Progress below

I’m adding Progress notes below.¹ It’s slow going.

What did I change?

The most important change I made was to eliminate links to pages that do not exist. Links between pages are created automatically. However, if a page links to another page that is not published, the link is still created and readers do not know any different until they are shown “Page not found.” In my mind, this is inexcusable and lazy. The system is capable of identifying pages that do not exist, so any internal links should be removed. Within Obsidian such links are valid. Clicking them creates the new page, yet the published website does not offer that functionality.

I (and others) modified the code to remove links that don’t exist and I extended it further to remove all sign of the link having ever existed in the first place. This lets me write public notes referring to people and places of importance to me, with no privacy leak. If my friend’s name is Mary Smith, then I write [[Mary Smith|my friend]], and all readers see, even if they look at the source code of the HTML page is my friend. But for me, in Obsidian the link is still relevant and active.

The next major change was to gain greater control over which pages were included and which were filtered out. I discuss that at length in Merging Public and Private Notes: Three Lines of Defence in Quartz 4.

Following that, the remainder of customisations were navigation or formatting in nature. I added previous and next page links, modified tags on the fly, made headings and fonts consistent across modules, and replaced the explorer tree navigation with a custom crafted list of page links.

Choosing to upgrade

Quartz 5 fundamentally breaks everything I’ve built; in a good way. Thankfully, I don’t need to upgrade all at once and hold off on any website changes until I’ve translated over my code so I can take it slowly.²

The first reason for upgrading to Quartz 5 is to keep up with security. Though my website is static and has very little running code, it’s always good to be on the latest version for security reasons. If I stay on the old version, underlying technologies may change and I’ll be forced to make more changes than I care to understand for the sake of currency. Site creation may even break, as occurred recently when an underlying library change broke some of my filtering. Running the current version reduces this risk greatly.

Secondly, Quartz 5 has some very clever plugins that convert Obsidian Canvas and Obsidian Base formats for web display. As of today I only have one canvas and I can’t convert it so the image is not linked, but I have many bases and displaying them natively cuts directly across several of my customisations making them irrelevant and creating a better experience for me and my readers.

Finally, Quartz 5 introduces a very strong plugin architecture. It allows me to make my changes independently from the core code, lets me easily disable functions I don’t want, and makes it easier for me to tweak code from other developers easily. Disabling some features in the past meant commenting out code I didn’t want to run, at the risk of an update putting it back. That risk has gone.

A staged upgrade

I’ve learned a lot in the last couple of days since the Quartz 5 release; about the architecture of the new version and how I need to best manage it for the way I think. So far,

1. I’ve configured a local clone rather than a fork. With the plugin architecture there is less value in me sharing my changes. I have no intention of pushing changes upstream to the main codebase.
2. I’ve created my first plugin. It replicates what was covered in Merging Public and Private Notes: Three Lines of Defence in Quartz 4. Filtering is critical to my note organisation so this was the obvious first case. The next will be removing links with a transformer plugin. My plugins will be hosted locally meaning I don’t have to worry about any private information leaking out should I need to include it. I’ve yet to decide if changes to public plugins will be a clone or a fork.
3. I added an en-AU localisation in preparation for formatting dates and currency to Australian locales. This is the only change to the base code so far.

Today will be removing links and understanding how styles work. I’ll test bases and decided how best to use the Quartz concept of folder notes, and where bases can replace them. One thing I’m looking forward to is removing the need for the Obsidian Dataview Serializer plugin. It’s been great and solved a very particular Obsidian → website display problem but with the ability to display bases directly from the original file, I won’t need it anymore. I will also likely get dates sorted as I have custom date fields that I may no longer need.

What have I learned

The plugin template has a test harness built in. It was the first time I have ever used one and took great comfort building and running tests for my filter plugin. I am confident it’s working as planned and it greatly reduced the code → build → test cycle.

The content folder is symlinked and indirectly caused my a round of 7+ rebuilds of the whole environment until I understood why my files were disappearing. Eventually I realised that when I added content to .gitignore the files went. It happens that Quartz uses fastglob for generating the list of files and it honours .gitignore so when I added it, the folder’s contents were ignored. The trick was to specify !content instead.

Progress

30 May 2026

Backup, backup, backup

At one point I accidentally replaced 2,000 markdown files with HTML. It took a matter of seconds. Thankfully I had last night’s backup. Well, I say “thankfully” but that’s why I backup every night. The Obsidian Sync was already underway. Had I been relying on that for my “backup” I would have been in very big trouble.

