Lost in the Weeds

Templater, Dataview, Javascript, Dataview Javascript (DVJS), Callouts, Callouts with inline query syntax, oh my!

The more I play with Obsidian and its features/plug-ins, the deeper the rabbit hole goes. Just ask my partner: while he's playing "Civilization VI" on his computer or "Final Fantasy Tactics"on the TV, I'm losing myself in the world of Obsidian. I can't tell you how long it has been since something has engrossed me this much, and it's only the beginning. Days, evenings, his days off, at some point or another throughout the day I'm linking, compiling, and creating notes so that I might finally, finally, catch up on the 120+ sessions of transcripts.

And for once? It feels feasible, and it's all because I can use a little bit of script to tell me, for example, what sessions and days a character appears in-game as long as I've linked them within the transcript or have added their name to the specific day they appeared.

Days and Session #'s Professor Wysaqirelle (nicknamed Professor Wyse by Cael) appears

Filling out other details becomes a time-consuming cinch. I narrow unlinked mentions from 5k+ results to maybe a few hundred, limiting the files I need to sift through from everything in my vault to those containing the "Transcript" property or the in-game day itself. This becomes especially useful when Cael has contacted someone such as Professor Wyse pretty much every day and I only want to know which sessions Wyse himself has actually made an appearance.

I wish I was joking, but this shows only a small handful of the days that Cael has been in contact with their professor through magic. There are 78 files, thus 78 days, where they have done so.

Thankfully, he's an outlier, and most characters are only going to appear in a handful of sessions.

Obsidian callouts let certain pieces of information pop, useful for ongoing quests or time-sensitive material. Really, the possibilities are endless, and I keep discovering just how infinite they are with each new discovery.

Heck, I just now thought about this, but I could keep a master file that tracks the current known whereabouts of every single character we've met just through a simple Base query. I'll actually do so right now. Currently it's 15:38.

It took me 2 minutes to create a simple master file that I can edit directly without having to go to each individual character file to update.

Truly, I am giddy, and this is only a snapshot of one of the basest functionalities I've begun to implement. I do see that I forgot to exclude the "Character Template" from the note, but that should be a simple fix.

Is all this fluff necessary? Probably not, but working on the layout and seeing the gaps starting to fill fires up those dopamine receptors in a way not much else does.

I should really sit down at some point and pick apart what it is about this sort of undertaking that consumes my interest and attention so.

Other Notable Accomplishments:

• My parents and my older sister visited yesterday, so most of the day was spent socializing with them.

• Got all of the correspondence between Cael and other characters compiled into the relevant in-game-day notes.

• Learning all of these different scripts has been rocky, and I often get confused on the syntax because I'm trying to learn so much at once, but I think it'll even out as I grow more comfortable with each plug-in's syntax. The hardest part is trying not to rely on Gemini too much as a crutch, but I've been failing at that.

Real Talk:

• I may have asked this before, but what absorbs you to the point where you forget to eat or go to bed at a decent time? How does that near-obsession drive you? When was the last time you felt it, or are you currently experiencing it?

This Week's Obligatory Cat Pic: Qiri

No coons were harmed in the making of this hat.