It rained for a couple of hours early in the morning, but it was enough to bring Porto’s sky and sun colors back to normal. Concerning the wildfires, I’m not an expert and have no idea how effective the rain was in reducing or extinguishing them. The only thing I can say is that the map on fogos.pt shows a significantly smaller number of ongoing fires plotted. But let’s not forget that firefighters are the real heroes here. They work hard to protect us. I greatly appreciate it, guys. Thank you!
😞 The sun is still covered with a red hue, as it had been yesterday. Thankfully, rain is expected within a few days. I’m hoping it will help put out the fires.
I took the picture below this morning at around 8:30 a.m., and, so far (5 p.m.), there have been no visual changes. The sky has been this unusual orange hue since yesterday because of the wildfires that have burned an estimated 38 square kilometers in the central and north regions of Portugal 😞, according to Google Maps. Even the moon appeared red last night.
Some of the fires are close to us here in Porto, but the Aveiro district has the most area affected. Seeing the devastation on the news is heartbreaking. My thoughts are with the firefighters and everyone affected by this disaster.
Voicenotes describing my goodbye picture
When I asked Voicenotes to describe the picture shown in today’s video, I wasn’t expecting so many details.
As you can see below, it got very few things wrong. For example, the “I❤️🐘🏠” (I love Evernote Home) was hilariously converted to “I ❤️ 🦛”. As for the chemical structure, it is indeed caffeine, but the sticker is on my tumbler, not the laptop.
The image shows a person smiling at the camera, sitting in front of a laptop with several stickers on it. The background features a decorative wall with a geometric pattern and a window showing outside reflections. The laptop stickers include ‘I’m not being rude, I’m taking notes in Evernote’, a star icon inside a speech bubble, ‘ActivityPub Enthusiast’, ‘I ❤️ 🦛’, and a chemical structure, possibly caffeine. There is also a stainless-steel tumbler with the same chemical structure sticker.
As a side note, that is a goodbye photo. On that day, I was told that the Starbucks would be closing for a period of 18 months. Like what happened when I lived in Boston, it took me a few weeks to find the best Starbucks in Porto to take breaks from working at my office.
This one had a fairly evenly split number of local and international customers. It was never full of tourists, and, at the same time, that peaceful feeling of listening to people speak so many different languages was still present. Then there were the enjoyable conversations with many baristas who started talking to me because of the sticker with a caffeine molecule on my tumbler. One even asked me if I was a chemistry professor 😄
I’ll now have to go on a new quest to find another similar fun place. Maybe it’s the Universe’s way of reminding me that change can bring unexpected positive outcomes.
Have a lovely week, Vlad.
My client didn’t show up, so let’s use that time to record another video. This one is about Evernote, as I really want to discuss a recent tweet from Federico.
From just a few days ago, when I recorded yesterday’s video about the changes I’m making on Obsidian, to today, my setup remodeling has already evolved significantly. My Maker Dashboard, for example, has been greatly improved.
Remember that I said in the video that I am always trying to find ways to make things have multiple purposes? The logos inside each Canvas group in the image below are there to help me quickly navigate to a specific topic, but they are also resources I can use on my video thumbnails.
I have a “Logos” folder in my Obsidian, and that folder is also a shortcut on my Mac Finder. However, it is not the only one. Many other Obsidian folders are shortcuts that make files easily accessible from other apps.
Curious about my minimalist Obsidian setup? A detailed video is coming soon, with screen recordings from my real account, showcasing most of my workflows. For instance, why only five plugins? This will probably be one of the longest videos on the channel. Due to that and the necessary blurring, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to release it today. However, tomorrow seems feasible.
I always wanted to produce my content in English
When I started my YouTube channel in English three years ago, I thought it would be one of the most challenging things I’d ever do. I always wanted to produce my content in English, but fear held me back for years. Thankfully, I finally took the plunge.
Despite living in the US several times, I’ve always struggled with the language’s nuances and quirks. I’m sure you can easily remember at least one time I used the wrong pronoun, verb, expression, or pronunciation. I can clearly see my mistakes in older videos.
Yes, I do watch past videos, as this helps me do my best to improve with each new one, but English will never be my first language, and mistakes are inevitable. The bright side is that things are getting easier every day. Or should I say less hard?
But why simplify when you can always complicate a bit? I have published books before, but always in my native language. As some of you may be aware, I recently started writing a new book, but this time in English. Which, like the channel on YouTube, has been just as intimidating.
