Bernie Goldbach

Local first then smart plugins

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 11:05:35 +0100

It’s been two years since I adjusted my laptop’s white space to a look similar to that spawned by IA Writer. More importantly, I’ve kept my focus on writing–both on my keyboard devices and on my phone. This focus relegates any sort of chat. In my freshly pruned workspace, the chat lane stays on the side for routed, context-rich, longer-running work inside my Obsidian Vaults.

If I need to go deep, I toggle outside for Pro versions with chat sessions. That includes e-mail and Signal. It’s going to involve Telegram soon.

If you’re interested in my plumbing, Smart Chat API Pro is where I run per-thread routing, richer context handling, and higher-control chat workflows.

Thinking clearer with visual dashboards

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 10:45:59 +0100

I am trying to visualise my work more precisely by auditing my routines several times a week. The main focal point is a colour-coded productivity doughnut (above). I want to present this framework of productivity to university researchers who are interested in amplifying their work with a knowledge management framework. It means Using Claude Cowork as a Research Assistant.

My Projects Dashboard is just a start. It springs from what Ethan Mollick calls “jagged frontier” AI use. At this juncture, observed during edtech26 in Ireland, my AI handles tasks (vault metadata parsing, HTML rendering, chart generation) that was always disproportionately time-consuming for me. I used to push this kind of task onto second year User Experience students and let them spin up samples during four hours of lab work. Now, because of Claude, I retain full ownership of my taxonomy, my priorities, and the meaning of my data.

Ten years ago, I shared Newport’s prescription to sports and fitness business students to show them how they should replace shallow-work overhead by deep work by making project-state information available at a glance, without context-switching. Now I’ve taken that precept and grounded it in my own highlighted principle from my Obsidian Vault.

Today, the hard part is not the output. Now the hard part is thinking about what the visually appealing dashboard tells me and how to continue evolving with tools which can lift me to higher levels of clearer thinking. Because Claude has relieved me of the busy work, I have a better focus for getting things done.

Hoping Siri gets as smart as my Gemini

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 21:46:37 +0100

I’ve bought six iPhones in my life and expect to buy only four more. It looks like the next two that I buy will come with Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence–but probably only if I buy the iPhone in the States with an American address. As a paying Gemini Pro user, I know something had to be done to make Siri a proper virtual assistant.

The WWDC shorts suggest much of the computer processing required to answer questions would happen on iPhones and other devices themselves, but not in data centres, where personal information is exposed to greater risk. But for the deep research I can do with Claude, I have to jump out into the cloud. I’m interested in how Apple handles those deep research requests while protecting them from outsiders. I hope Adrian Weckler has more insights on this issue after he returns from Cupertino. And I wonder if the only way to have personal intelligence on an Apple device bought in Europe is to install another AI on it.

That’s my iPhone 8 box with a freshly cracked screen inside, 29 hours from giving the phone to my daughter.

The cost of feeding my plastic brain

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 22:46:00 +0100

I have a plastic brain. At least that is what neuroscientists tell me and I’ve noticed some of those experts also believe my use of artificial intelligence might be readjusting how I think. And my enjoyment of AI is also taxing my neighbours.

Listening to David Lee, PwC Ireland’s Chief Technology Officer, I realise I’m one of many who have enjoyed the democratisation of new intelligence because I can talk to several flavours of AI just with my phone. He believes there is a risk of not leaning into AI. “I can tell you for a fact that the technology will be better in three months' time. An better again in six months.”

Use it and learn–that’s what I recommend to people taking the AI training I conduct with small groups in Ireland. Some of the most valuable opportunities are often identified by employees closest to day-to-day operations. “Senior leadership aren’t always in the the weeds of how everything works,” says David O’Sullivan from Forvis Mazars. Some of the best use cases I’ve heard suggested during sessions with the Irish Innovation Skillnet come from junior staff and middle management.

From the other side of the Atlantic, Christopher S. Penn offers timely observations about how the real value of artificial intelligence lies in turning data into insights. Chris runs Trust Insights and his encyclopedic knowledge is at least three months ahead of the average office analyst.

