From 12b85f0bcac3220e6396545b7287478a723d10e6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: sstent Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2026 11:03:24 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] [logseq-plugin-git:commit] 2026-01-06T19:03:24.352Z --- pages/Wallabag.md | 392 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------------ 1 file changed, 289 insertions(+), 103 deletions(-) diff --git a/pages/Wallabag.md b/pages/Wallabag.md index 9d22668..9961272 100644 --- a/pages/Wallabag.md +++ b/pages/Wallabag.md @@ -1,3 +1,189 @@ +- [Unable to Disable Two-Factor Authentication on Garmin Account - Garmin Connect Web - Mobile Apps & Web](https://forums.garmin.com/apps-software/mobile-apps-web/f/garmin-connect-web/411517/unable-to-disable-two-factor-authentication-on-garmin-account/1958801) + site:: forums.garmin.com + author:: + date-saved:: [[12-31-2025]] + published-at:: + id-wallabag:: 197 + collapsed:: true + - ### Content + collapsed:: true + -
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3945489 said:

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I hate Two-Factor Authentication.  Like who is going to steal my Garmin info.  Who in the *** cares.  Get over yourself.  Focus on making things easier to understand and use.

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Bitti said:

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I also think that Garmin's implementation of two-factor authentication is awful, but to answer your (possibly rhetorical) question on who would steal your Garmin info: Your account probably shows through recorded activities your home location and when you are traveling etc. That info would be valuable for burglars...

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4411990 said:

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You got to be kidding! That's the height of Paranoia. So where you live, burglars are rich enough to pay someone to scan the forum to find when you are home? Then they take that list and drive around checking these "tips"?  
I hope you are joking otherwise I feel sorry for you, wherever you live....Good Luck surviving.

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Bro, in general, Garmin gives zero Fs about whether people will steal your location data by hacking into your Garmin account, especially given the fact that many people willingly share this data publicly via Garmin Connect and especially Strava. 

No, what they do care about is whatever legal obligations they have to protect your health data, which is why 2FA is required to use ECG. They're not doing this as a gesture of pretending to care about the user, they are doing this because the government is forcing them to do so. They're probably doing more than is required, in order to cover their asses, which is why it's frustrating for users  [*]

As a matter of fact, if you create a burner Connect account and don't associate it with any Garmin devices, you'll find that you can turn 2FA on and off at will. I tried it a few months ago with no problems.

This tells me that the inability to disable 2FA is probably tied to having an ECG-capable device on your account

[*] For example:

- once you turn on 2FA, you can't turn it off, even if you don't use ECG. This is probably not legally required, but it's easier for Garmin to just force 2FA to stay on as long as you have an ECG-capable device on your account

- Garmin doesn't give you the option to delete any stored ECG data if you do use ECG but you really want to disable 2FA anyway. Again, I bet nobody forces them to do this, but this is just their way of being extra cautious (to protect Garmin, not to protect the users)

TL;DR Garmin is legally forced to protect your health (ECG) data and it's probably easier for Garmin to:

- enforce 2FA in order to use ECG (this is the part that's probably legally required)

- prevent users from disabling 2FA once enabled, if their device is ECG-capable (this is the part that's probably not required, but they're just doing this out of an abundance of caution)

I think the biggest issues here are:

- that they apparently don't tell you that 2FA is irreversible

- their implementation of 2FA is outdated and bad (but that's on brand for Garmin)

- 2FA breaks certain 3rd-party apps

+- [I went to the Stranger Things finale in theaters and the strangest thing happened](https://www.theverge.com/streaming/853133/stranger-things-finale-theater-scene-report) + site:: www.theverge.com + author:: Joshua Rivera + date-saved:: [[01-03-2026]] + published-at:: [[01-03-2026]] + id-wallabag:: 198 + collapsed:: true + - ### Content + collapsed:: true + -
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The secret to Netflix’s biggest hit wasn’t its love of the past, but how it spoke to the present.

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STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5
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Image: Netflix
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The secret to Netflix’s biggest hit wasn’t its love of the past, but how it spoke to the present.

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The parking lot was packed. That’s the first Strange Thing.

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A little background. Just about every mall is struggling now, but the Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem, Pennsylvania is more or less comatose. As Defector’s Dan McQuade, a lifelong Pennsylvanian and mall fan, wrote in his fond remembrance of the shopping center, the once bustling complex is mostly a shuttered ghost town, with half of it set to be demolished. There are only two real reasons to go there: a well-stocked Barnes & Noble and the AMC movie theater.

