๐Ÿง  Sharpen your thinking with a second brain
โœจ

๐Ÿง  Sharpen your thinking with a second brain

Oct 26, 2023ยท
Ria Stevens
Ria Stevens
ยท 2 min read
Image credit: Unsplash
blog

Create a personal knowledge base and share your knowledge with your peers.

Hugo Blox web framework empowers you with one of the most flexible note-taking capabilities out there.

Create a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.

Use it as your second brain, either publicly sharing your knowledge with your peers via your website, or via a private GitHub repository and password-protected site just for yourself.

Mindmaps

Hugo Blox supports a Markdown extension for mindmaps.

With this open format, can even edit your mindmaps in other popular tools such as Obsidian.

Simply insert a Markdown code block labelled as markmap and optionally set the height of the mindmap as shown in the example below.

Mindmaps can be created by simply writing the items as a Markdown list within the markmap code block, indenting each item to create as many sub-levels as you need:


```markmap {height="200px"}
- Hugo Modules
  - Hugo Blox
  - netlify
  - netlify-cms
  - slides
```

renders as

- Hugo Modules
  - Hugo Blox
  - netlify
  - netlify-cms
  - slides

Anh here’s a more advanced mindmap with formatting, code blocks, and math:


```markmap
- Mindmaps
  - Links
    - [Hugo Blox Docs](https://docs.hugoblox.com/)
    - [Discord Community](https://discord.gg/z8wNYzb)
    - [GitHub](https://github.com/HugoBlox/kit)
  - Features
    - Markdown formatting
    - **inline** ~~text~~ *styles*
    - multiline
      text
    - `inline code`
    - Math: $x = {-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac} \over 2a}$
```

renders as

- Mindmaps
  - Links
    - [Hugo Blox Docs](https://docs.hugoblox.com/)
    - [Discord Community](https://discord.gg/z8wNYzb)
    - [GitHub](https://github.com/HugoBlox/kit)
  - Features
    - Markdown formatting
    - **inline** ~~text~~ *styles*
    - multiline
      text
    - `inline code`
    - Math: $x = {-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac} \over 2a}$

Highlighting

Highlight important text with mark:

<mark>Highlighted text</mark>

Callouts

Use callouts (aka asides, hints, or alerts) to draw attention to notes, tips, and warnings.

Use the > [!NOTE] syntax to create a callout.

> [!NOTE]
> A Markdown aside is useful for displaying notices, hints, or definitions to your readers.

renders as

Note

A Markdown aside is useful for displaying notices, hints, or definitions to your readers.

Or use the warning callout type so your readers don’t miss critical details:

Warning

A Markdown aside is useful for displaying notices, hints, or definitions to your readers.

Did you find this page helpful? Consider sharing it ๐Ÿ™Œ

Ria Stevens
Authors
Ria Stevens (she/her)
PhD Candidate

I am a fourth-year Computer Science PhD student at Rice University, advised by Dr. Maryam Aliakbarpour and Dr. Tasos Kyrillidis. My research interests lie in theoretical computer science and statistical learning theory. I am particularly interested in problems involving differential privacy. For the winter 2026 semester, I am a visiting graduate student in the Federated and Collaborative Learning program at the Simons Institute in UC Berkeley. I am also passionate about teaching and recently developed and taught a discrete math course for incoming freshmen in Rice’s CS-RESP program.

Before coming to Rice, I completed my Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Statistics at McGill University, where I was fortunate to be advised by Drs. Elliot and Courtney Paquette.

Outside of my research, I enjoy playing sports, travelling and discovering new coffee shops. I play ultimate frisbee for Torque, Rice’s women’s club team, and I previously played varsity ice hockey for the McGill Martlets.