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tags:
- dispatch
references:
- title: "A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden"
url: https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history
date: 2023-04-30T18:47:58Z
file: maggieappleton-com-n6xsqa.txt
- title: "What’s in a Word? Building a Verbose Party Game | Viget"
url: https://www.viget.com/articles/whats-in-a-word-building-a-verbose-party-game/
date: 2023-05-26T16:33:41Z
file: www-viget-com-yrczde.txt
- title: "Why Have a Values Plan? – Anna Havron"
url: https://www.annahavron.com/blog/why-have-a-values-plan
date: 2023-05-28T19:58:40Z
file: www-annahavron-com-8hj07z.txt
- title: "Turning Obsidian into My Perfect Writing App – The Sweet Setup"
url: https://thesweetsetup.com/turning-obsidian-into-my-perfect-writing-app/
date: 2023-06-02T03:52:56Z
file: thesweetsetup-com-x9nbdv.txt
---
* Closet progress
* done!
* Get a photo (finish it first)
* Biking
* Installed trailer hitch
* Now need to select + purchase rack
* Read [_Building a Second Brain_][1]
* Tried a couple <abbr title="personal knowledge management">PKM</abbr> apps
* Settled on [Obsidian][2] (for now -- may just end up back in Vim at some point)
* I like the idea of [Logseq][3], but the editing experience had some warts and I didn't love being forced into an outline format
* Obsidian seems nice if a little non-native
* Set up the [web clipper][4] which is cool
* Need to figure out sync
* Also started keeping [public notes][5]
* Didn't write any go, but started a [notes page][6]
* This is the risk of getting to into PKM, I suppose
* [JCC][7]
* Pool
* Gym
* TTT
* 15 years!
* [Tides Inn][8]
* [Scooter][9]
* Having a kid is the end of "what if" thinking.
<div class="image-set">
{{<thumbnail IMG_4011 "400x" />}}
{{<thumbnail IMG_4012 "400x" />}}
</div>
[1]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/building-a-second-brain-a-proven-method-to-organize-your-digital-life-and-unlock-your-creative-potential-tiago-forte/18265370?ean=9781982167387
[2]: https://obsidian.md/
[3]: https://logseq.com/
[4]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/obsidian-web/edoacekkjanmingkbkgjndndibhkegad
[5]: /notes/
[6]: /notes/golang/
[7]: https://www.jewishforgood.org/
[8]: https://www.tidesinn.com/
[9]: https://www.segway.com/ninebot-kickscooter-max/
We spent Memorial Day weekend at Lake Norman, but it was like 55° and rainy the whole time. I've been loving the mild weather for the most part, but I was definitely looking forward to some kayaking and dock jumping. I'm sure it'll be hot and humid soon enough.
<!--more-->
We finished off the closet project -- building the second unit was a lot quicker than the first, since I really just had to scale up the existing plans. Then it was a matter of adding the connecting rod and shelf. I think it turned out great, though I'd like to improve at building drawers. Here are some before and after shots (courtesy of Claire):
<div class="image-set">
{{<thumbnail IMG_6173 "200x" />}}
{{<thumbnail IMG_6174 "200x" />}}
{{<thumbnail IMG_6593 "200x" />}}
{{<thumbnail IMG_6594 "200x" />}}
</div>
Other life updates: we had a big work retreat at the beginning of the month at the [Tides Inn][1], which was incredible. I celebrated 15 years (15!) with the company, and received a [scooter][2] as a gift. This thing is rad -- I've been really happy with the e-bike, but it's nice to have a smaller option for quick trips to the office or corner store.
We signed up for the local [JCC][3] since they have the best/only outdoor pool in the area. As a bonus, they have a nice gym, and I managed to get ~4 workouts in over the month. Hope to keep that up, though June's pretty packed. I didn't manage to fit in any long bike rides, but I did get a trailer hitch installed on the car, which was a bit of a process. Now I just need to select and purchase a bike rack and a whole new series of adventures should be unlocked.
I read [_Building a Second Brain_][4], a book about digital note-taking systems. It inspired me to try out a couple different <abbr title="personal knowledge management">PKM</abbr> apps. I was initially drawn to [Logseq][5], but the editing experience was a little rough and it didn't seem to support adding PDFs and images to notes. I've settled on [Obsidian][6], which checks a lot of boxes even though I'm not a huge fan of Electron apps. I set up a [web clipper][7] tool so that I can quickly send links from Brave to Obsidian. I also started keeping [public notes][8], inspired by some [digital gardening][9] stuff I've been reading.
