[HN Gopher] Show HN: A highly opinionated, fully functional Obsi...
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Show HN: A highly opinionated, fully functional Obsidian vault
A few months ago I noticed that I was quickly approaching my 10GB
sync limit for my daily driver vault. I considered deprecating some
of the heavier files and images, but I was worried how it would
affect the integrity of my vault. Instead, I took the opportunity
to think to myself -- what would the perfect vault look like? I
began to write down some of the key philosophies and strategies I
use in my driver vault which led to indispensable plugins, which
led to more indispensable philosophies and on and on it went. I've
chronicled these results into a fully working vault template that
includes templates, dataviews, macros, scripts, and powerful but
simple and intuitive structural elements. This vault is truly a
condensation of all of my knowledge pertaining to Obsidian (the
README is very long), so please do give it a go! I promise you'll
like what you see!
Author : _bramses
Score : 234 points
Date : 2022-12-18 02:13 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I try hard to take notes, but usually end up with a line or two.
| Maybe this is me, maybe the noise/information ratio of the
| meetings I am in - I do not know.
|
| I use and like Obsidian but do not have enough substance to make
| it big.
|
| One thing that I really, really miss in Obsidian is the ability
| to tag blocks. Not only lines, but whole blocks. This would be a
| fantastic solution for my 2/3/4 lines of notes - I would just go
| for daily notes and tag the blocks, and automatically merge them
| in a single page (per tag). I so much would like that that I am
| considering trying to write a plugin myself.
| aeonik wrote:
| Use Logseq. it supports tagging blocks, and it also supports
| markdown or org formats.
|
| I use org mode as my format and this has the added advantage of
| allowing all my source code blocks in my notes to be directly
| executable from emacs.
|
| All my notes now also double as a Jupyter-like note books, but
| for any major language. I can even mix and match languages in a
| single note file.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Would you be so kind and give an example of such a tagged
| block? I had a look at the documentation and only found https
| ://docs.logseq.com/#/page/how%20to%20create%20pages%20i...
| that does not addresses blocks.
|
| EDIT: OK, it seems that tagging a bullet point also
| encompasses sub-bullets. I will look at how to create a page
| that gather blocks tagged with a particular tag.
|
| Thank you for the pointer!
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| EDIT 2: this is really a good software from the limited
| tests I did.
|
| It is oriented towards bullet points (that from blocks) and
| match much closer my note taking style.
| Tomte wrote:
| Maybe try TiddlyWiki? Your block would be a Tiddler with tags,
| and if you want to see several blocks together, you can
| transclude them into a "larger" Tiddler.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Thank you for the suggestion, but this is already what I have
| with Obsidian.
|
| The problem is that my notes, over say a day, are blocks of
| unrelated information (personal, work, technical, dev, ...)
| which in that case would go into a page I would need to look
| for.
|
| What I saw in Logseq (sibling suggestion) is that it works in
| blocks and sub-blocks that I can tag. I will end with a daily
| note made of blocks I would have tagged that I would find in
| an "dynamic" page under the name of the tag.
| Mizza wrote:
| This is wild. I use Obsidian.. as a bunch of folders with text
| notes. The simplicity of the system is what works for me. But
| awesome to see somebody take the exact opposite approach.
| MrOrelliOReilly wrote:
| Great addition! Like others, I find it helpful to review how
| smart people are using Obsidian and related tools to create a
| second brain. I know it's popular to critique these posts as
| onanism when we should just "get things done", but Obsidian
| really has allowed me to accomplish all sorts of productivity
| flows that I'd have needed custom software for previously. It's
| OK to wax about your favorite tools when you're actually using
| them :)
|
| One thing I'd note is that language models like Chat GPT really
| do seem to me to be the next frontier in productivity apps. The
| author mentions using it to simplify search, but you could also
| imagine a model that recommends related notes in your
| Zettelkasten or automatically creates links to relevant Wikipedia
| pages, etc. It's an exciting area and I hope the author shares
| what they uncover next year!!
| mmastrac wrote:
| TIL: https://github.com/IdreesInc/Waypoint
|
| I feel like there's a huge amount I don't know about Obsidian
| after reading just a few files in this repo.
| oxff wrote:
| I have to say that there is a strong ngmi energy in this kind of
| obsession.
| mxgrn wrote:
| What's ngmi?
| nivertech wrote:
| Not Gonna Make It
| adham-omran wrote:
| Only did a cursory read and I love it already. I tried sharing my
| own thoughts a while back but it was a first pass kind of post,
| this is much more complete. I'll be digging into this later!
| mif wrote:
| I use Obsidian with a few of the mentioned plugins but struggle
| to get more than a really well organized view of the various
| projects I work on. Obsidian is great for its flexible ways user
| can interact. And sometimes I wonder whether thinking too much in
| those various philosophies makes you think better thoughts, or
| just makes you bend your thoughts so to fit into the system.
| localghost3000 wrote:
| xcambar wrote:
| I really like seeing how others use Obsidian. As an Obsidian user
| and a (neo)vim user, I think there's a lot of overlap in why you
| should invest just-enough-time to make it work for you.