Over in the States, Irwin Stelzer notes almost 61 per cent of Americans believer the country is on the wrong track, 55 per cent say they find it a severe hardship to maintain their current standard of living, 76 per cent believe economic conditions are getting worse. American consumer sentiment is at its lowest point since the University of Michigan Survey began in 1952. Blame the grumpiness on Trump’s Ailing Economy.

I see a lot of this grumpiness in videos I watch on YouTube. I respect those grump voices more when their videos are from real people with their authentic voices. There is too much AI slop contaminating online videos and in a large swath of written materials. Brigit Kolen, Roger Overall, and I are trying to show people the value of authentic voices in a project we’re formulating.

Those real voices will form part of our Authentic Stories project. In a perfect world, we might get a mention on Ireland’s most popular radio programme. That’s Morning Ireland, the show that 452,00 people tune into every morning. If ever there is a time when people will listen to live radio, it’s when they wake up. Even in this age of always-on news, people want to hear what new day brings.

And with audio, you don’t have to look at a screen. And the news is in your car.

One of the discussions forming part of the daily conversations revoles around data centres springout up around Ireland. That’s becuse data centres could suck up more electricity by the end of thedecade than all the houses in ireland use. In Ireland, data centres consume about 22 per cent of electiricty output, compared to 28 per cent for homes.

To hear the government explain it, data centres are a “critical component of the infrastructure underpinning modern digital economies”. So as long as Ireland courts large multinationals, data centres will be part of the landscape.

Local and national radio give prominent coverage to a recent report commissioned by Friends of the Earth and Beyond Fossil Fuels. Written by Sean Fearon, the report claims data centres are pushing up household electricity prices. The report claims an estimated average of €360 was added to household electricity bills between 2015 and 2023 due to high data centre energy demand. The report warns that depending on the growth of the data centre sector, the average Irish household could pay a further €295 to €644 cumulatively from 2025 to 2034. This means Irish households have “effectively been paying a hidden data centre tax on their electricity bills.

And since I’m a heavy user of AI, perhaps I should offer to offset the cost of my neighours who don’t want to see the logo of an AI accompanying anything they do.

Maxxing out and Pareto

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 10:07:51 +0100

I have slipped into Whoopmaxxing but don’t feel bad about it. That’s because I know I need to be pragmatic, not perfectionist. I try to operate with a grounded understanding of the Pareto Principle, which states that, for many outcomes, roughly 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort.

I invest in my own fitness by following the advice of people who are certified in their specialties. Some of those specialists are embedded in the conversations I have with the Whoop app every day. The lesson I have learned is that I can gain the most from going from zero to one, but then I encounter dwindling efficiency. Pareto says that likely around 80%–where the efficiency frontier begins to collapse.

So this is me, moving from doing nothing during an intense edtech conference and then getting stuck back into daily walks, 10k cycling routes, and drinking lots of water. Those activities confer significant benefits.

And here is a message for you readers who are gym rats: working out every day vs. 4x/week will yield diminishing returns. That’s the Pareto Principle applied to Fitnessmaxxing.

Notes from the second day #edtech26

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 21:32:42 +0100

I enjoy learning where ideas originate and during the second keynote of edtech26 in Dublin, I learned some of Felicitas Macgilcrhist’s ideas coalesced after reading The Anxious Generation

I spent three long days on the St Pat’s campus of DCU during #edtech26 this week, upskilling and learning how to teach and learn better. I almost didn’t make the cut because I forgot to register but Rob Lowney fabricated a lanyard for me and Gavin Hendrick gave me a sticker for the over-booked conference dinner. #win

This was easily the largest edtech conference in Ireland. I’ve a public photo album from edtech events and my first recollection is from 2006 in the photos.

More than 270 people were in the in the main foyer and in the auditorium during the 2026 edtech conference.

I asked my handset to find the most pertinent sessions, based on information in my Personal Knowledge Management system. It took Obsidian less than five minutes to book calendar items and room numbers. I didn’t know who was going to be presenting but Obsidian knew the top line items and found exceptionally relevant sessions for me. I summarised them in the accompanying three minute video.

I had a mission to find Leigh Graves Wolf and Ken McCarhty during coffee breaks. They are on edtech prayer cards that I carry so I feel like I've completed a missionary journey whenever I meet them. I also ran into Eoin Campbell from my 1999 XML days. #throwback

Before the event began, I found a quiet corner to share ethical and sustainable uses of AI with Frances O’Donnell. We had to keep a minivan full of ATU staff at bay as we ploughed through connectors, projects, calendars, API calls, and artifacts.

