2025-06-17
Obsidian, Dia, Disneyland.
I'm writing this, unusually, from within Obsidian, because I'm trying to generate a little more of my stuff from within here. Obsidian is a good thinking space for me, and swapping out to other apps disrupts the flow of that thinking.
I was using Ulysses, which I do still love, but I recently moved my novel out to Scrivener, to get a better structural overview of where I am and where I'm going. The act of doing so caused a question mark to hover over my use of Ulysses as a writing app. How much is it useful for? Am I using it when I don't really need it?
I'm a huge IA Writer fan, and Obsidian lets me switch directly into IA Writer with no fuss, in order to write in a distraction-free interface. With some jiggery-pokery, Scrivener does the same. Am I clinging to Ulysses just because I like it? Is there anything wrong with that?
Against my better judgement, I am trying out the new Dia browser from The Browser Company. Dia is their sort-of replacement for Arc, and it is quite relentlessly AI-driven. I honestly don't know how I feel about this yet - it's not generating stuff, but it summarises pages, compares tabs etc. Mostly stuff I don't need, but the browser itself is nice and minimal and the people at the Browser Company, if Arc is anything to go by, are working towards an interesting vision of how we use the internet.
Leaving you today with this piece from Cal Newport, which I read this morning:
Study Hacks