|
| Disclaimer: after 10+ years of vim and too much time customizing
| it, I ended up with LunarVim an I'm very happy with it.
| samsquire wrote:
| At one point I tried creating what is Notion/Obsidian style
| system in 2013. I called it "living documents".
|
| here's one of the last surviving screenshots of living documents
| version 1.
|
| https://github.com/samsquire/interface-experiments/blob/mast...
|
| The system accepted RDF N3 triples and it queried Jena Fuseki
| database to render graphs with d3. You could introduce facts into
| the system with the three boxes at the top. if you changed them,
| they would autocomplete and change the graph view. You could
| insert references or links into the document by typing them. (not
| shown in the screenshot)
|
| I have the code trapped in a JSBIN SQLite file. It's somewhere in
| here https://github.com/samsquire/jsbin It uses KnockoutJS.
|
| Living documents v2 has a screen cast of it here
| https://github.com/samsquire/live-interface/blob/master/scre... I
| believe the shareable and transcluding features of Notion or
| Obsidian are similar. The screencast shows transclusion and
| programming language syntax detection with a beyesian classifier
| - the arbitrary insertion of documents into other documents and
| they all update in real time. It uses Pouch (and CouchDB) to
| synchronize data between tabs. It's written in AngularJs 1 so
| it's legacy and I couldn't get it working when I tried to get the
| code working.
|
| Similar to this long README.md, my note keeping strategy is
| similarly to create GitHub repositories and edit README.md. In
| the top right of a GitHub README.md is a table of contents button
| which is only displayed as an icon. You can even search the
| headings. When I get to 100-500 entries I create a new repository
| and add a number to the repository name. This means I can share
| my journal whenever I get to a milestone and people can check for
| updates since my last journal by going to the next numbered
| journal. (For example, I shared "ideas" on HN in 2013 but shares
| of ideas2 ideas3 and ideas4 are yet to be shared around properly.
| The titles are all pretty similar.)
|
| I keep my notes and journal in the open and public. My old
| wikidpad based wiki (samsquire/idea-wiki) is publically
| accessible on GitHub and my journal of 700 entries is available
| on GitHub.
|
| I write in the open to add value. I am deeply interested in the
| mechanism of doing things and when it comes to code I am more
| interested in the structure of the code than the types. I write
| about futuristic software, architecture and desktop features,
| multithreading, parallelism, asynchrony and concurrency. I am
| currently working on a multithreaded programming language which
| has its own compiler that targets my switch based interpreter. It
| is a toy at this time but that's what my journal is filled with
| inspiration from.
|
| I write about what I'm doing and what I plan to do and any
| thoughts I have along the way.
| Ruq wrote:
| I love how Obsidian has evolved and grown to such an extent that
| merely showing off what you do with it is enough in itself.e
| breadchris wrote:
| i used to try to create obsidian workflows, but i found them very
| challenging to keep up. i used to think i wanted configuration
| for my note taking so I could capture all the ways I wanted to
| interact with the information i stored. Even though i initially
| rejected it, i have ended up embracing logseq and it's seemingly
| odd way of working. I have grown to love the daily journal being
| front and center as I find it removes mental overhead when it
| comes to figuring out what to take notes about. I just put
| everything in there! I don't think, i just take notes. When i
| store information, i write some contextual information to help me
| retrieve it the next time i look for it. When i search and can't
| find it right away, i add more context to the note to help me
| find it faster next time. I think it works for me because i don't
| like the pressure of writing a structured note, but when I do
| take the time to write, it's because i am excited about it and I
| end up streaming my consciousness in an almost blog like post (as
| I am doing now, i love writing about note taking). I work at an
| OSS company so fortunately all my notes I publish online:
| https://breadchris.com and i find it so freaking liberating to be
| able to share my haphazard ideas with others lol.
|
| having spent a decent amount of time looking at this stuff, my
| biggest recommendation is to try things out for a bit, and find
| habits that stick. I found a way to make note taking addicting,
| and other people i've got on the band wagon have found it
| addicting as well so I think logseq is a worthwhile thing to try
| out. I haven't put it together yet, but I would like to put
| together the workflow (more like a mindset, less workflow) that I
| follow.
|
| Good luck to those looking for a way that works for them for
| taking notes! I would love to hear about what people have tried,
| I have a lot of ideas to share.
| teedeepee wrote:
| Tried your website on Chrome 108.0.5359.125 (Win 64-bit), and
| it displayed nothing but a teal background, until I turned off
| the Decentraleyes 2.0.17 extension (which was reporting and
| blocking 542 locally-injected resources). FYI.
| dumbmrblah wrote:
| Hypothesis: people who use these "second brain" knowledge systems
| spend more time writing about using them, then actually using
| them.
|
| Disclaimer: I use obsidian myself
| nl wrote:
| I think there is an ultimate unproductive productivity local
| minima there somewhere. I suspect if someone kept a knowledge
| base of productivity hacks it would tend towards recursive
| collapse.
| psychomugs wrote:
| This is the note-taking version of Gear Acquisition Syndrome
| (GAS) in practically any hobby, e.g. camera bodies and lenses
| for photography, instruments and software for music. After the
| initial honeymoon phase, you realize that achieving that
| idyllic lifestyle advertised by the new gear actually requires
| work instead of purchase or download. The only antidote is to
| actually start using the damn thing.
