Changing links for the better
I never liked how Quartz, which is the underlying engine for my website, has treated links to other pages on the site. The default behaviour creates a link for every [[ ]] in an Obsidian source note, and that causes a problem for pages that are referenced in my vault but not published to the site. The system creates links to pages it rightly knows do not exist. It’s poor and I’ll have no truck with it. Early on I modified the code to ignore links to pages that don’t exist.
The second problem took much longer for me to solve. I frequently create self-referencing links to pages. The page on Learning is a good example. Self-references let me transclude paragraphs in other notes and have an inline link back to the original page. Per the first solution, the page exists and the link is created. However, it’s a redundant link on the original page so needs to be different. After many attempts, I finally find the code that needed modification. You can see an example below. The link has gone and replaced with a smallcaps variant.
Writing instead of thinking
I spend Too much time thinking in my head and not at the keyboard. Ultimately, it stops me from writing. The past fortnight I’ve been thinking as I write instead of thinking before I write.
Cleaning up my inbox
Today I cleaned my Obsidian inbox. I hid my head in the sand for too long. A third of the pages took a disproportionate time because each only made sense if linked to other pages not yet created. Further complication came from the use of similar phrases throughout my notes in the past so de-duplication was required. It’s all done now and I’m relieved. The Basic moods of life framework is in place and will become a central Map of Content for the site as future notes are created.
Reading
Truth be told, I’ve struggled with Stephen King’s The Dead Zone this week. George Stillson, the protagonist, is too Trump-like for comfort.
Parrish (2024), The Great Mental Models (General Thinking Concepts) is amazing. A few pages in and I became certain the next 3 books in the series will hit my library soon. I began the Graduate Diploma of Ontological Coaching with the goal of building a framework to hang my knowledge on. The Mental models in this book push that idea much further. More to come as I process my notes. Hey, I got my inbox cleaned out, what more do you want?
Movies
Gladiator got another look today in preparation for Gladiator II in a couple of weeks.
The Great Emu War was so bad I had to finish it. It had nothing to do with the actual Emu War and sadly very little to do with good quality comedy either.