More about those blog drafts
Dear reader Martin emailed me to chat about my hasty blog-drafts post and ask for some more details. So, everybody, if you don’t care for this post, blame Martin. 😁
My prior blogging workflow looked something like this:
work.computer > ssh home.computer
home.computer > mkblog
Enter your blog title: My fourth-least-favorite cereal
Created ~/Obsidian/Blog/2026-02-23 My fourth-least-favorite cereal.md
The script prepends some boilerplate frontmatter to the file and then opens it in $EDITOR.
The purpose of this workflow was to let me blog semi-privately from my work laptop because it’s so often the machine I have with me.
Before I wrote mkblog, I was using Obsidian’s community Templater plugin to prompt for the title and create the file.
I switched to the SSH and the shell script after deciding to remove all my personal notes from my work laptop, which meant I could no longer run Obsidian locally.
This worked nicely in most respects but was annoying in others. For example, if I’m on an iPad or my phone, which I don’t have set up to SSH and run that shell script, then it’s a little kludgy to create the file in the right place in Obsidian, the date prefix, the frontmatter, etc. (Yes, I know I can SSH from my iPad, but I don’t want to bother.)
In other words, I’d optimized my blogging workflow for my work computer at the expense of the experience on my personal devices. That seemed backward.
Meanwhile, I started taking handwritten notes again at work, first on paper, and then briefly on a reMarkable tablet (mentioned here; I want to write more about that), and ultimately on my 12.9” iPad. After returning the reMarkable, I decided to reinvest some of those dollars into the iPad rig by buying a used Magic Keyboard off Ebay.
And with that move, I now have a great, personal writing device along for the ride at work.
I can start using that device instead of my work laptop anytime I feel the itch to write.
And iA Writer on an iPad — any iPad, large or small — is :chefs-kiss:.
The new, ride-along iPad begged the question: was I still getting much benefit from old workflow, bothering with SSH and shell scripts and network latency on every keystroke while writing?
The hypothetical value was in keeping my private journal entries and blog posts together, both with date prefixes, giving me a tidy historical record of my thoughts, interests, and writing. But in practice, I almost never saw much benefit from this.
Plus, if I were to ever move my blog to another platform, the source of truth would be the Bear Blog export, not Obsidian. And, if I decided I really did want my journal and blog posts together, I could write a script to merge that export back into Obsidian.
So, for the time being, I’ve decided that I am not getting the intended value from the old workflow. Meanwhile, I’m excited by the serenity and elegance of opening iA Writer and just writing. My words — literally only my words and nothing else, no menu bar or status bar or dock or anything — on the glossy, Retina display of the iPad.
Like I said, :chefs-kiss:.