| EliasWatson wrote:
| I disagree personally, but I don't use Obsidian like most
| people. The majority of my notes just have a couple sentences.
| I mainly make notes about new project ideas, cool things I find
| online (eg. a note for each new programming language I
| discover), and cheatsheets (eg. a bash scripting cheatsheet).
|
| I probably spend 15 minutes total writing in Obsidian each
| week. I'm not writing down things that I don't have difficulty
| remembering or things that are very easy to search for online.
| Obsidian is a place for me to store info that I might want
| later but would have difficulty finding/remembering again.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| After using several of these "second brain" apps & systems and
| ultimately creating my own "second brain" app, I agree with
| this, and the general sentiment behind it. This space is just a
| rebranded subset of self-help. It's the productivity porn
| market. Roam Research was the first to realize the cash gains
| to be made in this space. Their marketing hook took off, they
| got their VC handout, and they haven't been heard from since.
|
| People who use these things are fooling themselves. I used to
| fool myself. We're not really achieving or producing and we're
| certainly not "assimilating knowledge." What we're doing is
| procrastinating. We're wasting time. We're struggling at our
| current, real endeavors, and we turn to a scapegoat: "oh darn,
| it's my knowledge management system that needs work; oh, it's
| just my productivity system that's just not efficient enough".
| So we find a nice game, a tool game [1], to: (1) distract
| ourselves (2) give us the feeling of accomplishment - "I'm
| taking second brain notes in a fun new app - I'm learning!".
|
| For me, the first step to actually getting things done wasn't
| to optimize my productivity workflow, it wasn't to find the
| perfect knowledge management app/system, it was to...get things
| done. When I became dissatisfied with my work, when I hit a
| difficult obstacle with my projects, I felt pain, and
| procrastinated to avoid that pain. There was no secret cure. I
| just needed to realize that playing with these tools and
| systems is not getting things done - it's just procrastination.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33135227
| trhr wrote:
| I think I found the easiest solution to this. I only change
| my knowledge management system at the top of the year.
| Whatever I decide on for that year, I stick to it, whether I
| like it or hate it by June.
|
| Some years I use filing cabinets. Some years I use OneNote.
| Some years I use Markdown. It all depends on the collection
| of tasks I expect to be doing.
|
| At the end of the year, I make everything (worth saving) a
| PDF, no matter what system I used - because they're very
| utilitarian. Then I decide if I'm going to keep using the
| same system. For the last three years, I've used self-hosted
| GitLab exclusively, even for non-code stuff.
|
| I doubt I'll adopt Obsidian next year, but if you don't
| already have a system, it's probably as good as any.
| CrypticShift wrote:
| > _(1) distract ourselves (2) give us the feeling of
| accomplishment_
|
| I agree. A lot of personal systems like this are indeed
| unconsciously used to (1) and (2). This is especially the
| case when you try to implement a very complex+generic one
| like this vault. I can guarantee 90-99% failure, albeit you
| may learn something along the way !
|
| Also, it is not a "BRAIN". It is worth stressing that because
| It is a bad and misleading name (almost as bad as PKM)
|
| But you are generalizing too much. The problem is the "just"
| in your _" it's just procrastination."_
|
| The thread is pointing to many benefits. For ME, it is not
| even about productivity anymore. It is about "healthier" work
| environment (in research-intensive activities).
|
| More than that, It is not even about "ME" anymore. It about
| creating better tools and systems in the long term. Obsession
| and Fooling-ourselves (at the "MICRO" level) is exactly what
| feeds that larger MACRO evolutionary dynamics.
|
| > _We 're not really achieving or producing_
|
| Speaking of fooling-ourselves, I feel that _getting things
| done_ itself (at any cost) is also sometimes just a way to
| _distract ourselves_ and _give us the feeling of
| accomplishment_ , and also to " _avoid that pain_ " (all
| three you cited). We may also be fooling ourselves at
| occasions here too in our rush to "producing" and
| ""producing" stuff. just saying...
| parthianshotgun wrote:
| And just like that we've hit infinite regress and the core
| existential questions to it all, why must we accomplish, is
| it to be happy? Accomplishments are finite and can die/fade
| away/stop, so placing your worth and peace of mind on them
| is subject to eventual failure and maybe even a crisis down
| the road, you'll keep wanting more, Kiarostami once said,
| responding to if he feels proud of his work, something to
| the affect of, 'proud is too big a word for humans'. So
| what is curation then? Is a PKM just a technology to help
| us remember? Again, to what end, I suppose it's all just
| instrumental
|
| a page from Lao Tzu comes to mind
|
| > Those who think to win the world > by doing something to
| it, > I see them come to grief. >For the world is a sacred
| object. >Nothing is to be done to it. >To do anything to it
| is to damage it. > To seize it is to lose it.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| That seems like a bit of an overreaction. Sure, tools are not
| magic and you should not use tools for the tools' sake but
| because they are useful.
