Obsidian Notes
Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.
I read this article How to Use Obsidian as a Personal Wiki on Your Computer. I’m looking for a general note file item that I can use, and since it uses local files I thought this might be a useful tool that I can use across computers as I can use FreeFileSync to copy it across to other PC’s so they can be up to date.
I’ve just created a new vault in a weird place on my PC as I’m trying to only sync my Revit Producivity Folder in AHK’s , so not in the ideal location. But it will be a test. Hopefully I can copy/paste the data to a location later.
Its in markdown so I suppose ‘ll need to learn that in a bit more depth.
It looks as if it has Graph tools so may be good for visualising stuff like the bubble diagrams. We’ll wait and see.
There is a personal version for Free and then there are other versions too. I’ll try the free version and see how I go.
At the moment the projects I’m doing with the book stuff are scattered all over the place and its hard to get your thoughts together, I’m struggling with AHK 2 book. I covered most of the stuff in AHK 1, in 2 I need to go into more detail. I’m struggling to find examples, which were easy in Revit Script book.
Also all the fiddly stuff with A+ content, different languages and other items to do with publishing, such as Draft2Digital and other topics. I need them all in one place to throw Ideas around and get focused, this may be the tool I need for that.
This is cool
2 months on, using daily
This has some great tools, also the opportunity to fiddle, so can be a distraction in its own right.
I’ve been using it daily and its been a great resource for getting ideas but of my head and in a place where I can move them around and shape them. Especially whilst I was writing the books.
Book Writing
Its been great to be able to put ideas down , then move them around as chapters , so I can see a process to the book. Also to move ideas from one book to another.
The Kanban tables are good for having an overall idea of what is current, really useful when you have lots of ongoing activities, you can then prioritise which ones to manage first.
Daily information & tasks
I’m using the free version, and do some work in the bed in the morning and some in the living room later. So I need Obsidian to be up to date, I’m using FreeFileSync to copy files across and mirror the latest version so that its always current. I sometimes forget to do this so need to get up and go to other computer to sync it to then work on where I usually work.
I find its good as a record for looking at marketing for books, which I need to do to get sales.
What I’m finding is that I have too many things on the go at the moment. I have:
- Blogger Covid Diary
- Vast blog site
- Revit Shortcuts site -software sales and books
- Obsidian – Daily diary on Marketing
- YouTube videos- productivity and other vids
- Writing books
- Current book on website and setup and looking to create website for AutoHotKey software and books
- Udemy courses
So there is a lot of maintenance on all of these items,and they are getting to be a chore, spending time on the maintenance and less on creative productive work.
Obsidian is exacerbating that as try to maintain it as well. So where does it fit in with the whole schema of things?
Obsidian for my daily use?
I really like using Obsidian, it has some really nifty things going for it.
I think of it as an empty database, of no use unless it has content to use and manage. So you need to fill it up to be able to get leverage out of the information in it.
Its good for capturing my thoughts and putting them in a place I can access, a really great note app, and you can re-order the information to suit later, and flesh out ideas.
One problem is the sync between computers, if it was on the NAS then it would be up to date and then I’d be able to quickly throw my thoughts down onto a note.
The issue is not using it as the 2 versions get out of sync and you loose data.
I don’t really want a further daily diary,no time for it.The marketing and Kanban stuff is good for keeping track but it needs to be up to date.
I love the smart stuff it does with DataViews and tags but that takes effort to learn, setup and maintain.
Markup , URL links & images
The markup is not too much of an issue, you can always look up info on that, a bit of nuisance in that its not at your fingertip (actually I should make a note on it so its easily retrievable).
URL links can be a bit of a pain as you have to do a double copy paste (Name & URL). It needs getting used to.
Images, moving them to the correct folder to display. A bit more inconvenient than with web pages, maybe there is a strategy yo make this easier as I do like to use images/screenshots for stuff)
End Comment
Is it worth paying for a sync version of Obsidian? Not yet, its useful but not indispensable.
I’ll try having the NAS as the vault and see if that works, it’ll save me having to sync all the time but connection may be troubling. Give it a crack.
Overall, the use case at the moment is with the book writing and marketing. Maybe with other projects too. I need to re-think how I use this.
Its good to use when you are familiar with it but if you are a bit rusty it can take time to hunt the feature, item that you want to use off the cuff, like the tick boxes and indents.
It’s a fantastic tool but I’m not using it effectively, I need to look at setting up on NAS so that its up to date wherever I am for accessing it.
