Obsidian Tricks
May 15, 2025
I started using a popular plugin with Obsidian called Templater. I would have called it something like Scripter because it allows you to replace special tags with the execution output of a script.
I wrote two little JavaScript programs for it: one calls a WeatherAPI endpoint and fetches today’s forecast, and the other calls the NYTimes API and fetches the current top headline. I use both of these as front matter in my daily notes!
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Unsplash + Raycast + Obsidian
May 15, 2025
I just installed an extension that allows me to quickly search for Unsplash images in Raycast. Here’s one for the search term “gamer:” Author credit
Blogs are more fun with images, right?
Russia?
Apr 04, 2025
Why don’t the tariffs include Russia?! Hmmm?
Death of a Unicorn
Apr 01, 2025
I went to see this with Eila on Sunday. I don’t know what to make of it. It was sometimes funny, but not usually. The villainous pharmaceutical family is fun to despise, though. Stealth Brit Will Poulter gets the funniest line in the movie, “Let’s hot tub about it.”
Paul Rudd is wasted here. He mainly stands around being confused.
I would pass on this unless you’re bored on an airplane.
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Happy Pranks Day
Apr 01, 2025
I didn’t see a single prank on the Internet today, so I’m super happy.
Authenticating a CLI with Okta
Mar 31, 2025
The standard OAuth authentication flow requires running a web server so there’s a place to redirect to after obtaining a token. But there’s another type of flow called device authorization that is meant for smart TVs and things like that, but it also works for a terminal application. This enables some really powerful terminal applications, because you can use REST APIs that require a bearer token. I learned how to do this using a burner Okta account.
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Falling for Obsidian
Mar 31, 2025
I’m trying not to get sucked down the Obsidian rabbit hole, but it may be too late. Once you start poking around at the community plugins, you’re a goner.
My Favorite Comic About Bash Errors
Mar 31, 2025
Julia Evans is great. If you haven’t seen her awesome tech zines, check it out right now.
But there’s one comic I keep going back to again and again. Maybe I’ll memorize these suggestions someday, but today is not that day!
Here it is, my favorite comic about bash errors
Syncthing + Obsidian
Mar 31, 2025
Obsidian offers a paid syncing service, and it’s probably well worth what they’re charging for it, but I had heard really good things about Syncthing so I decided to give it a shot.
Apple Ecosystem One of the reasons I gravitated to Obsidian is that it is truly cross-platform. I am writing these words on a super cheap ThinkPad I got off of ebay, running the most excellent Zorin OS. If you are only using iPhones, iPads, and Macs, you don’t really need to do anything special, because Obsidian for iOS is going to automatically save your notes to iCloud, and when you open Obsidian on your Mac, you browse to iCloud / Obsidian and open one of your vaults.
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Reliable Systems Don't Happen by Accident
Dec 04, 2020
While we’re designing intricate systems, beginning with the happy path can be a helpful simplification—but it’s a big mistake to design only for the happy path. While it’s true for any computer program, our problems multiply when we interconnect things in the cloud. Here’s a partial list of things that go wrong all the time:
Something you want to reach over the network is unreachable. Something you want to reach over the network is unusually slow.
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