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And people do go there for the movie theater. It’s one of only three theaters in the Philly area with an IMAX screen, making it a destination for fans of prestige formats. I’m there often in my job as a critic, and I’m used to the IMAX auditorium being a full house. The parking lot outside of the theater at 8PM on New Year’s Eve, the night it’s showing Stranger Things 5: The Finale, however, was on another level. The concession line was overwhelming (tickets were free, but to reserve a spot guests bought a $20 concession voucher), and waits for snacks more involved than popcorn, soda, and candy were substantial. The energy was infectious. It was the most crowded I’ve seen a theater since Barbenheimer.

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This was disconcerting. I knew, intellectually, that Stranger Things was a big deal. Netflix, notoriously opaque but quite ruthless in pruning shows that do not meet whatever metrics it does not share, has always treated the show like its Avengers or Star Wars. Regular PR blasts trumpet all manner of impressive stats, new episodes cause the service to crash, and the cast and iconography show up in ads and brand deals that no other Netflix show gets. Season 4 put Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” back on the charts, one of many nostalgic hits the show has brought roaring back. Even in the dodgy world of streaming data, it’s clear Stranger Things has a big audience and remains a phenomenon even if later seasons are not the critical darlings the first was. It can be much harder to feel this.

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There are many potential reasons: an increasingly fractured internet, the diffuse and curatorial nature of online fandom, Netflix’s conversation-killing binge-release strategy, and long gaps between seasons that snuffed out any sense of momentum. There’s also the show itself. Analyzing Stranger Things is not that difficult; the show has always more or less just meant what it said. There was no mystery it proposed that its characters wouldn’t solve, no reference that the show’s creators wouldn’t talk about (either themselves or through the show), and its narrative was almost entirely unconcerned with the world beyond Hawkins, Indiana. Even the Upside Down, the show’s other-dimensional realm of horrors, is so barren and empty that the final season declares its true nature to be a bridge and not a place, linking our world to the actual home of the show’s supernatural horrors. (And another surprisingly barren landscape.)

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In practice, this makes Stranger Things a show that feels complex, but is quite easy to follow. Which also makes it the sort of thing all kinds of people would watch together. And maybe even drive out to a dead mall for on New Year’s Eve.

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A still photo from the finale of Stranger Things.
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Image: Netflix
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The second Strange Thing: According to the woman who scanned my ticket, this was the busiest she had seen this theater since Black Friday 2024, the weekend Gladiator II and Wicked both premiered. Back then, she remembers being told that theater staff expected 8,000 people for the day. On this night, they expected a crowd of 1,000 people to turn up over one hour.

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I saw entire families, many in pajamas. Friends young and old. Lots of couples. There were Hellfire Club T-shirts, Demogorgon crowns and popcorn buckets (purchased in advance, from Target). Everyone was taking group selfies, posting photos or Instagram Reels of how crowded the concession area was. It’s New Year’s Eve, and everyone is having a ball.

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Behind me in the concession line I met a woman named Gia who came with her daughters. They had been watching together since the first season in 2016 and love that the show’s exciting, “with lots of things happening.” They told me that they were nervous for the finale, “scared that people will die.”

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There was a lot of that sort of talk. I overheard someone saying they thought Dustin was going to die, despite Steve’s efforts to save him. In the bathroom just before showtime, a teenager lamented how long his little brother was taking to wash his hands. “I swear to god,” he said. “If I miss a single fucking minute of this I’ll kill myself.”

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I met one couple, Adam and Tiffany, who drove an hour to be there. Recently engaged and in their late 20s and early 30s, they began watching Stranger Things individually, as teenagers, before they started watching together. (He said this was season 3; she said it’s 4.)

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“I like the nostalgia it brings to me, even though I didn’t grow up in the ’80s,” Adam said. He grew up watching E.T. and The Goonies, so he feels an affinity for the era in spite of his youth. He also loved the government conspiracy elements. “The first season it was really prevalent, with the MK Ultra stuff that it depicted. People didn’t know about it and it was a great way to expose people to it. I really enjoy that attitude the first season had and it kind of continues, especially in the latest season — the government does not always have your best interest in mind.”

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Tiffany, for her part, feels like “we really have grown to know and love all of the characters, you know? I’m not ready to cry tonight.”

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I must confess that I was continually surprised by all of this. I’ve grown accustomed to the asynchronous way most modern entertainment is enjoyed and discussed — often apologetically, as everyone triangulates how much of which shows they’ve seen and can talk about. Sports are among the only reliably communal experiences we get in front of our screens. Television as the characters on Stranger Things experienced it was communal, in shared living spaces where the screen fought for attention with the world around it. Television as Stranger Things fans have experienced it is virtually private, watched on a phone or laptop or TV at your convenience.

