Vim notetaking tips

[@jandrews377]

This is next level. 20 years as a dev, im super impressed.

[@jandrews377]

This vid sent me on a journey. Thought id stop back and just share that I now think that a better tool for Conner may be org-mode in Emacs. Although vim is a crazy good text editor, I now think that his workflow may be better served with Emacs. Thoughts? Promise, im not trolling.

[@charmsword]

I was watching this video a year or so ago, and there was this simple beauty in the way you managed science texts. At that time I was still struggling with MSWord. I spent some nights that week familiarizing myself with Vim. A year passed, and all my lectures, work notes and my PhD text are in markdown/latex. I use plaintext even for musical notation (w/ Lilypond). Thank you, Conner, this really inspires to use computer more reasonably and beautifully. And the great thing is that structurizing texts in MD/LateX does much good for the texts themselves, even for making notes at lectures. Somehow I started to get much more useful information in my notes, while everything inspiring and interesting was left for me to listen to and write down in my mind, not in texts.

[@charmsword]

btw, still using Vim, still learning :) I'm a PhD in musicology now, writing my Master's and working up to a second PhD (theology). Vim is indispensable for speeding up academical work, very convenient to use with .bib files and Pandoc.

[@keycapslapper7080]

This is probably one of my favourite vim screencasts ever

[@scottbaronxxx]

Given your personality, I can only assume you will be reading this asap. I can hear in your voice and other traits that you have embarked on a career/profession that you are well suited for. Please study hard and become a doctor unless that has already been accomplished. The world is a better place when intelligent people like you focus on their goals and endeavor to help the world by giving of yourself. Much of society glamorizes the medical profession when they hear some of the numbers doctors can earn. A good doctor is worth every penny. I wish you all the best much success in all of your endeavors. Thank you.

[@scottbaronxxx]

Continued success and health in the new year and for years to come. thank you for being a caregiver its not for everyone; lay people find medicine glamorous because there are occasions where there are financial rewards. however, they don't take into account the years of hard work, long nights, to get a medical degree. Notwithstanding, many people you work with are not happy to see a doctor because physical complaints are nothing to laugh about. thank you

[@SouvikHaldarmustang]

Comments like this is a gift to humanity! Appreciate it, sir.

[@kenziemackinnon7618]

Hope medical school is still going well/residency is going well. It has been so cool to see someone in the health sciences (Neuroscience major) taking vim to this extent. It's something I enjoy using for writing academic papers and really want to adopt it for more things, but I've been hesitant for note taking. This solution is really tempting so I really appreciate the system you've built.

[@ismailbello513]

Oh wow, a doctor running linux, vim and scripting?!?! Next time I need to see my GP...

[@astrophysx7523]

lol

[@KimMD.]

Wow. We should be friends. I am in my final year of medical school and am also into programming. Still not sure how to effectively merge the two skills

[@SnoreKiller1]

@@KimMD. hahaha in last year medical school too!!!

[@zachm9705]

@@KimMD. I was in school for programming before I dropped out months ago. Programming's skillsets will serve you well when combining medical school. If a task is repetitive it can be automated. If there's data that needs to be further analyzed Python is great for that. I've thought about going to medical school but I'm weary of the exorbitant cost.

[@CliffordFajardo]

Beginning my journey to learn Vim today. Start my new job in 2 weeks & I figured, heck why not. I watched this video over a year ago & I was impressed then and still now of your fluency with Vim. Thanks for the video!

[@JonathanMHethey]

This is really nice. It demonstrates very well how super powerful vim is

[@andreabadesso11]

You are a total genius, this is one of the most beautiful thing I have ever witnessed

[@CliffordFajardo]

The fact that you thought about "stable formats" for data (your notes) is great (2:15). More on this topic: pragmatic programmer (Chapter 16: Power of Plain Text ....txt, markdown etc..)

[@LundMr1]

Dude... I was totally blown away by this. It's amazing :D

[@tanmanhnguyen5932]

This is actually very good. You proved your incredible talent and I'm sure you will make a good doctor. Keep working hard, and I wish you luck.

[@dsj87]

just wanted to thank you for your sharing your knowledge. been adapting parts of your system step by step over the last couple of months and it definitely payed off investing some time into setting everything up. i am so used to vims efficency that working with other text editors feels like hell...

