Coefficiencies Newsletter Issue 4

Welcome to the Coefficiencies newsletter issue 4! A few short links this week about new Apple stuff, another video game I’m digging, some Obsidian nerdery, and a little bit of reflection about self-care. Let’s dig in!

Apple Week #

The new Apple stuff dropped this week: new phones (including the very sleek-looking iPhone Air), new AirPods Pro (they look awesome), new Apple Watches, and new OSes across the board!

It’s not new-phone time for me (I have an iPhone 15 Pro, and I’m trying to make my phones last 3–4 years these days) but it was new-watch time! I had a very dependable Series 5 that I’ve had for six years, which feels like a lifetime with modern tech. It was the first one with an always-on display, which was a game changer for me at the time. But the battery was barely making it through the day, and it wasn’t getting updates anymore. So this year I went fancy and got the new Ultra 3. I love it. It’s definitely a big watch, but I’ve always loved the look of it, and it’s nice having a battery that will last 2–3 days—enough that I can sleep with it on to track my sleep (I’m a terrible sleeper and I want to improve it). And I’m really feeling the six-year performance bump too—everything just feels snappier on it. As I mentioned last issue, it comes with cellular, and I’m going to get a cellular plan for it to try going “phone free” more often when I go out.

Here’s my new watch, all set up. Handsome!

Oh, and I’m actually digging the new OSes too. Liquid Glass is a fun design improvement, and I think a lot of the legibility concerns were overblown. It’s mostly been fine for me. And I’m really digging macOS Tahoe, especially the Spotlight improvements that let you run Shortcuts and do a bunch of other geeky stuff right from Spotlight. Plus it has a clipboard history! Jason Snell over at Six Colors had a great review of macOS Tahoe.

Hollow Knight #

The sequel to Hollow Knight, Silksong, came out this month, so I felt like it was time to try the original. It took me a bit of time, but I’m really digging it so far. The Metroid series was one of my favorite series ever, and Hollow Knight is a “Metroidvania” style game, and so far it’s hitting that sweet spot for me of exploration, upgrade, and fun (if anxiety-inducing) boss battles.

Making Obsidian Nicer #

I’m a very heavy Obsidian user, and I really do lean into it as my “second brain,” e.g. a place where I store just about everything of interest to me or that I want to remember for later. But one thing I’ve missed is the simplicity of the two-pane notes view, where you see a list of all your notes on the left, with a little summary, as a flat list, regardless of what folder they’re in, sorted from most recently updated to latest. Here’s an example of this style from Drafts, where I store very rough notes:

I just find this so much easier to navigate than Obsidian’s default “files and folders” view that looks like this:

All that is to say I was very excited to find the NoteBook Navigator Plugin for Obsidian this week. It gives me that sweet flat, Drafts-like list of notes, sorted from most recently modified to latest. Plus, it lets you pin notes to the top and add colours and icons to tags and folders which appear on the notes (I find colours help me a lot to identify things quickly). Here’s the example screen of how it looks.

Knowing When to Take a Break #

One of my favourite bloggers from way back, Lifehacker founder Gina Trapani, has a new blog (instant RSS subscribe for me) and she wrote a post this week about the sabbatical she’s currently on and knowing when to take one. As someone who just wrapped up a major, stressful project at work and hasn’t taken more than two weeks off work since I graduated university, this really resonated with me. A sabbatical sounds really nice right now. I definitely want to get myself in a (financial) position to make this happen soon.

Wrap Up #

That’s it for this week—hope you enjoyed it! I’m heading to Las Vegas this week for the Enterprise Tech Leadership conference. It’s run by Gene Kim, author of one of my favourite books ever about IT, The Phoenix Project. I’m going for work, but I’m also thinking I’ll discover some new ideas and weird Vegas things that might make it into the newsletter next week. Stay tuned!

—Tom