321: Elegantly Extensible

Elegantly Extensible

[00:00:00] Jeff: Hello, you are listening to the Overtired podcast. I am Jeff Severance Gunzel, and I am here with Brett Terpstra. Christina is away this week. Hello, Brett.

[00:00:17] Brett: Hello, Jeff. Um, I had a dream. Last night that we had already recorded, or like I, we did, we did the recording in my dream. Uh, so I have already spent in dream time. I have already spent an hour talking to you, um, in, in which almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong. There were crashes and restarts and like we started, and I forgot to say who was doing the intro.

[00:00:43] Brett: So there’s this whole like, garbled thing at the beginning and then I swore I swore right away because I recently read that. Uh, and it doesn’t matter for us cause we don’t monetize on YouTube. But on YouTube, if you drop the F-bomb in the first 15 seconds [00:01:00] of your video, according to the new profanity rules, you get demonetized.

[00:01:06] Jeff: Wow.

[00:01:07] Brett: And you can, you can use the FBO after that. Um, as long as it’s not, I can’t remember how they phrase it, but like, it was like, don’t do it too much. Um, and don’t put it in your screenshots, your, like your thumbnail image. Um, there’s all these new profanity rules, but they’re actually laxer than what they had before.

[00:01:27] Brett: Now, now you can say the FBO and still get partially monetized. Anyway, like that was on my mind. So in the dream

[00:01:35] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:01:36] Brett: dream, I was intentionally not swearing.

[00:01:39] Jeff: That’s amazing,

[00:01:40] Brett: Yeah.

[00:01:42] Jeff: Well, it’s too bad we can’t access that file somehow.

[00:01:44] Brett: I know. We could save a lot of time.

[00:01:46] Jeff: We could,

[00:01:47] Brett: Have a real, really trippy episode. It was, it got weird. It got weird.

[00:01:53] Jeff: Well, let’s see what happens in, uh, in real life.

[00:01:56] Mental Health Corner

[00:01:56] Brett: Yeah. So, uh, so we’re gonna [00:02:00] reinstate after a couple weeks off, uh, the mental health corner. Would you like, would you like to kick off the, the season? We should start season four soon. Um,

[00:02:12] Jeff: Season three was like five episodes.

[00:02:14] Brett: was it, I thought it was like 20, it was 20 episodes. We’re on, this

[00:02:18] Jeff: Really? Oh yeah. It’s three 20. Oh my God. See, this’ll, this ties into my mental health check-in

[00:02:23] Brett: All right. Go for it.

[00:02:25] Jeff: Um, I don’t know. I think it’s just that I’m trying to do too much, but my sense of space and time is really messed up. Like it wasn’t good to begin with, but I’ll be in a conversation.

[00:02:39] Jeff: It was just in a conversation with my wife actually. I was like, well, we talked about that on Friday. She’s like, eh, it was Monday. I was like, oh, Uhhuh. Okay. Got it. And that’s not just being like a stupid sitcom husband. It’s like . It’s like,

[00:02:51] Brett: mean that’s, that’s a common ADHD symptom, like time dilation and, yeah.

[00:02:58] Jeff: But it’s, it, it’s been really, [00:03:00] really hard the last couple weeks. I mean, um, and I think it is, I’m trying to do too much. I’m doing a lot in the house. I’m doing a lot at work. Um, there’s a lot of sort of, at work, especially, I’m wrapping up a five year project, which is gonna take a few months, but it’s like, there’s just a lot of feelings around that.

[00:03:19] Jeff: Um, and just a lot of work around that. I took on a new role in our, um, I’m, I’m a member owner of a, of a research, uh, cooperative, uh, a research firm that focuses on, um, mostly on social justice efforts, essentially. So organizations that have social justice at their focus, we do research and evaluation for them.

[00:03:40] Jeff: And so I’m, I also took on a new role, um, on, on the board and with our organization. And so, I don’t know, man, I just, uh, I’m, I’m, I’m daily noticing myself kind of failing to, um, Remember things that it’s kind of unbelievable. I failed to remember. Um, and, and [00:04:00] despite having notes or whatever else it is, I mean, I just, I can’t, I’ve never been able to fully explain it.

