How to learn stuff and an Obsidian preview
Added 2023-03-20 15:06:41 +0000 UTCThis week's video is a peek into my learning process. I have a history of jumping into new things I know nothing about and somehow ending up on the other side, and I thought I'd share some of my experiences and principles I keep in mind whenever I learn something new. I also show some examples of learning exhaust I've created to document my learning on (what else?) Obsidian.
Note: This video will be unlisted until Friday, when I have to mark it as private shortly before it is published for everyone to see. If you try to watch it and get a "Private video" error, you've probably caught it in that small window. Wait a few hours and try again-- it will be published shortly.
Livestreams coming up
Next Monday, I'm interviewing Bianca Pereira live to ask her all about her workflow for taking notes for academic research. Bianca is a researcher, developer, feminist, and, more recently, a friend of mine. She's got a lot of experience in PKM for research in particular, and I'm enjoying the chance to pick her brain about something I haven't looked as much into. We'll be talking about both Obsidian and another tool called Scrintal, and how each one works for research.
Project updates
- nvdh-ttrpg-vault: Added the full rules to Grant Howitt's awesome one-shot RPG, The Witch Is Dead. I played this recently and had a blast! Here are my notes on the system. I've also added WotC monsters back to the 5e monster database and fixed some empty stats for existing monsters. (Thanks to Sly Flourish for supplying missing monster stats!)
- xios-guide-to-monsters: This is the source for the 5e monster list for the TTRPG vault above. I also added back 5e WotC monsters and missing monster stats + open5e links to some 5e monsters for convenience.
- pf2e-monsters: I'm starting to work on a Pathfinder 2e monster database. I started with third-party stuff, so currently it only has monsters from the BattleZoo Bestiary. More to come!
- obsidian-playbook: I've done some work on this vault, though not as much as I'd like! I've added some more videos I've done in the meantime, and made some connections between notes that I'm exploring. I think it's starting to be quite a good reference for all things Obsidian!
To access these vaults, check out this list of Patreon perks-- they'll always have the most updated links and passwords for the vaults.
Stuff I'm learning
- I'm trying out Obsidian v.1.2.0 right now! The main feature in this release so far is a new Bookmarks core plugin that replaces the Starred plugin. Check out this Patreon-exclusive video to see a sneak peek!
- I've recently started using a read-it-later app called Omnivore. Think Readwise, but open-source. They recently released an Omnivore Obsidian plugin that lets you bring in your Omnivore highlights to your Obsidian vault. It's still early days for me on this. If anyone's been using Omnivore already, I'd love to hear what you think of it-- especially compared to Readwise.
- PDF management: How's everyone managing/organising their PDFs? I'm particularly interested in this because I have thousands of TTRPG-related PDFs... probably too many to really read. I've been exploring a few different ways to do this, including tools like DevonThink, Zotero, and plain old tags in Finder, but I'm not entirely sure what the best way is yet. Let me know if this is a problem anyone's figured out already!
Have a great week, all!
Comments
Well....I dunno. My chat with the developer: Me: I just freed myself from Evernote. I'm leery of adding plug-ins that may be abandoned or converted to a paid subscription. Frankly, Make.md it too polished and innovative to not be a paid service. I just worry about my data being captive again. I struggled mightily to free my 36k notes from Evernote. It was painful. I'm too new to Obsidian to understand the system or the dangers of automating too much on my notes. a user: make doesn't actually alter the content of the notes much, so you'll only lose the menus and convenience and context, etc but the front matter will stay the developer: Yep, totally agree with the sentiment and that's one of the reasons make.md was built, to give an alternative to notion that has the same ease-of-use while having open data format. It's been a while since I first addressed this but the plug-in will be open source and free, and always use an open data format. All your notes are just using markdown, the only "extra" syntax is for flow editors but those will work as normal embeds when you uninstall make. For Context (the database feature), the data is synced to your markdown frontmatter unless you explicitly turn it off. The schema for the database is stored using sqlite which you can use any free tool to open if you choose not to use make.md So...that's what I know.
rhkennerly
2023-03-20 17:44:58 +0000 UTCjust had a discord chat with the developer. Nothing in your folder is changed when you install Make.md. However, everything you add after you install Make.md will be changed, mostly moving tags and other data into the frontmatter. In other words, if you get a year down the road after installing Make.md, it will be a PITA to revert.
rhkennerly
2023-03-20 17:31:06 +0000 UTC