|
| Same with, say, ring binders: Having some is probably better
| than none, but if you have one hundred you have other
| problems.
|
| Same for hammers, pans,.... Buying them won't magically teach
| you skills, but if you want to learn skills tools will help
| you.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > After using several of these "second brain" apps & systems
| and ultimately creating my own "second brain" app, I agree
| with this, and the general sentiment behind it. This space is
| just a rebranded subset of self-help. It's the productivity
| porn market. Roam Research was the first to realize the cash
| gains to be made in this space. Their marketing hook took
| off, they got their VC handout, and they haven't been heard
| from since.
|
| Honestly, this is probably a good description of your
| situation, but certainly not everyone's. I use Obsidian every
| day and nothing you've written resonates with me. I dump
| things into the tool. I find those things when I need them.
| I'm much, much more productive as a result. Plus the sync is
| the best I've ever used. Works flawlessly every time on my
| Linux desktop, my Surface running Windows, my Chromebook, and
| my Android phone.
|
| Maybe your work doesn't require these tools?
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Did you fuss over the differences between obsidian and one
| note and google keep or whatever? Or did you just decide
| one day you need to note things down more and found
| obsidian and stuck to it?
|
| If there's any productivity gain to be had here, it's
| because you chose to write things down in a system you can
| search. Maybe the hyperlinking works, maybe it doesn't.
| I've met a decent number of productive smart people and
| have seen zero correlation between note taking styles (or
| even note taking at all) and their outputs.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I used to think this way:
|
| > If there's any productivity gain to be had here, it's
| because you chose to write things down in a system you
| can search. Maybe the hyperlinking works, maybe it
| doesn't.
|
| I realized that my system was useless if it didn't do
| 100% of what I needed. Sure, search usually works, but
| sometimes I need linking. If I'm taking notes on a paper,
| search doesn't help - I need a link to the paper and
| convenient storage.
|
| > I've met a decent number of productive smart people and
| have seen zero correlation between note taking styles (or
| even note taking at all) and their outputs.
|
| That's because needs vary widely. My father ran a
| business doing things like installing water and power
| lines. He didn't have an elaborate notes system, but he
| had one that was elaborate enough. Some things had to be
| captured and had to be retrievable with certainty. It had
| to be something he could do from the inside of the
| backhoe.
|
| I'm an academic. My needs are vastly different. His
| system would not have helped me at all.
|
| I'm not denying that some people waste time on these
| things. I don't see that as an argument that all of these
| apps and systems are useless though.
| bityard wrote:
| It's been quite a while since I disagreed with something this
| intensely.
|
| I built my own "digital notebook" and use it literally every
| single day for almost everything I do. When I'm in the middle
| of a project, I use it to take notes, write down questions,
| organize my thoughts, and save useful web links. It's hard
| for me to overstate how critical this to is to my day-to-day
| life. My notes ARE the thing I need most in order to "just
| get shit done."
|
| Yes, there are "tool fetishists" in this space, just like
| you'll find in any career or hobby. They get their enjoyment
| out of tinkering with these apps and cataloging the hell out
| of their notes. I'm not one of those which is why my app has
| practically no curation abilities. But I also think it's in
| extremely bad taste to shame those who apparently enjoy it.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Right but the important part is the notes, not the
| notebook. It could be notecards, google drive, text files
| in git, sqlite, whatever. The fact that you take the notes
| and can find them later when you need them are literally
| the only two important factors here.
|
| The "fooling themselves" element is in thinking adding
| sophistication beyond two those things improves the
| usefulness of the notes themselves. And there's some
| personal flexibility here too sure; if you truly can't ever
| find a note when you need it and adding a tagging system
| gets you there then that's useful additional
| sophistication.
|
| I think the point they were trying to make, definitely the
| one I'm making, is that the line between useful system and
| hobbyist tinkering is a lot lower than people want to
| think, because they want to ascribe purpose or benefits to
| their tinkering. Which is where the productivity porn comes
| in, a framework that only values things if they are or
| contribute to "productivity" demands everything _be_
| productive, demands that you justify it.
|
| But truly and honestly if you have a flat folder of text
| files and grep you have what you need and beyond that is
| tinkering. That's what people are fooling themselves about.
| badrabbit wrote:
| I use it, I don't write stuff outside hn comments lol. Obsidian
| is very cool, like onenote but more siliconvalley-ish and
| smarter.
|
| I hate that I needed to install flatpack for it but that is
| literally my only complaint. Sadly, it can't replace a
| text/code editor lime sublime which is where I dumped a lot of
| non-note knowledge. If only sublimetext copied some of this
| stuff for markdown.
|
| In school,I never, ever took notes unless threatened. I mention
| that to show you how even someone like me liked Obsidian.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| > people who use these "second brain" knowledge systems spend
| more time writing about using them, then actually using them.
|
| All people is far too strong of a claim I think, though if
| you'd said (or in fact mean) many I might agree.
|
| Is systems attract people who feel they need a better system
| surprising though? Or is it surprising we hear most from those
| who go on to spend much of their time talking about systems?
|
| I think there are many who have and use a second brain
| effectively, but perhaps most don't know that term.
| ramblerman wrote:
| This happens a lot :)
|
| - Look at the endless threads in /r/fitness discussing the
| 0.01% gain of getting the exact rep range right vs likely just
| going to the gym.
|
| - you can browse /r/language for days and prepare yourself
| fully for the day you actually begin ... learning a language
|
| It's a type of productivity illusion, I think there is just a
| greater overlap of this community with HN.
|
| That being said, I highly recommend obsidian to anyone, it's a
| great place to journal, and capture ideas. But just start
| typing, and don't worry too much about organization (ironically
| this is the biggest benefit of the tool).
