2024-11-15 - can I update the site using my phone

Hey visitor and dear reader,

If you haven't discovered, you should click the "ladies and gentlemen we're floating in space" text in the sites' subtitle. You can play the album for free - it's all over the place - both subdued and chaotic at times. Maybe put it on in the background? That's what I've been doing.

Today's update might as well be filed under website documentation. Perhaps I'll make that it's own note one day....

For those interested in the less technical and more philosophical, I'm starting to flesh out some of the motivations behind this website. I swear this will stop getting so self-referential eventually. Read on if you're interested in me going to absurd lengths to get something working that will probably end up breaking in a few updates anyway...

So I am pursuing something a bit excessing for this website, but it seems like a fun challenge and one that is fairly within reach. Obsidian has a mobile client that can sync your "vault" (this is just what Obsidian calls your main folder of notes and settings - something accessible yet self-contained and portable). Here is my vision:

It's a bit overkill - when am I ever going to be that far away form my desktop for that long where I would need to update something crucial to you, dear reader? I don't know, but it seems like it would be pretty neat to make.

There's just 1 minor problem, that in my use case, becomes fairly major. The obsidian to html plug-in written by Nathan George (discussed a bit further here), has a bug - the shortcut for exporting one's notes is broken. I have to do a series of 2 mouse clicks that cannot be automated nearly as easily as the one-hot-key for exporting notes.

As a believer in open source, I went straight to the source and started a discussion regarding my problem:

I find that I generally get involved in open source projects once I have used the project enough to have a) really enjoyed it and b) found some glaring error within it that I'd like to fix. I wonder how many folks join open source projects for the same reason.

from earlier this morning

This is just a test, albeit a public one. Obsidian has an iPhone app, and you can sync your local obsidian vault with your phone via the cloud and voila.

All I need is a script to automatically update the website when it notices a file change and I should be okay. That’s going to involve a few steps - first we have to monitor the folder for changes, then we need to automate the exporting of the obsidian notes to html, then we just use a simple bat file to automate the upload to neocities.

Let’s see what can be done…

Yesterday's post.