I didn't write any Go, but I did start a [notes page][10] about it and have a decent idea for a starter project. I need to make some actual progress here this month.
Final thought: when I was younger, I'd engage in a lot of "what if" thinking, imagining myself living totally different lives. This tendency decreased as I got older and built a life I was increasingly happy with, but never entirely went away. But since Nev came along, it's really the end of that -- she's so awesome, and any timeline where she doesn't exist exactly as she is right now just doesn't have any draw.
[1]: https://www.tidesinn.com/
[2]: https://www.segway.com/ninebot-kickscooter-max/
[3]: https://www.jewishforgood.org/
[4]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/building-a-second-brain-a-proven-method-to-organize-your-digital-life-and-unlock-your-creative-potential-tiago-forte/18265370?ean=9781982167387
[5]: https://logseq.com/
[6]: https://obsidian.md/
[7]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/obsidian-web/edoacekkjanmingkbkgjndndibhkegad
[8]: /notes/
[9]: https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history
[10]: /notes/golang/
This month:
* Adventure:
* Canoeing
* Beaufort
* Cruise
* Project:
* Skill:
* Adventure: this month is pretty adventure-packed between [Running of the Bulls][11], canoe camping, a long weekend in Beaufort, a cruise with Claire's family, and heading up to DC to meet our new niece
* Project: build a simple towel rack for the bathroom and publish an article on [testing][12] on my company's website
* Skill: gonna stick with Go and actually write some code
[11]: https://bullcityrunning.com/our-races/running-of-the-bulls-8k/
[12]: /notes/good-tests
Reading:
* Fiction: [_Rapt_][10], Winifred Gallagher
* Non-fiction: [_The Last Graduate_][11], Naomi Novik
* Fiction: [_Rapt_][13], Winifred Gallagher
* Non-fiction: [_The Last Graduate_][14], Naomi Novik
[10]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/rapt-attention-and-the-focused-life-winifred-gallagher/7485226?ean=9780143116905
[11]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-last-graduate-naomi-novik/15537202?ean=9780593128886
[13]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/rapt-attention-and-the-focused-life-winifred-gallagher/7485226?ean=9780143116905
[14]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-last-graduate-naomi-novik/15537202?ean=9780593128886
Links:
* [Title][12]
* [Title][13]
* [What’s in a Word? Building a Verbose Party Game | Viget][14]
* [What’s in a Word? Building a Verbose Party Game | Viget][15] -- write-up of the [Pointless Weekend][16] game I helped build in March
* [Why Have a Values Plan? – Anna Havron][17]
* [Turning Obsidian into My Perfect Writing App – The Sweet Setup][18]
[12]: https://example.com/
[13]: https://example.com/
[14]: https://www.viget.com/articles/whats-in-a-word-building-a-verbose-party-game/
[15]: https://www.viget.com/articles/whats-in-a-word-building-a-verbose-party-game/
[16]: /journal/dispatch-2-april-2023/
[17]: https://www.annahavron.com/blog/why-have-a-values-plan
[18]: https://thesweetsetup.com/turning-obsidian-into-my-perfect-writing-app/

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#[1]The Sweet Setup [2]alternate [3]alternate [4]alternate
[tr?id=1547247442291447&ev=PageView &noscript=1]
IFRAME: [5]https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-PS7L89F
NEW! All the Things: Productivity Course → [6]Check it Out
[7]The Sweet Setup The Sweet Setup
[8]ABOUT [9]COURSES [10]BLOG
[11]Sign In
* [12]Categories
+ [13]Mindfulness
+ [14]Workflows
+ [15]Setups
+ [16]Quick Tips
____________________ Go
Turning Obsidian into My Perfect Writing App
October 24, 2022
by [17]Mike Schmitz
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is right around the corner,
and if you’re looking for a great tool to help you hit your writing
goals, there are lots of great options available.
In this article, I want to make the case for using [18]Obsidian by
showing you how to turn it into a powerful writing environment using a
few essential plugins.