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| I disagree in terms of my own actual usage, after the initial
| excitement, but that is a real danger. That said, the most
| beneficial usage of my notes system has been the flat "tech
| notes" directory of tagged files on how to do various twiddly
| computer things (steps and commands to "get X to work"). I used
| Obsidian briefly but find abandoned it for just the markdown,
| vim, and a helper python script to search tags.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Thats funny to me because my main gripe with Obsidian et al
| is this Reductio ad absurdum down to unformatted text as the
| central organizing principle of modern knowledge. Rich text,
| screenshots, video snips, audio, etc are shoehorned in and
| don't quite fit. Give me a better organized system of
| Infinate canvases of whatever I want to throw in there over a
| souped up html file any day.
| TylerE wrote:
| So, a file system?
| stranger555 wrote:
| People should start using these apps as simple note-taking apps
| and extend/adapt them based on their needs, rather than diving
| head-first into these complicated methods/systems to form a
| "second brain".
|
| If you go straight into OPs system you'll spend way more time
| trying to figure out how it works (and it might not even work
| for you) rather than getting actual work done
|
| Start simple. Write a few notes. Maybe you need to draw things:
| add Excalidraw. Maybe some note structures are similar:
| consider Templater.
| gala8y wrote:
| Exactly. At its core Obsidian and similar apps allow you to
| make notes, connect them easily _and search for them_ using
| GUI. That's it. That is how I try to explain what it does to
| someone interested. These modern apps are a huge step
| forward, if someone prefers emacs or vim/fzf - no problem.
| rarecoil wrote:
| > People should start using these apps as simple note-taking
| apps and extend/adapt them based on their needs
|
| This. I'm a hardcore Obsidian user both at work and at home,
| and I started both vaults from absolutely nothing - no user
| scripts, no organisation, literally no plan at all. Since
| then, they've evolved and optimized in radically different
| ways. Taking someone else's "system" is just a way to fool
| yourself into thinking you can be more productive than you
| are; you have to find that for yourself and what works
| specifically for you.
|
| My personal vault is geared much more toward organizing
| creativity, with a little bit of task-oriented stuff and
| technical documentation, while my corporate vault is heavily
| schedule based and contains mostly tactical information,
| meeting notes and thoughts, etc. For it to be a "second
| brain", you need it to model your brain - and I work very
| modally. I have a "work mode" and a "non-work mode" that
| order things pretty differently, and it shows in the
| hierarchies and organization of both vaults.
| auggierose wrote:
| Interesting that you have so few vaults. I have dozens of
| them, each for a different project, or for different
| aspects of the same project. The way folders work in
| Obsidian is quite bad, when I am creating a new note it
| insists in putting it into the top folder instead of in the
| folder where I am currently in, so I prefer to keep it
| flat. I am just using the default setup and cannot be
| bothered much with plugins. There is no proper API
| documentation either.
| psychomugs wrote:
| You can choose the default location for new notes:
| Settings -> Files & Links -> Default location for new
| notes. This doesn't even require a plugin.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| This is the same advice any greybeard gives newcomers to
| Emacs. Just start small.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| I agree with you. I take a hell lot of notes and I still don't
| fully understand what the OP's post is really about. I don't
| understand the second brain philosophy at all.
| j7ake wrote:
| Apple notes is good enough for me. Can Obsidian users defend
| why not simply use Apple notes ? Learning curve and friction
| way lower
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I've really only dipped my toe into what Obsidian is capable of
| (very few plugins), but I took it up a month or two ago as a
| sort of minimal-resistance place to do simple but interlinked
| text mind dumps, and for that use case I've come to enjoy it
| more than I thought I would.
|
| Thoughts that were dissipating into the ether now increasingly
| get written down there, which frees up mental bandwidth for
| other things, which has translated in increased motivation to
| actually do the things I'm writing about.
|
| I'd tried doing similar things with Apple Notes and Bear in the
| past, but it never stuck very well and I didn't find myself
| revisiting notes too often. Something about Obsidian has worked
| better so for though and I'm not sure what it is.
|
| That said, I could see easily getting lost in the weeds and
| "overmanaging".
| scambier wrote:
| That's definitely a bias. Lots of people use Obsidian or other
| solutions, and most of those people don't write about it.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I am inclined to agree. I have switched to simple journaling,
| and so far it's been better. Basically I just journal every day
| with one file for every day, no branching out into other files.
| Then I have a "timeline view" which let's me quickly see what I
| journaled in the past. This helps me focus on actually writing
| something down instead of thinking about naming things etc. So
| far it's great. And I can still use ripgrep to find all
| notes/occurrences with e.g. some specific word quickly.