Fixing the date error was easily. I conformed my system to created/modifed instead of datetime/updated. It meant a few template changes were required, yet very easy using the excellent Notebook Navigator plugin.

I am pleased to say I have all filtering and link removal working as required. I’m not pleased that link removal has taken 8 hours. I started with a Transformer, then an Emitter and finally a PageType emitter. I thought plugins ran in the order given, but they are first grouped by transform → filter → emit, so my transformer could not remove links for pages that were filtered out afterwards. My first go at an emitter worked, but no styling, just HTML, and the final PageType version looked great, but also failed with pages that had been filtered. Strangely, when Quartz filters out pages, it does not update the main list of pages it’s generating.

From here on in, the changes are structural and cosmetic.

31 May 2026

Again, what should have been easy wasn’t.

Out of the box the site looked horrible. I changed the fonts as per the previous version, and the current instructions without effect. It transpires there was a theme plugin also added that was overriding my expected changes. I’m not the only one to have suffered this and it may just be those coming from Quartz 4.

I thought I’d start with the footer next. Three hours later… it is up and running. Admittedly I’ve made some copy and layout changes but most of the time was trying to work out what was required. Multiple web pages open comparing code that worked, to my code that didn’t. At least an hour lost because I’d typed “footer” instead of “afterBody”, then a bit more time because defaults were not being picked up.

As a whole the system is not as modular as I’d like. I use tinylytics and there is a way to have it registered automatically. What’s not there is any mechanism to add a couple of other flags. That requires direct modification of the site-generation backend. Although I expect such changes to be fewer now with the new plugin system, I’ve already had to make a couple and so will resurrect tracking Customisations of Quartz for The Quantum Garden.

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Conversations for clarity can be difficult. I frequently find people shy away and feel uncomfortable being asked for clarity because:

• The very act of asking can feel like a challenge to their Sincerity or knowledge
• They are unused to being asked for it
• They don’t know the answer and sitting in the grey is uncomfortable for them or they are afraid of me knowing they don’t. At the moment of answering what is thought to be known is shown to be unknown.¹ It takes Courage to acknowledge this in the moment and I am the person that doesn’t know I am comfortable saying so because I understand the importance of acknowledging the fact so missing knowledge can be sought.
• They feel the clarity I may need is unnecessary
  • Because they don’t have clarity themselves they cannot understand why it’s needed
  • They think enough clarity has been provided but I know from experience critical detail is still missing
• They don’t have the time (“a stitch in time saves nine”)

They same reasons are used by myself from time-to-time.

Sitting in a Conversation for clarity requires Trust, particularly alignment in my assessment of Involvement; that the other is attuned to my concerns. When the clarity is paralleled with a Conversation for coordination of action, my assessment of the other’s Sincerity; that they will do what they say they will do, is also crucial.

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I’m going to make a public request for people to converse with about the ontology of the human observer and learning. I crave conversations for speculation and learning with people that have similar interests. My post will be on Mastodon. Please suggest hashtags that might help me narrow down an audience. They are likely also going to be hashtags I subscribe to later on.

My prompt does not provide any indication of subject matter beyond ” ontology of the human observer and learning” and is typical of a prompt when I don’t yet know exactly what it is I’m asking for and I’m relying on a generative AI assistant to help. I was surprised by completeness of the answer.

What follows is Copilot’s response pretty much verbatim with some formatting changes only. I believe it’s more useful that way than me sanitising it to a list only.

I have followed most of the tags and am in the process of getting a feel for the content that is showing up. Those which tend towards meditation and self-reflection are so far showing up as platitudes. I have two options to clean these out. Either unfollow the tag, block the individual, or find some other keyword that can be hidden using Ivory. If it takes more time to manage than I’m getting value, I am better off unfollowing the tag.

I’m just at the start of this process. 20+ years ago, I met people by following their blogs. They are harder to find organically these days and I trust this hashtag approach will close the gap.

Here’s the short, clear takeaway: You’ll reach the right people on Mastodon by combining ontology‑of‑learning hashtags, philosophy‑of-mind hashtags, and small‑community academic hashtags that already have active conversationalists rather than just broadcasters.

Below is a curated set grouped by audience type.

🎓 Philosophical & Ontological Inquiry

These hashtags tend to attract people who enjoy deep conceptual exploration, systems thinking, and reflective dialogue.

• #philosophy— Broad but active; good for visibility among reflective thinkers.
• #phenomenology— Strong overlap with observer‑dependent interpretation.
• #ontology— General ontology discussions; includes both academic and applied.
• #epistemology— People interested in how observers know what they know.
• #philosophyOfMind— Good for conversations about interpretation, perception, and being an observer.

