Links
- Omnivore clips 15 - Omnivore is my preferred method of importing web content The majority of the notes this week come from two writers I follow, Matt Birchler and Jarrod Blundy, and their posts are imported automatically.
- Blog posts 21 - I wrote twenty-one different posts this week. I write in Obsidian more often than not. I save my drafts in my vault, using file properties to track the topic and published URL.
- Daily notes 7 - I start and end every day with my daily note.. I use the Periodic Notescommunity plugin.
- Receipt 1 - Since Obsidian serves as my Evernote replacement, I figured out how to email content into my vault to save stuff like receipts.
- Work People 8 - Whenever I have an interaction with someone at work (I’m in IT at a small university), I make a reference note using a template. I find this invaluable for tracking different tech issues.
- Personal Notes 2 - these are notes not related to work or technical areas. I made one note on how to get free Paramount Plus and another on how to stop my car from spying on me.
- Tech Notes 6 - Most of these notes are clips from emails and web pages covering various tech topics like blogging, web design and miscellaneous Apple related content.
- Bookmarks 8 - I have an automated workflowto import my Raindrop.io bookmarks.
- Restaurants 2 - I like to track the places I eat out using a template that includes a link to their website, map, information on the cuisine and my rating. It’s especially helpful when traveling because it cuts down on the hassle of finding a place if I already know somewhere good in the area.
- First thing in the morning on my MacBook Air to start my daily note where I record what time I woke up and run a couple of shortcuts to add the day’s weather and my calendar events
- As soon as I get to work, I open Obsidian on my PC and leave it open all day to record meeting notes, people notes and notes on things I will reference later. I use u\kepano’s templates from the vault he shared on GitHub
- on my iPhone, I record where I eat lunch and link it to a restaurant template and file class I configured with the Metadata Menu plugin.
- During the evening, I record what I watch on TV using the Media DB plugin
- Before I go to bed, I have a nightly checklist in Things 3 that involves me clearing my Obsidian inbox and internally bookmarking anything I need to read later. I also use this time to make a quick three-bullet gratitude list as part of my daily note.
- I have a workflow for sending emails to Obsidian and I clear that folder out each night too.
- I check to see if Omnivore, my Read Later Service has any imported pages or highlights I need to file.
- The last thing I check is whether I need to import any bookmarks I’ve made that day in Raindrop.io. This can be automated but I prefer to do it manually to make sure I correctly file and/or link web pages to any current MOCs
- BetterTouchTool
- CleanMyMacX
- MindNode
- WidgetWall
- 24 Hour Wallpaper
- CloudMounter
- AlDente Pro
- HoudahSpot
- PathFinder
- Default Folder X
- Dropzone
- CleanShot X
- Unlimited bookmarks
- Unlimited collections
- Unlimited highlights
- Unlimited devices
- More than 2,600 integrations (via IFTTT)
- Apps for Mac, iOS, Android, Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge.
My #Obsidian Week - Breaking Down the Notes I Created by Area and Workflow
This week I created 61 new notes in Obsidian. Some of them were original content - things I wrote. Some of them were automated. Others were the results of using templates. The breakdown looks like this:
Launcher is the king of widget apps. I use it on my lock screen, my home screen, and in my work focus mode. It does much more than just launch apps, allowing you to create actions for messaging, social media, music and more. Launcher on App Addict
This Weeks Bookmarks: 100 greatest protest songs, Making art, How to help someone with a computer, Royal order of adjectives, The US can't support Israel in Gaza, Who lived when, The world's most expensive spice
Say It Loud! 100 Timeless Protest Songs (popmatters.com)
How to help someone use a computer (ucla.edu)
Copywriting 101: the royal order of adjectives (lushthecontentagency.com)
The United States Cannot Defend Israel’s War in Gaza - The Atlantic (archive.ph)
This neat interactive gives you an idea of what people lived at the same time in history
Saffron: The Story of the World’s Most Expensive Spice - JSTOR Daily
I spent my high scool years doing farm work so my opinion of the modern cult of cleanliness is colored a bit by my experience. Talking Dirty
How many times a day do you open #Obsidian? When do your record data? When do you reference data? What are your habits?
I have Obsidian in the dock on my iPhone and MacBook Air and in the taskbar of the Windows machine I use at work. Obsidian is always within reach for reference but I have some habitual times I open it to record certain data.
Not All Boomers - the story of a recent visit with my 77-year old Dad that unfortunately exemplified a bunch of Boomer stereotypes in a very uncomfortable 30-minute span.