Eamon Costello passed the edtech torch off to Eleanor Walsh will light edtech27 proceedings in Mary Immaculate College. If you need pro tips about how to get to the MaryI campus or where to stay or which Treaty City pubs treat higher education with the greatest respect, ping me or cross over and get better advice from Donnacha Hurley.

Affirming the need to break down complex spreadsheets

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:19:11 +0100

I am planning the final training session of a 12-hour programme that leads mid-career professionals towards their efficient use of AI for personal productivity. During the penultimate training session, most of the 40 attendees wanted to extend their understanding of the use of AI to break down complex spreadsheets.

Otter in my thinking hand

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 10:42:24 +0100

I do a lot of thinking while talking to myself and I think that’s good. Today I have my Otter in my hand. I’ve been trying to tame my Otter. It behaves like a polite observer when it’s in my hand or in my shirt pocket.

Leveraging my digital critic

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:38:56 +0100

I use several flavours of AI as my pocket crit. Today, Gemini is helping me synthesize a few important points. I’m microblogging them from my Obsidian vault so it’s easier for colleagues to join the discussion.

1.The Cognitive Load of Visuals: Intro & Theory.

Tie Kahneman's System 2 thinking to how humans process dense data vs. clean visualisations. Explain how AI mitigates human cognitive offloading risks.

2.The AI Video & Audio Landscape: Tools & Platforms.

Introduce the practical tech stack for multimedia production (including mobile journalism workflows). Contrast surface-level content generation with deep, sustainable knowledge gathering.

3.Prompting for High-Precision Visuals: Framework Application.

Show a side-by-side comparison of a lazy prompt vs. a highly structured GCAO / RACE prompt used to clean and graph complex R&D data sets.

4.Breakout Challenge: Automated Pipeline: Hands-on Exercise.

We need to give clear, numbered instructions for participants to upload a technical document, ask an AI to extract key patterns, and map it into a functional workflow diagram.

5.The Sovereignty Warning: Data Security & PKM.

I don’t think people realise how maintaining an air-gapped second brain offers a clear advantage when trying to keep data private. I believe in the absolute necessity of backing up prompts (they’re in my Swipes folder) and workflows locally (using markdown/Obsidian) to prevent total data dependency loss.

Planning to meet like-minded at edtech2026 in Dublin.

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:25:23 +0100

I am headed to edtech2026 for the annual ITLA.ie conference, hoping to have a few meaningful chats with people who want to trade tips about productive workflows. I image the main foyer in St Pat’s College will look like the wide photo I snapped 10 years ago (above).

I’m bringing a notebook containing Swipes (useful prompts) for people who want to share how they use clever tools.

I’ve enjoyed the biggest jump in my productivity by tweaking a digital dashboard of my research and production. I want to trade ideas with others who use dashboards during their workflows. The one below shows an output developed by Claude using content from my Obsidian Vault.

This is the dashboard file that Claude created on 1 June 2026. Its hyperlinks work only if you have my Obsidian vault installed. I share elements of my Vault with two others by using the Relay Community Plug-in.

projects-dashboard-2026-06-01.html

Telling stories with colourful dots

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:23:06 +0100

I learn from the data visualisations I get from my knowledge graph when it is depicted as colourful nodes. Brian Petro explains it better than me.

When I see a graph like the one above, I can select sources for deeper dives into the content by opening their underlying notes. Smart Connections inside my Obsidian vault gives me quick summaries that anchor the area I’ve tapped to open.

Then I can copy all or part of the selection as wikilinks. Those wikilinks turn a region of interest into a reading list or a reading trail.

If I want to connect the text to deeper information that may sit in another one of my personal knowledge network, I send the selection into Smart Context to start well-focused work with another location like my Google Drive where Claude can access.

And if that little excursion doesn’t focus my effort, I make a tighter slice of the graph. The shape and sizes of those colourful graphs often tells a story faster than a concise paragraph or bulleted list.

Enjoying the Smart Connections dance on my phone

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 08:52:32 +0100

As a regular Obsidian user (on my phone, on my iPad Mini, and on my laptop), I enjoy the dancing screens that activate when I open Obsidian on my Samsung handset.