🧠 Learning, Sense‑Making & Cognitive Development

These hashtags help you find people who think about learning as a transformation of the observer, not just skill acquisition.

• #learning— Broad but includes reflective educators and autodidacts.
• #metacognition— People who think about thinking.
• #selfreflection— Often includes practitioners of embodied and linguistic self‑observation.
• #lifelonglearning— Good for people who enjoy speculative, exploratory conversations.
• #transformativeLearning— Smaller but highly aligned with ontological shifts.

🧩 Systems, Complexity & Observer‑Dependent Worlds

These hashtags attract people who naturally resonate with the Ontology of the Human Observer because they already think in relational, systemic, or interpretive terms.

• #systemsthinking— Very active; great for conversations about observers in systems.
• #complexity— People who enjoy speculative, emergent, multi‑perspective inquiry.
• #cybernetics— Strong overlap with second‑order observation and interpretation.
• #constructivism— Directly aligned with “observer creates world of meaning.”

🧘 Embodied, Linguistic & Mood‑Oriented Practices

These hashtags help you find people who think about learning as shifts in mood, body, and language — very close to the ontology you’re working with.

• #embodiment— People exploring body‑based learning and somatic awareness.
• #mindfulness— Broad but includes reflective practitioners.
• #somatics— Useful for conversations about embodied practices.
• #linguistics— For the language-as-action crowd.
• #moods— Small but surprisingly aligned with ontological moods.

🧵 Smaller, niche hashtags that may be perfect for your topic

These are less populated but more likely to attract exactly the kind of people who want to talk, not just post.

• #philosophyDiscussion
• #deepthinking
• #reflectivePractice
• #sensemaking
• #meaningmaking
• #innerwork
• #selfinquiry

These tend to have slower streams but higher‑quality engagement.

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In all but the most extreme cases books and movies are banned either because:

• one group wants to retain power over another, or
• one group is fearful of another.

The challenging of social, moral, political or religious norms are the usual “reasons” given to hide the true reasons of power and fear.

Those seeking a ban are acting superior to others, i.e., “they know best” and others are incapable of coming to their own conclusions. Or it’s an acknowledgement they are capable, and the conclusions reached will challenge those who benefit most from the status quo.

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I’ve been doing very little thinking at all and that’s nice. What thoughts have crossed my mind have been natural and not demanded by work or Personal knowledge management goals. I haven’t even catalogued our holiday photos beyond organising them by date and time.

I did however spend time sorting out Quantum OS Source Naming Rules and finally removed all the historical note tags that were clogging up my systems. Tags are not knowledge and now all tags are just Quantum OS Class Tags or Quantum OS Journal Tags. Everything is nice and neat (just don’t peek under the carpet).

I though I might get around to a Map of Content for the Expand my Way of Being landscape. I did a small experiment over the previous two weeks of spending 30 mins a day working on maps. It showed me I don’t quite have the concept down, and my high-level maps need work. I did get Productive Laziness sorted to a much better standard. Anyway, Expand my Way of Being, in my relaxed holiday state, hasn’t had a look in beyond me recognising the most likely place to start is a mind map or concept map; visual, not text.

I read the new Mark Lawrence book Daughter of Crows while I was away and it’s up to his usual standard. I’m looking forward to see how the story resolves over the next two books; all his stories are trilogies. Swann’s Way has been put aside for the moment. I’m enjoying it by need a break from 19th Century France. Currently reading Children of Ruin and listening to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Alongside my reading I determined that KOReader to iPhone sync is not for me.

My daughter gifted me a Darth Vader LEGO set for Christmas which I saved until now. I build a bag a day to draw out the enjoyment. Not a lot to this one with only 5 bags, nevertheless there is a record of my Building the Darth Vader Helmet in LEGO.

I put the base coat down on the head and arms of Manfred von Carstein. Today’s plans to paint most likely scuppered by the dull light and the draw of Elite: Dangerous as that’s had my attention the last couple of days.

I posted on Monday that: In Bendigo the trees have just woken up to the fact they are 2/3 through Autumn. Perhaps it’s the balmy 26℃ today on 1 May that’s confusing them. It feels like those cartoons where a tree dumps all its leaves in a moment. We’re going to need to blower vac (sue me!) the leaves from the shade sail tomorrow before it rains. Have never had them collect there before.

A walk the next day had dried, crunched leaves all over the footpaths which is itself unusual. The leaves normally stay wetter for a while.