[@shalpin]

Thanks for taking the time to do this. Great food for thought on effective note-taking . Would be nice to see a follow up again, to see how your thoughts have changed over time.

[@johnk8174]

I just received notification from my alma mater that I graduated med school 20 yrs ago. Man, that was a long time ago. I hope things are going well for you.

[@JosuahDemangeon]

Quite a whole year later, I switched to emacs (full time with a 600 lines init.el while cleaned a lot) and finally came back to vim. One strong argument for this was this single video: I liked to see someone use vime to edit biology-like notes (medecine class share a lot with molecular biology). Thank you again for sharing it!

[@kloppervok]

+Josuah Demangeon Have you tried Spacemacs or Evil mode? I'm working on developing work flows and tools similar to those in this video, but using a Org mode in a Vim/Emacs hybrid, and with many more features like flash card generation for use in Anki and instant information retrieval, e.g. inserting definitions, Wikipedia summaries, etc. directly into the buffer.

[@JosuahDemangeon]

Yes, I did :), thank you for the tip. I finally came back to vim + tmux + bash, because I missed the minimalism with very small tools an very few lines of codes. I took much of inspiration of spacemacs for my configs and workflow. But one sure thing is that I will come back to Emacs some day. To check if I still prefer vim. And then, I will try your plugin. :) No wait, I will try it right now!

[@JosuahDemangeon]

+truthling Well, it seems that it is not on github yet. I will just be patient. :)

[@albertroswell]

maybe a little late, but you never stop learning, you will LOVE fzf, specially the :Ag command (if you use the silver searcher) or :Rg for rgrep

[@martshal]

Phenomenal, I've been trying to come to a useful note-taking solution; I'm considering returning to academia for an advanced degree in chemometrics after many (many!) years of away, and this looks like an excellent starting point. Thanks for posting this, I'll definitely be raiding your github page for some code and ideas!

[@jrswab]

tweak addict, I feel you man! I'm always tweaking something :D

nice to see a different perspective. i always used vim for coding only

[@apenasmeucanal5984]

as a medical student, this is just what i needed :D thanks!

[@Paretozen]

I submit to thee, you have beaten my note taking techniques hands down :)

[@tommyodom4212]

yeah it seems like Emacs (org-mode + evil-mode) seems to be the same thing but with much more functionality. Cool video though, glad to see that the style itself in valuable enough to be generated whole clothe on your end.

[@avimehenwal]

Amazing video ... Today I am going to boom box my notes on VIM

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

Gonna have ´cat /dev/urandom´ in a terminal window or tmux pane all the time now, just to intimidate onlookers.

[@TheToric]

DundeeDriver cmatrix works pretty darn well.

[@TheToric]

Lorem Ipsum i just discovered lolcat recently, and im having way too mutch fun with it.

[@Soulthym]

Nothing can beat `while [[ 1 ]]; do sl | lolcat; done`

[@90hijacked]

*Look mommie I found some friends atlast!*! while true; do while read line; do i=$(( i >= $(tput lines) / 2 ? 0 : ++i )); echo -en "$(tput sc; tput cup $(( $(tput lines) - ( $(tput lines) / 4 ) - $i )); tput sgr0; echo -n $line; tput rc)"; sleep 0.02; done <

[@decaf4me2]

That was fascinating. Thanks for sharing. Best of luck with your career.

[@MorrowSind]

Very motivating and Nicely done.

[@markmiller8464]

Conner, I wonder if you would still use a text file approach to notes with some research now showing people learn and retain better taking notes by hand. Combining hand notes with a tool like scanning to Evernote would give you the ability to search your hand notes solving one of the big factors in using your approach. Curious on your thoughts.

[@AhmedThaking]

It is an old video and stuff but if you use mkdocs for rendering your notes you can easily search through them as well

[@FernandoBasso]

Very nice stuff. Congrats man! A true inspiration to me.

[@andreygonyaev6011]

Great video! Quick question, what plugin or shortcut did you use to quick show recent files at 8:28?

[@garkeinen7034]

That's impressive! As you say: anyone can edit vim to his liking but I think I'll rather adopt to vimwiki plugin instead of fumbling around with the scripts. 1. I simply wouldn't be able to pull this of 2. indeed it is "a waste of time" writing perfect scripts when the plugin also does it pretty good!

