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Obsidian Bases

help.obsidian.md

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Re: Obsidian Bases

#61

Post by al_borland »

Eji1700 wrote: post #43
raviisoccupied wrote: post #34

I’m an Obsidian user. I pay for Obsidian sync, and I love the philosophy behind their product. However, and I feel stupid for saying this, but I just find it confusing to use. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around plugins, and understanding how it wants me to use it. For now, I’m just sticking to using it for daily notes, but I feel there’s so much I’m missing.

I think the one thing that really kills me is "consolidating" data is harder than it probably should be. A simple thing I started with was "lets track movies and shows people recommend to me and I watch". Ok, page for each rec, and then I can use props to tag them with things like if I watched them or not, who recommended them, genre's, and most importantly, if it's just for me, or also something the wife would enjoy…

I’ve been using Obsidian at work for a few years now, and things like this are why I ignore almost all Obsidian content on the web. Everyone seems to create these really complicated setups, in the name of zettelkasten, that seem nearly impossible to maintain and use in real life. If I want to make a list of movies to watch, I use a simple checklist in one note and move on with my life. I keep Obsidian simple so it gets out of my way.

I tried going down the road like you’re talking about one for managing past, present, and future trips. It technically worked, but it was so fiddly that I hated using it. I just made a few folders instead.

I suppose now, if I wanted all the metadata you’re talking about, using a base would make the most sense. But I’d still need to be realistic about how I’m going to use it. Do I care enough about future sorting abilities to turn adding a movie to a watch list into a multi-field form, where I need to consider all these potential futures to fill it out, creating a lot of friction to the action?

Re: Obsidian Bases

#62

Post by abrookewood »

I don't think they do that good a job of explaining what it is, but the Reddit post linked below included this comment which is helptful: "You know how when you search your notes for something, say a phrase? Well, Bases can basically hold a static search that automatically updates. And, instead of searching all over again, you just click into the Bases file and new notes are just there in the default table format.

On top of that, you can add other properties to the view, especially one like modified date, which updates every time you modify the file. This is useful for seeing which files you haven't looked at in a while. Old concepts often apply to new ones, but we sometimes forget to check back to make that connection explicit."

Re: Obsidian Bases

#63

Post by al_borland »

dottjt wrote: post #24

As much as I like the idea of Obsidian, I just can't get over all the additional functionality that Notion provides due to the integrated nature of it. In particular, I love how you select text/blocks in Notion and how every line is a "block". I really wish other editors did that as well. In fact, it's probably the main reason why I haven't moved away from Notion.

Notion always felt painfully slow and fiddly. I have convinced myself that they have manufactured their entire perceived popularity through YouTube sponsorship. It seems like there is a better tool for every job.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#64

Post by bitexploder »

Eji1700 wrote: post #43
raviisoccupied wrote: post #34

I’m an Obsidian user. I pay for Obsidian sync, and I love the philosophy behind their product. However, and I feel stupid for saying this, but I just find it confusing to use. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around plugins, and understanding how it wants me to use it. For now, I’m just sticking to using it for daily notes, but I feel there’s so much I’m missing.

I think the one thing that really kills me is "consolidating" data is harder than it probably should be. A simple thing I started with was "lets track movies and shows people recommend to me and I watch". Ok, page for each rec, and then I can use props to tag them with things like if I watched them or not, who recommended them, genre's, and most importantly, if it's just for me, or also something the wife would enjoy…

Remember, this is basically your own personal Wiki. You can either embrace and accept a rigid organizational structure or not. You are signing up for a lot of up front maintenance and design this way. The alternative is to heavily use links, tags, and other tools that make it easy to find data later.

For a personal knowledge base I think the latter approach saves time in the long run. I have clusters of well organized information. Well tagged and linked. I can always find my movie ideas, projects, and deep thoughts when I want them. I like the idea of just curating the clusters I care about. Just enough organizing. I then have a few highly connected entry points to my clusters. Often I find people don’t link enough in their Obsidian. It’s free and puts things in a more graph oriented layout that the tool can show you.

Edit: oh, also remember, these are text files. Grep still works. Also, we have very powerful CLI LLMs to summarize and categorize text data rapidly. Like “suggest 3 tags for this document based on . :)

Re: Obsidian Bases

#65

Post by abrookewood »

abrookewood wrote: post #62

I don't think they do that good a job of explaining what it is, but the Reddit post linked below included this comment which is helptful: "You know how when you search your notes for something, say a phrase? Well, Bases can basically hold a static search that automatically updates. And, instead of searching all over again, you just click into the Bases file and new notes are just there in the default table format. On…

Another one: "Bases provides filtered and sortable table and card views of note Properties and Tags."

Re: Obsidian Bases

#66

Post by barbazoo »

nylonstrung wrote: post #45
raviisoccupied wrote: post #34

I’m an Obsidian user. I pay for Obsidian sync, and I love the philosophy behind their product. However, and I feel stupid for saying this, but I just find it confusing to use. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around plugins, and understanding how it wants me to use it. For now, I’m just sticking to using it for daily notes, but I feel there’s so much I’m missing.

I highly recommend Siyuan as an alternative, it has many the best features from obsidian plugins included by default

I can’t believe my eyes. Is that the self hosted notion alternative many of us have been looking for?

Re: Obsidian Bases

#67

Post by clickety_clack »

raviisoccupied wrote: post #34

I’m an Obsidian user. I pay for Obsidian sync, and I love the philosophy behind their product. However, and I feel stupid for saying this, but I just find it confusing to use. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around plugins, and understanding how it wants me to use it. For now, I’m just sticking to using it for daily notes, but I feel there’s so much I’m missing.

I just use it as a personal wiki, so plugins are overkill for me. I was basically using it as a way to basically have txt files with latex and it fits the bill.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#68

Post by Noumenon72 »

gavmor wrote: post #21
dadrian wrote: post #5

Are there any good LLM plugins for Obsidian, beyond just throwing Claude Code / Codex at your markdown folder?

There's no decent RAG functionality, AFAICT, but the Text-Generator plugin has been fantastic w/ larger contexts and a template that pulls either/both links and backlinks into the inference query window. Hands-down my most productive interface to LLMs for [years since GPT3.5] years running.

The fact there is no app to do "RAG on localhost for my own notes" really makes me wonder whether the tech works at all.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#70

Post by Ezhik »

clickety_clack wrote: post #67
raviisoccupied wrote: post #34

I’m an Obsidian user. I pay for Obsidian sync, and I love the philosophy behind their product. However, and I feel stupid for saying this, but I just find it confusing to use. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around plugins, and understanding how it wants me to use it. For now, I’m just sticking to using it for daily notes, but I feel there’s so much I’m missing.

I just use it as a personal wiki, so plugins are overkill for me. I was basically using it as a way to basically have txt files with latex and it fits the bill.

One of the best things about Obsidian is that even all this new stuff is done through built-in plugins and can just be turned off.
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