A few months ago, I talked about my note-taking problem. In that post, I talked about my new solution: QuillPad and Obsidian connected via Nextcloud. A few days after that, I talked about how much I was loving Obsidian and the setup in general. That was June.

Now, I wrote in that first blog post about how I have trouble sticking with a note taking solution. I like trying new things and I’m very picky when it comes to how this all works. I want it to work exactly like I want it to work, and if something doesn’t… well that shiz has to go.

Surprisingly, four months or so later, my setup when it comes to note-taking is largely the same. I still love Obsidian. That thing is amazing. I don’t use more than 10% of what it’s capable of, but I still love it. Quillpad too, has been very good. I’ve found that it does get a little messy, but if I’m diligent with my organization, it does great. I love the markdown support. My only real complaint is that it requires a title for the notes. I wish it would inherit the first line of the note if the title is left empty. But it is a small quibble give how well the rest of it works.

The real problem I’ve had is with Nextcloud. I’ve written about some of this over on The Linux Cast’s blog. The syncing that Nextcloud offers is, as the kids would say, mid. It has bugs, is often unstable, and doesn’t work at all like I want it to. I’ve tried everything to get this thing to work. I’ve stopped syncing my images, as that kept causing issues; I changed my note naming convention to ensure that there was no chance I’d run into some arbitrary naming rule that Nextcloud enforces. Nothing worked. The straw that broke the poor camel’s back came when I opened my Obsidian one day and found that all of my notes, which had been carefully organized, had all escaped their folders and were just in the main directory. Why? Dunno. I reorganized them, bitching the entire time, and thought “well, it’s just a one time thing, I’ll write it off as whatever”. I walked away and did something else. When I came back, the notes were once again all outside of the directories where I put them, and had somehow duplicated themselves so there were multiple copies all over the damn place.

I was pissed, as you might imagine.

So, I knew I needed a new solution. At first, the old Matt reared his head, and started to look at a completely new note taking solution. I looked at Notesnook, Evernote, and a few others. But, after I calmed down, I decided that I would just replace the thing that had to be responsible for all the madness: Nextcloud. It saddened me, because I feel like I was the one that failed. No doubt, whatever happened lies with a failure on my part. But, I need my notes to stay stable. I have the setup, THE SETUP, the one I’ve been working towards for literal years. I can’t have something ruin that for me.

So, I’ve moved on from Nextcloud as a syncing option for my notes. I will keep it running since my mom uses it for backup, but otherwise, I’m done with it. I decided that I’d go with something that has one job: Syncthing.

I’ve used Syncthing before. All I remember is that it made my fans run hard and threatened to make my laptop light itself on fire. I may have tried to use it to transfer a few TB, and it didn’t like that so much. My bad. I hear good things about it though, so, I figured I’d give it another try.

Guys. It is effing awesome. The syncing!! It is GLORIOUS. It works flawlessly, and instantaneously. Exactly how I want it to be.

I have it setup so that I’ve solved some of those flaws I have with Quillpad. To solve the mess problem, Quillpad now saves to a dedicated folder so that my mobile notes are all in the same spot. It will no longer see all of my notes, which was beyond messy. I still haven’t figured out how to get it to work well without a title, but I will. I may contact the dev and see what can be done. I’ve also made a new Obsidian vault that sees the entire synced directory on my desktop. I’ll keep using that as I have all these months. Transferring over wasn’t that hard, and it allowed me to clean some things up. I’ve also installed syncthing on my server so that I have a backup of my entire notes directory. It’ll also get caught by two different borg backups, so there will no longer be any chance of my notes going bye-bye.

So far, and granted it’s only been a day, this is so much better. Will it stay that way? I hope so. I love this little setup, and Syncthing feels like it has perfected it. Add in my new, and serious, obssession with field notes and my note-taking has elevated to an entirely new level. I’m even having fun taking notes again, something that hasn’t been the case for a long time. I’ve always been a note-taking nerd. This is going to make it so much better.