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In brief, KOReader is an alternative e-ink device reader that can be loaded onto a Kobo (native) or Kindle (jailbroken). There is no iOS version however which lessens the usefulness for reading on one device and then switching to another. There is now a plugin that will sync between Readest, which does run on all platforms, and KOReader. In theory I could begin reading a book on my Kobo, switch to my iPhone and then even pick up where I left off on Windows.

As I traversed my rabbit hole I also came across NickelMenu for the Kobo and that is staying. It was introduced as a way to start KOReader but also makes accessing dark mode easier, among other things. NickelMenu came out of my subterranean travels and will stay.

Installation troubles

I installed NickelMenu and then KOReader. I then spent time wondering why all the files on my Kobo were being treated as books. In fixing that I broke KOReader and had to reinstall it. I then connected to the sync service in calibre-web; after I realised my firewall rules were blocking access from the Kobo to the server hosting it. Nothing much seemed to be happening or of value over what I already have with the Kobo Utilities plugin in Calibre itself so I canned that. In doing so I somehow broke NickelMenu and had to resintall that again.¹ I then moved to the loungeroom and set up Readest and the plugin. It mostly(?) seemed to work ok. I’m unsure if the position from the Kobo was correct.

The duplicate book problem

When I purchase a Kobo book I can download to my Kobo Clara, and the app on my iPhone. When the book is on both devices, I can read on one, then pick up where I left off on another. It’s useful when waiting for takeaway to pull out my phone and be better engaged. On the Kindle it worked perfectly (which was it’s only redeeming feature²) but I’ve had problems with timing on the Kobo because I’m expecting it to sync quicker than it does.³ The upshot is that most of my book reading on the Kobo has been with sideloaded books.

I remove the DRM from all books that I purchase. I don’t want books removed or altered with out my consent. For the most part Calibre does this easily with Kobo formatted kepub books, and if that fails Adobe Digital Editions covers the rest. I make corrections in Calibre (mostly to series naming and numbering, and set the cover I like) and then use the Kobo Utilities plugin to help sync metadata and books out, and reading positions/read status, in. It means plugging the Kobo in via a cable, but at most that’s every couple of weeks as I transition books.

I didn’t sideload books on the Kindle and I’m wondering exactly what the chain of events was to do so on the Kobo. When I’m reading a sideloaded book, it’s not the same book on the Kobo or iPhone and so syncing doesn’t occur.

Anyway, the problem with KOReader and Readest means I have to bypass the native Kobo system and load the book in both places. It’s messy and KOReader doesn’t even organise natively on series metadata. I also didn’t like KOReader’s display of text. I couldn’t get the line spacing correct and that’s an important reading consideration.

Not worth it

In the end I dropped everything except for NickelMenu and have gone back to the way things are. I’ll spend some more time this morning identifying differences between native Kobo sync and sideloaded books. Will report back if I find anything useful.

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Anecdotally, I would say more than half of our evening meals are eaten out of a bowl. The change is culturally driven as we’ve incorporated foods from other countries into our daily menu. Whether it be Mexican, Indian, Chinese, or Thai, and despite the fact that many dishes are Australianised and not what people eat in their own country, this is a good change. In a simple way it shows that learning from other cultures can enrich our lives without needing anything more drastic than changing out a plate and replacing it with a bowl.

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There is a pressure within me to record everything I do, and to create. The recording takes a disproportionate amount of time, and an absurd amount of time compared to the utility. With a website on top, where everything can be easily shared, the problem gets worse.

The state of play

Screen shot of the books index page

Above is the books index page. It looks great, is created automatically from the list of book pages, and auto-sizes covers as needed. When I start reading a new book, I need to:

1. Find the Goodreads page for the book
2. Capture information using the Obsidian Web Clipper (title, author, published, cover, etc.)
3. Use one plugin to convert the cover image URL to a local file
4. Use another plugin to convert the local file to WEBP format
5. Rename to image to match my standard format
6. Replace the image property URL with the local link
7. Move the image to the assets\covers
8. And, if the book is part of a series, set the series and sequence values, optionally creating the book series if needed.

Add to all of this a complex backend for generating the public index page above and you can start to see the utility falls. Who really cares what I rate a book. I don’t in as much as I know which are my ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rated items already. A ⭐️⭐️⭐️ item doesn’t need to be tracked.

Poor quality information

Further, I am violating Don’t duplicate public knowledge on everything that is no my rating or my short review. I’m not great at reviews. Even for the higher ratings my review boils down to “because I liked it.” Most of the 88 books hinted to above do not have any commentary at all.