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A still photo from the finale of Stranger Things.
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Image: Netflix
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One last Strange Thing: Even for me, a Stranger Things hater, watching the finale in a packed house was frankly incredible. The crowd cheered early and often: when fan favorite Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) is saved from plummeting to his doom by his rival Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton); when newly minted fan-favorite character Derek Turnbow (Jake Connelly) gives the villainous Vecna the finger with his “Suck my fat one!” catchphrase; when Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) stares down the massive, arachnid Mind Flayer in the finale’s climactic battle. When a character is thought to have died, a chorus of sniffles works its way through the room.

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There is a sincerity to Stranger Things that is at odds with the cynicism of its marketing and imitators. The Duffer brothers are enthusiastic imitators that are happy to share their crib sheet, but they’ve always been open about what they’ve intended with Stranger Things. Despite all the dissonant things they’ve put inside of it as the show grew in every possible way, hopscotching from genre to genre often nonsensically, it remains a coming-of-age story about all the ways one can grow up.

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It’s the secret weapon of the show, the way it’s not just about the four D&D-playing kids getting older, but their older siblings on the cusp of adulthood or their parents who sank into bad patterns and had to do some growing of their own. In this last season, the show leaned into its age, introducing younger siblings who are about to face things the core four did; caring for them is their final step to maturity.

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Stranger Things’ relentless focus on nostalgia can make it easy to forget the present it aired in, and what it must have been like to grow up in that time. If you were a child watching it, you were a child watching when Donald Trump was elected the first time, when covid-19 took the world out from under you, when social media let our worst horrors beat a path right to your pocket. Your very own personal Upside Down.

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A still photo from the finale of Stranger Things.
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“Life has been so unfair to you, so cruel,” Jim Hopper (David Harbour) tells his surrogate daughter early on in the finale, when Eleven is committed to dying in her fight against Vecna because she believes she doesn’t belong in the world anymore. He tells her to fight to imagine a life beyond the horror. “I know you don’t believe you can have any of this. But I promise you, we will find a way to make it real. You will find a way to make it real, because you have to. Because you deserve it.”

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It’s a line that collapses the fourth wall, escaping the Hawkins / Upside Down of this movie-fueled vision of 1987 to crash right into the final moments of 2025. The roomful of fans, young and old, here with their families and partners and friends, taking selfies, hooting and hollering, haven’t just spent 10 years with characters on TV that feel like friends. They’ve grown up, and watched each other grow up, through hell. And the kids, young adults, and grown-ups of Stranger Things have gone through hell with them. A ludicrous, nonsensical nightmare parade that has, in some ways, rendered them unrecognizable from the people they were 10 years ago, the way bookish Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) has now become a rifle-toting monster slayer.

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Marking the end of that journey in a theater full of people who have been on it with you? What a way to close out a year. What a nice note to start a new one on, going back out into the world with all your fellow fans, looking for the right side up.

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+- [Busy is the New Stupid](https://www.cisotradecraft.com/bitns) + site:: www.cisotradecraft.com + author:: + date-saved:: [[01-03-2026]] + published-at:: + id-wallabag:: 199 + collapsed:: true + - ### Content + collapsed:: true + -

A tactical framework examining how busyness compromises cognitive function, strategic thinking, and effectiveness. Click on any tactic to view specific attack techniques.

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Select a tactic above

View specific attack techniques, defense strategies, and best practices

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Universal Defense Principles

These foundational practices form the bedrock of all anti-busyness strategies:

Intentionality Over Activity

Every commitment should align with explicit goals and values, not just fill time

Regular Systems Audits

Monthly review of all recurring commitments to eliminate what no longer serves you

Strategic Saying No

View every "no" as a "yes" to something more important and aligned

Sustainable Pace

Build rhythms that can be maintained indefinitely rather than sprinting to burnout

+- [Image](https://media.tech.lgbt/media_attachments/files/115/843/877/388/667/603/original/ff72ce13f931c449.jpg) + site:: media.tech.lgbt + author:: + date-saved:: [[01-05-2026]] + published-at:: + id-wallabag:: 200 + collapsed:: true + - ### Content + collapsed:: true + - image - [An Ars Technica history of the Internet, part 1](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/04/a-history-of-the-internet-part-1-an-arpa-dream-takes-form/) site:: arstechnica.com author:: Jeremy Reimer @@ -2227,61 +2413,61 @@ wallabag: image: wallabag/wallabag environment: - - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=wallaroot - - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_DRIVER=pdo_mysql - - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_HOST=db - - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_PORT=3306 - - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_NAME=wallabag - - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_USER=wallabag - - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_PASSWORD=wallapass - - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_CHARSET=utf8mb4 - - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_TABLE_PREFIX="wallabag_" - - SYMFONY__ENV__MAILER_DSN=smtp://127.0.0.1 - - SYMFONY__ENV__FROM_EMAIL=wallabag@example.com - - SYMFONY__ENV__DOMAIN_NAME=https://your-wallabag-instance.wallabag.org - - SYMFONY__ENV__SERVER_NAME="Your wallabag instance" - ports: - - "80" - volumes: - - /opt/wallabag/images:/var/www/wallabag/web/assets/images - healthcheck: - test: ["CMD", "wget" ,"--no-verbose", "--tries=1", "--spider", "http://localhost"] - interval: 1m - timeout: 3s - depends_on: - - db - - redis - db: - image: mariadb - environment: - - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=wallaroot - volumes: - - /opt/wallabag/data:/var/lib/mysql - healthcheck: - test: ["CMD", "mysqladmin" ,"ping", "-h", "localhost"] - interval: 20s - timeout: 3s - redis: - image: redis:alpine - healthcheck: - test: ["CMD", "redis-cli", "ping"] - interval: 20s - timeout: 3s -

