Instead of an update, this week's Obsidian essay is more of an "I should have known better." I just completed the first significant reformatting of my Obsidian layout, and I want to let you know why and how it happened. Thankfully, it didn't take more than several hours to complete; however, it would have been much worse had I waited or ignored the problem much longer.
First, the basics; I have transferred 2,295 thoughts from TheBrain to Obsidian. I've yet to figure out if there are record counters on Obsidian. I'd be shocked if there wasn't; I haven't been able to find it yet. I'd be interested to know how many additional thoughts I have added to Obsidian in addition to the ones transferred over from my old system.
I started running into some issues with pictures a couple of weeks ago and thought I solved the problem by opening a journal file and blog file to hold the images I added for articles and journal entries. Unfortunately, this didn't work nearly as well as I had hoped when I discovered three pictures for the same thought, and none of them was the picture shown on the page.
One of the main reasons I liked my original software so much was that the program created a separate file for each thought. I could then put in the file anything I desired, from PDF to JPEG files. However, what I didn't like about TheBrain file name was the complex 36-character name TheBrain created automatically.
In my blog post, "Technology is Awesome (when it works)," I mentioned one of the main benefits of TheBrain was knowing that all my data is stored on my device. Fortunately, this is also true of Obsidian. However, while it is helpful knowing that all my pictures, notes, and thoughts are on my hard drive, knowing exactly where the data is stored is anybody's guess if TheBrain software collapsed. I would have to work through each 36-character file to determine its contents.
Obsidian overcomes this issue by using common file names, and I mistakenly discarded the best export feature TheBrain provided for me. TheBrain exports not by the 36-character address assigned to the file but by the familiar thought name I had given. For example, I might have provided a journal entry with the thought name 2022-10-10, and TheBrain could have assigned the file name "b3da7986-b582-425a-bd32-e8a8062d8991." Instead, when I export from TheBrain, I receive a file named 2022-20-20 and a note residing within the file called "note."
The beauty of the transfer (and my stupidity in discarding it) is that each file also contained any .txt files, PDFs, or JPEGs associated with the original file. I had been manually transferring them to one large picture file, changing the name of the "note," and deleting the file.
My epiphany came when I realized I should have kept the original file, corrected the note name, and used the JPEG files in each primary location. I took several hours to remake file names (I transferred over all the old notes again, combined them, then deleted the old note files). I then reviewed each picture, verifying backlinks, moving them to the proper file, and deleting those not associated with anything.
It was a long process; however, each day has a file, and each file has a note, and if the message requires a picture, that picture is now found within the day file. The same is true for blogs, hikes, and mountain peaks. I've blundered for over a month; however, I believe the process of utilizing a file for everything will be much smoother and faster moving forward.
Written October 10, 2022
P.S. A community plugin entitled “Vault Statistics” provides this information via the status bar. I currently have 2,395 notes, having added 100 notes to those transferred from TheBrain.