Taking notes and keeping track
The sheer amount of information on the internet is insane. And, just speaking for myself, the amount of information I want to consume also seems enormous.
A lot of great things exist and the only thing keeping me from learning it is knowing its name.
And I think Foam is one of those awesome things.
Foam is a note-taking framework of such. It's part a nice collection of markdown extensions and part something new.
Basically, Foam turns VSCode into a very powerful node linked markdown note-taking power machine.
What I find really cool about this project is that it ditches the regular folder structure, and forces you to link notes by theme and content.
This ends up creating a connected graph of knowledge, where everything about buffer-overflow is linked even though it's written on your notes about C# and Haskell.
From the webpage:
Whether you want to build a Second Brain or a Zettelkasten, write a book, or just get better at long-term learning, Foam can help you organize your thoughts if you follow these simple rules:
- Create a single Foam workspace for all your knowledge and research by following the "Getting started" guide.
- Write your thoughts in markdown documents (I like to call them Bubbles, but that might be more than a little twee). These documents should be atomic: Put things that belong together into a single document, and limit its content to that single topic.
- Use Foam’s shortcuts and autocompletion to link your thoughts together with [[wiki-links]]\ (<-- this is how links look), and navigate between them to explore your knowledge graph.
- Get an overview of your Foam workspace using a Graph visualization (⚠️ WIP), and discover relationships between your thoughts with the use of Backlinking.
Foam is like a bathtub: What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
I use Foam for keeping track of:
- What new cool buzzwords I hear,
- The status and problems I run into for the different projects I work on,
- The different tech blogs and related technologies I write about.
Give it a swirl!
And let me know what you think about Foam, and having a second brain in general. Feel free to comment and ask questions!
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