Standard Notes is a Better Project than Braindump
I released braindump to the world last year to much fanfare. After the initial excitement from being on HN died down, and the PR’s stopped rolling in, it became a personal project once again with very few users. Over the last few weeks I have made several attempts to fix the spaghetti mess that is the current code base by refactoring the current Flask implementation, then rewriting it completely in Django, and even started a branch to investigate rewriting the whole app in PHP using Laravel. Other commitments took precedence and Braindump remains in a fairly usable but not that special state.
Today on HN I read about a new project called Standard Notes which is the most exciting note related project that I have seen in a long time. It solves so many of the problems around cross platform compatibility that plague many other note tools. In addition its goals are to create a standard file format for simple, secure, and durable notes. Even more it has already created a platform, an ecosystem, that allows anyone to come and create additional applications, plugins, and use cases for notes.
These are some of the problems that I set out to tackle when I started braindump. After reading about Standard Notes, and using it for a few hours, I have decided that my time would be better spent contributing to that project instead of continuing to work on Braindump.
Working on Braindump has been amazing. I learned a ton, became a better programmer, and most of all had a lot of fun. I want to thank everyone who tried it, provided feedback, and sent patches. The source code for braindump will remain on GitHub but I would encourage you to try and contribute to the Standard Notes project along with me.
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Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Give Your Spouse the Gift of a Couple's Email Domain from mtlynch.io
- Have smart glasses finally hit an inflection point? from The Torment Nexus
- The McPhee method from the jsomers.net blog
- Pluralistic: LLMs are slot-machines (16 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Pluralistic: Bluesky creates the world's weirdest, hardest-to-understand binding arbitration clause (15 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Just a Little More Context Bro, I Promise, and It’ll Fix Everything from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
- The Futzing Fraction from Deciphering Glyph
- Sit On Your Ass Web Development from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Issue 91 – GDP on the blockchain
The regulator set to take on primary crypto oversight is down to a single Commissioner, and new pro-crypto PACs focus on installing more Republicans in the midterms
via Citation Needed August 27, 2025V&A East Storehouse and Operation Mincemeat in London
We were back in London for a few days and yesterday had a day of culture. First up: the brand new V&A East Storehouse museum in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park near Stratford, which opened on May 31st this year. This is a delightful new format for a mu…
via Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries August 27, 2025Generated by openring