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Hi! I'm Tim.

I'm a web developer, an avid note taker, and I run a website called Obsidian.Rocks.

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Featured Post

Optimize your workspace - Obsidian Rocks!

For the last few years I’ve been dabbling in woodworking. Woodworking is a challenge. I have a dedicated space for my woodwork (a garage), and I’ve discovered that one of the hardest things about woodworking is optimizing your space. If your space is set up properly—all your tools are easily findable and within reach, your workbench is clear, and you have all the materials and tools that you need—then work is easy. All you have to do is find the time. Keeping the space optimized is the trick,...

7 months ago • 3 min read
A screenshot of a Recently Updated dashboard in Obsidian.

Hello all! Happy end of October. Hope you are happy and well, wherever you happen to be! This month I've been thinking about email. Love it or hate it, email is a fact of life for many of us. And I can't help shake the thought that Obsidian could make email better, if I could just figure out how. So I looked into it, and found... not a lot of interest. There are a few email plugins out there, but they have very few downloads, clearly not plugins that are in widespread use. What's up with...

about 1 year ago • 2 min read
A screenshot of the Day Planner plugin in Obsidian.

Hello all! It's October, which means... a new Obsidian October! What is Obsidian October? Every year, Obsidian holds a community event during the month of (you guessed it!) October. This event always results in a whole host of great new plugins and themes to try out. The results of 2021 were fun, and in 2022 they took it to a whole new level, with seven different categories for entries. You can also see the 2021 results here. A lot of great stuff! The Obsidian team hasn't announced categories...

about 1 year ago • 2 min read
A screenshot of the new Obsidian property editor.

Hello there! 👋 HUGE news to start off the month. Obsidian Properties, which have been in development for the last couple of months, are now available to everyone. If you're running Obsidian and haven't tried Properties yet, then better update your app! Also, a little humble brag: I wrote an article about Properties four weeks ago (linked below), and at the time I said this: Note: at the time of writing, Properties haven’t been released to the public. If you want access to them, you can become...

over 1 year ago • 1 min read
An example graph in Obsidian.

Hello and happy Thursday! I've been writing a lot lately, and as a result, I haven't been reading as much. I've used Feedbin for many years as an RSS reader, and I am... quite behind on my unread articles: Part of the problem with Feedbin is that I don't have a good system for transferring articles to Obsidian. Sure I can copy/paste URLs and highlights, but it's cumbersome and painful. So for the last week I've been trying Readwise. And to be honest, I really like it. I'm using the Readwise...

over 1 year ago • 1 min read

Hello there! 👋 July is nearing an end. How did that happen? Hope you all are having a great summer (or winter, as the case may be). Here we are with another newsletter And there’s a lot to talk about! Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been busy over at Obsidian.Rocks. We’ve written about: Streamlining Your Day: Enhance Focus and Productivity with RescueTime and Obsidian This is my own personal productivity hack for getting the most out of my days. This hack has helped me tremendously over...

over 1 year ago • 1 min read
The new Obsidian icon, purple on a black background.

Welcome and happy Friday! Many of you have never received an Obsidian.Rocks newsletter before. If that’s you, thank you for signing up! I appreciate it, and I’m going to try hard to make it worth your time. BIG NEWS since the last newsletter. Obsidian is going through a serious overhaul, and as a result many things have changed. For one thing, there’s a new icon for the app and website: The new Obsidian icon. Honestly I didn’t like it much at first. But the story behind it is excellent, and I...

over 1 year ago • 2 min read
Puzzle pieces.

Welcome and happy Friday! Today I want to talk about thinking. I’ve been thinking about thinking a lot lately. I don’t know what motivated you to start using Obsidian (or at least start following a newsletter on Obsidian!), but for me, it was forgetting things. Digital Dementia Digital Dementia is a real thing, I’ve experienced it. I spent so many years consuming content, that when I decided I wanted to start creating again, I struggled. I could never remember the things I needed to know when...

over 1 year ago • 2 min read
An image of a trashcan, with the caption "My evernotes look like this".

Welcome and happy Friday! Organizing files is hard. Last week we talked about naming files. Let’s say you’ve decided on the perfect name for a note, now what? Where does the note go now? Digital files have always been a challenge for me to organize. I just don’t care about organizing them most of the time. I drop everything in a single folder, and that’s good enough. Surely I’ll be able to sort them out if I need to in the future. But this is not a good long-term strategy. I can’t count the...

almost 2 years ago • 2 min read
A man contemplating his place in the universe.

Welcome and happy Friday! Naming things is hard. Whether you’re naming a baby, a boat, or a note, it’s hard to do well. But names are essential. Without a good name, your note will get lost. Note names are like YouTube thumbnails: they tell you whether the content inside is worth your time or not. Here are my top five tips for you to name your notes in Obsidian: Each note should contain one idea Rename notes some time after you first write them Search before creating If you look for an idea...

almost 2 years ago • 2 min read