Joplin Notes and Github
This week has mostly been about finally getting round to learning Git and how to use Github and I’m very grateful for the tutorial here on the W3 Schools Tutorial series.
One of the many joys of Github is the use for digital gardens like this one , my own second brain of things I am learning or interested in.
Git repositories can be used to generate static websites using generators like Hugo or Hexo.
Hugo is written in Go and Hexo relies on Node.js but they both do the same thing in generating static websites from Markdown - simple text code to render pages with rich css in a quick and flexible way.
If you’ve made it this far, then you will no this site is built with Hugo from text files edited in Sublime text editor.
The whole static site idea is gaining traction as there are no databases to maintain for content and render/build times are lightening fast.
In these weird and chaotic times it’s nice to play with something a bit simpler and old school too. I’m increasingly disillusioned with Social Media too so if I want to integrate what I build with that, it’s up to me.
Joplin Notes
This week I have mostly been enjoying Joplin
Joplin is an open source note-taking app. Capture your thoughts and securely access them from any device.
I’m already a massive fan of Obsidian so why another note taking app?
It’s more about what tool for what job. Obsidian is almost absurdly customizable and it satisfies the inveterate tinker as to how you create YOUR workflow. It’s great of course but perhaps a but overwhelming for newer users.
Joplin on the other hand IS flexible too but in different ways:
It’s a much less busy interface and set up nicely for sharing projects.
Joplin has a similar cloud sync feature as Obsidian but the difference I found is that you can run a Joplin server to manage your own data and syncing between devices and run this as a Docker application on your own Homelab server. Nice! Liberating!
Another interesting feature I made use of this week was Joplin Publish. This converts your selected Markdown notes with a #blog tag and pushes them to a Github repository and github pages where they are then rendered by Hexo as a static site.
In the space of a couple of evenings I built askchadwick.uk as a little work project site for Environmental Health/Housing stuff and work interests. The only cost was a domain name which you can quickly set up to point at the github.io pages. Easy and quite fun. You can then use Joplin notes to progressively add more content. It’s also quite separate from my more sprawling Obsidian notes/Digital Garden which is just .. me.
Interestingly for me with Joplin, you can create separate user profiles which have independent plugin settings so this allows me the flexibility to make separate note repository and a separate github account and repository for another blog. This one is going to be more for local issues.