Note that you must fill out the mail related variables according to your mail config.

nginx

I use nginx to make wallabag public available. This is a example how to use it:

server {
-			  listen 443;
-			  server_name wallabag.foo.bar;
-			  ssl on;
-			  ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/wallabag.foo.bar/fullchain.pem;
-			  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/wallabag.foo.bar/privkey.pem;
-			  location / {
-			          proxy_pass http://wallabag;
-			          proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $server_name;
-			          proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
-			          proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
-			  }
-			  		  }
-

Import worker

To run the async redis import worker use the following command:

$ docker run --name wallabag --link wallabag-db:wallabag-db --link redis:redis -e <... your config variables here ...>  wallabag/wallabag import <type>
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Where <type> is one of pocket, readability, instapaper, wallabag_v1, wallabag_v2, firefox or chrome.

+ - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=wallaroot + - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_DRIVER=pdo_mysql + - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_HOST=db + - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_PORT=3306 + - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_NAME=wallabag + - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_USER=wallabag + - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_PASSWORD=wallapass + - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_CHARSET=utf8mb4 + - SYMFONY__ENV__DATABASE_TABLE_PREFIX="wallabag_" + - SYMFONY__ENV__MAILER_DSN=smtp://127.0.0.1 + - SYMFONY__ENV__FROM_EMAIL=wallabag@example.com + - SYMFONY__ENV__DOMAIN_NAME=https://your-wallabag-instance.wallabag.org + - SYMFONY__ENV__SERVER_NAME="Your wallabag instance" + ports: + - "80" + volumes: + - /opt/wallabag/images:/var/www/wallabag/web/assets/images + healthcheck: + test: ["CMD", "wget" ,"--no-verbose", "--tries=1", "--spider", "http://localhost"] + interval: 1m + timeout: 3s + depends_on: + - db + - redis + db: + image: mariadb + environment: + - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=wallaroot + volumes: + - /opt/wallabag/data:/var/lib/mysql + healthcheck: + test: ["CMD", "mysqladmin" ,"ping", "-h", "localhost"] + interval: 20s + timeout: 3s + redis: + image: redis:alpine + healthcheck: + test: ["CMD", "redis-cli", "ping"] + interval: 20s + timeout: 3s +

Note that you must fill out the mail related variables according to your mail config.

nginx

I use nginx to make wallabag public available. This is a example how to use it:

server {
+		   listen 443;
+		   server_name wallabag.foo.bar;
+		   ssl on;
+		   ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/wallabag.foo.bar/fullchain.pem;
+		   ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/wallabag.foo.bar/privkey.pem;
+		   location / {
+		           proxy_pass http://wallabag;
+		           proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $server_name;
+		           proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
+		           proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
+		   }
+		   		  }
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Import worker

To run the async redis import worker use the following command:

$ docker run --name wallabag --link wallabag-db:wallabag-db --link redis:redis -e <... your config variables here ...>  wallabag/wallabag import <type>
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Where <type> is one of pocket, readability, instapaper, wallabag_v1, wallabag_v2, firefox or chrome.

- [What do Threads, Mastodon, and hospital records have in common?](https://arstechnica.com/?p=1996063) site:: arstechnica.com author:: Fintan Burke @@ -4777,54 +4963,54 @@ tags: ping: yyyyw\#\# contact: - - email: - - phone: - - whatsApp: - - telegram: - - twitter: - location: - --- - **Birthday:** yyyy-mm-dd - %% - [ ] \#Someone's Birthday (yyyy-mm-dd) \#ann 🔁 every year 📅 yyyy-mm-dd %% - **Company** - Details - role - \#\#\#\# How We Met -

This is shockingly useful. Obsidians backlinks make sure whenever I record a reference to a person in my daily notes or projects, I can go back and look at things like the last time I talked to them, notes about conversations or meetings with them, or tasks that are assigned to them.

Need to see what that meeting with Pete was about? Check the backlinks on Pete for the date and then look at your dailies and the meeting in question. Need to see what tasks are assigned to your direct report Anna? Use a tasks block query to check for her name before your weekly 1:1 to see what may need to be talked about.

