In which I mambo dogface to the banana patch
It's been one of those weeks. Again. Now I'm here in Kirby and using Bear and Day One and Lightroom and anything else that doesn't require me to care about file organization and naming. See File Management Fatigue.
You know, technically, I don't have to manage the content files here in Kirby. That's what the panel is for.
(NOTE: This post first appeared on foofaraw: 🌎 Where in the World is Jack? Vol.3)
A theme for the past month has been, "Wrapping my Obsidian vault around Johnny Decimal."
Johnny Decimal is "A system to organise your life." It's a structured system for keeping folders full of stuff, using a (fairly strict) numbering system.
If you're into note-taking, you already know about Obsidian. For most people, I believe that Obsidian is the Correct Answer for keeping notes and for PKM (or a "Zettelkasten", if you're feeling fancy). I keep trying to move my notes into Obsidian. I struggle with sticking with it, mostly because I'm already pretty good with Emacs. Once Emacs happens, nothing else feels viable. I keep trying though, because it would be nice to have decent mobile access to notes. And sometimes Emacs feels too much like work. Anyway, I've been giving Obsidian another run.
There are hundreds of articles and videos about how to use and organize things in Obsidian. My system isn't special, but I have been trying one thing that I haven't seen mentioned often.
A month ago I went all in and organized everything using a Johnny Decimal layout. Then I created an Obsidian "Vault" comprising the entire set of folders.
The first thing I needed to do was make Obsidian not look terrible. Not an easy task. I installed the "Minimal" theme and the accompanying "Minimal Theme Settings" plugin. This helped. Then I changed the font to "Berkeley Mono" which is just wonderful. Here's a screenshot:
Obsidian's plugin community might be its greatest asset, but it's also the thing that puts me off Obsidian. It's too easy to install so many plugins that you get lost in the weeds. So far, I've avoided installing every plugin I've ever heard of. Here's what I'm using currently.
The key plugins for working with the Johnny Decimal layout are "Folder notes" and "Waypoint".
The Folder notes plugin makes it easy to keep notes on each area in the J.D folders. I ⌥ + Click a folder in Obsidian and the plugin creates a new Markdown note with the same name as the folder. It's almost like an automatic README file. Super handy. I have a template for Folder notes that includes placeholders for the "Waypoint" plugin. Waypoint traverses the current folder tree and generates links to everything in it. It's an automatic MOC ("Map of Content").
Speaking of maps of content, I love seeing other people's J.D layouts, so here's mine:
├── 00 System
│ ├── 01 Exports and Backups
│ ├── 02 Templates
│ ├── 03 Software SOPs
│ └── 04 Scripts
├── 10 Personal
│ ├── 10 Personal Info
│ ├── 11 Family
│ ├── 12 Health
│ ├── 13 Career
│ ├── 14 Finance
│ └── 15 Travel
├── 30 Home and Auto
│ ├── 30 Household Misc
│ ├── 31 Auto Records
│ └── 32 Household Projects
├── 40 Writing & Creative
│ ├── 40 Misc (Writing)
│ ├── 41 Exports and Backups
│ ├── 42 Blogs
│ ├── 43 Journals and Notebooks
│ ├── 44 Daily Notes Archive
│ ├── 45 Books
│ ├── 46 Creative Assets
│ └── Legal Pads
├── 50 Media and Sources
│ └── 51 Books
├── 60 [redacted]
│ ├── 60 Misc
│ ├── 61 [redacted] (building)
│ ├── 62 Financial
│ └── 63 Leasing
├── 70 Knowledgebase
│ ├── 70.02 howm
│ ├── 70.03 denote
│ └── _attachments
└── 80 Hobbies and Interests
├── 81 Photography
└── 82 Reef TankThis is my first pass, and will probably change a lot, but it was easier to put together than I expected.
So, how's this all been working for me? Frankly, it's been hit or miss. The problem is that there's just too much stuff in the vault. For example, I have receipts going back to 2018 and they get in the way of my normal Obsidian usage. Looking for a specific file becomes difficult when there are thousands of them that I'll never want to actually open. I want to use the "OmniSearch" plugin, but it gets bogged down easily with so much stuff to index.
I thought I'd "fix" this by moving older files (e.g receipts, taxes) out of my J.D tree and onto an archive drive. Now I had yet another place for my stuff and that made me immediately feel like I was breaking J.D to accommodate Obsidian. I mean, scattering stuff all over the place was what the whole enterprise was trying to avoid in the first place.