[00:04:04] Jeff: They do describe it as an A D H D symptom. Um, I just, it, it doesn’t, even, even with that, it doesn’t seem like, it seems like I should be able to, um, get on top of it. It seems like I should be able to systematize it, but I’ve, I, I’m not sure that for me, I believe in the longevity of systems anymore. Um, and I am, I am constant evidence of that from my life.

[00:04:30] Brett: So like what, is there anything historically that has worked for you to stay on top of these things that, that rationally seem like you just shouldn’t forget, but you do?

[00:04:41] Jeff: I mean, my calendar works pretty, pretty well for me. Uh, it’s just that one of the things that can happen is, uh, I can look at my calendar in the morning and have forgotten most of it, um, by lunchtime, you

[00:04:53] Brett: I do the same I do.

[00:04:55] Jeff: Uh, and, and that just, it makes me crazy. So, like what I used to do, the two things that have [00:05:00] worked, two things that have worked for me is to just grab a note card and write out my schedule in the morning.

[00:05:07] Jeff: Um, sometimes then I never have to refer to it and I, and otherwise I have like a little reference card next to

[00:05:12] Brett: just the act of writing embeds it better in your brain,

[00:05:16] Jeff: Yeah. And then when I had jobs that were, when I’ve had jobs that were more. That lent themselves more to daily routines. Um, I, I would, I remember when I, I was a editor at Reader Magazine and I handled our website and I would just have a, a handwritten checklist that I photocopied that just had the things that I needed to, you know, uh, check or do that day and, and, and I could kind of look over a week’s worth of those and be able to see what I missed and what I did and whatever the , since we’re talking about it, the other thing that has worked really well for me, and maybe this is the other thing I need to do, is, I mean, I, what part of, I mean why, why what I’m describing can be so [00:06:00] bad?

[00:06:00] Jeff: Is it. Is that I work with other people, right? Like there are people that are depending on hearing from me or, um, that I’m waiting on something from, or whatever it is. And I have found in my life that if I, if I forget to stay engaged with people, even just a back and forth, maybe by text or whatever it, people quickly fall into the background.

[00:06:28] Jeff: Um, the world outside my four walls, this office I’m in now quickly falls into the background because I’m just. I’m just so focused on whatever’s right in front of me and sort of triaging or whatever else. Right. Um, but anyway, one thing I used to do, I used to have this, I should I say used to, I’ve actually probably brought it, uh, I, I’ve re I’ve resurrected it several times in life, a daily, um, template for, um, for kind of how to stay engaged.

[00:06:59] Jeff: And [00:07:00] one of the things I would do every day is just I would list three people that it would be good if I got in contact with, whether it was an email or a text or a phone call or whatever, people that are waiting to hear from me. Right. Um, and if I didn’t have three people waiting to hear from me, maybe I had one waiting to hear from me, I’d, I’d pick two that I know it’d be good to be in touch

[00:07:19] Brett: Is this both? Both professional and personal or one or

[00:07:23] Jeff: Professional and personal, definitely. And then the next bit would be, um, who am I waiting for stuff from? Because that also just falls into the background after a while. And so anyway, I mean, I, you know, if, uh, if listening to this in the future because I am applying for a job, I’d just rather you just, you know, move forward to the next part of the podcast.

[00:07:42] Jeff: But , like, cause this is my own business. Goddamnit , but I’m just in that space right now. And I’m, and the interesting thing is I’m also in a really productive space. So it’s not just like, I’m like, I have been in the past. I’m not just lost in the [00:08:00] wilderness of all the things. Right? Um, I’m actually getting a lot done, but it’s like, woo, it’s, uh, the brain.

[00:08:07] Jeff: I need like a serious memory upgrade. I need like, uh, I think these new MacBooks. My new macro pro. I don’t think I met like 60 or something like that. That’s what I need No more of this 18, uh, gigabyte business

[00:08:23] Brett: Yeah.

[00:08:24] Jeff: anyway.

[00:08:25] Brett: as you know, I’ve spent a good portion of my life developing tools to help me with exactly the stuff you’re talking about, and honestly, I’ve never found a perfect system that I stick with. Um, like OmniFocus is great if you get into a habit and you have a daily review and you’re actually curating.