Obsidian isn’t helping

Obsidian compounds the problem by being too damn powerful. It’s super easy to add a new property and build a database of something. There are tools for that. I’m already using Calibre, calibre-web, Plex, and Audiobookshelf as my point of truth databases. Why duplicate information even in my own systems?!

And let’s not even mention Obsidian bases. The newly introduced database tools that can slice and dice pages any way I like. Here is the equivalent book index view native within Obsidian.

Book index in bases “card” view.

I can’t display bases on the website. Instead, for something like a book series page, I have a base (which doesn’t display) and use Obsidian Dataview Serializer plugin to create public version for the website. This means I have the same information displayed in two separate was on a single note, and it’s dubious if I even need it in the first place.

The initial trigger for this whole piece was the noise created by my internal index bases matching external indexes. I had to think of which I was looking at Obsidian’s quick switcher.

Coding effort

The Quantum Garden Website is generated using a substantially modified version of Quartz. I estimate 95% of the time and 80% of the code changes I’ve made have been to present books, movies, etc., on the site so they look pretty. It’s time that I could have spent elsewhere.

The cleanup

Everything is a journey and it’s been a series of small decision steps over the last fortnight which have led me to the conclusion I need a big clean out of media-related pages.¹

• Unless I have a substantial review or notes, the media page and associated cover will go
• Public index pages will be deleted from the vault and the website. My internal Obsidian base copies are more powerful.
• It is nice to have the covers, even in The Quantum Garden Vault so I will likely keep that process described above. I will wait to see what the impact is after deleting the superfluous copies.
• ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ items of all types will be listed on a series of My favourites pages where I list the item and describe in a paragraph why it is important to me. It achieves the same level of meaning with far less work.

At the end of this note I’m happy with that approach. It feels cleaner and I have a sense of my important notes being seen through the trees.

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On Friday night, my wife and I saw Joanne McNally perform Pinotphile at The Melbourne Comedy Festival. It was the first festival show we’d ever seen. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves but have resolved that any late shows in the future mean a city stay-over. Getting home at 1am was too much and a little too risky.

Burgers for tea pre-comedy show were magnificently surpassed by dinner last night at Ms. Batterhams. As always, amazing food, good wine and welcoming service.

I’m reading Le Cunff (2025), Tiny Experiments and have set myself a small PACT to work on the Map of Content notes in The Quantum Garden Vault. I did a bit of research yesterday and concluded I’ve too many notes that are just lists or indexes and not true maps. My Landscapes are close and will form the basis. They just need more attention. To that end, I’m going to work on improving my maps for 30 minutes each evening for the next fortnight. I want time to explore and see the benefits to me, rather than force something out for a website.

During the week I listened to Dialetic, ep. 42: Celine Nguyen - Nurturing Your Mind in Public , followed up reading no one told me about proust¹ and as a result am now enjoying Swann’s Way.² The way Marcel Proust seems to slow emotional thought to the speed of being capable of capturing it on paper is mesmerising.

Merging Public and Private Notes: Three Lines of Defence in Quartz 4 describes my weekend’s work of combining public and private notes for less friction in The Quantum Garden Vault. So far it’s working well and has allowed me to begin introducing some automation. I’ve also begun using Obsidian Web Clipper extensively and that benefits from having a combined note structure. I’ve linked frequently to The optimisation-procrastination trap yet this is different. I’m pulling down and recreating a structure that is already working for me. When the trap is at play it feels like I’m making changes to chase something. This time around it’s been a natural change.

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I’m combining public and private notes into the same folder because it reduces a complexity problem I’m facing by having them split. This post outlines the thinking I’ve done from a software developer point of view in the hope it helps others understand a little better what needs to be considered when documents are public facing.

All weekend I’ve been working on moving all my notes to a single folder. I was likely leaning towards this from last weekend’s investigation into how I can provide my notes to AI for identification of patterns and themes (not to generate content, see my AI policy). At the same time fighting with how best to store sources and my notes on them. Then, during the week the Universe delivered and I came across. Steph Ango’s Obsidian Vault Template where they have a very flat structure of notes and references (items not created by them). My decision made, its no longer atlas/notes and public/notes but just atlas/notes.

Privacy first

For some background on the way I did this in the past see Protecting what’s published.

The separate of private and public notes provided a degree of privacy by default. Notes that were in the public folder would be displayed on The Quantum Garden Website and those outside the public folder would never be candidates. I added an extra level of protection by employing the Quartz ExplicitPublish plugin to only publish pages where the publish property was set to true.