| afarviral wrote:
| It's almost the Noguchi filing system, in a way. Since you
| typically need to access things closer to the top/front which
| will be the most recent.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Hmmm! Please don't discourage them. I actually feel I should
| write a lot and just put it out. What I have learnt the most
| are from other people, comparing them, "stealing" from them and
| modifying them. There should be more opinions, and ideas.
|
| I like it when people feel good about what they do, spend a few
| minutes each weekend and then in months or even years, they
| publish it. Or just publish as you go on. I also like "work-in-
| progress" in the wild.
| culi wrote:
| Nothing wrong with that imo. Lots of great skills are picked up
| from trying to organize thoughts like this.
|
| Hypothesis: people who've obsessed over "knowledge gardens"
| tend to be great at sustaining documentation
| seanosaur wrote:
| I've dubbed this "theoretical productivity"[1] and also fall
| into this trap. I keep thinking that just moving to a different
| app/system with X feature will make this 100x better for me.
| That goldilocks app/system doesn't exist and is always a moving
| target. Spending time on solving these problems mean I'm not
| thinking/writing/completing the things I really want to, hence
| the "theoretical" nature.
|
| 1: There's a good chance this is already a term with a
| different meaning. If that's the case I don't mean to rip it
| off, it's just what sounded good at the time.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think I historically suffered from a form of this: I
| loooooved setting up for a project but didn't really like
| doing the project. Whether it was downloading the resources
| and setting up a workspace for a code project or setting up a
| physical work area for some electronics work.
| afturner wrote:
| Same! And that's why I'm now a DevOps engineer. In my role,
| DevOps primarily means automation and pipeline creation,
| working with teams to build and release their apps reliably
| and effectively. For me, it really scratches the itch of
| "setting things up".
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Gosh I love dev ops. Smaller company so I have many hats.
| I saved a whole week of "clean up CI/CD and make the
| integration tests 3x faster" as a "treat" for the last
| week before vacation this year.
| theLiminator wrote:
| Wow I'm glad to hear such people exist. I dread doing
| DevOps though I really value good DevOps setups. I just
| want to write my code.
| Quikinterp wrote:
| People like you are heroes in the workplace to me. I hate
| anything devops related because I feel like it takes time
| away from the stuff I'm trying to do, so I appreciate
| anyone who does it!
| gala8y wrote:
| It is also simply called procrastination, bike shedding, yak
| shaving, fear of success, fear of failure, Forest of the
| Infinite [0], list goes on... depending on the context.
|
| On the other side, as we are already using computers, we
| might sometimes want to explore and get lost in this forest
| of problems and possible solutions and have some fun.
|
| After all, as Douglas Adams put it:
|
| "(..) a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to
| other people about telephones. And a computer nerd therefore
| is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer."
|
| [0] https://gameweld.medium.com/fractal-tasks-and-the-
| journey-th...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Anyone organized enough to leverage such a system doesn't need
| it!
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Some people are several times better at configuring these
| things in the same amount of time.
| s3000 wrote:
| >Visitors can meander around your thought garden [1], stopping to
| marvel at the hydrangeas, or beelining straight for the mini
| pagoda and water feature in the corner.
|
| What good is a thought garden if visitors cannot offer feedback?
| There should be an ActivityPub interface to collect feedback and
| links to other gardens. Thoughts should be able to grow on their
| own. Otherwise, it's not a garden but a sculpture park.
|
| [1] https://publish.obsidian.md/bram
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| This is brilliant. Thanks for this, I'm going to be looking
| around to see what I can steal and improve mine. I have crashed
| Obsidian so many times when I tried to load up everything. Here
| is my most current implementation;
|
| - Vault (Home / Personal) is about everything for our family, and
| I. This is a folder inside Dropbox. So, we have everything there.
| Suddenly at a hospital, and the wife said, bring out the first
| list of vaccinations when our kid was born -- bam, I got it. :-)
|
| - Vault (Work) is the Google Drive Folder that I have everything
| about our Company. These days, most of my work is just writing,
| and more writing. They are good archives and I don't have to re-
| say or say a little with the writings as a backup for async
| reference for anyone.
|
| - Vault (dev folder) is usually shared by Sublime Text and
| Obsidian. These days, I'm left with just writing more and more in
| MarkDown either as content, documentation, or more contents that
| gets converted to other outputs.
|
| To maintain sanity, I have very few must-have plugins and the
| current vaults are all on "Minimal" themes with different color
| schemes making it easy for me to just toggle my Vaults. I once
| tried to maintain a common ".obsidian" folder and symlink to it
| but that was a bad idea - the vaults are better off mostly being
| unique with shared preferences.
|
| For the notes management I have PARA[0] at the root and
| everything inside them, with few rules broken to make it easier
| for sharing, especially with the work content.
|
| 0. PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive) - here is an
| article with details - https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/
| suumcuique wrote:
| >To maintain sanity, I have very few must-have plugins and the
| current vaults are all on "Minimal" themes with different color
| schemes making it easy for me to just toggle my Vaults. I once
| tried to maintain a common ".obsidian" folder and symlink to it
| but that was a bad idea - the vaults are better off mostly
| being unique with shared preferences.
