I digitise some of my handwritten stuff, but not all of them, just what I really want to keep or be searchable.
For that I created a simple Shortcut on my iPhone: take a photo > rotate it > resize by 20% > save file > rename > share with Obsidian and add it to either Daily Note or a specific note.
In Obsidian I have a Claude integration (Claudian Plugin) with an /ocr skill, which runs optical character recognition on the uploaded image and corrects any mistakes and adds some markdown formatting. I have a pretty ugly handwriting but it still does a great job and gets it like 95% right.
All this results in a lightweight (~200kb) image in chosen note in my Obsidian vault with a transcribed and edited text below it.
Generally I’m a big fan of Obsidian because it’s very intuitive and customisable. Like I also have an Excalidraw plugin there for example :)
But most things start in one of my notebooks before they get ingested into obsidian just because I like to handwrite and stay away from my phone as much as possible
As far as pencils go, I got annoyed by the “normal” pencils because their tips kept getting broken or flat and I would need to carry yet additional thing with me, a sharpener. So I looked into mechanical pencils and settled on a 0,5mm tip with HB or H leads. I ended up getting a couple of mechanical pencils to test out and then gave away most of them as gifts to friends. I really liked the Pentel Graphgear 500 for its metal grip which make it well balanced; the uni-ball kuru toga for its rotating tip that keeps the lead sharp at all times; and the Parker jotter for its full stainless steel body. They are each like 10-15€ on Amazon and I think they are all great quality and just fun tools to use
For that I created a simple Shortcut on my iPhone: take a photo > rotate it > resize by 20% > save file > rename > share with Obsidian and add it to either Daily Note or a specific note.
In Obsidian I have a Claude integration (Claudian Plugin) with an /ocr skill, which runs optical character recognition on the uploaded image and corrects any mistakes and adds some markdown formatting. I have a pretty ugly handwriting but it still does a great job and gets it like 95% right.
All this results in a lightweight (~200kb) image in chosen note in my Obsidian vault with a transcribed and edited text below it.
Generally I’m a big fan of Obsidian because it’s very intuitive and customisable. Like I also have an Excalidraw plugin there for example :)
But most things start in one of my notebooks before they get ingested into obsidian just because I like to handwrite and stay away from my phone as much as possible
As far as pencils go, I got annoyed by the “normal” pencils because their tips kept getting broken or flat and I would need to carry yet additional thing with me, a sharpener. So I looked into mechanical pencils and settled on a 0,5mm tip with HB or H leads. I ended up getting a couple of mechanical pencils to test out and then gave away most of them as gifts to friends. I really liked the Pentel Graphgear 500 for its metal grip which make it well balanced; the uni-ball kuru toga for its rotating tip that keeps the lead sharp at all times; and the Parker jotter for its full stainless steel body. They are each like 10-15€ on Amazon and I think they are all great quality and just fun tools to use