But Isn’t Obsidian a Notes App?
That’s what I thought when I first started using it a couple of years
ago. I was hoping it would help me make connections between my notes
and help inspire some new ideas. But over time, I fell in love with it
as a writing tool. In fact, every article I’ve written in the last 2
years has been written in Obsidian.
What makes Obsidian great as a writing tool is how much you can
customize it using third-party plugins. The number of plugins continues
to grow (676 as of this writing), and with Obsidian recently launching
version 1.0, the app shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
My Journey Away from Ulysses
Let me get this out right now: Ulysses is an incredible writing app.
It’s just not for me for a couple of specific reasons.
First, publishing to the web isn’t quite as easy as it should be with
Ulysses. It does give you the ability to publish straight to WordPress,
and you can even update blog posts from Ulysses now — if you can get it
to connect to your custom WordPress blog.
When this broke for me, I started digging in to how to fix it and
quickly came across weird plugins and settings for modifying XMLRPC.
And unfortunately, I could never get it functioning again. I fully
understand it’s something on my domains, but the “simple instructions”
didn’t work for me, and even as a web developer I didn’t feel
comfortable digging too far into this.
Which meant I was stuck copying and pasting into WordPress.
And because Ulysses doesn’t use standard Markdown, that meant I had to
“export” my text first. This works, but adds a few extra clicks (or
taps in iOS) in order to get my text out of my writing app. Combine
that with the fact that Ulysses has some weird Markdown formatting that
never quite clicked for me in the first place, and I was left looking
for a straight Markdown-based text editor.
Obsidian fits that description perfectly. It’s simple, uses plain text
files, provides inline formatting, and supports standard Markdown. It’s
everything I’ve ever wanted in a plain text editor.
But there are a few additional settings and plugins you can use to make
it even better as a writing app.
Obsidian Settings
First, let’s look at some of the settings.
To access these settings, click the gear icon in the lower-left corner
and then select Editor from the Settings sidebar.
The defaults are actually pretty good, but here’s the key settings you
want if you’re going to use Obsidian for writing:
* Make sure that Auto pair Markdown syntax is toggled ON. This
creates both symbols and places the cursor in the middle, making it
easier to create italicized or emphasized text.
* Make sure Smart indent lists is toggled ON. This makes it easier to
create bulleted and numbered lists quickly, automatically adding
the next bullet when you hit the Return key.
* Make sure that Fold heading and Fold indent are toggled ON. This
creates carats for Markdown headers as well as indented text,
adding some cool outliner-inspired features that make it easy to
fold up text in large files and focus on the text you want.
There are a bunch of other settings you can customize, but many of them
are simply personal preference. These are the important ones.
Once you have your settings, it’s time to move on to the plugins.
Obsidian Core Plugin Settings
There are two types of plugins in Obsidian: Core plugins that ship with
the app, and Community plugins that you can install to extend the
functionality of Obsidian. We’re going to look at the Core plugins
first.
Here are my recommendations for modifying the Core plugins:
* Make sure that Backlinks and Outgoing Links are both toggled ON.
These are sections available in the right sidebar that show all of
the notes that link to the active note and all of the notes linked
to from the active note respectively. (If you’re new to the concept
of connected notes, check out [19]this article on using the local
graph.)
* Make sure that Outline is toggled ON. This adds a tab in the right
sidebar that creates a table of contents for your note based on the
Markdown headers. This is helpful when you need to jump to a
specific section of a longer text as you can do so simply by
clicking on the appropriate header title.
* Turn the Word Count setting OFF. Word counts are important, but
there’s a Community plugin that does this much better than the
built-in word count tool here.
Again, there are a bunch of options here that are personal preference,
but these are the important ones. Once you have these Core plugins set,
it’s time to really make Obsidian dance by adding some Community
plugins.
Obsidian Community Plugins for an Upgraded Writing Experience
You can access the Community plugins public directory by going to
Settings → Community plugins → Browse once you’ve toggled off Safe
Mode. From there, you can find plugins for just about anything, from
[20]embedding tasks from Todoist to [21]creating timeblocked daily
plans to [22]creating kanban boards — all based on your locally-stored
plain text files using standard Markdown.
All of the plugin links I share below are Obsidian links
(obsidian://link-adress) that will open straight to the plug-in page if
you have Obsidian installed and running on your device.