[@andreipopescu7636]

The video is very informative and insightful, but... the intro was just genius! Music and all, so cool. What is this soundtrack?

[@connermcdaniel3395]

Thanks! It's a song by Lymbyc Systym called Prairie School

[@someonestolemyname]

7:23 completely summarized how linux ruined my school life. I am actually writing my diaries in Vim which is just logs for my own crazy ideas and philosophies and I want them to be searchable when I need them. Did not use any markup though, didn't think I need it.

[@luciano9250]

Please could you somehow re-put online your blog notes attached to this video description? Also thanks for this brilliant come up

[@KimMD.]

Wow. We should be friends. I am in my final year of medical school and am also into programming. Still not sure how to effectively merge the two skills

[@christianchadwick7185]

I just installed Linux on a VM machine for work… idk why this is so interesting and addicting - that I want to begin more taking st work like this. Is it the customization aspect? The aesthetic?

[@bendomino8476]

Wow, at 3:47 are you using a plugin or command to do bold and italic or just native vim language? i understand a little bit with V + $ to block until the last char, but how you automagically add ** and __ between them? -- You rocks!

[@GautamSharma-un3cr]

Hey Conner, I'd suggest you to try out spacemacs and org-mode if you haven't already. emacs (especially spacemacs config and org-mode) is mind blowing

[@jmisc]

Another disadvantage, not an image based notetaking, And unfortunately we process information better visually... Am debating whether to hold on Evernote and OneNote..

[@14u2ponder]

Just curious: how did you get a ":" instead of a "$" and also what are you using to get the status bar at the bottom. I like this setup.

[@Yaxqb]

Very cool setup. Have yet to see a non-computer scientiest using tech in this manner IRL. Personally, I use html and Asciimath, and it's a terrific alternative to LaTeX if you have earlier knowledge with html and not LaTeX. ✌️

[@jasonguto]

Conner - thank you for this vim video. I have been trying to grasp with the same topics. I think you missed the Techie bug... are you 100% sure that you are a medical DR? Keep these videos coming...great job

[@saulaxel]

Jason Guto (

[@ND-oz5lt]

No hes a dr to files

[@remusomega]

How are you taking notes now you are in residency?

[@chewie481]

the links in the description don't work for me. replacing the / at the end with a .html fixes it, but I thought I'd let you know.

[@TheOctoberwu]

very helpful!! thanks for sharing the tips! :)

[@Budaeku]

Can't understand counting the letters and using v8l instead of just ve. Counts are cool, but for me they usually require too much mental overhead.

[@zohaybkhan]

Are you an engineer or a doctor ?... You are studying Med-school and yet you know scripting ? WoW !!

[@mwgkgk]

this is the kinda doctor I want

[@liesdamnlies3372]

Knowing how to use computers effectively is now a necessary fundamental skill for almost any job. Besides, using plain-text files in open formats is just easier to work with in general. And *actually* future-proof.

[@zohaybkhan]

However, medical doctors have not much need to use computers efficiently. Their work does not require them to.

[@liesdamnlies3372]

*However, medical doctors have not much need to use computers efficiently. Their work does not require them to.* Nice sentiment, but untrue. Hospitals now depend heavily on IT to manage all their paperwork. Doctors are more often filling forms on a computer, not paper. Some modicum of knowledge is required, as is some understanding of opsec so they don't unwittingly compromise that network. Hell, my GP even uses a computer for everything now.

[@KevinPartridge]

No. Very true. I'm married to a doctor and I have performed quite a few security tests of hospitals. They are some of the least computer literate folks in the professional world. There is a difference between having and making use of a computer and doing so with fluency. The key with +Md. Zohaib Ali Khan's comment is the use of the term "efficiently." The maker of this video is concerned with efficient use of a computer at a level you rarely see outside of engineers and mathematicians. Nearly ever human in a developed nation uses a computer (phone, car, tv, tablet, etc) but few people learn scripting, use a real text editor, or pretty much stay in the command-line like the maker of this video.

[@capitangreen2921]

Could you make a video on how to setup something like this?

[@JosuahDemangeon]

+Capitan Green Its dotfiles seems to be here: github.com/connermcd/dotfiles And this may be its notetaking system: github.com/connermcd/notes

[@putnum01]

Great video! How did you get your folding to work?

[@robertwhite3503]

This Pomadoro not GTD. But excellent anyway.

