So I decided to start using Foam. I see much potential in it as a thought organizer, so I thought I might as well give it a go.

After the initial setup, which went smoothly thanks to the awesome documentation that came bundled, I decided to port the massive list of links that I’ve been accumulating and start cataloging them just for safekeeping. Right off the bat, I noticed that I had way too many links and that they were exported as a single HTML file representing my browser bookmark folders.

And thus, my first documentable problems arose:

• is it possible to convert HTML to markdown?
• can I split a single markdown file into smaller files (by title, subtitle, or something like that)

The first problem was easy enough to fix, as there were some free online converters. But even if those weren’t around, I think I could have managed with some find & replace.

The second problem was trickier, because I didn’t want to code a complex grep nor did I want to mess around with the filesystem. Luckily, I found the following link to be very helpful and got to learn about gcsplit.

The basic gist is that you can split a file using

gcsplit --prefix='subfile_prefix' --suffix-format='subfile_suffix.md'  file_to_split.md "regex pattern to match" "{*}"

In the end, I decided to not bulk import my links and instead start with a clean daily slate, but it was a fun beginning nonetheless.

# A trained ear

I stumbled across this video on my daily Youtube venture, and couldn’t help but wonder how there’s a whole world to which I am completely oblivious. Imagine hearing a mundane sound such as your laptop shutting down and being able to identify how that sound is made or how to reproduce it.