[00:08:46] Brett: Like if you just let let your inbox pile up and never file anything, it doesn’t do any good. And if you file, file everything, but don’t review it, it doesn’t do any good. Uh, because like the whole point is to get it out of [00:09:00] your head into someplace you trust, right? Like basic G T D stuff. Um, but if you. Get it out of your head and then forget about it, then you’ve actually done worse than just trying to remember everything you have to do.

[00:09:15] Jeff: Yes,

[00:09:17] Brett: well, I, so I guess this leads into my mental health corner. Um, I had a one day manic episode, uh, just a few days ago, and like I, I woke up at like 11:00 PM I went to bed at nine, woke up at 11. Just immediately knew I wasn’t gonna fall back asleep. Um, I stayed in bed for like three hours anyway, just completely awake.

[00:09:46] Brett: Um, and when it eventually drove me nuts, I went downstairs and did my usual thing, started coding, uh, wrote, wrote a bunch of code, um, and then crashed like that during the day. The [00:10:00] next day I just, I could feel it, I could feel it end, and I slept for the next two nights. I slept great. Last night was a bit of a rough night, but not like a manic night.

[00:10:10] Brett: Um, and. The thing is, without all the tools I’ve built, I would have no idea what happened that manic night like I do. I do not consciously remember because I had two really good nights of sleep. Um, it like cleared my brain of all the stuff I was obsessively working on. Um, and if it weren’t for like doing, which, uh, I have, I have it set up so that anytime I make a get commit, um, I have a, a default hook that gets initialized with any new Git repository.

[00:10:44] Brett: So anytime I start a project, I initialize git repository and there’s a gi commit hook that once it saves the commit message, it adds it as an entry in my doing file. So simply by. Committing, [00:11:00] which is, you know, like I, I have a good habit of committing every change. Uh, simply by committing within a project, I create a, a record that I can easily, easily pull up and say, here’s what I was doing.

[00:11:12] Brett: And when I realize I’m manic, I add a default tag to my config file. So anything that gets, anything that gets added to my doing file during that period gets a tag manic. Um, and then when it’s over, I remove that tag. And that means that I can just write doing show manic and it will show me everything that I did when I was manic.

[00:11:39] Brett: And I can plot that out. I can use the timeline output and actually see like a, a JavaScript of like a view based time.

[00:11:46] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:11:47] Brett: my mania, and I can see exactly like when I was manic, what I accomplished while I was manic, how long it lasted. Uh, and this last one was less than 24 hours, which is just weird. [00:12:00] Like I’ve never had, never had a mania that lasted less than three days.

[00:12:04] Brett: Um, and it, it hasn’t been followed by any major depression. I want to talk to my shrink about microdosing.

[00:12:13] Jeff: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:15] Brett: I’m, I’m really excited about the possibility, like I don’t know if there are drug interaction concerns, uh, with things like psilocybin and L s D, but from the results I’ve seen and I have friends, like I went to a , I went to a 70 year old trans woman’s poetry reading on Friday and no on Thursday night.

[00:12:40] Brett: And, uh, The crowd was mostly also 70 year old people, and the guy who introduced her was like misgendered her left and right in his introduction. It was, it was very uncomfortable to be there. But I met up with a queer [00:13:00] studies professor. Um, and halfway through the thing she tells me, uh, that she’s on mushrooms.

[00:13:06] Brett: Um, because she had been dealing with some major depression and a friend had, uh, convinced her to try microdosing. Um, and that night I think she might have macro dosed, but she said that, like she said,

[00:13:22] Jeff: tried macro dosing

[00:13:26] Brett: she, she said that like, just like tiny bits of a psilocybin. Um, did wonders to get her out of bed into the world. Um, feeling alert and, and bright-eyed and hopeful. And I like, cause we’ve talked many times about how I feel like my version of bipolar stable is actually leaning towards depression. Uh, like, like as long as I’m sleeping, I consider myself in good shape, but I also [00:14:00] do not enjoy life much during those periods.

[00:14:03] Brett: Um, and I really, I think, and I can’t because of the bipolar, I can’t medicate the depression effectively. Uh, because any good antidepressant will just make me manic. Um, so I have to use these things like Lamictal that have antidepressant qualities.

[00:14:24] Jeff: about that. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:25] Brett: Like it has qualities, but it’s not an antidepressant. Um, and, and, and honestly, my A D H D meds increase dopamine, um, and, and make me and, and help with serotonin production.