For checking things like birthdays, anniversaries, and my own life milestones (I tend to try to remembe reach year when I did something cool or new for the first time - also prompts me to plan new trips and upskilling ideas). I use the following query which is largely driven by the \#ann (for anniversary) tag.

not done
-			  		  is recurring
-			  		  due before in 4 weeks
-			  		  tags include \#ann
-			  		  sort by due
-

This generally gives me 4 weeks notice if I want to plan something for someone’s birthday, do something special for Mother’s Day, or book a trip because I’m mourning the fact my life has gotten so dull and worky since moving to Singapore.

So, looking at this right now in my right sidebar, I can see three people’s birthdays coming up (one which I should book a dinner for), an anniversary I should remind someone of, and the fact that, in a couple of a days, it’s been 20 years (!!!) since I was at a small oasis in Tunisia with the vast Sahara stretching to the West before me.

I’m sure there are ways to extend this to make it even more useful, but I like the lightweight nature of this approach, it’s ease of use, and fact it focuses on what’s important to me, which is the people.

Experiments

I use the same approach from the previous two items to also track “experiments” I’m running every quarter. I am always trying something new and seeing if it improves or otherwise changes my life to figure out if I want to adapt it.

Each experiment has a page with a dataview query, and a yaml frontmatter markdown template that describes “database fields” for it and some headers on things like hypothesis, plan, treatment, contraindications, and outcomes so I am methodically dealing with things.

To make sure I’m “checking in” on these, there’s also a monthly recurring task to review them.

Blog Queue

One thing I really missed from Notion when trying to bend emacs and logseq to my will was Notion’s excellent Kanban functionality.

I had been using this for my queue of blog ideas and posts that I wanted to write and logseq and emacs just do not have a nice mechanic for this.

One of the first things that sold me on Obsidian after seeing hthey’d finalyl implemeted live previews was the fact kanban functionality is seriously nice and I could link cards to a post (as I’m doing with this.).

You do need to use the Kanban plugin and I have a directory in Areas dedicated to blog posts, but the really nice thing about this is the writing experience is excellent, and because the files are straight up markdown, I use the same template I use in Hugo when I get to the Pub stage, I simply move a copy of the file directly to hugo to publish it (in fact, I could probably even find a way to make my Hugo directory a vault or plug it directly into Obsidian with a little work but this works really well right now.). The markdown avoids the need to export or otherwise translate from Notion, logseq, or emacs so pretty happy with it since I’ve been using it.

And, as mentioned, with live preview the writing experience in Obsidian is improved so much I am super happy with using it for posts. It’s beautiful and easy to write in. I had noticed the subtle effect or trying to write blog posts in emacs and logseq meant I was writing less and I’d fallen behind on my twice monthly goal, which I seem to be making up quickly. Don’t ever under-estimate the effect of writing experience na dUX on your ability to pump out quality content (or feel like writing!)

Obsidian Blog Queue

As cards are effectively a task, I use two tags “\#blog” and “\#wip” to also further isolate these. Blog posts don’t show up in my inbox for processing due to the query there, but they do show up in my WIP queue when I am working on stuff, so I can keep to my WIP llimit on things.

Dailes and Weekly Review

I use the Periodic Notes plugin to get my Daily Notes to fire up from the template I have for them every day (nicely, with the calendar plugin, you can also get it to create future notes for you which is super handy.).

The Daily Template looks lik this (note the links for giving backlinks to a page so I can look back at stuff over time if I choose).

\#\# Daily Plan
-			  
-			  		  \#\# Log
-			-
-			- => ToDos
-			- => Pings
-			  		  \#\# Perso
-			  		  \#\#\# [[Morning Pages]]
-			  		  \#\#\# [[Storyworthy]]
-			  		  \#\#\# Meta
-			- Where: ???
-			- Weather: ???
-			- Music: ???
-			- Sleep: 7h?
-			- Weight: ???
-			- [[Exercise]]: ???
-			- [[TIL]]: ??
-			- [[Highlights]]:
-			- [[Lowlights]]:
-			- Energy: L/M/H
-			- Effectiveness L/M/H
-			- Emotions: ???
-			- Eats:
-				- Breakie: ???
-				- Lunch: ???
-				- Dinner: ???
-				  		  \#\#\# [[Gratitude]]
-				  		  1. 
-				  		  2.   
-				  		  3. 
-

I keep thinking I should extend some of the sections (like ToDos and Pings) with basic queries though their function is generally to add things that happen that day into the system (ie new tasks or things that happen with people) and I like the daily note being “indelible” rather than dynamic.

