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Ditching Obsidian and building my own

amberwilliams.io

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Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#201

Post by lolinder »

old-gregg wrote: post #192
lolinder wrote: post #6

> Since my PKMS is hosted online to manage notes across devices, I have multiple layers of security to ensure my notes are kept private. {Screenshot of a login form} The biggest life hack I can recommend for a self hoster is to set up a VPN on your local network and then just never expose your services on the public internet unless you're specifically trying to serve people outside your own household. Before I did th…

Your "life hack" is not a good advice. There's plenty of well-written explanations for why perimeter based security doesn't work. What is strange is that you've started in the right place: by being "constantly worried about security implications of each app". Unfortunately it's annoying and time consuming, but that's the right way to keep your data private. And if that's too much hassle, it means it's worth it to pay…

Any serious approach to security begins with a reasonable and clearly defined threat model, and my threat model for my home network doesn't currently include a team of superheros targeting my file backups in an effort to save the world. But I'll definitely keep your advice in mind when I do decide to start executing on my evil plots.

For now my threat model consists of script kiddies and abusive corporations. Self-hosting gets me away from the corporations and keeping my stuff off of the public internet keeps me away from script kiddies.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#203

Post by holmb »

skeledrew wrote: post #153

I find it just a bit crazy that this is still an issue. I too jumped from Evernote when they did their rug pull in 2016, landed on Emacs+org-mode, and never looked back. Since then I've adopted Orgzly for org-mode on my phone, and syncthing to keep it all synced. The only real issue I ever had was the occasional conflict, which I resolved by splitting one of the files further into things that got modified on the lapt…

The discontinuation of Syncthing for Android bothers me.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41895718

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#204

Post by trwhite »

bryanhogan wrote: post #198
trwhite wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s $4 a month to sync Obsidian notes, for anyone wondering.

I think your comment is very disingenuous. And not just because it's another subscription. That plan does not work if you got more than one vault, and if you use Obsidian you will probably have more than one vault. https://obsidian.md/sync

It's a time/cost tradeoff and for me personally $4 has been fine for out-of-the-box syncing between clients for the last ~2 years of using just the one vault. It's now $8 for 10 vaults (I only recently added my second), which is still a relatively insignificant amount considering I spend more than that on toilet paper.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#205

Post by eviks »

edanm wrote: post #183
braden-lk wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big obsidian fan, but I will say: notes being “just markdown” is not entirely true depending on how you use obsidian. If you are a plug-in heavy user, and those plugins introduce new syntax and lots of JavaScript functionality, you are accumulating a bespoke custom syntax that only works on your copy of obsidian with your set of plugins. Obsidian and those plugins are still free and are a huge benefit, but just somet…

True, but the format is still text. In a "catastrophe", you can always just a) ignore these, or b) write custom code to process them (e.g. port the plugin to VSCode or whatever). Still far better than a proprietary format.

A proprietary format with an export function allows you the same inconvenience of having to write code for processing.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#206

Post by freddie_mercury »

bryanhogan wrote: post #198
trwhite wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s $4 a month to sync Obsidian notes, for anyone wondering.

I think your comment is very disingenuous. And not just because it's another subscription. That plan does not work if you got more than one vault, and if you use Obsidian you will probably have more than one vault. https://obsidian.md/sync

I use Obsidian and don't have more than one vault. What a weird thing to claim.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#207

Post by al_borland »

charkubi wrote: post #193
mutoyoru wrote: post #41

> Obsidian was a great tool for me personally for a long time. But I felt frustrated when I wanted to access my notes on my phone while on-the-go and saw that I had to pay for this feature. I'm using Syncthing [0] to sync my vault between devices. On my main PC, Syncthing runs constantly in the background. Say, if I made a change, and want to send those changes to my phone, I open the application on my phone and let…

Apple allowing iCloud directories to be permanently downloaded fixed this for me.

Yep. I use iCloud for my Obsidian vault, set to always be downloaded. I haven’t had an issue, and doesn’t cost me anything (beyond what I’m already paying for iCloud due to Photo Library).

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#208

Post by shreezus »

mettamage wrote: post #124

I'm at the other side of the note system trade-off thingy. I use Apple Notes. It's not perfect, but if I really want better search functionality, I'll just use the SQLite database that stores the notes. I've never needed to roll up my sleeves for that. I get around the limitations. It's not perfect, but crafting one's own Personal Knowledge Management System sounds like a 5 year journey for 10 to 20 hours per week at…

Exactly - I have tinkered with all sorts of systems (including Obsidian), and ultimately prefer the simplicity of Apple Notes. I have a system of nested folders and tags that handles my organization needs pretty well, and I find added complexity just ends up adding more friction to the note-taking process. Apple Notes search could certainly use improvement though.

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#209

Post by AstroBen »

Sytten wrote: post #5

I really don't want to critisize OP since building stuff for yourself is always a good mentality. But lets be realistic, 1000$ over 10 years is nothing. It will always cost more if you consider your own time for maintenance long term. Obsidian is one of the most consumer friendly business for note taking out of there, they are not VC so the Evernote comparison is unwarranted IMO.

even better: Obsidian is only $480 over 10 years!

Re: Ditching Obsidian and building my own

#210

Post by RadiozRadioz »

hindsightRegret wrote: post #131

Obviously no right answer, but personally I think worrying too much finding the perfect tool instead of just integrating more knowledge to your PKMS is a distraction. Rolling your own solution is especially limiting in the context of the sheer amount of integrations the popular ones (like Notion for example) support. You're basically saying you will quickly build something better than the X hundred engineers at PKMS…

If you reframe it slightly, it can make sense. Those x hundred engineers are working on y hundred features / integrations. Do you need all of those? Do you want all of those? I bet a handful of those engineers are currently working on a brand new UI redesign that will move all the buttons you're used to. One of the engineers is adding a new cookie popup & enforcing SMS 2FA as we speak.

One of the things I dislike about moden software is the constant bloat and churn, because there are so many customers and so many different incentives for software companies to keep pushing features ad infinitum. In contrast, home-grown software like this has one customer and they know exactly what they want. It doesn't matter that a theoretical home-grown app doesn't integrate with the 10 social networks the user doesn't use, because it integrates perfectly with the one they do use.

This person isn't rebuilding the entirety of Obsidian, they're rebuilding the subset of parts they actually use and get value from, which is a much smaller project. By intelligently narrowing your scope like this, making stuff yourself is totally viable. Reframe "limiting" as "targeted".

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