[00:14:40] Brett: So that aids a little bit, but once I’m depressed, it’s so weird when I’m manic one A D H D pill, uh, in my case, Vivance right now, um, will, it shoots me through the roof. I’m like just, just super focused coding, [00:15:00] writing, uh, like social, like it’s amazing what it does. And then when I’m depressed, it doesn’t do jack.

[00:15:08] Brett: Like I can take it and I don’t even notice like a difference.

[00:15:13] Jeff: It’s not like the classic up upper downer

[00:15:15] Brett: Right. No, the depression can override the A D H D meds, which is, uh, it’s kind of frustrating, but, uh, anyway, yeah, I’m, I, I really wanna look into microdosing. I spent like a year of my life tripping balls. Um, got really into, uh, like D M X and acid and, uh, mushrooms and actually started dealing mushrooms.

[00:15:41] Brett: Um, I had a dealer that would like front me a pound at a time, and I would just like sell it to college kids. Um,

[00:15:49] Jeff: Like college kids where?

[00:15:50] Brett: uh, m a

[00:15:51] Jeff: Oh, mcad. The art school. Yeah. Right.

[00:15:53] Brett: Yeah. And I was just tripping the whole time and got, I got really kind of good at [00:16:00] like, tripping and, and like maintaining a good trip and, and getting used to navigating the world.

[00:16:08] Brett: In a hallucinogenic state, um, which isn’t because I could never smoke weed like I’m allergic to T h c. Um, so like I didn’t have a lot of experience with any kind of hallucinogenic until I get into that stuff. Um, but what I’m saying is microdosing, which is not, you know, you don’t trip you, you’re not like hallucinating.

[00:16:33] Brett: I think I, I think I could navigate it. Fine. I think I’d be good at it.

[00:16:37] Jeff: Yeah. I have the Michael Poll book sitting on my bookshelf about the various uses of psychedelics. Um,

[00:16:46] Brett: What’s it called? I’ll add it to the show notes.

[00:16:49] Jeff: Oh God, it’s, uh, I’ll have to, I’ll have to search it, but I, for some reason, this is one of the things, my brain is just not holding

[00:16:56] Brett: I, I, I added a poorly spelled note to the show notes. You can flush [00:17:00] it out when you have time. Um,

[00:17:02] Jeff: Um, you know, when you were talking about doing, um, I, which I’ve used, I mean, I love doing, like doing is one of the things, like I could tell you, I could sit down, I forget, tell you, I could sit down and, and map out the perfect system for me, right. Like, and the elements and the tools and everything.

[00:17:20] Jeff: What’s too, what’s like, not too much and not too little and, you know, um, but my ability to stay with it is a whole different story. Anyway, I think two episodes ago, our first question, uh, our first big like question episode, right? You had asked about input devices, like the dream input device, and I, I said somehow it would involve drumming, and I realized that like what I, what I would love is like, To be able to, like my entry in doing would be triggered by like the end of a song drum thing, like, right.

[00:17:53] Jeff: And then it pops up. It’s like, what were you doing? Oh, thanks for asking. I was just, you know, and I’m just finishing now. Thank you. And then I count it off. I [00:18:00] count off the next one. Right. Like,

[00:18:02] Brett: Yeah.

[00:18:04] Jeff: that would be perfect. Just perfect. But I wanna say that like, um, I, I’m in a stage of kind of being hard on myself about not being able to kind of hold with a system.

[00:18:14] Jeff: But I remember, um, I had a therapist once and I was describing kind of this very thing where it’s like, I imagine I’m walking on a berm, you know, and it’s like I could fall down on either side. Um, I’ll walk on that berm for a couple weeks and then I’ll, I’ll trip and fall, right? And, and if I’m not doing well, I’ll just walk down where I fell.

[00:18:34] Jeff: I won’t try to climb back up on the berm, right. But if I’m doing well, I’ll work to climb back on the berm. And I don’t know how long I’m gonna last up there, but like, at least I went back up and she, she kind of affirmed that, you know, what’s really important in this case is, you know, how to, she put it really nicely.