Under Log, I also use a simple meeting template to let me know who was in a meeting, what the agenda was, the takeaways from it, and if there were any actions I need to get into my tasks (or were assigned to other people I might need to chase up on or are deependenices for me.).

My Weekly template is extremely similar to the one I’ve talked about in other places though trying to figure a nice way to have 4 OKR quad I have talkaed about in previous quotes and trying to boil it down to the bare essentials more, so probably a future post on revisiting weekly reviews.

As well, I do Monthly and Quarterly OKR reviews though those are simply talking about how the month (or quarter) went and if I got down what I said I was going to do, and what I will be doing or changing next period.

Mobile

I’m using the mobile app on my iPhone and have to say it’s been surprisingly great for on-the-go. While it is much more mature than logseq’s, I have to say I am really impressed with the usability as well as ability to just get stuff done on the go with it. Big fan. I’m currently using it with Apple iCloud for syncing (which sometimes goes awry due to iCloud not actualyl snycing) so would love to see this with Dropbox so I can have cross Apple and Linux syncing.

Mobile was one of the edges that Notion had on every other tool, but I kinda don’t even miss it at all with Obsidian’s mobile client which is saying something. Try it out if you haven’t. I was quite surprised at how great it was.

Academia and Deep Geekery

I have to admit to being very impressed at how smooth things like complex math in Obsidian render and how nice the experience was when taking things from complex papers and the like.

My academic notes look great and strangely that just makes it so much easier to extract key points and information from them. I find refactoring notes to make the m more euccinct and memorable a pleasure and I’m just enjoying the process so much more.

While I havenm’t had to pull together a publishable paper yet with Obsidian, I’m kinda looking forward to the process as well as what the “zettelkasten” form of my notes may yield when I am coming up with new ideas to investigate and explore.

There is a plugin that takes highlights from a pdf and extracts them for you, which I’m looking forward to checking out but so far I’m still easiing into how to use Obsidian for serious academia. I would note though that there are a bunc hof plugins and blog posts on how to also integrate it with Zotero for citations support and the like. Stay tuned for a future post on that.

For coding as well, I’m finding taking notes and code snippets super easy. The syntax highlighting and standard markdown fenced code block approach is implmented well and just makes it a pleasure to work with.

Web Clipping

While there is no dedicated web clipper for Obsidian there is an easy to use bookmarklet which is easily hackable to get the template formats I’ve described above and which is working extremely well for me.

Do note the js boomarklet is actually better than many of the extensions available for Chrome and Firefox, I found.

Porting

By far the biggest hurdle I had, but one which I have to say made Obsidian less painful, was moving everything over to Obsidian. Staright up and idiomatic markdown is probably the secret there.

The usual issue is getting things over from other systems which have “extended” markdown or otherwise jigged around it in order to support features they have which are not really supported within the markdown spec (yeah, looking at you Notion and logseq).

I also like the way that the links are simple [[link]] markers rather than some esoteric index like many Zettelkasten systems. It makes context so much easier (one of the issues I had with emacs’ org-roam).

Conclusion

Weirdly, more than any of the other programs I’ve looked at in the last two years, Obsidian has managed to get itself into a state where I feel really good about doubling down and putting everything I’ve got in other systems into it. This is not to say it’s perfect, just that for my use cases, it works exceptionally well and makes me feel like I am not making any compromises on the things that are important to me.

I own all my files. They are a simple, standardized format. Knowledge is linked and tasks are manageable. I can use it on the go too. Oh, and it looks good and feels great working in it.

if you were like me and rejected Obsidian early on because of the need of a preview pane, I’d look at it again, and see if it meets your needs as well as it has mine.

I’m feeling very in control, things feel planned, and I’m thumping through tasks like a boss while still feeling like I’m making progress on larger goals. Maybe it’s juthe the honesymoon period of a fresh new system I haven’t messed up yet, but considering what I’m asking it to do (and the fact I find refactoring things in it easy), I am thinking I may have found the thing that works for me. YMMV.

So, in my constant effort to simplify and be more productive, this feels like moving in the right direction. I have to say I was shocked at how easy Obsidian was to get what I wanted it to do. As always, I hope this post helps you be better and accomplish more of what you want to get done calmly and efficiently. I’m always curious to hear how it’s gone for people who may adopt some of these processes, or hear more about what may have worked (even better!) for you or other things that have made a huge difference for you. Feel free to mention me as @awws on mastodon or email me at via email hola@wakatara.com.

+ - email: + - phone: + - whatsApp: + - telegram: + - twitter: + location: + --- + **Birthday:** yyyy-mm-dd + %% - [ ] \#Someone's Birthday (yyyy-mm-dd) \#ann 🔁 every year 📅 yyyy-mm-dd %% + **Company** + Details - role + \#\#\#\# How We Met +

This is shockingly useful. Obsidians backlinks make sure whenever I record a reference to a person in my daily notes or projects, I can go back and look at things like the last time I talked to them, notes about conversations or meetings with them, or tasks that are assigned to them.