|
| My solution to maintaining seperate vaults for personal/work
| notes has been to make a sandbox vault where I can
| test/configure plugins and if I'm happy with the result I run a
| little script that I can point at a "real" vault that:
|
| * backs up the current config of the target vault incase I
| screw up
|
| * `rsync`s the sandbox .obsidian and meta folders (containing
| templater templates etc.) to the target vault
|
| This leaves me free to experiment with plugins without getting
| in the way of my day-to-day notetaking.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| This is indeed a good idea. I think I will make a template
| with changes to the OP's idea, make it simpler, add mine and
| I can have it as a starting template for my use.
| Scandiravian wrote:
| One thing I miss after switching from macos to Linux is Alfred.
| It seems like this setup eliminates a ton of friction, but it
| might be difficult to replicate when using Android + Linux
|
| I'm obviously still going to try because this looks amazing.
| Great work!
| choward wrote:
| Obsidian is still closed source, right? I thought they were
| talking about open sourcing it at some point.
| taink wrote:
| I think they pledged to free it when they stop working on it,
| but that's about it. One of the developers posted a message[1]
| on their forums when they were asked about it, and their stance
| was pretty much "we don't see a good enough value in open
| sourcing our software". I am unaware of further developments.
|
| [1] https://forum.obsidian.md/t/open-sourcing-of-
| obsidian/1515/1...
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| > they pledged to free it when they stop working on it
|
| Source, please? To my knowledge, while this has been
| mentioned, they have not actually made such a pledge.
| taink wrote:
| Ah, maybe you're right; I skimmed through the thread a long
| time ago and I think they said they would open-source it
| and write a privacy policy. I'm pretty sure they did write
| the privacy policy but I may have remembered incorrectly
| about the pledge.
| darkteflon wrote:
| It's all just text files, though. There's no risk of lock-in.
| imperfect_blue wrote:
| This is true for every note-taking app with an export
| functionality. And it really isn't good enough.
|
| The entire reason you use Obsidian or Notion or Anytype or
| Capacities.io or Logseq, or anything more powerful than a set
| of markdown files in the first place, is that you care about
| the relationships between the notes and the rich
| functionality that comes with them - sorting, search,
| linking, reminders, etc. None of this is easily exportable
| into another app. The series of markdown files that make up
| Obsidian is not a substitute for the Obsidian software, nor
| are the relationships easily rebuilt in another app.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| The difference between all the other Apps you mentioned and
| Obsidian is that in Obsidian, it it just a layer on top of
| your text files (Markdown) and do not ingest in its format.
|
| For instance, with Notion, I have to be able to export that
| and figure out how I fit in to the next Awesome Note App.
|
| What I like about Obsidian is -- I don't have to. The day I
| want to walk out, I just walk out and use the next tool
| that can look at my content and do its magic.
|
| The caveat is, I make it my discipline not to use tool-
| specific features. For instance, Obsidian has a really nice
| Plugin called "Dataview", I use it at times but don't
| depend on it. I can walk out and nothing gets lost.
|
| Own the content, then use whatever tool you like on top of
| your content.
| imperfect_blue wrote:
| If all you're using Obsidian as is a fancy markdown
| editor then of course you lose nothing. But the whole
| point of PKM apps is that they're more than a fancy
| markdown editor.
|
| Without the tool, a Kanban board that remains as a bunch
| of scattered markdown files is worthless for its intended
| purpose, and not easily recreated in another app.
|
| It's like, a Microsoft Word document is perfectly
| portable if you never use any of its formatting features
| and always save it as plaintext, but at that point is it
| really using Microsoft Word?
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| Obsidian vaults can be converted into formats that work
| with competing PKM tools. I swapped back and forth
| between Obsidian and an open source tool based on Visual
| Studio Code for a while.
| imperfect_blue wrote:
| If you use a subset of its features and don't rely on any
| particular plugins, yes, you can seamlessly convert
| between some tools -- because in the end, it's just
| Markdown and some basic features like tagging and linking
| are shared.
|
| "But _my_ workflow is portable! " is really not a good
| response, when a workflow like OP's, or even one that
| depends on a few key plugins, becomes very much not
| portable. The more you buy into the ecosystem, the less
| portable your workflow will be. "Don't buy into the
| ecosystem" is not a reasonable take at all because that's
| the entire point of Obsidian over competition, the
| (mostly open-source) ecosystem that they have with the
| first-mover advantage.
