- [<] Status Log - created:: 2021-09-13 - status-updated:: 2022-03-22 - current-status:: #articleseed but almost done, just needs to be cleaned up and shipped. - [S] Marketing - purpose:: Explain different methods of quick capture for the [[Obsidian Roundup]]. ## VIII. Quick Capture I touched on this some earlier, but I think it deserves its own section. ### VIIa. Voice to text I often brainstorm articles and stories while I'm driving, or out for a walk. Quickly capturing those ideas Personally, I use otter.ai or the google keyboard for this most of the time, but I view this as a tool agnostic method. You could just as easily use Dragon or any voice to text tool. Then I either share the file to my email or drop it directly into my Obsidian vault, depending on which device I'm using. ### VIIb. Inbox Zero A month or two after I started the Obsidian Roundup, my email started to get overwhelming. This was a relatively new phenomenon for me, since I read and type very fast and historically I've spent relatively little time on mobile: I've never had good cell reception in a school building so I was basically always near a computer when I was checking my email. It was my habit to respond quickly and file the email away, or maybe flag it for response and get to it later that day, but the stuff I needed to follow up on never fell off the landing screen when I opened up my email client. Then I started getting people reaching out with questions, or sending me videos I wanted to check out and respond about, or offering help with problems I'd run across. I was getting a lot more email, so I looked into various ways to manage email and eventually landed on Inbox Zero. The philosophy boils down to the idea that your inbox shouldn't be a to-do list and you should file everything away as soon as you get it, either into the archives or into a task management system. So of course I did the exact opposite of what the whole point is and started using my inbox as a quick-capture to-do list, precisely because I _will_ file things away... for the same reasons I keep my root folder neat and tidy. If I'm on a computer that doesn't have Obsidian installed, but I have an idea I want ### VIIc. Ye olde post-it note ### VIId. Making local-first tools work with the cloud. There's a guy in the obsidian community, also an older guy who makes it a point to make sure that all of his markdown files are interoperable. With no other programs, he doesn't use any of the newfangled wiki link stuff, because he has been writing in markdown for the last couple of decades. And all of his notes still work. And he wants them to still work, you know, 30 years from now, and you don't have to use all the fancy stuff you don't you can find other ways. The there's a philosophy that, you know, I agree with that your program should work if you have crappy internet, I often I'm working on crappy internet, it's one of the reasons that I use obsidian instead of a cloud based software. Whereas when I was really worried about being able to use programs on different computers and work back, when I switch to different computers, like, I like six different routers I switched through at any given day, I really needed stuff to be in the cloud, like I was an early supporter of novela. Play, it's not supported or novel or they don't use it anymore. Because at that time of my life, I really needed cloud software. And now I spend so much time with no internet, that what I really need is local first software, preferably that I can interact with, in some way from devices that don't have the program installed, which is fine with obsidian because I can use either Dropbox, or get or whatever to access the notes remotely if I need to. And that works for me now. So you know, decide what works for you. But a good rule of thumb is to use themes that have base 64, encoded fonts. And as many, you know, minimize as much plug in stuff that does API calls to the internet. But sometimes you can't, right, like the whole point of revised is that you're getting stuff off of requests. But what's nice about the Kindle plugin is that it will run off of my clippings dot txt, like right on your computer, you don't need an API call. So that's just another philosophical thing to keep in mind, you have to decide whether you are a cloud first or a local first situation. If you are on a lockdown computer that you can install software on or usage computers a bunch, then you probably want to have something in mind for that. And maybe that means get or maybe that means Dropbox. Or maybe that means setting up a server that you can you know remote into like the hackers but I personally find it frustrating. So I have an ass and just email stuff to myself. Sometimes if I don't need to actually access the file like you can you could get away with a low tech easy solution, you do not actually have to figure out how to run a virtual server. Fine, you can just read only your files in Dropbox, or the email like you have to decide how much effort you want to put into this. And another little effort kind of #### VId1. Mobile Markor for quick capture option for obsidian. Apple shortcuts. Widgets and stuff. #### VId2. Computers you don't control There's also the GitHub option, but mentioned that it's not super great for non technical people, and I don't personally use it. I'm only mentioning it because it solves some problems for people who have locked down workspaces, work computers, to let them quick capture things from work if they prefer not to use their email, and just want to use GitHub directly, or dropbox or whatever. ### VId. Scripts I often found myself writing an article in a text editor on one screen (I'm fond of writemonkey2, a 10-year-old markdown editor with great focus features) with Obsidian open on my other monitor, the workspace set up so that I had all the files I needed open and neatly organized. Then I would have a thought I wanted to record, and I kept finding myself having to open a new note, type out the thought, and then close the note... and re-arrange the workspace to get it back the way I liked it. Because the panes would get resized, and not all of my notes are short atomic things that only take up one "page," I'd often lose my place in whatever I was referencing. It was adding friction to my process and taking too much of my attention. So I went to the Obsidian community, hat in hand, searching for a solution. The method the community helped me develop uses a script for the Templater plugin and the Hotkeys for Templater plugin, but there are at least three other ways to accomplish this on Windows alone, using different Obsidian plugins or a bash script that runs straight from your operating system. For me personally, if I hit `ctrl+q` a modal pops up and asks me what I want to title the note, and then asks me what I want the contents of the note to be. The script creates a file in my root folder with that information. The _easiest_ method I currently know of to accomplish this kind of is the QuickAdd plugin from Christian Bager Bach, which alas did not exist at the time I decided I needed a quick capture solution.