this is a small collection of applications i’ve been using. most of these involve health or lifestyle.

obsidian

• what it’s for: taking notes
• platforms: basically everything
• price: free for personal use

this program has really gotten me to get more organized in one aspect of my life: taking notes for d&d. for that, i find this program to be amazing. it has a really steep learning curve, which is really weird to think about for a note taking program. the learning curve stems from the fact that learning markdown is important, and there is a lot of functionality that’s enabled by plugins made by the community.

the phrase that sums up obsidian for me is “you get out of it what you put in.” if you want something to take notes in and you want to leave it that, it’s too barebones. if you put in the effort to learn it, you can do so much more with it that you can’t with other similar programs. it’s a godsend for taking great d&d notes, and there are two sources i want to plug that gave me everything i needed to get started.

if you’re a DM, josh plunkett’s videos on youtube are fantastic for showing you how you can use obsidian’s extensive plugins to make some magic happen behind the screen. i’ve been using less of the plugins since i use foundry and i don’t over-prepare for my games anymore.

if you’re a player, this great video by nicole van der hoeven showcases an amazing setup. personally, i paid for her patreon so i could download her vault myself. my one criticism with her setup is that it’s extremely disorganized.

diarium

• what it’s for: keeping a journal/diary
• platforms: basically everything (except linux 😔)
• price: it depends

i picked up the hobby of journaling after reading an incredibly insightful comment on reddit a few years ago. i tried keeping my stuff in a big google docs file. it didn’t work out for me since google docs was very clearly not designed for this one specific purpose. enter: diarium. it looked really cool and exactly what i was looking for, although the pricing was something that didn’t leave me feeling enthusiastic.

the price model is unusual. there’s no free model, and no central server or anything for diarium to check premium status. it’s instead spread out and sold across multiple app stores. the upside to this is that there’s no subscription fee, unlike a lot of other great journaling apps. the major downside, however, is that you have to buy it on every platform you want separately. i managed to get lucky and snag an android and windows copy over the holidays for about $10 total. i’ve been very happy with my purchase!

i struggled to write every day in google docs because of how much of a chore it felt like to get the formatting set up the way i wanted. with this, i just go in and write, then i’m done. you can add photos to your journal entries, and if you do, it displays them as thumbnails in the calendar view. this has indirectly inspired me to take more pictures, and i’ve found that i’ve been able to take a photo of something i’ve seen or something one of my friends has said that i want to remember. this was so worth the money for me.

zero

• what it’s for: tracking and logging fasts
• platforms: ios & android
• price: free, paid options

this one is rather simple. i really like fasting—i often switch between 16:8 and 20:4—in order to keep myself from midnight snacking. i discovered that while i’m not a visual learner, i do highly benefit from being able to see things laid out before my eyes. diarium’s calendar view is a great example of this. zero provides a nice timer for me to look at, and it activates the part of my brain that likes keeping streaks going. i have no idea what the paid options even do. there’s a whole lot more to the app, though i haven’t even looked at any of it. i just like my timers.

voicemeeter potato

• what it’s for: virtually mixing audio
• platforms: windows
• price: free (donationware)

be warned—this program has a learning curve to it if you’ve never used any physical or virtual audio mixers. i enjoy what this software enables me to do. i primarily use it so that i can have 3 separate audio tracks when i save highlights with OBS: game audio, my microphone, and anyone talking to me over discord. having clips saved this way means that i can go in and fine tune the audio levels in editing so that everything sounds perfect. i’ve also streamed once or twice while in a discord call with everything except for the game muted.