[00:18:50] Jeff: You know how to call yourself back, essentially. And I, I, I find that I, I put emphasis when I’m, when I’m really conscious of it, which I will be, now that I’ve [00:19:00] said it here, I put emphasis on can I call myself back more than what have I sustained? Right? Um, and that seems to me far more. , um, realistic as a human being and, and as an expectation of myself as a human being.

[00:19:17] Jeff: doing like knowledge work and all this other stuff. So anyway, I just wanted to add to that at the end little, so I’m not just being hard on myself. I forget to not be hard on myself.

[00:19:26] Brett: Uh, doing was actually one of the things I worked on when I was manic. Um, so I have been in the habit recently of adding plugin architectures to all of my tools. Um, so they can be easily extended, uh, if, you know, whatever language I happen to have written it in. Um, it’s not like text mate where you can like write extensions in any language, but, but like doing, uh, with just some basic Ruby school skills, you can add new [00:20:00] features to it.

[00:20:00] Brett: And, uh, someone asked me if they could output a view. By day where like everything was grouped by day in a table, um, and you could just like see kind of a calendar view of, of what you had done. And I was like, that is absolutely an export plugin. And uh, in about maybe 45 minutes, I wrote one page of code that now you can type dash o by day, uh, all one word by day, and it will, it’ll output an like a Nastys doc table of all of your, all of all.

[00:20:39] Brett: So you can combine it with any command. So like doing today or doing since or or doing, show any command that has output, you can just add dash O by day and, and it’ll output in that day format. And it just like, I’ve really been appreciating this. This [00:21:00] focus on plugin architecture, because even if no commu, no community, like evolves around it, even if you don’t have like an obsidian or notion or text make kind of community making extensions for you, just from a code maintainability perspective, uh, the ability to add features that are optional and are completely modular, and I didn’t have to go in and edit any of the core code to do it.

[00:21:30] Brett: I, I am, I, I I will moving forward. Always, always include a plug-in architecture, like marked kind of. You can use custom processors and you can write them in any language, but they’re, it’s also a little flaky. Like the best way to crash mark is to use a custom processor. Um,

[00:21:49] Jeff: Is that what you wrote in your iTunes review? Unmarked

[00:21:51] Brett: the best, the best and most consistent way to crash.

[00:21:54] Brett: Mark is the fuck up your. Your custom processor. It, it is, it [00:22:00] is not graceful when things go wrong, and I’ve tried to fix that, but like the idea is there, it’s extensible. Like you don’t want to use multi markdown or GitHub flavored markdown, add your own processor and use whatever you want. Um, so this isn’t like a new concept to me, but it is definitely something I’m trying to make, like an elegant part of anything I code.

[00:22:21] Brett: No.

[00:22:21] Jeff: I love that. And it actually speaks to something I’ve been meaning to bring up with you on the podcast, which is that in the last couple of weeks I’ve moved back completely to Envy Ultra for, I was using obsidian for some things and whatever, and, um, I just, I find. Uh, I find that the closer I can feel to my actual text files , um, the more comfortable I am and obviously Envy Alt is and was that, and Envy Al Ultra is that as well.

[00:22:52] Jeff: And what I had been doing was sort of using a single notes folder that Obsidian could act on and pull from. Right. [00:23:00] But also Envy Ultra. But I don’t, and this may just be, uh, like my own, like personality disorder or something, but like in the end, and you and I have talked about this when talking about sublime text versus vs code, like I find that I just feel more comfortable and, and I feel more of a flow when I feel super close to the text file itself.

[00:23:25] Jeff: So like if you’re the type of person that’s going to even go in the direction of text files, right? Like why not stay as close to those files as you can? Um,

[00:23:35] Brett: Well, the other, the other commonality there between sublime texts and uh, NV Ultra is, is operating system like being as close to the operating system as possible. Um, electron and obs, I mean, uh, obsidian and VS code are both electron and do not integrate fully with Mac os. Um, which is, [00:24:00] that’s for me, that’s why I prefer Sublime and NV Ultra, uh, just like right down to, uh, sublime less so than NV Ultra, but it uses real Mac OS components.

[00:24:13] Brett: And you’re, you’re like directly interfaced with the operating system.

[00:24:17] Jeff: And can you explain what electron is and why it doesn’t integrate fully with the operating system?

