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Why I Like Obsidian

ddanieltan.com

371–376 of 376 posts

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#371

I like Obsidian, too, having recently switched over from 9 years of OneNote (the fact that there's a tool to import my OneNote notes helped a lot). The most important tip for getting started with Obsidian, in my mind, is to absolutely ignore all of the Obsidian "power users." I'm 99% convinced that no one actually uses zettelkasten seriously, but even if so, it's overkill for when you're just checking out the app. An…

"I'm 99% convinced that no one actually _understands_ zettelkasten" Fixed that for you ;) For real, anyone interested should go read the original book (How to Take Smart Notes[1]) and you learn that it's not about creating backlinks between your notes (that's just a wiki or personal knowledge base). It's about capturing ideas inspired by your reading, etc. and linking them other ideas. Yes, building your own personal…

I kind of understood Zettelkasten only after I implemented it with slip notes in analogue form. I had read How to Take Smart Notes, zettelkasten.de, watched several videos, etc., but I only got more confused. Then I read Antinet Zettelkasten, by Scott Scheper, implemented the system on paper, and finally I understood the system. Now I could go back to Obsidian and implement my Zettelkasten in Obsidian again in a way that would be much more straightforward than what I had tried the first time (and honestly, sometimes I think of doing that because of the convenience of digital). But I enjoy writing on paper and using my fountain pens.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#372
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give a try to Markor it is much more usable than the mobile Obsidian.

Strong disagree. I have indeed tried Markor and used it for quite a while. Atleast several months if not a year. It doesn't hold a candle to Obsidian. Just two things off the top of my head among plenty of others: 1. No live edit mode in Markor. You can either edit or see the live preview. (Not sure if that's changed in recent times). 2. Here's the most thoughtful killer feature IMO of the Obsidian mobile app: it let…

Not sure if you are going to read that, but Markor now allows to reorder and toggle action buttons for the editor. Look inside the markdown settings.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#373
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one? https://dynalist.io/ Looks like it's still alive and kicking. I guess you're probably upset by a lack of updates or something - luckily upgrading to a paid plan would be a good way to incentivize whoever is developing it to continue working on it, at least at the margin.

I‘ve never been a customer, I‘m using Workflowy. What you missed is that the paid offer didn‘t stop the developers to lose interest and… start Obsidian!

Both Workflowy and Dynalist were treated as finished software for years. Workflowy did pick up again when it started losing customers.

Subscriptions do motivate ongoing development, but only if there's a threat to stop going or start incurring subscriber losses. Product software categories have different ratios of customers who buy subscriptions for the current utility vs the investment into future utility.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#375

Obsidian is great. For those looking for an open source alternative (or don't want to pay the Obsidian fees for professional usage) check out Logseq: https://logseq.com/

Search for “Logseq data loss $current_year” and you’ll see horror stories of people who did everything exactly right and still lost a bunch of data from it. The most recent one I saw involved someone getting on a plane and thus losing Internet access to the paid syncing service. They did a bunch of work as they flew across the country. When they landed and the connection resumed, it synced everything back to the pre-…

This exact issue happened to me. I think it was related to crossing timezones during the flight. The experience has definitely made me think twice about adopting Logseq my primary notes tool.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#376

Obsidian is nice, I use it to write articles. But I don’t like to take notes in it. IME notes are something transient, so recording them as files generates too much pollution/trash. Having paper notebooks around is much more fun, gets me in a flow easier, there’s close to no commitment with structure, the mind works better, can use colored pens, etc. Plus, it’s so much fun to go through old notebooks, it has historic…

Not disagrreing with you but it's sorta funny that you say files pollute more than paper.

I keep my notebooks around. But I get your point about the paper making industry. I think it’s mostly water waste than by-products pollution, though, since most sources nowadays employ reforestation. Those industries evolved a lot. Unbleached paper (what I use) has less of an impact. I actually meant pollution to signify “mess”, but English in not my native language.
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