Thank you for your patience and support. You guys are spectacular! By the way, what’s something that scares you? Maybe it’s time to take the leap and do it!
PS.: This is the first video I published in English. However, the channel is not only about Evernote anymore.
From time to time, I go on a quest searching for a basic macOS photos app that reads images from a folder on my computer, like Picasa did before Google bought and discontinued the app. I could never find a good option. Any suggestions?
I opened Mastodon, and suddenly, I’m reading posts about the Apple event from Threads, Flipboard, Micro.blog, Medium, and even Mastodon 😊. All in one place! The Fediverse and the ActivityPub protocol are mind-blowing. What a time to be alive!
This book weighs 1.1 Kg
That’s insane. It is likely the 786 pages containing text plus four inexplicable blank sheets at the end. Anyway, I picked this one up secondhand because it’s out of print and there’s no e-book version I know of.
I love reading on subways, trains, and planes, but, as you can imagine, bringing this book with me is always a challenge. It’s like reading and doing cross-fit at the same time 😂. Not to mention how unbalanced it was to hold when I began reading it. Now that I’m reaching half of it, it’s easier to manage. But as soon as I cross to the other side, things will become unbalanced again.
That’s probably why it’s taking me ages to finish it, so I came up with a plan to make it more portable. I started testing my idea yesterday and just completed the process. I can now read it on my Supernote, and you can learn how I did it watching the video below.
On how am I rediscovering my creative freedom with digital scribbling.
The Supernote is helping me to rediscover the joy of handwriting my scripts. It’s like using magical paper to seamlessly capture and reorganize ideas.
Years before Evernote, I would write many of my first podcast scripts on any piece of paper I could get my hands on. I’d usually have the ideas during of after jogging, and it still happens today for the YouTube videos. But even though writing them down was a great way to remember later, trust me, the final “document” was typically a big mess.
Let’s be honest, it’s tough to keep handwritten notes as organized as a bullet list. Ideas don’t always flow in a neat, linear way, so it can be a real challenge to make sense of them later. My drafts were often ugly and pretty challenging to understand because of all the small text inserts. On some occasions, I would use arrows and even a second piece of paper with numbers on both parts of a sentence to try to connect them. I suppose you can imagine that it was often difficult to decipher.
In hindsight, I’d say I’d moved to digital writing as soon as technology was portable enough, probably because of the impossibility of inserting new text in between lines on paper. When I finally started using a Palm, I wrote down so many notes on it that I became an expert at using the Graffiti alphabet.
Today, I frequently write on my computer; however, typing comes with its limitations. For example, sketching can be difficult to integrate with typed text. That’s great on paper, but again, there are all the problems mentioned above. Furthermore, I’m not good at drawing, so I frequently have to erase and fix things as I go.
For example, the thumbnail you see in the image below was created at a much larger size. It was the first thing I did on that page. When I was happy with it, I resized it to fit the corner of the screen (paper?). All the text you don’t see — more on that in a moment — was rearranged several times as I was writing, just like the pieces of a puzzle slowly falling into place.
It’s impossible to do that on paper, but the Supernote brought back the freedom and joy I remember having many years ago, and improved the process. It is like having the best of both worlds. And the most convenient part is that I can easily send the final version to Evernote or Obsidian.
As for the hidden text, there’s no secret there. I’m just trying to keep a mystery aura because I have already started to produce this video and don’t want to spoil the surprise. But if you cannot contain yourself, the untouched drawing is available for supporters on Patreon and YouTube.
Anyway, I think that you can probably tell by the thumbnail and the other drawing that the video has something to do with sending content to the Supernote via Evernote.
Obsidian Canvas as a resources space with images and PDFs—my new experiment
I have a new idea that I’d like to share with you. Yes, again. Changing things up, like I’ve been doing lately, makes me feel inspired.
I believe I’ve finally found a good way to use Obsidian Canvas. Instead of creating notes just to be able to filter them by tags, I’m trying Canvas groups for images or PDFs.
This approach may not work for everything, but the zoom in and out feature may make it easier to find the resources I use on my Maker and IT-related projects, especially when compared to sorting notes by tags. It’s a visual space, so I believe it will be easy to spot the item based on the color and format of the image or PDF. Time will tell, though.