Note that many of the plugins I will share here are 1:1 replacements
for standard features in Ulysses, so if you don’t mind non-standard
Markdown formatting and don’t run into the publishing issues that I
did, maybe try that instead. But if you’re all in with Obsidian, here
are the plugins I use to make Obsidian my perfect writing app.
Better Word Count
The first plugin is called [23]Better Word Count. This replaces the
built-in word count core plugin, and it functions largely the same with
one key addition: when you highlight text, it shows the
words/characters of the highlighted text instead of the whole document.
It’s not as good as the writing stats in Ulysses, but it’s good enough
for me.
cMenu
If you’re uncomfortable relying on your memory for Markdown formatting,
[24]cMenu is a third-party plugin that gives you a minimal text editor
modal that allows you to do things like bold, italicize, strikethrough,
underline, and toggle blockquotes.
If you don’t like the default options, you can customize what shows up
in the modal by adding any of the Commands in your Obsidian library.
Reading Time
Another handy Ulysses feature is being able to see how long it will
take to read the text in the selected file. But you can add this
feature to the status bar using the [25]Reading Time plugin.
This one is pretty straightforward — just install it and turn it on and
you’ll see the reading time at the bottom of your Obsidian window. You
can customize your reading speed in the settings for the plugin.
Footnote Shortcut
If you use footnotes a lot, they can be a bit of a pain to create with
standard Markdown. It’s a lot easier with the [26]Obsidian Footnotes
plugin.^[27]1
Once installed, you can find it in the Command Palette and with the
hotkey: Footnote Shortcut: Insert and Navigate Footnote. You can
customize the hotkey by going to Settings → Hotkey and searching for
Footnote, which will then insert the appropriate Markdown and navigate
to the bottom of the note where you can insert the text for your
footnote.
Focus Mode
The Obsidian interface can be a little distracting when you’re trying
to focus on your words. Fortunately, the [28]Focus Mode plugin allows
you to remove all the distractions and focus on what you’re writing.
Once the plugin is installed and active, just click the Toggle Focus
Mode button to hide the sidebars and status bar, and you can
shift-click the button to hide everything but the active writing pane.
Typewriter Scroll
[29]This plugin keeps the currently selected line in the middle of the
screen as you type. As you type, the focus moves from the current
section to the next section by moving the rest of the page in the
background, much like an old-fashioned typewriter.
There’s even a Zen Mode option that grays out the background text to
help you focus on the line that you are currently writing.
Novel Word Count
If you are aiming to write a book (fiction or non-fiction), you
probably have a total word count in mind. [30]Novel Word Count shows
you the number of words that a document or folder contains in the
sidebar so you can keep track of your long-form writing progress.
You can also use pages, characters, date created, and date updated (as
well as a few different combinations) that can be configured in the
plugin settings once you turn it on.
Conclusion
Obsidian is much more than just a notes app, and might be the perfect
writing tool for you if you want to:
1. Store your plain text files locally
2. Use something that supports standard Markdown
3. Gives you the flexibility to craft your writing environment
Obsidian may not be for everyone, but since it’s completely free to
start, there’s no reason not to give it a spin.
__________________________________________________________________
1. Since it’s an Obsidian Command, you could also add this as a button
to the cMenu plugin mentioned above. [31]↩
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and personal devices too. [44]»
[45]How We Created our Master Resource Database
A couple of months ago, we were in a Blanc Media staff meeting and we
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Well, the answer was.... “um, I don’t think so”. So then I had the idea
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[47]Lock Screen Widgets, Productivity Must-Haves, and More
Catch up on what we published this week, including a look at some great
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[49]Great Lock Screen Widgets for the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max
Here are some of our favorite Lock Screen widgets thus far. [50]»
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References
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16. https://thesweetsetup.com/category/quick-tip/
17. https://thesweetsetup.com/author/mikeschmitz/
18. https://obsidian.md/
19. https://thesweetsetup.com/the-power-of-obsidians-local-graph/
20. https://thesweetsetup.com/syncing-embedding-tasks-from-todoist-in-obsidian/
21. https://thesweetsetup.com/timeblocking-in-obsidian/
22. https://thesweetsetup.com/my-obsidian-based-kanban-writing-workflow/
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