At the end of the street where I’ve lived for thirty years stands an unassuming blue building housing Zorba’s Gyro on a Spit, a restaurant I’ve frequented for even longer. An ode to my favorite diner, a comforting home away from home, a place where I watch everybody but me grow up.
This Week's Bookmarks - Subscriptions worth paying for, book summaries online, unofficial holidays, a rare bird, best small town in every state, 50 historical photos, things that don't work
Six Subscriptions Actually Worth Paying for, According to Reddit | Lifehacker - The article discusses different subscription services that Reddit users recommend as being worthwhile based on the value they provide: airport pre-check membership which allows faster security screening at airports. An air filter subscription service ensures the right sized filters are delivered regularly. A subscription to Cook’s Illustrated magazine is recommended for recipes tested by experts. The Great Courses is mentioned for lifelong learning opportunities across different topics. A national parks pass provides access to national parks and other federal recreational lands. Dropout.tv is a comedy streaming service with original shows
BookPecker.com: 14509 books summarized in 5 bullet points - Discover your next read! Browse bullet point summaries of thousands of books, find books smilar to those you own, and add new items to your reading list.
Laugh: By looking up your birthday on this list of unofficial holidays.
This Bird Is Half Male, Half Female, and Completely Stunning - The New York Times (nytimes.com) - This honeycreeper was first observed in October 2021 on a small farm in Villamaría, in western Colombia, and soon became a regular visitor. It appeared to be a bilateral gynandromorph: female on one side and male on the other. (video)
The Most Charming Small Towns in Each U.S. State - AFAR - Consider these 51 beautiful places found across the country—including Puerto Rico—for your next trip
50+ Must-See Moments In History (historydefined.net) - Here are 50 must-see historical moments – significant events that have shaped our world. From wars and revolutions to scientific discoveries and technological innovations, these are some of the most important moments in human progress. (photos)
Things that don’t work (dynomight.net) - A somewhat controversial list of things people use that don’t actually do what they are intended for. Among the first items is acupuncture and multivitamins.
Ian Betterridge’s 10 Blue Links - One of my favorite link newsletters complements of @ianbetteridge@writing.exchange. This week there are some long reads of classic tech journalism made relevant by current events.
Saw a great post today from writer @jhpot@mastodon.social about how we can screw with corporate social media by not joining the outraged chorus after events intended to provoke us. The topics of outrage and online speech motivate me to do a little self-examination. I thought I’d share
If anyone needs more storage, Amazon has an external Seagate 4TB hard drive on sale today for $99. It’s not my affiliate link, it’s just a good short-time deal.
I couldn’t resist the urge to participate in the Scribbles experiment, so I decided to put my free domain from omg.lol to use (once I get all the DNS details). In honor of the heritage of the IndieWeb, my first contribution is a repost from 1997, GeoCities style - The Road Trip
How to Talk to an Actual Person at Amazon
For confusing situations, skip the forms and bots. An Amazon customer service rep will call you if you know this trick. While logged into your Amazon account, go to the Contact us page.
Choose the issue that mostly closely matches your problem, then go through the form. At the end, choose Request a phone call. Click that, enter your phone number, and you’ll see an estimated time before you receive the call. I’ve never waited more than three minutes. Have your order number handy!
📲 If you do need a phone number for Amazon Customer Service, it’s 1‑888‑280‑4331. You might want to save that in your contacts. I don’t want you to get scammed by Googling support numbers that turn out fake.
From The Current newsletter
A Dozen Reasons to Try SetApp - #Mac Apps I Use Every Day and How Much I Save
SetApp is a monthly subscription service that offers access to 240 different Mac apps starting at $9.99 a month. I currently have 37 different applications from Setapp installed on my MacBook Air. Some of them are startup items that run all the time when my Mac is on. Others I use an a regular basis for maintenance and routine tasks. They have quite a few apps that I’ve purchased in the past but no longer have to pay for upgrades because they are now included in my plan. I’ve listed a dozen of my favorite programs from Setapp, along with their cost if purchased or subscribed to separately to give you an idea of what you can save with a subscription. If you use my affiliate link, you can get a 30-day trial instead of the seven-day trial they normally offer.
