Thoughts on Obsidian

Obsidian

I first tried Obsidian on 2023-10-04. Prior to Obsidian I kept a diary that was just plain text files stored on the phone. This is already very good and better than not to do anything or at least try to do. I just wanted some way to make more connections with the past and with other topics in life. It is very good at that, you can just type in the filename and link it (if there are duplicates you have to write the path). All localy but you can sync it of course. In the beginning it was just meant to be my note taking tool. But I’ve tinkered around and found lots of new uses of this software. You can keep notes during lectures and much more…

Here is my list of plugins that I use in my obsidian vault. This list will be updated so I myself know what I’m doing and why. I use a lot small plugins that are not really worth several words:

• Better word coulnt
• Auto link Title
• Commander
• Dataview
• Mononote
• Natural Language Dates
• Periodic Notes
• Various Complements

Plugins

Obsidian can be extensively customized. There are so many plugins that help you to create a tailored Obsidian experience. The default Core plugins are almost left unchanged in my case. The only change I made is to disable the bookmark/slides and template plugin.

Advanced Canvas

I don’t have the need to use canvas except for presentations. This is a plugin that allows you to have a presentation with your notes.

The nice thing that is not shown here is that you can hover over one any link to notes and show them live. This can be handy if you really don’t know if the audience wants to refresh their knowledge on the linked topic.

Ofcourse there are also more complex presentations with branchnig off and coming back and lots of other personalisation.

Excalidraw

You should try it https://excalidraw.com/. I just use it to draw freehand on my tablet. It is super popular and open source. I don’t have any complain.

Google

Photos

This is the one I ‘use’ the least out of theGoogle plugins. You just have to insert a small code block in your diary template then you’ll be able to see all the pictures of that day nicely embedded. I don’t really care that much but it’s a nice to have.

notedate

The use case is nice documentation for yourself. This does only work for me (because I’m logged in). For this site (Quartz) I have to add the photos manually to a public folder and insert the link.

Calendar

Go to the Google calendar Obsidian plugin linkto learn more. It is basically what you expect a Google Calendar. Very very nice feature next to the expected functionally of viewing/editing (monthly/weekly/timeline…) is that you can add notes to events. They just get a event-id in the frontmatter and are linked.

Tasks

You guessed it it’s Google Tasks. You can edit/check tasks. I didn’t even know that you can have tasks in your google calendar. You can even set the time. This was new to me.

Keep in mind that you can have a better calendar and tasks right on your home screen if you are using a mobile device. I don’t use any google plugins on myAndroid.

Latex Suite

This is good if you have to type complex equations in a short period of time in the latex equation formatting. You can customize it of course. But I’ve not found the need to everything is there already. The gif above goes through some common use cases.

PDF++

This one is the best one! The other plugins should be taken for granted. They are all nice to have and can achieve something but they don’t really help you understand a pdf. https://github.com/RyotaUshio/obsidian-pdf-plus?tab=readme-ov-file#getting-started Just watch the demo videos. This is a vital tool to take notes in class or elsewhere. This is also good to create notes forBooks.

Self-hosted LiveSync

This is my chosen method of syncing. If you don’t have a domain or don’t want to have any website but still have a syncing obsidian, then I’d recommend Syncthing. Instead you could also pay for the official one.

Spaced Repetition

This is a way to make style flashcards. This is similar to Anki but less shitty (there is flashcards plugin that lets you connect it to anki). I use it from time to time to refresh on vocabulary. It can display all types of media check it out here.

Maybe I should use it go generally ask myself if I still remember day to day things. Some are easy and they get repeated less and less. I have some cards that have to reviewed in 9 months time.