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| You're moving the goalposts. The "sorting, search,
| linking, reminders" features you initially mentioned
| _are_ all easily available elsewhere. A highly specific
| Obsidian-specific workflow is harder to replicate, but
| everything you initially mentioned is pretty basic
| functionality.
| imperfect_blue wrote:
| The features may be available in the new app, but your
| existing setup will break. Your existing relations and
| notes will break if they used any Obsidian specific
| feature, of which there are plenty. Any notes you use to
| dynamically summarize/organize/sort/filter other notes
| will break, and probably can't be trivially recreated in
| whatever app you switch to.
|
| The most basic type of links, links to other notes, will
| generally work fine yes. But what about links to
| headings? Links to blocks? Links to attachments? Embedded
| blocks? Embedded files? The more you've used Obsidian's
| features, the more stuff will break.
|
| Searching by tags is trivial. What about searching by
| properties? By done/undone status? By note attributes, by
| tasks, by attachments, by block-level searches? What
| about filters?
|
| The simplest use-case being, if I simply want to view the
| list of all undone tasks across a set of notes on a
| separate app, sorted by priority, as I can now on
| Obsidian? Not trivially possible, as far as I know.
|
| Reminders and any calendar-like functionality are
| definitely not carried over across apps, either.
|
| Like I keep saying, if you limit your functionality to
| just markdown basics, it'll work fine. Start using the
| exclusive features of the app or even just the tasks
| plugin and it's no longer so simple. Something like the
| Kanban plugin is just impossible.
| 323 wrote:
| Being open source doesn't help you much.
|
| What will you do if they stop developing? Start
| maintaining the code yourself? Wait for others? Very few
| open source projects thrived after original author lost
| interest.
| Gatsky wrote:
| This isn't necessarily the case if you are back linking
| blocks.
| darkteflon wrote:
| Not sure I understand your point. There are pros and cons
| to open sourcing something - should we begrudge the
| Obsidian team the right to make money from their software,
| particularly when they've taken steps to ensure data
| portability? And saying that the advanced features the
| Obsidian team built won't work without Obsidian is sort of
| circular, isn't it? I reckon being able to walk away with
| your data gets you 90% of the way there.
|
| Nobody owes you an open source text file-based note-taking
| app with advanced backlinking features, etc. Perhaps you'd
| like to set up an open source project yourself supporting
| Obsidian-like advanced functionality?
| imperfect_blue wrote:
| Open source != Free != Libre, I didn't expect to need to
| make that distinction. And of course, Obsidian is free to
| do whatever they want to do.
|
| But primarily, my intention is to to advocate support for
| and investment in ecosystems/features around open-source
| alternatives like logseq and AppFlowy, and to discourage
| investment in the Obsidian ecosystem of plugins,
| primarily because of lock-in risk.
| tantalor wrote:
| This was really fun to read without know what "obsidian" is and I
| can happily report that by the time I got to the end I still had
| no idea what it is.
|
| A ha, found it on another website:
|
| > Obsidian is a Markdown-based note-taking and knowledge base
| app.
|
| https://help.obsidian.md/How+to/Format+your+notes
| astrange wrote:
| I thought it was going to be about Fallout New Vegas.
| Temporary_31337 wrote:
| I was a little disappointed, as I thought it would be
| instructions on how to make actual, physical vault from
| obsidian. I made a knife from obsidian. It's brittle but very
| sharp. I only really use it to open envelopes.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Ok - I want details, youtube video and how to guide :-)
| astrange wrote:
| How about jello, paper and bismuth?
|
| https://youtube.com/@kiwami-japan
|
| (not all at once)
| DaniDaniel5005 wrote:
| I thought it was a new Minecraft block ;)
| melony wrote:
| The founder of Obsidian is a former Minecraft modder.
| romwell wrote:
| Obsidian is a TiddlyWiki[1] alternative ;)
|
| While TiddlyWiki is both a Wiki and a personal knowledge
| database, I am also using it as a basis for my personal website
| about ADHD[2].
|
| [1]https://tiddlywiki.com/
|
| [2]https://romankogan.net/adhd/
| MikusR wrote:
| Main feature of Obsidian is that unlike TidlyWiki it can
| save.
| JoachimS wrote:
| I created a PR to add a note similar to that, and a link to the
| Obsidian web page.
| un1crom wrote:
| life well lived is a series of personal obsessions shared without
| expectation of an audience.
|
| well done.
|
| may an audience manifest around your knowledge of knowledge.
| darkteflon wrote:
| > life well lived is a series of personal obsessions shared
| without expectation of an audience
|
| I like that. Is that a quote or original?
| nullandvoid wrote:
| I saved this quote, thanks (couldn't find an original reference
| as someone else notes). This resonated pretty well with the
| hours I've put into side projects, and the philosophy I try to
| maintain to keep moving forward.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Yes, I love this. I have started to just share openly and since
| the last few years, I have even removed all comments,
| analytics, social-shits from most of my websites. I just don't
| worry about what others think. However, some people went out of
| their ways to find how to contact and there is always that
| trickle of emails thanking, or in most cases offering to sell
| something. :-)
|
| Let's help and propagate more of this idea -- share your
| personal obsessions -- I might just get inspired.
| [deleted]
| deafpolygon wrote:
| I get more done in Emacs and org-mode, at this point.
| pflenker wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! How long have you been working with it? My
| biggest issue these days is that many tutorials or guides seem to
| be written at a point where the setup is still fairly new and not
| really tested thoroughly. Some drawbacks only materialize over
| time.
| AB1908 wrote:
| This is an example of what I came to call a PKM Docker. Easily
| replicable setups for others. I have a feeling stuff like this
| could be useful for students where they use a per subject setup
| of sorts. Probably a terrible idea though.
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