BetterTouchTool
BetterTouchTool allows you to customize various input devices like trackpads, mice, and keyboards. It offers a wide range of gesture definitions for the Magic Mouse, Macbook Trackpad and Magic Trackpad, and allows users to trigger keyboard shortcuts, system actions or custom scripts. Additionally, the app also features window management and a clipboard manager. My favorite actions include one click trackpad action to launch a Google search and launching the Raycast emoji picker and clipboard manager. ($22 for a lifetime license when purchased without SetApp)
CleanMyMacX
CleanMyMac X is a versatile maintenance utility designed to keep your Mac running smoothly. It includes features for junk file deletion, system optimization, application updating and uninstalling, plus malware protection. I have a reminder to run the optimizer once a week. (Yearly subscription price is $34.95 when purchased without SetApp)
MindNode
MindNode is a powerful tool designed for creating mind maps and visualizing ideas on your Mac. It has customizable layouts, themes, and easy-to-use drawing tools. I’ve been using it for over 10 years and took advantage of the SetApp version to avoid having to pay an upgrade fee. (Yearly subscription $19.99 when purchased without SetApp)
24 Hour Wallpaper
The 24 Hour Wallpaper app for Mac provides high-quality, time-synchronized wallpapers that adapt to match local daylight conditions. The wallpapers change throughout the day, mirroring natural or city scenes suited to the time. I like it more than the Bing wallpaper app I previously used. (One-time purchase price is $9.99 without Setapp)
CloudMounter
CloudMounter connects your Mac to cloud storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive. It mounts these services as local drives, allowing you to manage your online files directly from Finder. I like it because it let’s me avoid having to run the native app for each application. (annual license is $39.99 when purchased without SetApp)
AlDente Pro
AlDente Pro protects your MacBook battery by intelligently managing its charging behavior. It lets you set a maximum charge percentage to prolong battery lifespan and offers various customizable settings for optimal battery health. I keep my maximum charge set to 70% on my MacBook Air, although I can easily top it off to 100% if I need to be on battery for a prolonged time. (One time purchase of $25 without SetApp)
HoudahSpot
HoudahSpot transforms your Mac’s search capabilities. It builds upon Spotlight, offering complex search criteria including file attributes, content, and metadata. I use the saved search functions to find all the Markdown files created in the last seven days (run as a weekly task) to import my Obsidian files into EagleFiler. (One-time purchase price of $39.00 without SetApp)
PathFinder
PathFinder is a powerful file management alternative to macOS Finder. It offers advanced features like dual-pane browsing, batch renaming, deep folder comparisons, and customizable interface modules. This is another app I’ve used for more than a decade. (Annual subscription $29.99 without SetApp)
Default Folder X
Default Folder X enhances your Mac’s Open and Save dialog boxes. It offers quick access to recent folders, favorites, powerful keyboard shortcuts, and default folder management. I’m a long-time user and no longer have to pay any upgrade fees. (One-time license costs $34,95 without Setapp)
Dropzone
Dropzone supercharges your Mac’s productivity with its drag-and-drop interface. It lets you send files to apps, shorten URLs, execute custom scripts, and much more – all by simply dragging files or text snippets onto its icon. I use a script to automatically install apps from DMG files and a shortcut that uploads media files to Micro.blog (License is $35 without Setapp)
CleanShot X
CleanShot X elevates screen capturing on your Mac. It offers far more than basic screenshots with tools for annotations, blurring, screen recording, and a scrolling capture mode. CleanShot X delivers professional-looking visuals and clear communication effortlessly. I’ve used other apps like Shottr and SnagIt) and I find that CleanShot X offers more. (Subscription is $10 a month for the cloud service plan without SetApp)
A generation that grew up with Google is forcing professors to rethink their lesson plans A story about how today’s college students don’t understand how to find a file, or even what a file is.
“Take their phones away and get ‘em on Windows 98.”
This Week's Bookmarks - Coolest Street in the World, Funniest Novels, Movies That Couldn't Be Made Today, Greatest All-Time Albums, Photo Award Winners, Scientific Mysteries, and More!
If you are working on your bucket list or maybe you just have the travel bug, here are some ideas for you - 30 Coolest Streets in the World Right Now (timeout.com)
Do you and your co-workers play that morbid death game? If so, here is the definitive score-keeping site! - Deaths in 2024 - Wikipedia
This list dates from the publication of Catch 22 to the present, because we could all use a laugh! - 22 of the Funniest Novels - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
I think there’s pretty much a consensus that classic TV shows like All In The Family couldn’t be made today but what about movies? - 30 Movies That Could Never Be Made Today | Lifehacker
Back in the days when downloading and owning music was a thing, I collected the Rolling Stone list of the top 500 albums of all time, something about which I was extraordinarily proud. That was 20+ years ago and the list has changed since then, and here’s why. - What Makes an Album the Greatest of All Time? (pudding.cool)
Who doesn’t like looking at great photography? - 2024 Open competition Winners & Shortlist | World Photography Organisation
Ask any entertainment question and instantly get personalized picks for TV shows, movies, books and podcasts! - Let AI Make Recommendations
What is the universe made out of? How should we define death? Where did dogs come from? And more! - 17 of the most astounding scientific mysteries - Vox
A letter to the editor that will restore your faith in book reviews (and maybe humanity).
