Tag: obsidian

Obsidian has added a functionality called ‘Bases’. An interface driven way to make overviews like you already could make with Dataview queries. Where Dataview is a plugin, Bases is a core functionality. Bases use properties for filters, and I don’t really use properties, at least not as frontmatter like Bases assumes. Such frontmatter properties suggest the need for structure and consistency that can only feel like a burden more than an aid. I do have inline data fields (inline works better for me, because I can turn any part of a note into a piece of data that way).

Perhaps it helps make overviews of ongoing projects somewhat easier to make. Let’s see.
I’m hesitant as it seems a step towards Obsidian trying to be everything to everyone, bloating functions, whereas for me having plain text notes that I can approach with any other tool besides Obsidian is the key thing to ensure works.

In reply to SPARK! Toon random kennis in Obsidian by Frank Meeuwsen

Leuk Frank! Ik heb het nog niet geprobeerd of bekeken, maar ik ga dit denk ik proberen te gebruiken om een random quote uit mijn map van web clippings te halen en af te beelden bovenin mijn Daglog. Om op die manier blootgesteld te worden aan dingen die ik al een keer bewaarde. Je vraagt naar aanvulling: zou je in plaats van een map ook naar een enkel bestand kunnen wijzen? Bijvoorbeeld naar de annotaties van een boek dat ik net las, zodat ik dat als het ware verder verwerk door toevallige interactie er mee.

… op mijn Obsidian homepage laad ik continu een random paragraaf uit de Tao Te Ching. Door op een button te klikken verandert de paragraaf en kan ik naar het origineel doorklikken voor verdere studie. Ik maakte hiervoor een eigen script…. Kun je hier iets mee? Zo ja, waar gebruik je het nu voor?

Frank Meeuwsen

Posted on
by

Obsidian has released a Webclipper for a variety of browsers. Making it easy to get stuff into your notes from your browser is a key thing to make as frictionless as possible. So this is a laudable step.

I’ve been using the Markdownload webclipper for 4 years.

Both allow you to precisely template what gets saved and in which way when you save a page or a selection on a page. That way I can ensure it ends up in my Obsidian notes tool in a shape that is immediately useful inside that environment.

A key difference is that Markdownload saves to the file system, it simply puts a text file with an .md file extension in a folder I designated, and that is the same folder Obsidian looks for my notes. It can also save through Obsidian though. It’s independent and useful regardless of Obsidian, because of it.

The Obsidian webclipper saves through Obsidian, I suspect so you can leverage whatever you have set up in Obsidian for incoming material. It brings Obsidian to the front and does the saving, and if you want opens the note to continue there. In my case it meant the default template for new notes got applied by the templater plugin, overwriting the material I tried to save. The settings of the Obsidian webclipper does not have the option to save to a folder, bypassing Obsidian.
This to me introduces an unneeded dependency (and the need to figure out suppressing my default template inside Obsidian so it doesn’t overwrite incoming webclippings). To me the fact that Obsidian is a viewer on top of regular text notes on my hard drive is valuable because I can use the files and manipulate them in other tools. I daily read and write those notes outside of Obsidian. It seems many others don’t realise this fully as there is the strong tendency to want and expect Obsidian to do everything (even though the dev team handily shifted that urge to the developers of plugins).

I will stick with the Markdownload webclipper for now.

Posted on
by

During the September Dutch PKM Obsidian meet-up the topic of discussion was journaling. An interesting thing that stood out was how a participant demonstrated their use of named block references in Obsidian.

In Obsidian any phrase surrounded by double brackets is a link to another note. Adding an circumflex (accent circonflexe, ^) behind such a link allows you to reference a specific paragraph inside a note. On occasion I’ve used those, though not often.
If you add the circumflex and select a paragraph, Obsidian will add a random alphanumeric code behind the selected paragraph in the original note, and to the end of your link. Removing or altering either will break the link.

What I hadn’t seen before was that you can add your own block references. At the meet-up someone did that using templates so he new the block references in specific types of notes, and could always refer to them elsewhere, in this case establishing links between day notes and week notes in a predictable manner. These block references can then be human readable, and re-used (as long they’re unique within a single note).

In the past days I found myself using them to references reading / literature notes from my own notes. Especially I noticed that I use the block reference to point to the part inside a paragraph I’m mostly referring to.