[00:24:24] Brett: Electron is a, a layer, uh, it’s a web-based. Layer, um, where you’re basically, I think mostly in node js, uh, but they build their own components that run within kind of, you could consider electron like, uh, an operating system layer, um, that provides all of the interaction between the components and everything.

[00:24:47] Brett: Uh, but they are not, a text field in Electron is actually a web field, um, like an H T M L field, not an os, like a Mac OS text [00:25:00] field. So things like system services are abstracted away from, from working the way they would in a cocoa text field, uh, and like an NS text field. Um, it’s, it, it provides a lot of flexibility, especially for developers who want to write cross-platform applications like an Electron app with very little effort can run on any operating system.

[00:25:26] Jeff: and is that the primary attraction to it and the reason for its popularity?

[00:25:31] Brett: For, yes, for among developers, yes. I mean, that is why you would make an Electron app is, is for cross platform availability. It also makes a lot of things easier. Like the, the things that VS Code can do, um, it can do more easily because of the electron kind of ecosystem around the functionality. Um, and what makes like VS code so popular is just the [00:26:00] sheer adaptation adoption, I mean, um, by users and the number of packages available and the amount of the extensibility of it.

[00:26:10] Brett: Um, it is easily. Five times what, uh, sublime taxes ever had available. It’s insane what

[00:26:19] Jeff: is

[00:26:20] Brett: extend it to do, but I just run into enough friction when I try to use it the way I want to use my I D e I run into enough little, like not being able to run system services, like it’s a big deal for me. It seems like a small thing, but I kinda rely on, on, on the text navigation, the custom key bindings and the system services that I’m used to having in any cocoa text field on any app on my Mac.

[00:26:49] Brett: And then suddenly they don’t work and it, it’s friction for me and it just sublime. Sublime has enough packages that do what I need to do. Um, I’m just [00:27:00] more comfortable in it.

[00:27:01] Jeff: Well, and when I get really drawn into obsidian, it is because of. It’s not just that there’s the shared number of plugins. Cause it is pretty incredible. There’s a woman who keeps a, um, who keeps a weekly, uh, who runs a weekly newsletter that always lists like, what’s new, what’s in the approvals. You know, I’m always like Jesus Christ.

[00:27:20] Jeff: Um, but I, I actually, the more, the more sort of plugin, the more plug-ins you have, the more plug-in like spam you have kind of, it’s, it’s like, and I forget this is what happened in obsidian. I was like, let me just really look at how I use obsidian. Do I really need obsidian for this? Because the other things I used to do, there are plug-ins to do this.

[00:27:40] Jeff: There are other ways of doing this that make me feel a little closer to the note. And I don’t know if that’s just me being artisanal

[00:27:46] Brett: the, the one thing obsidian does that I wish I could convince Fletcher to steal is backlinks.

[00:27:53] Jeff: Yep. Back links are good, although I like ’em better in Rome, but

[00:27:56] Brett: Sure. Like, like Envy Ultra [00:28:00] has wiki linking and you can, you can with auto completion add a Wiki link to another note. Uh, and it has somewhat of a back button feature. Like you can navigate backwards in history, so you can go back to the note you click from, but you can’t see what all notes link to your current note, and you can’t easily see any kind of graph of where the notes link together.

[00:28:24] Brett: Um, and that is, that is the one thing about obsidian, like I’m.

[00:28:28] Jeff: of fun.

[00:28:29] Brett: I’m like you, I, I prefer Envy Ultra and just being very close to my text files and just basically it serves as an interface to raw text, and that’s what I love about it. Um, obsidian abstracts that by one layer, it’s still a, a, a bucket of raw text, but it has, the thing with extensions and plugins is it’s very easy for me to add too many and no longer know why something’s happening, which is what I [00:29:00] always run into in VS code.

[00:29:01] Brett: The first thing I do is add, uh, you know, the recommended packages for say Ruby or Swift or Markdown. And, uh, I get a bunch of, a bunch of packages that I’ll provide different features and I no longer know. When I, when I experience a behavior, what caused it or why or where this keyboard shortcut is coming from, and I’ve never spent enough time with it to really get good at tracing that backwards.

[00:29:30] Jeff: Well, and there’s a relationship in a way to, so like if, I mean, I know I don’t speak just for myself here, but what, what is so attractive about text files for me, besides the future proof aspect of them, um, is that I don’t get distracted with, um, formatting, which I am just prone to do. Um, and if you happen to just naturally think a textile in markdown format looks beautiful, then you are a lucky, lucky, wonderful person.

