On the Search Engine podcast with PJ Vogt: Why can’t we turn all the empty offices into apartment buildings? The answer: We already have, for many. Most of the remainder are unsuitable for residences. And also, a century of zoning law and NIMBYism stands in the way.
Things I saw while walking with the dog this morning. š·
Iām happy to support the Kickstarter for the audiobook for Cory Doctorowās next book, āThe Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation,ā a guide to breaking up tech monopolies and incidentally saving the planet. Backing the project supports the great work Cory does on his blog and podcast.
Maybe youāre saying I should watch where Iām walking more carefully. And maybe youāre right. But Iāve lived with cats nearly forty years and the dog for ten and it hasnāt been a problem before. I have suddenly acquired dog poop and cat throw-up bad karma.
In recent weeks I have cleaned my shoe soles of great masses of dog poop twice and an extraordinary quantity of cat throw-up once.
I have become a reluctant expert on this subject. Warm water and dish soap. Easy peasy.
Minnie says good night.
This is what itās like to spend your life in prison.
Listening to the men in the short Opinion Video above is like encountering visitors from another planet. They are serving life sentences at Angola prison, in rural Louisiana, with little to no hope for release. Many are elderly; they have not seen the outside world, or their families, for decades. They do not face execution, but they have been sentenced to death all the same, their lives spooling out endlessly on the cellblock and in the cotton fields, then ending in a prison hospice bed.
My essential and useful Obsidian plugins
A friend is getting started with Obsidian, making the switch from Evernote, and he asked me for recommendations on pluginsāwhich ones I, personally, find most useful. Hereās my list:
Essential
Command Palette This is the main way I invoke commands in Obsidian. You type a keyboard shortcut (Command-P on my Mac) and a little text popup comes up. You start typing and Obsidian auto-suggests possible commands, until you quickly narrow down to what youāre looking for.
Command Palette is a core plugin. It comes with Obsidian. If you want to use it, just switch it on from the Preference settings in Obsidian. The same is true for all core plugins.
Slash Commands does the same thing as the Command Palette plugin, but you start by typing a slash into the text of your note. I often use this as an alternative to the Command Palette. (Core)
Quick Switcher. A palette for quickly finding files and documents. Itās similar to the Command Palette. The Quick Switcher is my primary way of navigating between Obsidian documents. The keyboard shortcut on Mac for that is Cmd-O. (Core.)
Iām in Obsidian all day when Iām working. Most of the time, Iām writing, but when Iām in Obsidian and not writing, most of the time Iām hitting Cmd-P or / to invoke a command, or Cmd-O to switch between documents.
Daily Note. For writing daily notes. (Core.)
Files. See the files and folders in your vault. (Core.)
Better Word Count. Obsidian comes with its own word counter plugin, but this one can count the words and characters in a text selection.
I see now that Better Word Count has a couple of useful settings I have not explored, like excluding comments from word counts, and counting pages in addition to words.
My work as a writer requires me to write to length, and Better Word Count is how I keep track of that.
Better Word Count is a community plugin. Community plug-ins are made by people in the Obsidian user community. To get Better Word Count, or any Community plugin, go open Obsidian preferences, go to the Community plugins section, and search for the plugin by name.
Pandoc Plugin. Export Markdown documents in a variety of formats. I use it to export documents to the DocX format, for sending to clients. (Community.)
Useful
Backlinks. Shows other documents that link to the current document. (Core)
Search. Searches the vault. (Core.)
Outline. Displays an outline of the document youāre working on. (Core.)
Page Preview. Hover over an internal link to view its content. (Core.)
Templates. For creating note templates. (Core.)
Auto Link Title. When you paste in a Web URL, this plugin automatically fetches the title of the page. Works almost all the time. (Community.)
Calendar. Displays a calendar. Useful for navigating between daily notes. (Community.)
Daily Notes Viewer. View your most recent daily notes in a single page. (Community.)
File Tree Alternative. Displays files and folders separately. (Community.)