[@michaelanhari6354]

Hey Conner, Relatively new to VIM/bash (I use zsh right now) and I'm having some trouble getting your systems to work (pulled it from your github page). It looks like I need the font.tex file you have in your notes directory in order for it to work. Any idea on how I can get this up and running? thanks! :) Great video!

[@JosuahDemangeon]

+Michael Anhari Two month after your post this file appeared: github.com/connermcd/notes/blob/master/fonts.tex

[@XorAlex]

How do I write math equations in markdown documents? I guess I should use Latex insdertions for that. How do I use Pandoc to convert such a document to pdf? I've tried "pandoc input.md --latex-engine=xelatex -o result.pdf". It converts markdown, but not Latex.

[@XorAlex]

I figured it out. Just needed to use the correct syntax for Latex insertions, e.g.: $f(x) = x^2$

[@briannielsen2002]

Really cool video!

[@RichellyItalo]

Someone know the font family used in this video?

[@RichellyItalo]

@@connermcd Thank you!

[@pubudithamanathunga812]

Mad Respect ... Doctor who uses Linux

[@bryanhaakman6723]

would you say that, all the time spent on customizing your note-taking was worth it looking back?

[@nksdp9776]

Hello, thank you the video is great !

[@samyak039]

why have you made markdown with .txt file instead of .md ???

[@PupleCowCsdc]

Hi, Conner, great video! one question: how do I navigate PDF outline / table of content (as you have demostrated in the video) in Zathura? What command did you use? Thanks!

[@PupleCowCsdc]

Thanks Conner!

[@mixcocam]

Are you running linux on your laptop?

[@iamarawn]

Conner, would it be too much to ask for your Vi config and your notes as well? I'm just an IT guy but I like to read these things. If the local university would allow me to visit classes for free, I would on my days off.

[@CodyLuu]

+iamarawn I think you can access it via his GitHub in the description.

[@rajasekharkoduri]

May I know the font name? I would like to use it. It is very good.

[@rohanghige]

Any updates in 2019?

[@connermcd]

Updates in 2020!

[@neilkanakia]

@@connermcd Still waiting

[@connermcd]

@@neilkanakia kzbin.info/www/bejne/pInKoqGPi6atgc0

[@rellify3]

Do you mind sharing what plugins you utilize for markdown writing in VIM? I have been looking for one that handles things like tables and list completion but I haven't found anything great, and I need a starting point.

[@rellify3]

Thank you for the response! Do you just manually do bulleted lists and managing the indentation? I don't know why but I'm very hung up on this issue since moving from Sublime text. You're obviously productive with it though. It just doesn't work for me, carriage returns indent lists all funky.

[@TheIkarus93]

do you think it is still possible to take notes with a similar system in a physics or math class, with all mathematical formulas ?

[@dacodastrack7271]

TheIkarus93 Yeah, I totally jive with this. This is what I've been doing for all my engineering class notes. With some snippets and what not, putting in LaTeX even for significant math becomes reasonable. Also, to Conner McDaniel, when going through your disadvantages I totally agree with the getting distracted! I totally jived with you when you were talking about wanting to tweak your customizations or work on other projects --- I sometimes start to do that and then fall behind in lecture... Being able to export to LaTeX and have very nicely organized notes, however, is something that I don't think I'll give up for a while, hahahaha.

[@JohnBastardSnow]

Very cool. Have you tried vimoutliner? Also, speaking of learning, do you use mnemonics or Anki (flashcards with spaced repetition). If you use mnemonics, it would be interesting to know what techniques do you use. For students, if don't know it already, you might want to check the mnemotechnics forum. It's the place for the learners, memory champions and anybody who is interested in learning. When we study, most spend of our time is spent creating our flashcards, figuring out how to come up with our mnemonics, and working out our retention schedules, not doing the actual memorization itself. I hope to automate this process as much as possible with vim, vimoutliner and vimium. Btw, vimium is a super cool browser extension. It makes researching a lot more productive.

[@jayshartzer844]

***** Quite a late comment to reply to but there is AnkiDroid for Android now for free. They have been doing good work with it so it might be worth a second look.

[@kloppervok]

Jon Wise I would love to hear about your system. I am on mnemotechnics forum as well. It looks like Vim is a potentially game changer for organizing notes and putting them into Anki, enhanced with mnemonics.