[00:29:56] Jeff: And I am one of those people. And so for the same reason, [00:30:00] I don’t want to be in a bloat of formatting features. I don’t want to be in a bloat of plugins, you know, cuz that’s where I’ll go. Like, and, and with obsidian, some of those plugins, like the way you. Almost turn every sentence into a kind of data and then do data views.

[00:30:18] Jeff: Like that is stuff that causes you to alter how your text files are written. And, and I, that has never been worth it in the end for me. And I, and I often am super suspect of, of people who do their initial few obsidian videos right on YouTube. I, I would love to know what it actually looks like for them a month later, two months later, a year later.

[00:30:42] Jeff: It’s not, I’m not trying to be caddy, I just mean like, I wanna see the data generally, like how many people after they dive in and install their plugins and whatever, are still on the platform, right? Like, and, and with text files just used to something like Envy Ultra. That’s never something you would think about.

[00:30:59] Jeff: It’s like, this is just where my [00:31:00] notes are, you know? I mean, the thing I think about most is how poorly I’ve labeled my notes over the years,

[00:31:05] Brett: There. So I, I speak at, I speak at Max Sock pretty regularly. Um, not going to this year, but, um, There’s always at least one person that does a presentation on productivity, you know, of some kind. And one year it’ll be notion, and then one year it’ll be obsidian and like you’ll watch the same person do a deep dive on, on this new app that solves all the problems.

[00:31:34] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:31:35] Brett: the next year it’s something else. And the next year they’ve moved on. And, um, I think it’s really easy to get distracted by new shiny, um, and it’s really easy to recognize, to see the power in something, the possibilities,

[00:31:49] Jeff: It’s exciting.

[00:31:50] Brett: But, uh, when you really sit back and look at like, what’s the portability? If I use these new syntaxes and, and come to rely on this [00:32:00] data layer in this app, and then I wanna move to something else a year from now, uh, will all of this, will all of these systems that I built around it cease to function and it makes you, it makes you crave minimalism.

[00:32:16] Brett: It makes you, it makes what’s, what’s the bare minimum syntax I can add to this to accomplish what I actually need without being lured in by like, oh, but I could get the, I could get this special view if I use this like very specific syntax, that would be impossible to rejects out later.

[00:32:36] Jeff: Right, Yeah. And by red rejects out, you’re, you’re, you’re hitting the thing, right? It’s like, for me, if I go deep on something and change, essentially add a new syntax to my text files, it’s gonna be a year or two. But I’m gonna want to be writing a script that takes all that shit out,

[00:32:53] Brett: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:32:54] Jeff: and none of this is to like judge people who are excited about obsidian or anything.

[00:32:57] Jeff: It’s just, it helps me to kind of [00:33:00] explore my own. Like, I just find it, I, I don’t know why, you know, those of us who have such an intense draw towards text files and markdown and that stuff, I, I would love to know what is going on there beyond what we’re able to articulate. Right? Like, cuz it’s a type of person,

[00:33:18] Brett: Let, let, let me just, yeah. As a, as a, as a caveat, um, I, I think obsidian is amazing. I

[00:33:26] Jeff: it is.

[00:33:27] Brett: a really cool app with a lot of power, and even if you just used it at its bare minimum, um, it’s a great companion to Envy Ultra and potentially a complete replacement for NV Ultra. It’s a solid app.

[00:33:39] Brett: I’m not, I’m not, I’m not dissing it. There are, there are a couple of friction points for me, but I don’t begrudge anybody their love of obsidian. It’s a solid app.

[00:33:51] Jeff: Yep. My only issue with it is the way it changes how I behave and the way I behave because of it. It’s not, has nothing wrong with the app. I mean, it’s [00:34:00] cool and I actually love, I love communities that are just, just like popcorn popping plugins and, and ways to use it. I, I learned so much from that, but I just happen to be returning home right now.

[00:34:14] Jeff: That’s where I’m at on my journey.

[00:34:15] Brett: That’s actually, um, one of your, one of your interview questions that we may or may not get to was what was the first app or program that expanded your sense of what could be possible? And, and my answer to that would definitely feed into what we’re talking about right now, but I’m gonna take a quick sponsor break.