My Bookmark Workflow in 2024 using #Raindrop.io and #Obsidian
I recently found a backup of my browser bookmarks from 2009. It was a trip down memory lane looking at what i was most interested in 15 years ago (lots of cycling) and seeing what web resources are sadly no longer with us (Google+, Stumble Upon). Before browsers started syncing bookmarks I used (and paid for) Foxmarks a browser extension that synced bookmarks between different browsers. My Chrome (work) and Safari (home) bookmarks were identical. It was great. Foxmarks died when its functions were supplanted by native browser capabilities. For the next few years I relied on Chrome’s native capabilities to sync, ditching Safari. In 2022, I switched to Microsoft Edge and I’ve remained there since (on Mac, iOS and PC).
Microsoft Edge Really Doesn’t Suck | Lou Plummer (amerpie.lol)
Raindrop.io
Last year I heard about Raindrop.io for the first time in an article from Mac Automation Tips. Raindrop.io is a multi-featured bookmark manager with a web interface and native apps for Mac and PC. It allows you to add sites to your collection via a browser extension. When you add a new bookmark you can assign it to a folder, add a note, tags and set a reminder to revisit the site later (paid feature)
The free version of Raindrop.io offers enough features for may users.
The pro version offers even more benefits. If you rely on PDFs for reference, you can upload your library to Raindrop.io’s servers and take advantage of full text search and universal availability. For regular web sites, Raindrop.io saves an archive of the page when you add it to your collection so you never have to worry about losing access to an article if it gets pulled from the Internet or disappears behind a paywall. You get daily backups. I have mine saved to Dropbox so I get a local copy of them downloaded to my computer.
Integrations I use include YouTube where every time I give a video a thumbs up it gets added to Raindrop.io. My RSS service, Inoreader, allows me to add pages directly to my bookmarks and it automates it even further by also adding starred (read later) articles as well. I also imported all my articles from Pocket and for awhile synced my bookmarks with an Evernote notebook.
Obsidian Integration
I try to make Obsidian the center of my digital life. After hacking together a workflow that involved exporting my bookmarks to Dropbox via IFTTT and then moving them to my vault with Hazel, I found a community plugin that accomplished all that for me, The Raindrop Highlights Plugin can be set to only import bookmarks where you’ve made highlights or it can import every page you add to Raindrop.io (my choice). The plugin allows you to customize your import template for the body of the note and the metadata. If you choose (recommended), it will duplicate the folder structure you’ve created for your collection. Vitally, you can import the tags you assign as you add bookmarks so that if, like me, you use tag-based MOCs (maps of content) in Obsidian, your imported bookmarks will get automatically added.
If you’d occasionally like to add the full content of a page, you can use the community plugin ReadItLater which will import a website from a URL on your clipboard. Even if you don’t import the content of the page, the clean interface of an imported bookmark note invites you to add your own commentary and to add internal links to other notes on the same topic, Obsidian’s super power.
This Week's Bookmarks - Disney Adults, 1-Star Reviews of National Parks, Steve Job's Biggest Rival, 90's Band Name Origins, How Maps Distort the World, Printing any Web Page, Making Google Better #Links
For parents and grandparents, the Walt Disney Company is nearly inescapable, such is the corporation’s reach into American society, but for a certain sector their is a different attraction. The Disney Adult
We all agree that setting high expectations is good in some circumstances. Setting unrealistic expectations is unwise in all cases however. The article shows what happens to people who expect the wilderness to be a theme park. It’s hilarious. The best one-star reviews of national parks: ‘A giant litter box’ - The Washington Post
“Today’s businesses and technologies were not just defined by the names we remember, and in his new column, The Crazy Ones_ Gareth Edwards [tells] the stories of the forgotten men and women who thought differently and helped build the future. His latest piece demonstrates how the personal computing battles of the early 1980s—when Steve Jobs and Adam Osborne battled for supremacy—echo to today The Rise and Fall of Steve Jobs’s Greatest Rival (every.to)
You need this article if you ever want to win a trivia contest. Slightly fascinating. Slightly icky. The Name Origins of 20 Famous ’90s Bands (mentalfloss.com)
Of course the white map-makers of yore found a way to minimize the impact of black and brown people and of course the trend continues today. You’ve probably never seen the true size of Africa. How Maps Distort the World
What if you want to print a webpage without the ads and photos? Paste the web address into PrintFriendly to strip out all the extras.
