I’ve collected notes everywhere over the years - notebook, Gmail, Google Keep, text files on the desktop, uncountable scraps of paper. I could keep going, but I won’t.

I moved my blog to Hugo at the start of 2020, and the convenience of writing posts in markdown made me realise it’s a perfect format for note taking.

Around the same time I was experimenting with self-hosting Joplin to collect notes and make diary entries, but too many work arounds were required for what was ultimately meant to be simple and maintainable.

Looking for a markdown editor for Linux that had reasonable features, particularly the ability to paste images into text, led me to Typora. It’s a really clean experience, but closed source. I always feel like I should use open source, but at the time, there was nothing that really fit the bill. I’d like to say Typora got a lot of use, but given my general ambivalence towards blogging, it didn’t.

Roll on a few months, through the first COVID lockdown of 2020 (assuming there’ll be more as of September 2020), and I find Zettlr, an open-source product. This thing is a knowledge management system first, markdown editor second. It seemed pretty solid, but the day after I installed it, a friend randomly linked me to Obsidian.

At this point I find out about the Zettelkasten system of knowledge management upon which these two systems are based, and partake in too many hours’ internet spelunking finding Andy Matuschak’s notes and discovering digital gardens. I was hooked.

Currently, at the start of my journey, I can’t see myself getting anywhere near the level of integration of other Zettelkasten enthusiasts, but the idea of note taking in the same tool that I can write a diary entry, a wiki post or a web page really piqued my interest.

Going back on my tendency towards open-source, I’ve primarily switched to Obsidian for my notes. Whilst Zettlr is the open-source alternative, it’s currently lacking the polish of Obsidian, and has a few bugs/quirks that I can’t quite get on with. That said, I have the free version of Obsidian at home (personal use), so I use Zettlr for taking quick notes at work where I don’t need any of the bells and whistles the proprietary tool provides. Zettlr seems to being in rapid development though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this changes soon.