Below is an example from this week.
First a reference link in one of my notes, with the block reference ‘sortboxes’. Then the original annotation. The reference ‘sortboxes’ points exactly to my words in the annotation I am referencing.

It’s interesting that after learning this possibility a month ago, I now see myself doing that in a different manner than I saw it, yet as emergent behaviour, as a new earned structure. A useful thing perhaps to also adopt in Latticework, as during sensemaking it is common that new thoughts or associations latch on to steadily shorter phrases or even single words of annotated material rather than full paragraphs, as you progress in thinking things through.

Posted on
by

I am trying out the Books Search plugin for Obsidian. I keep notes on all books I’ve read, own or have come across. I add meta data to those notes manually. The Books Search plugin helps make that easier by picking up that meta data from Google Books through their API. You install the plugin through the Community Plugin list, and can then add an API key. Without that key, after a few tries you will get an error message.

The plugin documentation does however not state how to connect the plugin to that Google API.

These are the steps I took after a bit of searching:

  • In the Google cloud console first create a project. (A Google account is needed)
  • In the same console, under credentials, click create credentials and create an API key. Copy that key and save it in the settings of the Obsidian Books Search plugin.
  • In the same console, under Enable APIs & Services, enable the Google Books API.
  • Go back to Credentials, edit your API key, select Restrict Key under API restrictions, and select from drop down list the Google Books API you’ve just enabled. (If it doesn’t show any APIs to choose, you have not enabled any APIs yet.) Now the key works only for the Google Books API.
  • Ignore the warning in the console about OAuth consent, as this is not needed (the books API is accessible without authorisation, and you’re also not building an app for others to use.)

Using the Book Search plugin I notice it is by default restricted to English books, not finding titles in other languages that Google Books does have in its lists. The locale settings in the plugin allow me to switch language before a search in the search form through a very long drop down menu, but doing that (or doing the same search for each of three or four languages) quickly negates the effectivity gain the plugin provides.

It is unclear from the Google API documentation if locale can be set to multiple languages.

Probably not, given Google’s long history of interpreting multilingual as serial monolingual (see this 2007 presentation at Google by Stephanie Booth pointing this same stuff out), ignoring that multilingual people tend to change languages throughout their activities even for just a single word or short phrase. (I don’t have Dutch, English or German days or topics, in the case of books I may want to find the German original of an English translation, or want to search for a specific thing in French because I know it exists, while also interested in any Dutch translation that might be available or the Italian original. My notes are always in multiple languages.)

Posted on
by

Working on a visual representation of the European data strategy landscape, integrated as well as alongside a textual representation this morning. It makes for a pleasant experience. The experience comes from what Zsolt Viczián’s Excalidraw plugin for Obsidian allows me to do, something I mentioned here earlier after the PKM Summit last March where Zsolt showed this.

Excalidraw drawings are basically text files describing the drawing, which are then rendered in the viewer. What the plugin supports is putting other text elements outside the drawing elements, and exclude them from the visual view. This creates two representations of the same file: one the drawing presented visually, one the text content outside the visual. Zsolt calls it the ‘flip side’ of a drawing, being a note accompanying the drawing. I see it more like two different views on the same thing. I have a hotkey (cmd arrow down) enabled to flip a note between both views.

Putting both views next to each other, and working in both at the same time, allows me a seamless mode of working, switching between visual material and text writing. As shown in the screenshot below.

Here you see the same note twice, opened in two tabs. The left side is the textual representation. It also contains an embedded auto-generated image from the visual representation but that is something I choose to do. Underneath that image you see some notes I wrote.
The right hand side shows the visual representation, a drawing of how I perceive the context of the European single market for data (at least, part of it).
I use the visual side as a Systems Convening landscape, to think about barriers, possible interventions, visibility etc. I use the text side to turn those thoughts into notes, potential actions, and links to other relevant material, or to write down things I think might be added to the visual.

Over the years my main problem with working more visually has been the lack of fluidity between the visual and the textual. Basically rendering them into two separate silos. Few tools solve that issue (Tinderbox is one). This means I usually favor the textual side of things. Where I use images, they are ‘frozen’ moments of the ever evolving textual side. The set-up this morning is not silo’d and here the creation of visual elements aids the text creation and vice versa, while I work on both in parallel in a single note. Both text and visual evolve together. Very nice.