Monday funday

Just kidding, it was a good day but this post is going to be about the veritable explosion of "networked" note-taking apps that have come out as of late.

Roam Research. Obsidian. Org-Roam. Athens. Dendron. Logseq.

I've tried half.

I tried Roam first, as you do. I still have a grandfathered-in free database in there. I used it, then I didn't, then I did again, then I didn't. There were a couple of things holding me back: all the crazy features you accidentally bump into while using it, the less-than-ideal aesthetic, and the fact that all my data is in their black box of a database and it is hard to get data out or into it.

So I switched to Dendron. It matched my previous method, which was a bash script, then later a Ruby script, that created a new markdown notes file for the current day, based on a template. Dendron was really easy to import stuff into it, as it also keeps everything in local markdown files. Drag and drop. And working in a text editor instead of a web page has its advantages, for sure.

At work, we use Roam pretty extensively. This got me back into the form factor of the web app, as well as into one of the basic techniques for using the tool--just put everything in daily pages and let the links do their work.

So it left me wanting more out of Dendron, and even though I knew I could make it work, I tried out Logseq. Logseq is very much a Roam clone, except it looks nicer (solving for one of my issues), and you store everything in a git repository (solving for my other issue). 

So far I'm really hyped on Logseq. Their Roam import is flawless. I've only tested the waters in terms of importing some of my older stuff. Their "markdown" format is weird and will require that I reformat my existing markdown files to work. This might drive me back to Dendron.