Need to see what that meeting with Pete was about? Check the backlinks on Pete for the date and then look at your dailies and the meeting in question. Need to see what tasks are assigned to your direct report Anna? Use a tasks block query to check for her name before your weekly 1:1 to see what may need to be talked about.

For checking things like birthdays, anniversaries, and my own life milestones (I tend to try to remembe reach year when I did something cool or new for the first time - also prompts me to plan new trips and upskilling ideas). I use the following query which is largely driven by the \#ann (for anniversary) tag.

not done
+		   		  is recurring
+		   		  due before in 4 weeks
+		   		  tags include \#ann
+		   		  sort by due
+

This generally gives me 4 weeks notice if I want to plan something for someone’s birthday, do something special for Mother’s Day, or book a trip because I’m mourning the fact my life has gotten so dull and worky since moving to Singapore.

So, looking at this right now in my right sidebar, I can see three people’s birthdays coming up (one which I should book a dinner for), an anniversary I should remind someone of, and the fact that, in a couple of a days, it’s been 20 years (!!!) since I was at a small oasis in Tunisia with the vast Sahara stretching to the West before me.

I’m sure there are ways to extend this to make it even more useful, but I like the lightweight nature of this approach, it’s ease of use, and fact it focuses on what’s important to me, which is the people.

Experiments

I use the same approach from the previous two items to also track “experiments” I’m running every quarter. I am always trying something new and seeing if it improves or otherwise changes my life to figure out if I want to adapt it.

Each experiment has a page with a dataview query, and a yaml frontmatter markdown template that describes “database fields” for it and some headers on things like hypothesis, plan, treatment, contraindications, and outcomes so I am methodically dealing with things.

To make sure I’m “checking in” on these, there’s also a monthly recurring task to review them.

Blog Queue

One thing I really missed from Notion when trying to bend emacs and logseq to my will was Notion’s excellent Kanban functionality.

I had been using this for my queue of blog ideas and posts that I wanted to write and logseq and emacs just do not have a nice mechanic for this.

One of the first things that sold me on Obsidian after seeing hthey’d finalyl implemeted live previews was the fact kanban functionality is seriously nice and I could link cards to a post (as I’m doing with this.).

You do need to use the Kanban plugin and I have a directory in Areas dedicated to blog posts, but the really nice thing about this is the writing experience is excellent, and because the files are straight up markdown, I use the same template I use in Hugo when I get to the Pub stage, I simply move a copy of the file directly to hugo to publish it (in fact, I could probably even find a way to make my Hugo directory a vault or plug it directly into Obsidian with a little work but this works really well right now.). The markdown avoids the need to export or otherwise translate from Notion, logseq, or emacs so pretty happy with it since I’ve been using it.

And, as mentioned, with live preview the writing experience in Obsidian is improved so much I am super happy with using it for posts. It’s beautiful and easy to write in. I had noticed the subtle effect or trying to write blog posts in emacs and logseq meant I was writing less and I’d fallen behind on my twice monthly goal, which I seem to be making up quickly. Don’t ever under-estimate the effect of writing experience na dUX on your ability to pump out quality content (or feel like writing!)

Obsidian Blog Queue

As cards are effectively a task, I use two tags “\#blog” and “\#wip” to also further isolate these. Blog posts don’t show up in my inbox for processing due to the query there, but they do show up in my WIP queue when I am working on stuff, so I can keep to my WIP llimit on things.

Dailes and Weekly Review

I use the Periodic Notes plugin to get my Daily Notes to fire up from the template I have for them every day (nicely, with the calendar plugin, you can also get it to create future notes for you which is super handy.).

The Daily Template looks lik this (note the links for giving backlinks to a page so I can look back at stuff over time if I choose).

\#\# Daily Plan
+		   
+		   		  \#\# Log
+		  -
+		  - => ToDos
+		  - => Pings
+		   		  \#\# Perso
+		   		  \#\#\# [[Morning Pages]]
+		   		  \#\#\# [[Storyworthy]]
+		   		  \#\#\# Meta
+		  - Where: ???
+		  - Weather: ???
+		  - Music: ???
+		  - Sleep: 7h?
+		  - Weight: ???
+		  - [[Exercise]]: ???
+		  - [[TIL]]: ??
+		  - [[Highlights]]:
+		  - [[Lowlights]]:
+		  - Energy: L/M/H
+		  - Effectiveness L/M/H
+		  - Emotions: ???
+		  - Eats:
+		  - Breakie: ???
+		  - Lunch: ???
+		  - Dinner: ???
+		    		  \#\#\# [[Gratitude]]
+		    		  1. 
+		    		  2.   
+		    		  3. 
+

I keep thinking I should extend some of the sections (like ToDos and Pings) with basic queries though their function is generally to add things that happen that day into the system (ie new tasks or things that happen with people) and I like the daily note being “indelible” rather than dynamic.

