🧠 Sharpen your thinking with a second brain

Oct 26, 2023·
Brian Jalaian, Ph.D.
Brian Jalaian, Ph.D.
· 2 min read
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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
  - blox-plugins-netlify
  - blox-plugins-netlify-cms
  - blox-plugins-reveal
```

renders as

- Hugo Modules
  - Hugo Blox
  - blox-plugins-netlify
  - blox-plugins-netlify-cms
  - blox-plugins-reveal

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/hugo-blox-builder)
  - Features
    - Markdown formatting
    - **inline** ~~text~~ *styles*
    - multiline
      text
    - `inline code`
    -
      ```js
      console.log('hello');
      console.log('code block');
      ```
    - 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/hugo-blox-builder)
  - Features
    - Markdown formatting
    - **inline** ~~text~~ *styles*
    - multiline
      text
    - `inline code`
    -
      ```js
      console.log('hello');
      console.log('code block');
      ```
    - 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.

By wrapping a paragraph in {{% callout note %}} ... {{% /callout %}}, it will render as an aside.

{{% callout note %}}
A Markdown aside is useful for displaying notices, hints, or definitions to your readers.
{{% /callout %}}

renders as

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:

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

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Brian Jalaian, Ph.D.
Authors
Associate Professor
Dr. Brian Jalaian is an Associate Professor at the University of West Florida and a Research Scientist at IHMC, where he leads cutting-edge work at the intersection of machine learning, AI assurance, and systems optimization. His research spans large language models (LLMs), AI model compression for edge deployment, uncertainty quantification, agentic and neurosymbolic AI, and trustworthy AI in medicine and defense. Formerly a senior AI scientist at the U.S. Army Research Lab and the DoD’s JAIC, Brian has shaped national efforts in robust, resilient, and testable AI. He’s passionate about building intelligent systems that are not only powerful—but provably reliable. When he’s not optimizing AI at scale, he’s mentoring the next generation of ML engineers or pushing the boundaries of agentic reasoning.