[@kloppervok]

+Jon Wise I've been working on developing work flows and custom tools using Org mode in a Vim/Emacs hybrid called Spacemacs. I still have a long way to go with my goals, but I've gotten to the the point where I can generate flashcards from my notes that are written in Org mode in a markdown outline format very similar to what Connor shows in this video.

[@farahjabeen8457]

Doctor + linux geek. Great!!

[@zohaybkhan]

How do I get that character as eol which I see you using ?

[@kennetheggelund749]

If you don't mind me asking, what (and how) are you using to insert the file name, date, and ++ at the top of the files?

[@zohaybkhan]

Kennet Heggelund​ probably this is letting it function github.com. I am not 100% sure.

[@narutoaerowindy4972]

put this in .vimrc . " set list lcs=tab:▸\ ,eol:¬ "

[@CharlesTersteeg]

Naruto Aerowindy add 'set list' above that line.

[@o0phuoctai0o]

what colorscheme do you use to highlight specific format like **bold**

[@JosuahDemangeon]

***** For custom colorscheme, like he posted here (connermcd.com/blog/2013/02/06/a-color-suscheme.html), you can go here to create a theme that suit your needs: bytefluent.com/vivify/ [EDIT]: Direct URL to the raw file on GitHub raw.githubusercontent.com/connermcd/dotfiles/master/.vim/colors/hipster.vim

[@TheNaradien]

Hey --- are you running Linux on a MacBook? If so, why are you , and would you recommend it for others?

[@IntegralMoon]

You could just use brew on the mac though, that tends to work quite well. There are very few incompatibilities that you will run into.

[@WinterWeaver]

why not use vim-wiki?

[@svhuwagv2965]

What is the music in the into?

[@svhuwagv2965]

@@connermcd Thank you!

[@jon1867]

with a vim setup this well thought out who need good handwriting anyways

[@andresorrego6778]

You're amazing!

[@BeatSyncBytes]

You're brilliant

[@levijohansen2603]

Amazing!

[@whisnuariesa.3975]

doctor, please do more vim tutor[in your spare time], thank you sir.

[@connermcd]

Am planning to do some vim tutorials coming up

[@whisnuariesa.3975]

@@connermcd God bless you, sir.

[@remusomega]

Yoooo M4 here

[@krisnrg]

I want to be my doctor lol I used to work at a electronics retail store. The horror when we would get doctors and lawyers that just didn’t not have a clue about anything tech. I mean it put fear into me lol

[@gery49]

Goddamit you are brilliant o.O I feel like such a noob now...

[@RombusEvilBones]

Epic

[@gatekeeper258]

Have you looked at evil emacs org mode? :)

[@virgiliomurilloochoa2884]

Dude seriously état da fuck hahaha, the only think I Can Say is congratulations

[@StephenKim422]

I am also a student in the college of engineering, and this video was extremely inspirational. I'd start this right away only if it wasn't this fatass laptop I'll be carrying. What model have you been using and how's its weight?

[@ari_archer]

I just have a text file that I take notes in lol

[@ayanyasirshaikh7860]

Indian best math

[@ayanyasirshaikh7860]

Yasir azmi

[@spikespiangel]

try latex

[@JosuahDemangeon]

Thank you for sharing this: it *will* help me! If you're stuck with a tablet or a phone, you still can use stackedit.io to take notes offline. This webapp load and save the notes offline in your browser's cache, and sync everything online to Google Drive, Dropbox, GitHub... It is not pandoc's markdown, but it have $LaTeX$ support. Depending of what software and version is on your phone and tablet, you may be able to make this to be able to launch it as a normal app even without it opened on the first place. I will try markdown next year and try to share tips, but yours may be good enough to go!

[@BLACKNIGHTCODING]

You may be missing your calling sir.

[@ihebbendebba2978]

wait, are you a doctor?

[@porevdavaa]

Emacs, org-mode.

[@liesdamnlies3372]

But but...but....emacs... :

[@seta-san2149]

the more i watch these videos the more delusional i think linux advocates are. no normal person wants anything to do with console/terminal/command prompt. Vim will never be a normal person's text editor of choice.

[@MoreChannelNoise]

Your thumbnail photo is so dark I thought you were a black guy.

[@Al_Gepe]

Nice video but too long, cut to the chase!

[@azmo101]

Amazing !