For a page to appear online, it must be in both the public folder and have publish: true.

Even if I were to accidentally move my whole journal folder into public my most private thinking wouldn’t leak because publish was either undefined or false.

Why not two vaults?

If you’re asking why not have two separate vaults and keep everything separate, it’s because I often link from private notes to public notes and vice-versa. I’ve modified the back end of Quartz in such a way that a link from a public to a private note is completely hidden. The default Quartz doesn’t do this which I find poor design.

Improving the publish property

The publish property as a checkbox is a little too simple and prone to error because there is no state representing, “I’ve not made a conscious decision”. I replaced the two-state checkbox it with a three-state text field where the choices are:

• deny: under no circumstances publish this page
• undecided: default state for new pages, forcing me to make a decision to publish or not
• allow: publish this page

There is a hidden fourth-state that occurs when a note does not have the publish property at all, or it is blank. I treat this as an error and abort the site generation process until I’ve fixed it.

The filter rule (take 1)

Every note in atlas will be made public if publish = true. All other notes will remain private.

Class tags: a second line of defence

What happens if I accidentally move a private journal entry to the atlas folder? If a second accident has set publish = true it will be published. It is a case that is unlikely but may have high impact. I accept some level of risk by co-hosting private and public notes in the same vault so what can I do to minimise the likelihood. Software development is more about handling possible exceptions than anything else, so let’s use a second piece of important information I have attached to my notes.

Many of my notes have Quantum OS Class Tags for structural organisation. Just like this is. So I can employ them to double-down on privacy by filtering out those classes which should never be published.

My privacy filter has a list of classes which, not matter what the state of the publish property is, will never be published. It’s effectively saying, “I don’t care that your parents have given you permission to ride this roller-coaster, your head is not above the line so you’re out”.

Quantum OS Restricted Tags lists the tags that are filtered in this way.

The filter rule (take 2)

Every note in atlas will be made public if publish = true AND it is not in a prohibited tag class. All other notes will remain private.

Folder filtering: a third line of defence

To structure The Quantum Garden Website properly under the hood, I need to have not just an atlas/notes folder but other supporting folders like atlas/assets which contains all images, etc. By inference, any folder under atlas might be copied to the web, even if it has nothing to do with the website. That’s the way Quartz operates by default and it makes sense, though is risky if you’re not accustomed to thinking about risks. Someone would have to type the path to get to the files, they are otherwise hidden, but it’s much better to not have them there.

For this we can use the ignorePatterns Configuration. Files and folders which should be ignored are not copied, and anything not ignored is.

deny, allow

There are 2 ways we can go with security. Allow everything and deny exceptions, or deny everything and allow exceptions. Of the two, deny first is the most secure. It requires you to make a decision about what is allowed. In the case of the Quartz ignorePatterns filter, the default is allow, deny which is not great. All it solves is the problem of the developer being hounded by new people not understanding why there are no files showing.

The relevant part of my Quartz quartz.config.ts file looks like this.

const config: QuartzConfig = {
  configuration: {
    ignorePatterns: ["atlas-unchecked","Home Life Index", "JDEX","maps","notes/sources
  plugins: {
    filters: [
      Plugin.Portcullis()
    ],
}

The filter rule (final take)

Every note in atlas will be made public if publish = true AND it is not in a prohibited tag class AND it is not in an ignored folder. All other notes will remain private.

The code

Here is the code for my filter function. I called it Portcullis to represent the serious nature of the filter. The image reminds me nothing gets through without permission.

• Lines 1–2: Hook the filter into the Quartz system and include chalk for coloured log output
• Lines 4–10: Create the list of Quantum OS Restricted Tags to be check against later
• Lines 12 onwards are the main function. Each file is checked in turn, and if it should be published return true otherwise return false.
  • Lines 16–21: Check for the existence of the publish property. If it is missing or not set, abort site generation with an error message.
  • Lines 24–26: Return false if the value of publish is deny. This version of the code outputs a notification to help debugging. Over more than a few deny files this should be removed because it’s too much noise. I’m using it for testing. Proceed to the next note.
  • Lines 27–29: Return false if the value of publish is undecided. Here we are defaulting to a deny behaviour if no decision has been made. Proceed to the next note.
  • Lines 30–50: Handle an allow. Further checks are required.
    • Lines 31–41: Check for the presence of illegal tags. If even one is found, deny publishing.
    • Lines 43-49: I sometimes write blog posts with a future date. If a post is future dated, don’t publish it yet.
    • Line 50: All checks are passed, this file is ok to publish. Proceed to the next note.
  • Lines 51–54: Remember I said that software development was dealing with exceptions. Since the value of publish has to be typed it could be something other than “deny”, “undecided”, or “allow”. These lines capture that occurrence and abort with an error.

