I’ve only barely scratched the surface of what it can be made to do with plug-in extensions, but so far I’m really loving the note-taking software Obsidian .
What I had been doing in my old notes app was creating a daily journal entry, adding random thoughts and bits and pieces over the day, and occasionally spinning out a thought into a separate note if it got …
Thanks to the great influence of the Micro.blog community, I’ve now installed and am playing around with Obsidian (yet another note-taking app). I’m seeing a lot of potential in it for how I would use it, as it’d resolve all the bugbears I have with Standard Notes (e.g. no linking between notes; inability to save notes as plain markdown accessible from outside apps; lack of a calendar view to make it easy… or even feasible… to just browse old entries (there is rapid full-text search though, for finding specific things)). However, I still have vivid memories of how much of a pain in the ass it was to move to Standard Notes in the first place. After that, I thought I’d convinced myself for good that the marginal superiority of one note-taking app over another doesn’t actually make up for the gigantic hassle that is the export/import process. And yet…
Ugh, the import-export headache gets me again. Goodlinks only exports in JSON format, while Raindrop.io can import from HTML, CSV, TXT or some special Pinterest export tool but not JSON. It didn’t like the output of a JSON-to-CSV converter either, so because I’m fussy, converting that CSV file manually to HTML now… 🤯
Last night I got started setting up NextDNS . I run µBlock Origin pretty religiously on all my computers, but I’m looking forward to having more reliable ad blocking on my iPhone, and I’m going to see if I can convince my partner to use it and leave the ad-watching lifestyle behind 😅
One issue I have had is trying to set it up at the router level. I do have IPv6 set up but my router won’t let me set IPv6 addresses for DNS. My IPv4 address is dynamic so I’ve tried to do the “linked IP” approach, but apparently my ISP’s use of CGNAT means that won’t work. Surprisingly it actually is working for the wired connection with my TV, but it doesn’t seem to for anything connected to the wifi networks.1 I’m not really knowledgeable enough to try to fix this, so I guess I’ll just deal with the minor inelegance of installing apps!
Correction: While it didn’t work on my laptop, actually other devices in my home seem to be going through NextDNS just fine. 🤷🏻♀️ ↩︎
Everyone likes the idea that when you put your data into an app, you’ll be able to get it out again easily. Unfortunately, the reality is that many apps' import and export functions fall way short of what you’d hope for, leaving you with a ton of manual work to do if you’re determined to switch apps. So today, you get a gnarled tale of me trying to move my archive of journal …
Jessica Smith is a left-wing feminist who loves animals, books, gaming, and cooking; she’s also very interested in linguistics, history, technology and society.