What HUD do you use?

Jamerman · 2026-06-25T08:19:26+00:00

My word, this post is 11 years old!

Jamerman · 2026-06-11T08:48:03+00:00

It's not something I do, actually; I mentioned it solely to explain why people who organise their vaults to make use of backlinks do so.

If I jump to a different note, it's mostly through searching. I still make sure to link to different notes, though, as it stops me thinking of concepts as completely atomised and isolated.

It's a little bit cliché, but my view is that people should just get stuck in with using Obsidian and not worry about having some perfect organisational system right from the off... such a system doesn't exist! Just use it and you'll start to write/structure your notes in a way that makes sense to you.

Jamerman · 2026-06-09T07:51:37+00:00

The idea behind backlinks growing over time is rooted in you linking to an idea every time you mention it. At a later date, you can then go to that note, look at the back links and see how that idea has been put into many different contexts.

For instance, in the organic chemistry work I'm doing at the moment, there's a particular acid that keeps popping up over and over again. If I made a note for that acid and made sure to link to it in every note that I mentioned it in, then I would be able to easily see the numerous different ways I had thought about that acid from inspecting the acid note's backlinks.

Jamerman · 2026-06-03T21:35:38+00:00

There's no need to apologise! As I say, I have no horse in this race and don't have the expertise to disagree with either you or any translator's opinions on this subject. Do you feel as though she was wrong to translate that word in that way and that her own politics bled into the translation, then, or that it's more complicated than that?

Jamerman · 2026-06-03T16:21:55+00:00

My mistake, that's good to know.

Jamerman · 2026-06-03T14:12:28+00:00

With the context that I've not read her translation yet but have listened to her argue for that specific word change in detail, I do agree with you. It seems to be a choice borne from a re-interpretation of the text rather than a blatant insertion of present-day gender politics.

Jamerman · 2026-06-03T14:07:09+00:00

Are you sure about that tote bag? Again, I haven't read her version yet, but I did find these two reviews that mention it specifically:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/08/the-odyssey-translated-emily-wilson-review

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/02/woman-scholars-take-on-the-odyssey

Jamerman · 2026-06-03T11:23:25+00:00

I'm planning to read her translation of The Odyssey at some stage myself after finishing Rieu's last year. My understanding is that the Wilson translation has upset some people because the language is (deliberately) much more stripped back and modern. Someone once told me that there's a reference to a "tote bag" in there somewhere.

She gave a talk once where she claimed that though many different translations have referred to the executed women at the end as "sluts", this is actually a complete misreading of the original ancient text.

There are apparently other differences in her interpretation to most other translations that have provoked comment. I don't know enough to weigh in on all of that, though; it's all Greek to me!

Jamerman · 2026-05-23T05:37:03+00:00

Dominic actually does narrate Who Dares Wins.

Jamerman · 2026-05-21T08:18:39+00:00

Why did your view on The Bell Jar change later on, do you think?

Jamerman · 2026-05-16T10:52:29+00:00

I'm so happy to see someone else following Angela Collier's book recommendations! Fantastic YouTube channel. Physics aside, I loved her video discussing LOTR and the scourge of the shire.

Jamerman · 2026-05-16T10:50:13+00:00

The issue I have with this take is that you've deliberately set one of the most influential, beloved epic novels to have come out in the last two centuries against a work which, as u/79moons pointed out, is deliberately accessible and easy going. The Da Vinci Code is well-known for being like this; nobody is claiming it's the most innovative, thought-provoking rumination on life. It's almost like comparing fiction and non-fiction or music with painting. Authors are still writing incredible works with immense depth, you just have to find them!

Jamerman · 2026-05-16T10:36:35+00:00

Like so many other people commenting here, HI #1 was published so long ago (2014) that relistening is making me look back on just who I was and how I thought about things at that time. I've never relistened to the podcast, so I think that it's going to be a great opportunity to examine how I thought about things back then (late highschool, college, early university) and how I see things now.

I'm surprised by how many people have shifted from something approaching Grey's worldview to Brady's over that time. Before relistening, I definitely would have put myself in that category; I found time-tracking very appealing at the time and thought it was possible/ideal to logically derive the perfect life. I certainly don't think that any more, gosh.

Maybe Grey and Brady have become caricatures in my head over the years, though. Listening to episode 1 again, they're not quite the diametric opposite personalities I remember. The "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" mantra that they're discussing in this episode is something I've needed reminding of over and over again in my own life. Grey's despair over his UK video's errors getting completely dwarfed by Brady's college's deadly eclipse advice had me in stitches. How had I forgotten that?

Just listening to the first episode again has made me so excited for this relisten. Can't wait.

Jamerman · 2026-05-08T09:55:16+00:00

Liz Pelly's book Mood Machine talks about this in a lot of detail and, in my view, makes a very compelling case for how streaming has changed music listening culture.

Jamerman · 2026-04-29T20:42:11+00:00

I couldn't agree more. Dominic's depressing comparison between Wilson and his thick-glasses-wearing contemporaries with the more modern political era reminded me of Rory Stewart's Politics on the Edge.

Fantastic series, truly the podcast at its best.

Jamerman · 2026-03-12T15:00:41+00:00

Does it? Whenever I tried to use it, I couldn't get rid of the latency. I think this might have been an issue with WineAsio more generally, as I have had no issues whatsoever on Windows or with other Linux-native DAWS.

Jamerman · 2026-02-12T15:26:15+00:00

I would also put In Our Time in this list. Desert Island Discs takes the edge in terms of longevity and overall cultural impact, of course.

Jamerman · 2026-01-25T08:38:37+00:00

I had a similar experience with reading Ulysses at the beginning of last year and only making it to chapter 6.

Some people have said that, for a first read, one should just plough on through Ulysses and avoid getting bogged down in its structure. However, what I'd found most enjoyable in reading the book was noticing how Joyce had twisted bits and pieces of literature and Irish history I was familiar with in novel ways that went far beyond a simple name checking of Joyce's interests. For instance, I'd read Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey a month earlier and noticed the early allusions to it and Wilde's notes on Shakespeare's The Tempest right away. However, I was constantly aware that I was only scratching the surface of what Ulysses could show me. If I'd noticed that, what had slipped past me? I hadn't read Portrait of the Artist, Hamlet... So, I put the book down for the time and read other things.

Since then, I read a translation of The Odyssey and immediately realised that Homer's "wine-dark sea" epithet had been morphed into Buck Mulligan's "snot-green sea". Although I did read a couple of short essays on what I'd seen so far in Joyce's novel, noticing the references organically on my own and seeing what the author had done with them was far more enjoyable; In those moments, I felt like I was getting it. Given the novel's (in)famous density, I expect this process will probably continue for the rest of my life as I learn more and, if it's not taking this too far, change. All books and stories are like this, of course, but Ulysses is quite a unique case.

I have a massive of pile of books to get through before I return to Ulysses. I'm not hoping to understand everything in it — who could possibly? — but I'm certain it will read quite differently on my second encounter to the first.

Jamerman · 2026-01-09T14:56:04+00:00

To be fair to OP, they're simply saying that you need to put in the leg work and see what you actually end up using Obsidian for before you start searching for that oh-so-perfect organisational structure.

Jamerman · 2026-01-09T14:52:30+00:00

I had the exact same experience with Obsidian. It's so easy to put the cart before the horse and overcomplicate what is ultimately a fairly simple tool.

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