Under Log, I also use a simple meeting template to let me know who was in a meeting, what the agenda was, the takeaways from it, and if there were any actions I need to get into my tasks (or were assigned to other people I might need to chase up on or are deependenices for me.).

My Weekly template is extremely similar to the one I’ve talked about in other places though trying to figure a nice way to have 4 OKR quad I have talkaed about in previous quotes and trying to boil it down to the bare essentials more, so probably a future post on revisiting weekly reviews.

As well, I do Monthly and Quarterly OKR reviews though those are simply talking about how the month (or quarter) went and if I got down what I said I was going to do, and what I will be doing or changing next period.

Mobile

I’m using the mobile app on my iPhone and have to say it’s been surprisingly great for on-the-go. While it is much more mature than logseq’s, I have to say I am really impressed with the usability as well as ability to just get stuff done on the go with it. Big fan. I’m currently using it with Apple iCloud for syncing (which sometimes goes awry due to iCloud not actualyl snycing) so would love to see this with Dropbox so I can have cross Apple and Linux syncing.

Mobile was one of the edges that Notion had on every other tool, but I kinda don’t even miss it at all with Obsidian’s mobile client which is saying something. Try it out if you haven’t. I was quite surprised at how great it was.

Academia and Deep Geekery

I have to admit to being very impressed at how smooth things like complex math in Obsidian render and how nice the experience was when taking things from complex papers and the like.

My academic notes look great and strangely that just makes it so much easier to extract key points and information from them. I find refactoring notes to make the m more euccinct and memorable a pleasure and I’m just enjoying the process so much more.

While I havenm’t had to pull together a publishable paper yet with Obsidian, I’m kinda looking forward to the process as well as what the “zettelkasten” form of my notes may yield when I am coming up with new ideas to investigate and explore.

There is a plugin that takes highlights from a pdf and extracts them for you, which I’m looking forward to checking out but so far I’m still easiing into how to use Obsidian for serious academia. I would note though that there are a bunc hof plugins and blog posts on how to also integrate it with Zotero for citations support and the like. Stay tuned for a future post on that.

For coding as well, I’m finding taking notes and code snippets super easy. The syntax highlighting and standard markdown fenced code block approach is implmented well and just makes it a pleasure to work with.

Web Clipping

While there is no dedicated web clipper for Obsidian there is an easy to use bookmarklet which is easily hackable to get the template formats I’ve described above and which is working extremely well for me.

Do note the js boomarklet is actually better than many of the extensions available for Chrome and Firefox, I found.

Porting

By far the biggest hurdle I had, but one which I have to say made Obsidian less painful, was moving everything over to Obsidian. Staright up and idiomatic markdown is probably the secret there.

The usual issue is getting things over from other systems which have “extended” markdown or otherwise jigged around it in order to support features they have which are not really supported within the markdown spec (yeah, looking at you Notion and logseq).

I also like the way that the links are simple [[link]] markers rather than some esoteric index like many Zettelkasten systems. It makes context so much easier (one of the issues I had with emacs’ org-roam).

Conclusion

Weirdly, more than any of the other programs I’ve looked at in the last two years, Obsidian has managed to get itself into a state where I feel really good about doubling down and putting everything I’ve got in other systems into it. This is not to say it’s perfect, just that for my use cases, it works exceptionally well and makes me feel like I am not making any compromises on the things that are important to me.

I own all my files. They are a simple, standardized format. Knowledge is linked and tasks are manageable. I can use it on the go too. Oh, and it looks good and feels great working in it.

if you were like me and rejected Obsidian early on because of the need of a preview pane, I’d look at it again, and see if it meets your needs as well as it has mine.

I’m feeling very in control, things feel planned, and I’m thumping through tasks like a boss while still feeling like I’m making progress on larger goals. Maybe it’s juthe the honesymoon period of a fresh new system I haven’t messed up yet, but considering what I’m asking it to do (and the fact I find refactoring things in it easy), I am thinking I may have found the thing that works for me. YMMV.

So, in my constant effort to simplify and be more productive, this feels like moving in the right direction. I have to say I was shocked at how easy Obsidian was to get what I wanted it to do. As always, I hope this post helps you be better and accomplish more of what you want to get done calmly and efficiently. I’m always curious to hear how it’s gone for people who may adopt some of these processes, or hear more about what may have worked (even better!) for you or other things that have made a huge difference for you. Feel free to mention me as @awws on mastodon or email me at via email hola@wakatara.com.

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