There’s a hidden setting that makes searches more precise. How to Make Google Show You the Good Search Results Again
A Lovely Routine - The Digital Checklist That Brings Me Joy Every Day and The Hunt for Links
I have a digital checklist I try to complete every day. It helps me do the mundane things we all have to do, stay on top of my email, organize my notes, keep important software updated. My checklist also helps me to remember to do the fun things I enjoy: uploading a photo every day to Micro.blog where it gets cross posted to all the social media sites in which I participate. I have a reminder to check in daily at Product Hunt because I enjoy seeing what’s new in the software categories I follow. The other “fun” item I try to check off seven days a week is to find a bookmark to share.
Every Saturday morning, I get up at 4am to drink coffee and work interrupted on posting to my blog. I keep a running note all week in Obsidian where I add each day’s link. I write a short blurb for each site, download/upload a few images and post the links. My uber original name for this feature is (drumroll) This Week’s Bookmarks.
I subscribe to way too many newsletters and what keeps me interested in them is looking for the link of the day. Ironically, some of what I subscribe too are other people’s weekly link posts! I’ll share anything that looks like it might catch the eye of a curious person. It could be a story about the world’s coolest streets or something funny like the Washington Post’s collection of one-star reviews of National Parks. I rarely share news stories. I aim for something with a little shelf life. I’m a techie and a blogger so there’s plenty of stuff there for like-minded folks.
Right now, I’m keeping a running list of several week’s worth of links. One day it will get too unwieldy, and I’ll have to pare it down or start a volume two or something, but for now it’s there to explore. If you check it out and find anything useful or entertaining it would mean the world to me if you let me know.
Matthias Ott, author of the wonderful newsletter Own Your Web, wrote a piece recently about all the reasons why creating a links page is an integral part of the IndieWeb. He listed different ways to share your finds (like newsletters and RSS feeds) and he gave multiple reasons for collecting links in the first place. He’s the inspiration for this reflection.
A couple of bloggers I like have weekly links posts or newsletters. Check out the HeyDingus Seven Things This Week collection and let the writer, Jarrod Blundy know that I sent you. While you’re at it, look at Ian Betteridge’s new 10 Blue Links which he’ll be happy to email you each week.
Peace! Lou, in NC
Lou Plummer | Amerpie
Email
This Week's #Bookmarks: Free PDF tools, Alexa safety, online museums, amazing photos, emoji news and an RSS family tree
Bookmarks for Week 10 of 2024
Maybe you need this I don’t know. We all have phones these days with voice assistants and may of us have one or more additional devices in our homes. They are fun to query but be careful. Take the advice in this article. 7 things you should never ask Siri, Google Assistant or Alexa (komando.com)
If you are the kind of person who doesn’t just accept the default font in your apps and documents, it would pay to learn a little bit about different typefaces. This informative page is a good place to start. Fonts and Typology Infographic | (dailyinfographic.com)
My son is a self-taught art lover who often travels just to visit museums in places like NYC and Boston. I sent him this web site so he could preview some of the places he plans to travel to. 50+ virtual museums you can visit online for free (komando.com)
An amateur photographer myself, I quite enjoyed this series. James Lucas on X: “Photographs taken in the right place at the right time, intentionally or by chance
I work in IT support and one of the chores I have that is 100% not my favorite is installing Adobe Acrobat Professional for people who I just know aren’t going to realize the full value of it. I wish I could just send them this bookmark instead. iLovePDF | Online PDF tools for PDF lovers
I confess to sending way too few emojis to fit into 21st century life. I may be a grumpy old man. Still, I’m not above learning something new. Heart Emoji Meanings | Later
My Inoreader subscription for RSS feeds is one of the best tech investments I make each year. Getting into blogging and the whole IndieWeb scene has been a real blessing. This site helps me discover new feeds to follow by making a family tree of sorts from my Mastodon account and revealing all of the RSS feeds available to me from the people I follow. RsS iS dEaD LOL (rss-is-dead.lol)