The next thing I thought I'd try was having two Obsidian vaults: one for J.D and one for my "knowledge base" (aka "notes"). There we are splitting things up again. However this version feels better than fracturing my J.D system, so that's where things are right now.
I'm not really using the J.D Obsidian vault other than to keep notes about the files that are in there. I've been spending the most time in my "regular" vault, which is where I'm keeping Daily Notes and notes about stuff that isn't in J.D. I hope that makes at least some sense.
Overall, the dream of having everything in a single place remains elusive, and may always remain so, but I keep trying.
I botched a roll of film while processing yesterday. After the pre-wash step, instead of emptying the water from the JOBO tank, I just poured the developer in with it. This of course diluted the developer. I thought it was odd that some of the dev ran out of the tank but kept going anyway and didn't realize what had happened until I poured the developer out and noticed there was way too much of it and the color was very diluted. I pressed on, just in case.
Fortunately, I at least got salvageable images. The roll of Portra had expired in 2014, so I wasn't expecting much to begin with. The colors are off and they look underexposed, but it's my mom, so I'm happy to have them.
When I write a quote or note on an index card, I try to record some version of a reference. Most often this is just a title, author, and date of the article or book. When I need to revisit the source, I then need to look it up based on what I'd written on the card. This is fine for physical books, but I had an idea today that could make it easier for digital sources.
What if I put a QR code pointing to the source right on the index card?1
I have a little Niimbot label printer that can print QR codes. I just paste the URL, and it generates the QR code automatically. What I don't love about it is that I have to get out my phone to make the labels and the app is pretty awful. And trying to run the iOS app on macOS is an exercise in frustration2.
Here's my first run at this:
The QR code could contain anything, really. Not only URLs. I could encode a link into an Obsidian vault, or the path to an Org-mode file, etc.
I'm not sure yet if this is a terrible idea or not, but I feel like it's worth a try.
So far today, (as of 9:57 am) I have installed three apps that I had deliberately avoided installing on the new Mac Mini.
MailMate because I just quit Hey but still wanted something different to play with. I've used MailMate on and off since sometime in 2013 I think. It's a powerful, flexible, text/Markdown-first email app.
TheBrain because I'm still looking for the "Everything" app, and in my experience, TheBrain has been the best at that. If I'd never stopped using it, I'd be able to find every single thing and everything associated with that thing.
Bike Outliner because sometimes I just want a quick outline without all the fuss of Tinderbox or Org-mode. Bike is nice for that.
After a time away from Hey email, I impulse subscribed again. And once again, after a short time, I already don't want to use it. I have reasons.
When Hey (hey.com) email was first launched, I signed up immediately. It was a fresh take on email and it felt nice. Hey either resonates with you or it doesn't. With me, it did. I paid for a year or two, and used it (on and off) for a long time. I never fully adopted my jbaty@hey.com email address because, well, I know me. Also, I already have an email address.
I still think Hey is a good service. Its opinionated way of dealing with email is clever and useful. However, I can't get over the fact that it doesn't use normal IMAP. This means there's no way into my email other than using the Hey web interface or iOS app. It's fine, but makes me feel trapped. Email is one of the few remaining things we have that doesn't lock us in.
Linking to emails is something I do all the time. Links to Hey emails are easy to make, since they're just web URLs, but I don't trust using them in my notes because once again, I know me, and those links will be dead once I, inevitably, go back to using "normal" email.
There's something about the web UI of Hey that introduces more friction than I like. It's fast enough, but it just feels a teeny bit janky. I can't explain it, but it wears on me.
A smaller, but irritating aspect of using Hey is that one of the guys who runs the place can't seem to stop saying stupid shit in public. I try to allow people plenty of leeway when it comes to differing opinions, but his keeps getting worse and the smug, know-it-all-ness of it bugs me.
And honestly, I don't get that much email these days, so a fancy workflow for processing it is overkill.
So, I've stopped forwarding my email to Hey and am back in my usual Fastmail->Apple Mail combination. If I get bored, I can always install the wonderful Mailmate or something like it to play with.
Something I've always liked about TiddlyWiki is that I'm never forced to decide where something goes or what it's named. I can simply click on the new tiddler button, type something, and hit save. Links, tags, or other organization can be applied later, but none are required.
