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:

1. Create a single Foam workspace for all your knowledge and research by following the "Getting started" guide.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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!