Otávio Cordeiro

Personal

tinyScientist got a new bed. They grow so fast!

After using so many Read Later services in the last decade, I believe I can finally stop looking for the right one for me. Readwise’s Read works the way I need a Read Later app to work. Both their apps, Readwise and Read, have performance and UX issues, but they work, deliver what they promise, and are always improving. I was skeptical with all those YouTube videos praising the service, but I decided to give it a try and am impressed.

Last week I migrated all my personal notes from Obsidian to Bear, but maybe I was too eager to try Bear’s update that I rushed things. Thinking again, Obsidian (and some other apps) offer something Bear doesn’t: access to the notes without having to use the their app. Obsidian uses simple Markdown files in the file system, while Bear stores all notes and assets in a sqlite database, hidden away from the user.

Portability is an important thing nowadays, especially with so many apps hiding their features behind subscriptions. With simple Markdown files I can edit my notes with anything, including my beloved Vim.

Work

Another short week at work, 7th of April was the first day of Easter (Good Friday). But I went to the office twice, on Monday and Wednesday, for 1-on-1s with the folks from my team, to support them with their Development Plans.

Hacking

I had plans to work on the Webpage Feature of my native omg.lol client for macOS, but decided to work a little bit on Micro.publish, my Obsidian plugin to post to Micro.blog.

Readwise’s plugin for Obsidian automatically fetches highlights and notes when Obsidian launches, so I decided to do the same for Micro.blog categories. Now, when the user opens Obsidian, it fetches the categories one has on their blogs.

The command to force fetch categories is still present and can be used at any time to retrieve categories (e.g., in case new categories were added directly to Micro.blog while Obsidian was open).

Another feature I’ve added is the ability to schedule a post for a future date. I usually don’t scheduled my posts, but it’s a nice feature to have.

I’ve also updated my blog’s colors to match the Obsidian dark theme I use, and used Xcode dark colors for the code snippets. Feels much more natural to me now.

Photography

During the week I published another page to my Digital Garden, Obscura, where I detail the setup I have to take Monochrome photos using the app.

Later during the week I updated the page to include the missing piece in my setup, which was causing Glass not to show the EXIF of my photos.

After talking to Ben, Software Engineer behind Obscura, we found what was missing, and now my setup is exactly the way I wanted it to be: Monochrome photos by default, saving JPEG SOOC, and with EXIF preserved, ready to share online (or not).

Personal

tinyScientist is officially six months old. I was browsing some of his early pictures and it’s crazy how much things have changed in such a short time. This week he tried Parsnip and Potato. He loved the first, but didn’t enjoy the latter that much. Pumpkin is still this favorite.

Browsing Disney+ I found Devs, a Hulu TV Show I had no idea existed. It’s an 8-episode miniseries about free will and determinism where Nick Offerman runs a tech company with quantum technology to… It doesn’t matter, it’s Nick Offerman. Interesting show, watched the entire thing.

Last week Bear released Bear 2 Beta on TestFlight and, as a big Bear fan, I downloaded it to try. The editor was rebuilt from scratch, adding features users were asking for a long time. One of my favorite features is backlinks, something all Obsidian users know well. Currently Bear supports [[WikiLinks]], allowing one to link another note (as Obsidian does), but the new version implements backlinks, showing which pages link the one selected. It also shows pages that mention the page but don’t link them (Unlinked Mention). This is big! I exported all my Zettelkasten notes from Obsidian and imported on Bear and will use it for now on. And it’s a native application, and I’m a sucker for good native applications.

I’m using Arc from The Browser Company as default browser in my work computer for a few months, and I’m loving it. The way the tabs are managed, the different spaces, and profiles, the pinned tabs, etc… I’m the kind of person who can’t handle multiple tabs open at the same time, quickly getting lost in a see of tiny favicons. Arc changed that completely, I can easily keep several sites open simultaneously and, more importantly, find my way in it.

Thursday Arc released Arc for iPhone. It’s not a browser but a bookmark manager. It gives access to Spaces, Easel, and Notes one has on their computer. And offers the ability to create new tabs by importing URLs from other apps via the iOS’ share sheet. Still not sure how useful it is; time will tell.

Work

Most of the time I work from home, but if there’s a day I like to go to the office, this day is Monday. It’s the day I have most of my meetings (Retrospective, Planning, 1-on-1s), and it’s the day the kitchen is restocked. Big day.

On Wednesday we had a public Meshnet Meetup, open to the community where the team talked about the feature and technical details and concepts on networking and how the whole architecture was designed and built. My macOS team works on Meshnet, and I’m happy to see the company promoting and talking about what we’re building openly. We even released some of the libraries as open source software. And, as in most meetups, tons of pizza and beer.

During March I experienced 4-day workweeks, but this week I had two days off, Thursday and Friday. Finally used all my vacation days from 2022.

Hacking

I finished the Now Pages support on my omg.lol app for macOS. The implementation allows the user to update their Now Pages and keeps a history of previous edits, in case the user wants to roll back a version.

Additionally, I’ve added a way to share the Now Page as a Status in the Statuslog.

Next week I plan to add the Webpage feature, so that users can edit their pages. Once that’s done, I will decide on how to release the application. I don’t know if Open Source or not, if AppStore or direct download (as Micro.blog and NetNewsWire). But I want to get it out before implementing the blog support, which will be a bit more complex.

Photography

First year I managed to complete Micro.blog’s March Photo Challenge. I created a category and added all my photos there,. These are my favorites:

• Solitude - JPEG, SOOC with a Fujifilm X100V
• Engineering - JPEG, SOOC with a Fujifilm X100V
• Road - JPEG, SOOC with a Fujifilm X100V
• Portico - JPEG, SOOC with a Fujifilm X100V
• Court - JPEG, SOOC with Obscura 3
• Support - JPEG, SOOC with Obscura 3

I’m planning to write a blog post (or Digital Garden entry) about Obscura 3, the setup I have, and why it’s my favorite iPhone camera app.