Minimal Theme Settings. Customizing the look of the minimal theme. Also, Styles. (Community.)
Natural Language Dates. For example, typing @today enters the current date, @yesterday enters yesterdayās date, and so on. (Community.)
Typography. Automatically replace dumb quotes with smart quotes, three hyphens with an em dash, and so on. (Community.)
AidenLxās Folder Note. Creates a note with the same name as a folder. You can use the folder note as an index to the folder, with notes about whatās in the folder. The folder note can either be inside the folder, or in the parent folder. (Community.)
Thatās seven plugins in my āEssentialā category, and 13 more in the āUsefulā category. This level of complication might be holding Obsidian back from mainstream adoption.
On the other hand, this level of customizability is precisely what appeals to Obsidianās core user base.
And thereās more:
Trying these out to see if they are useful
Properties. Manages custom metadata you can add to your file: Dates, descriptions, links, whatever you want. Uses YAML formatting, which is just plain text at the top of the file. Obsidian has supported YAML for a while, but previously you had to work with the plain text; Properties puts an easier to use and prettier face on it. (Core, currently available only to people in the Obsidian Catalyst early-access program.)
Tags. Iām experimenting with switching to a very tag-heavy organizational structure for my vault. Previously I used folders. (Core.)
Tag Wranger. Rename, merge, and search tags from the tag pane. You can also create tag pagesāpages with the same name as your tag. (Community.)
DevonThink. Helps to pair Obsidian with the very sophisticated Apple-only DevonThink document and information management tool. (Community.)
Very useful to many people, but Iāve never found a need for them
Bookmarks. Saves files and searches as favorites. (Core.)
Workspaces. Save and restore workspaces layouts. Frequently used for displaying multiple notes on one screen. (Core.)
Dataview. Turns your vault of text documents into a database you can query. I lack the technical chops to use this plugin. (Community.)
Templater. A powerful alternative to the Templates core plugin. As with Dataview, this seems to require more technical chops than I have. (Community.)
Canvas and Graph View are core plugins you use to visualize relationships between notes. Graph View generates maps automatically, using the links between notes. Canvases are built manually, by dragging notes and cards on a two-dimensional surface. I am an extremely non-visual thinker, so I do not find these two plugins useful. At least not yet. Maybe one day.
I’m working on an article about Snowflake Inc. and trying to get in just the right amount of puns about snow and winter.
Yesterday afternoon, I went into the sunroom to lie down for a few minutes, and found that Minnie had peed all over the daybed in there. She had been extremely difficult to potty train when we first got her 10 years agoāmany, many accidents for about the first 18 months we had herābut she hasnāt had an accident in years. She has been rock solid. But she broke that record yesterday. And boy this was a big one.
We keep a canvas cover on the daybed for just such accidents as these, and also because Minnie can be a high-energy dog at times and she goes in and out of the backyard all day and we want to keep the daybed clean and unshredded. The canvas cover was allegedly waterproof. It is notānot the least little bit. Minnieās urine soaked through the canvas cover, and into the blankets and sheets.
So, no nap for me, and Julie cheerfully pitched in and took the lead on the clean-up for which I was and am grateful.
I brought the canvas cover out back and hung it on the fence and sprayed it down with Urine Destroyer (great product name) and hosed it down and went back inside. Around nine at night, I went out back to check to see if the canvas cover was dry, and on the way back to the house, I stepped in a big pile of dog poop. I was wearing the only shoes I have that I like to wear with shorts and no socks.
This morning, I went to let the dog out and looked for the key to the backdoor. A few days ago, I decided I didnāt like the place I usually keep the key, and put it somewhere else. I didnāt like that place either, so I put it in a different place. I didnāt like that place either, so I found a third place for it. And now I canāt find the key anymore.
And how is your week going so far?
Fortunately, we have had no repeats of indoor doggy accidents. And I found another pair of no-socks-shorts shoes that turn out to be quite comfortable and look better than the ones I had been wearing.