I also enjoy how I can explore Smart Graph in the Connections view menu. Graph links now show directionality arrows (but they’re very tiny).

I’m trying to see if the “recency” ranking gives me an actionable “time-ago” scoring that I can use. It’s something one of my Claude dashboards can detect. It will be very cool to see this functionality directly inside Obsidian.

On my iPad Mini, being able to drag the graph view node into a note is very sweet. It drops a link like I’m dragging a result from a list.

All these features enhance the hands-on functionality of Obsidian for me and they keep me inside my Vault where I’m more likely to produce content like this blog post.

I’m posting this content directly from my Obsidian Vault to my microblog

Big win.

Weekly health check of my main Obsidian Vault

Sat, 30 May 2026 21:23:59 +0100

One of the my recurring weekend tasks is cross-checking if I've air-gapped more than 15,000 items from my main Obsidian Vault. I let Claude talk to that Vault.

I use a folder structure similar borrowed from Nick Milo's Ideaverse.

I'm often surprised by the things I've forgotten. I find those welcome forgotten ideas when I ask the local graph to display information for me.

Too many edits. Must recalibrate. #NTS

Thu, 28 May 2026 09:51:10 +0100

I realise I must dampen a personal habit that I inherited from my florist grandparents. They would spend endless hours tweaking floral arrangements, ensuring the bouquets and vases were perfectly composed. More than a century later, I am spending too much time tweaking content I use when conducting online AI training sessions. I get so engaged in the pursuit of the perfect deck that I overshoot bedtime.

My Whoop wristband documents the physiological effects of all this, triggering Whoop Coach’s prompts that should help me recover.

The bigger challenge is to see if I can convince my virtual self to produce a deck that I merely have to review and tweak.

Claude, are you listening?

Big fan of Veed

Tue, 26 May 2026 16:31:59 +0100

I first heard about VEED.io during an edtech conference in 2025 when a lecturer praised its ability to correct his eyes when they wandered off camera. Now my positive opinion is reinforced after discovering I can upload my own clips, edit them, and enhance my on-camera style.

I found out I can upload my own footage (like MP4 files from my glasses) into my VEED workspace. This requires a paid account.

I can also create new clips on the fly through VEED's screen recording. This happens directly inside my browser.

Once my clips are in the editor, I can trim them, merge multiple clips together, add text, generate automatic subtitles, or combine my original footage with elements from Veed's stock library.

According to Veed's terms and conditions, I retain full ownership and intellectual property rights to the content I upload. VEED.io's Terms of Service state that users own their uploaded content; the platform simply processes the files so I can edit, host, and export finished videos.

Finding perfect remote working spaces

Mon, 25 May 2026 10:10:00 +0100

I’ve been away from the classroom for one year now–the first long period since my sabbatical in 2002–and I’m carving out special places to think, write, and work with my iPad Mini. Near the top of my favourite thinking spaces is The Dean Hotel in Cork, Ireland. I snapped a shot of one of my quiet spaces. In each of my three appearances there, I’ve had exceptional table service from staff who come from other countries. Today, a Russian named Uschi brought me a perfect vegetarian pizza.

Loving Throwbacks

Thu, 21 May 2026 09:04:10 +0100

I enjoy a calming sensation when viewing a dozen images from photo albums that were magically saved in the cloud.

During Coffee with Claude Time

Thu, 21 May 2026 06:34:22 +0100

I keep my laptop off at night which means when I boot up in the morning, I’m greeted by Claude wanting to share my coffee as it starts a set of three tasks. While Claude scampers around to gather VAT receipts, make updates to several of my slide decks, and alerts me to money pots, I tap into Inoreader and Fabric to see what they’ve discovered while I was sleeping.

Letting Claude run part of my morning means I save more than 30 minutes before I finish my cup of coffee. It also means I have to review a set of scheduled tasks that I have set up to run automatically without me actively watching.

Being able to have Claude run scheduled tasks automatically is the second reason why I started paying for Claude Pro. The first reason to pay €22 a month to Claude is to get high quality writing that sounds like me. To inherit my authentic voice, I populated Claude with samples like this blog post. By doing that, Claude should produce text that appears to be written (or dictated) while I’m finishing my morning brew.

