Stephen Millard has been doing this wonderful project where he keeps all the Automators podcast episodes and resources in an Obsidian public vault. I felt awful telling him we were shutting the show down last month, but he has a plan for the maintenance of the vault going forward.
I’ve heard from several labs members asking for the best way to export their Apple Notes to text. My favorite method is the Obsidian Importer plugin. Even if you intend to use something other than Obsidian, this plugin gets a reliable export of all your Apple Notes to markdown text in minutes.… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Level 3 (Early Access) and Level 2 (Backstage) Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?
I’m so pleased to announce the release of the Obsidian Field Guide. Hooray!
Obsidian is a remarkable app, and the new Field Guide came out great. You can even get a 40-minute free sample at the above links. Check it out.
Obsidian brings new tools and paradigms to working with our thoughts on computers. Obsidian can be a game changer, and I’ve been using it since its early beta release. You can turn Obsidian into any sort of notes and data management tool you need: research, client work, PKM, or whatever. I use it primarily to document my own personal operating system, but there is more on that in the course. However, before you can make Obsidian truly race, you need to get some time behind the wheel and figure out how it works.
Obsidian allows linking to and from notes throughout your Obsidian “vault”, making connections of thoughts easier and more illuminating. It’s built on a plugin-style architecture that gives the app an ever-increasing feature set with plugins built by Obsidian’s developers and the Obsidian community. It’s based on a folder full of Markdown text files, so you always own and control your data. It can be end-to-end encrypted to protect your privacy. People use Obsidian to gather their thoughts, write their dissertations, plan their projects, and even track visits to the veterinarian. The app is powerful and flexible.
However…
The Obsidian on-ramp is steep. It takes a while to wrap your arms around exactly what you can do with this app and unlock its full potential. You need a guide. That’s me, MacSparky, your Obsidian pal. Once you master Obsidian, you’ll also need help picking plugins and figuring out exactly how far down that rabbit hole you want to go. I’ve got you covered there, too.
The Obsidian Field Guide is a 6-hour course including 78 instructional videos that will get you up and running. The course starts with the basics and goes straight through to the advanced. It is carefully paced so anyone can take advantage of Obsidian. Each tutorial includes a full transcript and closed captioning. The transcripts are even bundled into ePub and PDF documents you can download.
Your purchase will also get you access to the Obsidian Field Guide Private Vault, where you’ll get additional resources, links, and access to the samples used throughout the course.
In addition to the above, with the Obsidian Field Guide Plus Edition, you’ll get an additional webinar series going deeper into Obsidian with additional materials, guest speakers, questions and answers, and even more Obsidian goodness. All webinar sessions will be recorded and added to downloadable content for plus edition customers.
There’s a lot more, along with a free 40-minute sample, at the below Obsidian Field Guide links. If you’ve ever wondered why so many people love Obsidian, now’s your chance to learn.
Don’t forget, the code OBSIDIANLAUNCH gets you 10% off.
Want a 40-minute sample? Here you go.
Obsidian, the personal management and idea connector that we have all been losing our collective minds over, is now officially out of beta with their release of version 1.0. Congratulations to the small Obsidian development team that made a very big app.
While I don’t use Obsidian for everything, I’m in it daily and use it for many things. Here are some of my favorite things about this application:
I love this app. I’m actively producing a new Field Guide about it right now. If you’ve been waiting for Obsidian to leave beta, you’ve got no further excuses.
I spent three weeks running Obsidian as my primary task manager. I learned that task management in Obsidian is a lot better than I expected, but probably still not the answer for me. In this video, I walk through plugins and workflows to manage your tasks in Obsidian…
This is a post for MacSparky Labs Level 3 (Early Access) and Level 2 (Backstage) Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?
I did an appearance as part of the Obsidian conference run by Nick Milo last week. Specifically, I did an hour-long session about how to link from Obsidian to external sources. Here’s the video link. Enjoy!…
This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?
I am fully invested in the emerging idea of linked thinking and how it can help us use technology for our own good. When Nick Milo asked me to participate in his Linking Your Thinking Conference, it was a no-brainer. I’m doing a session this Wednesday morning at 9:00 PDT, all about how I link from Obsidian to other places. This is part of how I contextually compute. Registration is free, I hope to see you there.
I’ve been busy evolving a project management system from inside Obsidian. This system relies upon the use of status folders (instead of tags) and the DataView plugin to auto-sort and display relevant projects. I believe this system could work for all sorts of work but it is, admittedly, still a work in progress. In this video, I walk you through how I’m using it and what I’m up to… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Early Access and Backstage Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?
This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members. Care to join?
With all of these changes lately, I’ve been exploding with new content ideas. I needed a way to capture and manage them so I built a little Keyboard Maestro script to take an idea and format it into a special note, and then save the note to my Obsidian database. Here’s how I did it …
Mike Schmitz and Nick Milo are two of my favorite people on the Internet and they’re joining forces this Thursday to do a webinar on Sensemaking with Obsidian. I know they have both been working on hard on this one and I’m looking forward to seeing what they are up to.