Publishing these notes

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Publishing these notes

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I use Obsidian to write these notes, and Blot to publish them. I have a private git repo for all my notes public and private, and the notes that get published on this website are a submodule in that larger git repo (the submodule is the git repo blot provides for syncing).

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I use the Obsidian Git plugin to automatically push content to the website, so when a file is edited or moved to the submodule, the plugin will push that content to the website at some interval.

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I use Working Copy to sync the repo to a local folder on my iOS devices that the Obsidian mobile app can use as a vault.

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Alternatives

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I wanted a system that could do the following:

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Publish new notes easily

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Have some form of a blog post style, where recent posts can be made more visible

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Handle wikilinks

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Display backlinks

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Simple management

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For now, this works well for these purposes. A couple alternatives I’ve tried or considered:

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A more standard static site generator: Hugo, Jekyll, 11ty, etc.

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Obsidian Publish is quite good, but I’ve found the out-of-the-box CSS from Blot to be closer to what I’m looking for.

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Despite that, a couple things that Obsidian Publish does better than Blot:

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Proper handling of dead links (i.e. links to notes that have not yet been created)

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A local graph view displaying the connections from one note to other notes

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Robustness

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For now, this process feels relatively robust.

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I really don’t want to get too stuck in the tinkering and development of the system, and allow myself to focus more on the writing and content creation. I have tendency to be easily dissatisfied with UI/UX, and a tendency to tinker and try to over-optimize (very related to my background as a developer I’m sure). For this reason, it is a priority to have something that “just works”, as much as that is possible.

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I still want to make lots of changes to the CSS I’m using on this site, and may switch away from Blot to something else in the future. But for now this system has given me the most peace of mind, and I’ve found myself writing and not worrying about the process of publishing knowing that it is working pretty well, which is great.

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Pre-notes

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I use Apple’s Notes and Reminders apps to take down quick ideas before processing them into the my Obsidian notes. Since I use pretty much all Apple devices, I’ve found this to be a good way to take down quick ideas or things I want to remember.

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This allows me to jot down ideas while away from home with my phone (with or without internet access), provides an easy place to throw quick thoughts without needing to organize them, and allows me to speak to a HomePod while at home or speak to Siri in a car if I don’t want to get out a device.

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