One final caution

My code is an extension of the base Quartz code. Upstream changes automatically incorporated into my own could overwrite or bypass my changes, thereby creating a security leak I wasn’t ready for.

This dependence. is problem with the software development industry as a whole and means I have to check each change before accepting it. That’s the price I pay for modifying code to do what I want where that differs from the original developer’s needs or intentions.

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I love being reminded of how important it is to listen to my emotions and they change during the day based on the activities I undertake. The small moments can be enlightening.

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At work I’m redefining my role to move away from the drudgery of certain types of project work to more engaging conversations with my clients where we can create something instead of just going through the corporate motions.

I spent too much time over the past week and a half learning about Retrieval Augmented Generation and how I can apply it privately to my own notes. Not to create content, but to assist me in finding hidden patterns across my public and private writing.

I’m reading Le Cunff (2025), Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff and am trying a new note-taking method. There has always been a friction between taking notes, matching them to a source and sharing them online. I want to keep certain articles I read for reference, yet it’s inappropriate for me to reshare that article. Sharing my notes is fine. Until now notes and sources have been in the same document. I’m now running with “Source” and “Source (notes)”.

My memory of Project Hail Mary the book wasn’t great. I remember listening to the audiobook and enjoying it, but time has ranked it behind The Martian. Today, after seeing the movie in the cinema with my daughter has reset that. It’s an uplifting and humorous story about working together for the benefit of all. Something the world needs. My other reading is a return to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Book and tv-show in the past, now the audiobook. I will recommend to you During the Dance by Mark Lawrence as a sweet very short story.¹

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The problem with this assault of titles is a lack of connection. The recommender is pushing their preferences on the assumption mine are identical. I try to keep to an approach of:

• Asking what podcasts they like and why
• Asking if they would like any similar recommendations
• Offering something different with a why I think they would like it

The same goes for books, movies, music, tv shows and video-games. Always make recommendations with a contextual why.

On the flip-side people are often swamped with indiscriminate recommendations because their request is too broad. Reddit and other forums are filled with people asking “What game should I play?”, “What computer should I buy?” etc. Most people take the podcast path above, try to be helpful, and give a direct answer. A few will ask what type of games they like, what is the computer for, and make a more useful recommendation from there. It’s not always the fault of the person asking. Sometimes they don’t know where to start so their question has to be high-level.

On a related note, remember that Should is a very dangerous word. I know someone who makes every suggestion a commitment. “You should listen to …” is answered with, “Yes, I must listen to that”. Don’t let your lack of seeking a why for your answer burden someone who can’t say no.

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The premise is this: as I age, what I over-easily tolerated without question when I was younger is butting up against the realities that I’m facing up to in my middle-age. The irritability is not a sign of something wrong now, but the reality of a correction to something that has been wrongly set in my past.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about the nature of work I do in my job. Yesterday I was struck by incoherence in how I feel when I explain my role verses how I feel when undertaking my role. How can I explain it with genuine passion and at the same time feel loathing at some of the work? I was able to separate this into a Great work passion for solving problems and advising clients and a Bad work component of chasing clients for information and doing their thinking for them (aside: I am struggling to get the wording of this Bad work component right).

My irritability has reached the level where I’m forced into this kind of thinking simply to relieve the pressure. I see now that’s an understatement. I’m actually getting closer to who I want to be in my remaining work years.

Whether it was the YouTube algorithm or the Universe helping me along, and whether this is science or just resonates with me, I now have a new perspective which gives me the power to make change.

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I understand a Daily note provides context for when something occurred, yet I treat my journal entries in the main as exploratory and reflective. True, there are many with a record of the day’s happenings, but they are important happenings.

Perhaps I don’t yet see the benefit in tracking everything. It feels very messy to me. I suspect I never will.

I name each Journal entry with the current date and I do not want each journal entry to reflect the whole day. Two notes with the same name format would be confusing.

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Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.

Christopher Alexander

The Pattern Library contains patterns for the use of Personal knowledge management software that remembers for you. These tools facilitate knowledge and learning through easy linking of topics to real world occurrences and forms the core of any Personal knowledge management strategy.

