on Markor. It's a bit bloated for my + use case, but I couldn't find anything that looked pleasant and worked at + the same time. +
+ +