An atlas of my own

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For years my GPS routes from hikes sat in a folder on disk, and the places I'd been or wanted to go were mostly in my head. I'd never found a tool that held both.

Phone apps already do a lot of this. Organic Maps and OsmAnd both keep bookmarks and GPS routes on the same map, and Trail Sense covers the outdoor utility side. What was still missing was a cross-platform option, since the three above are phone apps.

Ferd is what I ended up with. One map for the pins and the lines, running on my own machine.

Under the hood it's small. About 5 MB of code, made of one web page, a small Python API, and a SQLite database behind it.

Nothing about it is technically novel. What it gives me is the thing I'd been looking for, which is one map for both the dots and the lines, reachable from any device.

<div class="link-buttons"> <a href="https://github.com/polybjorn/ferd" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> <svg fill="currentColor" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-hidden="true"><path d="M12 .297c-6.63 0-12 5.373-12 12 0 5.303 3.438 9.8 8.205 11.385.6.113.82-.258.82-.577 0-.285-.01-1.04-.015-2.04-3.338.724-4.042-1.61-4.042-1.61C4.422 18.07 3.633 17.7 3.633 17.7c-1.087-.744.084-.729.084-.729 1.205.084 1.838 1.236 1.838 1.236 1.07 1.835 2.809 1.305 3.495.998.108-.776.417-1.305.76-1.605-2.665-.3-5.466-1.332-5.466-5.93 0-1.31.465-2.38 1.235-3.22-.135-.303-.54-1.523.105-3.176 0 0 1.005-.322 3.3 1.23.96-.267 1.98-.399 3-.405 1.02.006 2.04.138 3 .405 2.28-1.552 3.285-1.23 3.285-1.23.645 1.653.24 2.873.12 3.176.765.84 1.23 1.91 1.23 3.22 0 4.61-2.805 5.625-5.475 5.92.42.36.81 1.096.81 2.22 0 1.606-.015 2.896-.015 3.286 0 .315.21.69.825.57C20.565 22.092 24 17.592 24 12.297c0-6.627-5.373-12-12-12"/></svg> GitHub repository </a> </div>

Highlights worth keeping

Sat, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Highlighting passages in a book never did much for me. Once a highlight was sitting inside the reader app, I didn't have a way to pull it back out, so it mostly just stayed there. My notes live in Obsidian, and getting the highlights from Readest into that same place was the gap I wanted to close.

So I made a small plugin that does exactly that. Open Obsidian, run a command, and your book highlights show up as notes, one per book. Run it again later and the notes update in place instead of piling up duplicates.

Each note has the title, author, and year at the top, followed by the highlights as a list, each with its page number and any notes you wrote alongside it.

The plugin never changes anything in Readest itself, just reads the highlights and never touches the original files. It also doesn't talk to the internet, so nothing about what you've highlighted leaves your computer.

I run it after finishing a book, and it's been quietly useful.

<div class="link-buttons"> <a href="https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/readest-highlights" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> <svg fill="#9387D9" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-hidden="true"><path d="M19.355 18.538a68.967 68.959 0 0 0 1.858-2.954.81.81 0 0 0-.062-.9c-.516-.685-1.504-2.075-2.042-3.362-.553-1.321-.636-3.375-.64-4.377a1.707 1.707 0 0 0-.358-1.05l-3.198-4.064a3.744 3.744 0 0 1-.076.543c-.106.503-.307 1.004-.536 1.5-.134.29-.29.6-.446.914l-.31.626c-.516 1.068-.997 2.227-1.132 3.59-.124 1.26.046 2.73.815 4.481.128.011.257.025.386.044a6.363 6.363 0 0 1 3.326 1.505c.916.79 1.744 1.922 2.415 3.5zM8.199 22.569c.073.012.146.02.22.02.78.024 2.095.092 3.16.29.87.16 2.593.64 4.01 1.055 1.083.316 2.198-.548 2.355-1.664.114-.814.33-1.735.725-2.58l-.01.005c-.67-1.87-1.522-3.078-2.416-3.849a5.295 5.295 0 0 0-2.778-1.257c-1.54-.216-2.952.19-3.84.45.532 2.218.368 4.829-1.425 7.531zM5.533 9.938c-.023.1-.056.197-.098.29L2.82 16.059a1.602 1.602 0 0 0 .313 1.772l4.116 4.24c2.103-3.101 1.796-6.02.836-8.3-.728-1.73-1.832-3.081-2.55-3.831zM9.32 14.01c.615-.183 1.606-.465 2.745-.534-.683-1.725-.848-3.233-.716-4.577.154-1.552.7-2.847 1.235-3.95.113-.235.223-.454.328-.664.149-.297.288-.577.419-.86.217-.47.379-.885.46-1.27.08-.38.08-.72-.014-1.043-.095-.325-.297-.675-.68-1.06a1.6 1.6 0 0 0-1.475.36l-4.95 4.452a1.602 1.602 0 0 0-.513.952l-.427 2.83c.672.59 2.328 2.316 3.335 4.711.09.21.175.43.253.653z"/></svg> Obsidian community plugins </a> <a href="https://github.com/polybjorn/obsidian-readest-highlights" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> <svg fill="currentColor" role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-hidden="true"><path d="M12 .297c-6.63 0-12 5.373-12 12 0 5.303 3.438 9.8 8.205 11.385.6.113.82-.258.82-.577 0-.285-.01-1.04-.015-2.04-3.338.724-4.042-1.61-4.042-1.61C4.422 18.07 3.633 17.7 3.633 17.7c-1.087-.744.084-.729.084-.729 1.205.084 1.838 1.236 1.838 1.236 1.07 1.835 2.809 1.305 3.495.998.108-.776.417-1.305.76-1.605-2.665-.3-5.466-1.332-5.466-5.93 0-1.31.465-2.38 1.235-3.22-.135-.303-.54-1.523.105-3.176 0 0 1.005-.322 3.3 1.23.96-.267 1.98-.399 3-.405 1.02.006 2.04.138 3 .405 2.28-1.552 3.285-1.23 3.285-1.23.645 1.653.24 2.873.12 3.176.765.84 1.23 1.91 1.23 3.22 0 4.61-2.805 5.625-5.475 5.92.42.36.81 1.096.81 2.22 0 1.606-.015 2.896-.015 3.286 0 .315.21.69.825.57C20.565 22.092 24 17.592 24 12.297c0-6.627-5.373-12-12-12"/></svg> GitHub repository </a> </div>

Bjørn A. Andersen - Projects

An atlas of my own

Highlights worth keeping