As with any piece of software there is great benefit in knowing how to use it for best advantage. Once way to do this is to become familiar with the patterns of use as described here. Patterns provide generalised methods which are applicable to a variety of situations. Understanding them saves both time and complexity.

The patterns are organised into three groups. Thinking, Connecting and Remembering.

• Thinking patterns — describe methods for quickly bringing information into a Second brain. They cover targeted research and informal browsing.
  • Brainstorm pattern
  • Thinktank pattern
• Connecting patterns — explain how to build upon the power of knowledge already in a brain and connect it to existing ideas or generate new ones.
  • Happiness pattern
  • Occurrence pattern
• Remembering patterns — Once a thought is in the Second brain and connected to others, how do you recall it. The Remembering Patterns help with navigation through a brain.
  • I Want pattern

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I had some success, with Complete photo cataloguing as there are 40% fewer photos left to catalogue, and some of the harder, poorly dated folders are done. Learn astrophotography basics was a complete write-off and I didn’t get the camera out once. What I did do instead was paint my Sylvaneth Treelord Ancient model, accidentally bringing that forward from Autumn during my holiday. It was the wind-down activity I needed to complete.

And I’m ok with that. The purpose was to push forward in large chunks without getting distracted by smaller things, or feeling ashamed about not finishing projects. Here is the revised structure.

Of the two items, Learn astrophotography basics has to happen before our Uluru trip but with thick cloud and a full moon in a couple of days, all I can do this week is some preparation.

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Copperminds are a second brain

The Terris people in Mistborn store knowledge in metal bands they wear on their bodies, called copperminds. Knowledge is transferred into the coppermind as a true Second brain because any knowledge stored leaves their memory immediately, yet can be recalled as long as the metal band is worn.

Copperminds store more than an single mind can hold and represent a near perfect Personal knowledge management system.

There is no mechanism for backup. To transfer knowledge one Terris must read it to another who can then store what they hear.

That’s just rubbish as far as the original intention when I first had the idea. It was difficult to write and felt wrong the whole time. Here’s what I should have written.

Sazed's copperminds

I was listening to The Hero of Ages in the car on the way to visit a client in Geelong. As I approached Ballan, Sazed reluctantly reconnected with his copperminds. Only he has access the knowledge needed to engineer a water diversion solution.

I thought how useful it is to have all our personal knowledge at our fingertips and saw the copperminds as Sazed’s Personal knowledge management system. He had an idea what was in there, and pulled up the index to find it.

Sazed’s system is organised more akin to a library than a Zettelkasten. He uses indexes as Structure notes to help recall information he once knew, then he returns it to the shelf.

I connect strongly with having one’s life knowledge immediately available.

The second note form is more me. Easy to write and makes the connections I want to make. That first entry was written for others and not even my Future self.

It wasn’t until I thought about this post, that I recognised the beginnings of The NoMa Method at play. Something piqued my attention and I thought about it, adding detail to my coppermind.

There is a pattern I can look for in the future. When a note is too difficult to write, it’s likely I’m trying to write the perfect note for someone else, and not me.

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There is a very strong line that I do not want AI to cross in The Quantum Garden Vault. Even with a case for AI’s automation to help me with knowledge management tasks AI must never create knowledge.

What does this mean? The knowledge in my vault is my knowledge, generated from my thinking and processes: not placed there by AI, copy/paste, attachments (PDF, epub) or ingested articles. It is important that I maintain Epistemic integrity and text represents my thinking and the knowledge I have created.

Any automation of “knowledge creation” by AI is not my knowledge and never can be. My knowledge comes from my owns words. It is where the learning happens.

I’m not yet sold on the idea of bringing AI to my vault as I only started thinking about it this afternoon. Here are a few possible uses I can think of:

• Automatic clean-up of notes missing information e.g.. books, (but what about Keep book list or not?). Outside of this, it never creates content
• Using AI as a second person who can look at what I wrote and challenge it for gaps, or Adversarial probing. I then have to be disciplined to fill the gaps myself and be aware that anything AI gives me is by its nature a summary, so I have to look deeper.
• AI can help me extract themes from what I’ve written as done with identifying some Initial interstitial journal observations.

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I could play on, well behind the eight ball, or I could start again. Instead, I put it on my Gaming pile of shame.

And the world did not end.

Nor did it end when I put aside Kingdom Come Deliverance because I wasn’t enjoying it.

Unlike books, which many are ashamed to put aside, every gamer has a large Gaming pile of shame which they are perfectly ok with. Although we can feel guilt about not finishing every game we have, we also know it’s simply not possible.

We know it’s ok to quit.

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