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  "path": "/2026/02/16/ptpl-195-2-links-1-idea-plain-notes",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-15T22:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://ellanew.com",
  "tags": [
    "Thymer",
    "Silver Bullet",
    "Bauhaus Clock",
    "full letters of appreciation",
    "Using one writing tool per writing task can help you stay focused",
    "email subscribers",
    "Medium",
    "RSS",
    "Mastodon",
    "Bluesky",
    "support jar",
    "Gumroad store",
    "Comfort Quotes",
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  "textContent": "## Tools and inspiration to enhance your plain text practice\n\nLast week I promised to talk about filtering information with the built-in Search plugin in Obsidian. While that is busy cooking, here are two links and one idea to brighten up your plain text workflow.\n\n### Link 1: Thymer Notes for techies (not me; might be you)\n\n_“ The IDE for tasks, notes, and planning”_\n\nThymer is a new way to take notes that looks to _potentially_ fit well with my no-gatekeeper rule, _if_ you self-host. The website looks promising. Silver Bullet is another self-hosted notes solution I’ve mentioned before, that gets a higher score than Thymer. It truly keeps data human readable and local.\n\n### Link 2: Bauhaus Clock version 2 (new release), Mac only\n\n_“ Turn waiting into watching”_\n\nI love the way Atilla Taşkıran approaches his work. He’s putting in details that perhaps no one but him will ever know are there, and building it to be as perfect as a digital clock screensaver can possibly be. And people are responding with not just positive feedback, but full letters of appreciation!\n\nThis is not a cheap utility. It doesn’t materially improve my notes. But it makes me smile, and inspires me to put the same amount of care into my work each time I see it.\n\n### Idea: Using one writing tool per writing task can help you stay focused\n\nCogmodo uses Drafts for short form writing, BBEdit for processing final drafts, iA Writer for journal entries, Obsidian as a personal database, and Ulysses for complex, longform writing.\n\nI use Drafts for initial ideas, VS Code for plain text accounting, and Obsidian for pretty much everything else.\n\nWhat about you?\n\n* * *\n\n### A note for email subscribers:\n\nFor the past few months you’ve been receiving summaries of posts every three weeks. That was supposed to save me time and cognitive load, but I felt deep down there was a better way.\n\nThe kinds of emails I genuinely enjoy receiving have these things in common:\n\n  * They arrive on a predictable schedule\n  * The subject line clearly tells me what’s inside\n  * The topic is pertinent to my interests more than 90% of the time\n  * They don’t take long to read, and there’s something of value I can apply right away\n  * There’s a link to more information\n\n\n\nSo that’s what I’m striving for. As always, no hard feelings if you unsubscribe. You can also read almost everything I publish on Medium (and it supports me when paying members do that), but the most reliable way to know when new posts drop will always be the RSS feed!\n\n* * *\n\n_💬 I love to hear from readers! email hello at ellanew dot com or message me on Mastodon or Bluesky._\n\n_If you get value from my work I invite you to share this post with someone you think will like it and / or contribute to mysupport jar.  You may also like to check out the free resources on my productivity themed Gumroad store or the Comfort Quotes I made to help people going through tough times._\n\n_You can follow my RSS feed https://ellanew.com/feed.rss, or sign up to receive posts in your inbox._",
  "title": "PTPL 195 · 2 Links and 1 Idea to Make Plain Notes More Enjoyable"
}