Three good things: red, blue and yellow.

Three things have happened lately. Good things.

Thing One: Saying Goodbye to Ham Radio (again)

What? You may recall I only recently wrote about the Return of Ham with glowing terms of endearment. And now I'm saying it's a good thing to be parting ways again? Yes. That's what I'm saying.

There are a host of reasons I am divorcing ham radio. Let's just say I don't have time for it and leave it at that. It was fun for a while, but it's just not worth the trouble.

Thing Two: SyncThing

Back in December of 2023 I discovered SyncThing and set it up as my main file sharing and backup application. I shut off Dropbox, which had been my last cloud file storage provider. When I wrote about it, I called SyncThing My Favorite Synced Storage Solution. That is still true.

SyncThing has allowed me to build a system of file management methods that fit my needs. There is only as much online (Internet) involvement as I choose. My stuff is under my control. That's the way I like it. And I have only gained capability. Nothing lost.

Thing Three: Obsidian

Obsidian is the most wonderful thing I have discovered in the world of computers in decades. It is similar to OneNote or Evernote (or any number of note-taking apps). The things I like about it are:

▪ Obsidian uses markdown.
▪ Rather than having to learn some menu system, I just type and Obsidian handles the formatting.
▪ I now have one place to put everything. Either a thing, or a link to the thing can be logged in my daily note.
▪ It saves everything to a local file in places I specify. No weird proprietary file formats or burying data in databases.
▪ It saves everything in plain text unless it's a .pdf or some sort of image file. Everything is accessible in its native form.
▪ While it's not open source, it feels that way. Free for personal use, large community developing themes and extensions.
▪ It is really easy to incorporate my own tweaks. For example, I wrote a Python app that translates copy/pasted text from a spreadsheet into a note with my choice of formatting. I assigned it to a keyboard shortcut, and it just works wonderfully.
▪ I decide the folder structure and where those folders will live.
▪ SyncThing syncs my Obsidian folders across devices; so my phone, my tablet and all my computers have exactly the same Obsidian experience.
▪ Using SyncThing with Obsidian also means my notes are backed up on multiple devices at all times.

These three things have made my life better in the past few months. It's really nice when I can say that.

These three things have one verb in common: simplify. Pulling my energies and resources closer in, and using more efficient methods to solve my daily opportunities is a good thing. Rather than adding a new tech on top, I've replaced things that were causing me mental fragmentation. My life is better because it's a bit more simple.

Simple is better. Simple works. SyncThing, Obsidian and no ham radio is a thing that works!