To be honest, I love self-hosting tools. I think it has to do with my love of learning, but I digress. I know there are gobs of note-taking/sharing/synchronizing apps out there, many of them free, but they all lacked features, and I wanted to self-host.

What I Was Looking For

I wanted a note-taking app, with the following capabilities:

• Self-hosted
• Synchronization across devices
• E2EE (end-to-end encryption)
• Rich media note-taking ability
  • Markdown style note-taking
  • Image support
  • Code highlighting
  • Embeddable documents
  • Hyperlinks
  • Etc.
• Web-based interface
  • Desktop and Mobile capable

What I Found

After searching the interwebs for a bit I ran across Trilium and Joplin.

Admittedly, I tried Trilium first, since it boasted a Desktop-and-mobile web platform which got rid of my need for synchronization. But after a few days, I decided to move on. Trilium is an electron-based application, and it just doesn’t work as well in the browser as it does in the app. I decided I’d give Joplin a try (and I’m certainly glad I did!).

Joplin for the Win!

Joplin is pretty much everything I’ve needed for this endeavor. It even comes packed with some extra cool features like the text-based Mermaid diagramming capability. It lacks a web app, but it does have iOS, Android, and Desktop apps, which work really well. Another feature I love is nested notebooks. This allows me to keep a running daily note, in a hierarchically way. See the image below.

Another great feature is the simplicity of sync and encryption. I’ve got a WebDAV server setup which runs over HTTPS and using E2EE, everything stays nice and secure.

The post Take notes using Joplin appeared first on Jacob N Calvert.

SpeedCrunch is so incredibly feature-packed, and has such an intuitive interface, that I could hardly believe that it’s a free tool!

Working with numbers

Using the built-in functions hex and bin, numbers are easily converted into various representations. Very useful for programmers.

But, its usefulness doesn’t stop there. SpeedCrunch has a very robust conversion interface and syntax. Check out this example for converting bandwidths.

SpeedCrunch – bandwidth conversions

SpeedCrunch also has built-in functions for almost anything you can imagine. From basic trig functions to distributions and beyond, SpeedCrunch likely has it.

What to do if you don’t find the function you need? SpeedCrunch also handles variables and user-defined functions. Simply define your function, then use it like any other built-in. Go check out SpeedCrunch, it has replaced my standard calculator, and I bet it will replace yours too.

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