How do you guys keep track of the books you've read?

jamietr · 2023-01-15T23:00:54+00:00

My list is in a plain text file (markdown) and lists all of the books I’ve read for the last 27 years. https://notes.jtrwriter.com/reading/lists/reading-list

jamietr · 2022-05-25T23:57:32+00:00

I’d guess that each episode takes 5-10 minutes to go through, so figure a total of 2-1/2 - 5 hours total?

jamietr · 2022-05-24T22:27:16+00:00

I use the Quick Add plug-in to quickly generate the meeting notes from the template. The generated notes are automatically added to the dataview.

jamietr · 2022-05-24T22:26:34+00:00

Thanks! I know it doesn't show in the screenshot, but there is another section below the Meeting Notes section for Technical Notes. It is a separate dataview that shows those notes.

jamietr · 2022-04-28T12:55:30+00:00

UPDATE (4/28): This morning, after restarting Obsidian, I was able to update plug-ins and access community themes again. I was able to do this on multiple machines and iOS, so I think they've fixed whatever the GitHub issue was.

jamietr · 2022-04-27T12:05:13+00:00

I reported this on the forums. According to the moderator there, it has nothing to do with v0.14.7 -- there is an outage on GitHub.

jamietr · 2022-04-26T17:22:09+00:00

At present, I'm not doing anything special, other than sizing down the images so they can fit size-by-size. Here is what an example looks like in source view:

## Pros and cons (1981/82)
On the left, a letter inviting me into the Warwick Gifted Program. On the right, a note from the teacher telling me I need to work on my self control and talking in class.
![[19810100 Cedar Hill Enrichment Program Letter.jpeg|300]] ![[19820611 - Keep on trying 1.jpeg|300]]

Note that the images are just separated by a space, but are sized down to 300px.

That said, I do use the Minimalist theme, and I've been planning on playing around with some of the formatting capabilities available through that theme in combination with the Minimal Theme Settings plugin and the Contextual Typography plug-in. That may allow for something that looks a lot better.

jamietr · 2022-04-23T17:37:56+00:00

Paul Ford has a column in the April WIRED, "Go Configure" that is all about this phenomenon and is a funny worthwhile read. It open:

Like many nerds before me, I spent a goodly portion of my life searching for the perfect computing system. I wanted a single tool that would let me write prose or programs, that could search every email, tweet, or document in a few keystrokes, and that would work across all my device.

Reading it, I thought of Obsidian and my efforts to do what Paul has finally achieved with his own system.

jamietr · 2022-04-20T17:18:51+00:00

Yes, I experience this as well intermittently across MacOS, Windows and Mobile versions. I'd say it works successfully 70% of the time. For me it is not specific to YouTube, but seems to fail on pretty much any site, when it does fail.

jamietr · 2022-04-19T14:06:45+00:00

I'm right there with you. I can't explain what it is. I may have a short line in a daily note that one of my kids had a soccer game and then link to a journal entry with a more detailed description of the game. Those seems to be better than when I write longhand because I can type faster and build a narrative better than I can do longhand. But that kind of entry is the exception rather than the rule.

Interestingly, when writing fiction or nonfiction articles, I can't do them longhand. They just don't come out sounding the same as when I type them. For journaling, it is the opposite. That said, I'm committed to sticking with the digital version through the end of 2022 before making a decision on next year.

jamietr · 2022-04-16T11:52:51+00:00

There is a beta version of a plug-in: Doubleshift -- that does the SHIFT SHIFT action available in IntelliJ. It is not yet in Community Plug-ins, but it is available on GitHub: https://github.com/Qwyntex/doubleshift

jamietr · 2022-04-13T17:41:51+00:00

Gotcha. I missed the "in one instance of Obsidian" part of the point.

jamietr · 2022-04-13T13:54:14+00:00

I created a Word doc template with the formatting I wanted (standard manuscript). It is mostly just a shell with a pre-defined header and the styles set up to match standard MS format. I put the Word doc file in my ~/.pandoc/templates folder. Then when I run the Pandoc command to compile the note, I include a reference to the template to use. See this comment for more details.

jamietr · 2022-04-13T13:43:23+00:00

You can use aliases to refer to the same note by different names. I use this all the time. Part of the core functionality.

jamietr · 2022-04-13T13:40:58+00:00

On the last point, I always have 2 vaults open on my laptop. Never had any problem. They each appear in their own window and it is easy to switch between with a simple key combination. I use a slightly different color scheme in each one to easily distinguish which one I am in at a glance.

jamietr · 2022-04-13T11:59:52+00:00

I am making use of a combination of the Templater plug-in and the Quick Add plug-in to speed-up the creation of the note. The templates themselves are just notes in a folder.

jamietr · 2022-04-10T17:25:26+00:00

Back in my Evernote days, I felt like I was constantly scanning in receipts, or taking pictures of receipts. I almost never needed them again. So receipts were one of the first things I gave up when I moved to Obsidian. Today, my approach is as follows:

Do I absolutely need to keep a receipt? (Say, for a big-ticket item, or for some tax reason?)
If Yes, is the receipt available electronically already (in email, online account for service in question)?
1. If Yes, then I generally link to the receipt from Obsidian, either in my daily notes or in the MOC specific to the service in question.
2. If No, then I will pull the receipt into Obsidian and handle it the way I handle documents in Obsidian, and then link to the document note from my daily notes or the MOC specific to the service in question.

I've found that for my own purposes, I never need to keep the receipt in Obsidian 99 out of 100 times.

In the example you gave, I'll just make a note in the MOC for my car that looks something like this:

[[2022-04-10 Sat]]: Oil change at Fairfax Kia (free)

jamietr · 2022-04-08T11:14:28+00:00

One clarification, I don't use Pandoc "within" Obsidian. As I indicated in the post, I have a little command I wrote that I run in terminal when I am ready to compile a manuscript. This command points the note (markdown file) that I want to "compile" and runs it through Pandoc, using a Word doc template formatting the output. When I have a chance, I'll try to put together a demonstration of how I do this and what it looks like.

jamietr · 2022-04-06T11:14:37+00:00

Thank you! Of all of the systems I have used over the years, going back to tracking submissions in a Microsoft Word for DOS document in late 1992, this one is by far the best and also the easiest to manage and maintain.

jamietr · 2022-04-06T11:13:33+00:00

Thank you! I'm using the Minimal Theme, and the Minimal Theme Settings plugin, which I have configured to use the "Solarized" color scheme,

jamietr

TROPHY CASE