[00:34:34] Jeff: Okay. Sounds good.

[00:34:35] Sponsor: Kolide

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[00:35:17] Brett: The moment collides agent detects a problem, it alerts the user and gets some instructions to fix it. If they don’t fix the problem within a set time, they’re blocked. Collide method means fewer support tickets, less frustration, and most importantly, 100% fleet compliance. Visit collide.com/ Overtired to learn more or book or book a demo.

[00:35:39] Brett: That’s K O L I D e.com/ Overtired.

[00:35:45] Promo Swap: The Nerd Room

[00:35:45] Jeff: Awesome. Awesome. Okay, I, I’ve got a podcast, uh, to talk about the nerd, the nerd room. Um, are you looking to get more out of your fandom experiences? Always. Uh, do you wish you had the time to keep up with all the [00:36:00] latest news and insights about your favorite film franchises? Generally, well then look no further than the Nerd Room Podcast, a weekly audio experience with deep dives into the latest news reviews and speculation from the worlds of Star Wars, Marvel, DC and beyond.

[00:36:19] Jeff: Whether you’re a casual fan or a diehard enthusiast, the Nerd Room has something for everyone. Plug into the Nerd Room podcast every Thursday on all major podcast platforms, and let them bring the nerd to you.

[00:36:32] Jeff: For more from the nerd room, head to the nerd room.net or use the hashtag hashtag We The nerd. Hashtag

[00:36:42] Brett: Hashtag with a nerd.

[00:36:44] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:36:45] A sense of wonder… in an app

[00:36:45] Brett: So, so do you want, do you wanna, do you want to dive into this question for a couple

[00:36:50] Jeff: Yeah, let’s do it.

[00:36:52] Brett: So the first app or program that expanded your sense of what could be, what can be possible or as a [00:37:00] user or a programmer? Uh, for me it’s both. It’s text mate. Um, so I, I, I didn’t start using a Mac until 2000.

[00:37:11] Brett: Um, I was always a PC Linux guy up until that point. Um, and then OS 10 came out and, and I got into it and I started, I learned a little Apple script, like I’d been using VB script and, and I learned Pascal and c and stuff before that. But like, apples script was a, a new beast that allowed me direct.

[00:37:32] Brett: Interaction with apps, and that was fun. Um, and then I, I, I heard about this text editor called Text Mate, and I downloaded it and I opened it up and it was like a blank screen with no buttons. And, and I didn’t, I didn’t know what to do and I quit it and went back to whatever editor I was using at the time and maybe BB edit and, and I didn’t think about it again for a few months.

[00:37:57] Brett: Um, and then someone pointed out like [00:38:00] how to do a certain thing using a bundle in TechMate. The plug-in architecture was called Bundles. And so I loaded it back up and, and I opened the bundle editor and I began to immediately see, How extensible it was and how it could be crafted and, and like the lack of buttons became, it was the first time that I had had, uh, an editor of any kind without a toolbar.

[00:38:26] Brett: Um, and cuz you know, I came from Windows in like Microsoft Word, uh, which is just overloaded with buttons. And, and I began to see the elegance of everything being keyboard based, everything being plugin based. Um, and that’s why I learned Ruby. Uh, my strongest language today is Ruby. And it is all because.

[00:38:50] Brett: The easiest way to extend TechMate was with Ruby, and I learned Ruby specifically to extend TechMate. Um, Ellen Agard, the, the [00:39:00] creator of TechMate, ran a mailing list and was just super helpful to newbies like me, um, who I would ask the dumbest questions and he would gently explain like, well, here’s where you went wrong.

[00:39:14] Brett: Here’s what you need to do, here’s how it would work. And, and he, he fostered the community, uh, which was very active, uh, for an app at the time. Uh, probably not to the extent that you see like obsidian and notion communities now, uh, but in its day, In the, in the early days of kind of extensible Mac software, uh, it was a, it was a vibrant community full of very helpful people.

[00:39:41] Brett: And like the mailing list was like, it was like Usenet just full of ideas and, and helpful tips. And that was, to me, it’s still the gold standard. Like it, it was a Mac app that literally gained its popularity on the [00:40:00] basis of its extending extend ex the community that was extending the application. Like he built, he built somet