The Howm Emacs package works similarly. By default, Howm1 notes are organized in YYYY/MM/ folders and file names are automatically created based on the current time, e.g. 2024-05-07-130712.txt. I don't have to think about them.
It's nice to just make a new note and not care where it goes. I sometimes get twitchy about not having useful file names. "What about accessing your notes outside Howm?" First, I never do that. Second, there's grep, Spotlight, or any other text editor that can search a folder full of plain text files. This is not something I need worry about. In fact, it's slightly better than with TiddlyWiki, since to find something in TiddlyWiki, I need a web browser to open the wiki and search. There's only one useful way in. Of course that's never a problem, but still.
This is fine:
I continue to be surprised by how quickly Howm has become an important part of my workflow. I should write about how the combination of Howm and Denote fit into my process.
I've decided to write it as "Howm" with an initial capital. Howm is an acronym, but I've never seen it capitalized as "HOWM". I don't like it all lowercase, since it feels like it should be treated as a proper noun, so I'm going with "Howm". ↩
In the spirit of /Now and /Uses and /Hello pages, I've created a /Nope page.
It's for keeping track of things I don't like or want to do. It's a work in progress, but it'll probably see more updates than my now page 😄
In a post from Andreas:
Well, of course it’s great, even fantastic - for Adobe. They can lure you in with low prices, then gradually make the subscription more expensive, and then move the features you use to the “premium” tier where you have to pay even more. Not to mention that they can remove features on a whim if they feel like it, or charge you even more if you want to keep them. And if you want to keep access to your files, you have to be subscribed until the end of time - “nice pictures you have there! It’d be a shame if you couldn’t open them because you decided to opt out of our subscription model, wouldn’t it?”
I dislike subscriptions. I rage-quit everything Adobe a few years ago in a huff about subscriptions and, well, I don't love Adobe. However, I'm once again paying a subscription to Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.
Why? First, because the product is, overall, more appropriate for me than the alternatives. And second, in seven years of subscribing to the Adobe "Photography" plan, none of the things Andreas mentioned have happened. The price is the same (I'd happily pay double). They've only ever added features (I don't remember a single feature being removed. Has there been any?) If I cancel my subscription, I still have 100% access to my files (I just can't make additional edits).
I'm not trying to single out Andreas. His post just reminded me that these "What if...?!" doomsday scenarios have guided way too many of my decisions. What if [SOME APP] stops being developed? What if Apple behaves even more badly? What if some "proprietary" (usually sqlite, so not really) database becomes corrupted? What if I can't read [FILETYPE] in 50 years?
Of course these things can happen, but how often do they? Basically never, has been my personal experience. And if they do happen, there's almost always a reasonable way out.
Why suffer using something we don't love, on a just-in-case, instead of something we do love and find immediately more useful, because "what if!?"
I still keep an actual calculator on my desk, and use it regularly. I find it easier and more "stable" than using either a calculator app or even the built-in calculator in Raycast.
I bought the Casio shown above years ago because it had a large screen and doesn't use batteries. It's fine, but there are a couple of things about it that bother me.
First, there's no "On" button. Ok, there is, but it's buried under the AC button. Bugs me.
The On button issue is bad enough, but that's not why I hate the Casio. I hate the Casio because when I turn it off, the screen reads "CASIO" for a few seconds before actually turning off. It's like watching a little ad each time. I hate it, so I bought a new calculator.
This is the re-issued version of the iconic, Dieter Rams designed Braun ET66 (1987). I recently watched the Dieter Rams documentary, "Rams" (2018), which reminded me of the Braun, so I thought this model would be a fine choice.
I like it. It's simple, clear, does what I need, and looks good doing it. And it doesn't shout its own name every time I turn it off. Much better.
I love software. I love learning what software can do. I love setting up workflows using all the fun software I've learned about. The problem is that this leads to chaos and complexity. Every time.
You're probably wondering what made me think of this. Well, yesterday I was exhausted from fighting with Obsidian and Emacs, so I installed Bear. You see what I mean? I spent an hour this morning importing stuff from Obsidian and cleaning up tags, etc. Bear is so nice and simple and absolutely does not lend itself to tweaking.
Problem solved! Not really.
What about daily notes? What about templates? What about complex exports? Why is folding so cumbersome? Where are the backlinks displayed again?
Sigh. I really appreciate Bear, but can I live in it? Probably not. I love simplicity, but can't abide constraints. I'm screwed, I guess.