For testing how efficient, or not this will be, I’ve created the “Maker Dashboard” Canvas that I’m using for everything related to my creativity process. For now, it has just a few notes (image above), and the following groups: macOS, Writer, Woodworking, and some loose content that I’m sure will end up being grouped with other future images or PDFs.
Side note: Keen eyes will notice that there’s also a “Palm OS” group, and, although it is not possible to clearly see, there are some images related to other vintage passions of mine next to that group.
And just like what I mentioned yesterday regarding the single folder for all my pictures, all these files can also be easily added to other Obsidian notes, or used from my computer file system.
Since I am currently on a reorganization spree, I decided to experiment with an idea. At the moment, I have multiple subfolders for images used on my blog posts, Journal, Office, and Home folders on Obsidian. Maybe even others. One thing I always wanted to try was to have some folders dedicated to certain types of files, such as images, PDFs, etc.
Here’s the plan. I’ll consolidate all the images into one folder, which will serve two purposes. First, it will work as an album. However, it will also serve as a centralized storage space from which I can drag pictures to use in any of my notes.
And because of the way Obsidian works, those pictures will also be easily accessible from the computer’s file system if I need them for other projects. Below, you can see how easy it is to interact with the images using the Mac file system (Finder). By the way, the kids in the picture are my sister and me, captured during my first move to Boston. I absolutely love that city.
Another benefit is how straight-forward it is to save pictures there. I can simply use the “save as” option on any image editor and choose the Photos folder on the file system, which in reality is located in Obsidian.
I’ve successfully moved 40 images and am pleased with the results. But there’s a catch. Because of the way I imported some of my content to Obsidian, the creation dates of many files are all messed up. So, I’m also adding the date (YYYY-MM-DD) to the beginning of each file name (thumbnails above). This will help me see the pictures in chronological order by ordering the files alphabetically. I hope that makes sense.
If this works, I may try the same with PDF files. Stay tuned.
I’m down to 5 plugins on Obsidian now, and I’m happy with that. However, there is still work to be done regarding the organization of information between Obsidian and Evernote. 🤔 Maybe there is an opportunity for a video on this.
How to reset the Garmin Instinct 2
My Garmin Instinct 2 screen froze Sunday before a run, and even though there’s a surprisingly simple fix, it took me a while to find it. So, here it is, in case you need it.
To reset the Garmin Instinct 2, hold down the CTRL key for about 15 seconds. The screen will turn off, and after a few moments, it will come back, showing the Garmin logo. If it doesn’t open your selected watch face from there, just press CTRL again for a few seconds.
This was the very first time I had any problems with my Instinct 2. It’s remarkable how reliable this watch is. I love it and stand by everything I said in my first impressions video below.
I don’t have any clients today, but I’ve decided not to write scripts or edit videos. I am putting my energy into unraveling the mess I created after simultaneously using Evernote and Obsidian for a while now. Both have strengths and weaknesses, so my goal is to figure out what to use each one for.
There are things I can easily piece together. For example, I love how Evernote handles tasks, and I find the Obsidian Tasks plugin overwhelming. The same is true for the calendar. Evernote does a much better job of bundling it with our notes. At least, in my opinion.
But Obsidian is so well integrated into our computer file system, and I love to use that when creating my Unexpected Workflows.
Roughly speaking, the plan is to keep tasks and business-related content in Evernote. Especially meetings with clientes and companies I collaborate with. As for Obsidian, it will still house my Knowledge Base, as it deals much better with PDFs, blog posts, and files I’m currently using (or used) for my books, courses and video production.
I am also trying to keep the minimum number of plugins possible, having already removed many of them. That includes—don’t panic!—Davaview.
As for my personal documents, that’s still undecided.
And while testing all the ideas above, I’m experimenting with posting without using titles. After making so many posts today, I am looking at it as a far better formatting style for the blog, as well as a much cleaner way to cross-post to other social media platforms.
Connecting a USB-C flash drive to the Supernote
Some people were asking me this, so I decided to test it. So I bought on to understand how the Supernote deals with it.
It is possible to connect a USB-C flash drive to the Supernote. Thus far, I have discovered that:
- There’s no eject option. One can simply physically remove the drive.
- There’s no way to rename the flash drive on the Supernote. Renaming it on my computer did not affect its functionality.
- Supernote files can be copied or moved to the drive, and I was able to edit notes on the drive, just like I demonstrated with the expansion card.
- The drive doesn’t appear in the list of folders that can be synchronized with the cloud.