I started depending on simple Claude automations in early 2025. Letting Claude accomplish low-risk tasks like generating Morning Briefs or scavenging my rat’s nest of folders to compile information I really needed before I blocked it with my spam filters.

I still don’t let Claude send messages before I review them, make purchases, or take other actions that are difficult to undo. But I let Claude wake me up with annoying alarms when I finds a CLASS-A item while I’m sleeping.

I need to pause tasks that don’t need to run at the moment. They burn tokens and use electrical power. I think about reviewing my scheduled tasks that sit in the “Scheduled” page of Claude’s left sidebar. It’s not good for the earth to let a task run in the background if I’m not going to at least review its output. I also have some scheduled tasks running when my laptop is turned off. I’ll explain how that works in another blog post. You might be able to guess what I’m doing with Cloud-based services by scrolling through my Inside View photos.

Emotions sell stories

Tue, 19 May 2026 18:38:25 +0100

I listen to the Pivot podcast every week. On that show, Professor Scott Galloway (he pronounces his surname incorrectly) routinely tells Kara Swisher (she uses the nasal A with her given name) “the thing that resonates with people is the personal stories. The most-read post I’ve ever published was a post I wrote about putting my dog down. There’s a wide space for men of my age to talk about their emotions.”

Amen, brother. That is one reason we are starting Authentic Stories with American, Irish, and Dutch voices.

Framing up authentic storytelling

Tue, 19 May 2026 16:51:11 +0100

I am working with Roger Overall and Brigit Kolen to share a framework of authentic storytelling. Brigit and I ran down that rabbit hole when we shared our vision during a pre-conference Edulearn workshop in November 2025. We are amping up the sophistication through a set of frameworks that will help people create and visualise as they think about authentic storytelling in the era of AI.

Listen to “First go at Authentic Storytelling” on Spreaker.

Smart loop to prevent knowledge loss

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:48:49 +0100

“I’ve lost exceptionally valuable information once because I downgraded an AI to the free version.” I’ve shared my experience with mid-career professionals, explaining even though it is important to know how to prompt efficiently, it’s critically important to prevent loss of work.

There’s a tool called Smart Loop that turns AI from a one-off reply machine into a compounding workflow:

Note → AI → Better Note

Full breakdown at smartconnections.app/smart-loop/

Open Smart Graph.
Scan the visible clusters.
Select a promising note, cluster, or group of sources.
Use Focus cluster or Neighborhood to narrow the view.
Use your favorite chat to analyze a cluster

Select a cluster

Click "Add to context"
Copy the context to clipboard
Paste into your favorite chat for analysis
Share or save a cluster view
Use the camera icon in the bottom-right corner of the graph to capture the current view. The image will be copied to your clipboard and saved at the root of your vault.

Smart Graph is especially useful when list-based retrieval feels too flat when researching a broad topic, finding related source notes for synthesis, seeing boundaries between nearby ideas, spotting clusters worth exploring, turning visual exploration into AI-ready context.

Productivity through my knowledge graph

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:07:01 +0100

I teach university researchers how to achieve greater productivity through digitally transformed knowledge management. At the core of this effort sits the notes, lab reports, preliminary research findings, presentations, and peer-reviewed published work. To manage all these high quality nuggets of personal knowledge, I show my process from Obsidian. A the screencap above of my knowledge management, a depiction of how my current projects are part of a spider web of connected information.

I credit much of my current productivity to Obsidian and to the small team working with Stephen Ango aka Kepano. It’s easy to hear online discussions about the future of Obsidian. I reckon there are more than one million active users of this Open Source service. I think it’s a robust user base because I can find questions and comments every day on the social networks I use. In many cases, Obsisian users want to make the service more accessible.

Brian Petro is one of those vocal users. He developed Smart Connections, a very clever mechanism that shows clusters of related information to me from the material I have saved. The screencap above shows how my projects are connected.

I also enjoy how Brian has gamified Smart Collections. He has encoded a ladder of learning into his app. As I accomplish each task, Smart Collections ticks off my accomplishments. Here is a selection of several dozen tasks I need to accomplish.

Environment done 2/2

✓ Initial embedding completed, you are ready to make connections!

✓ Initial vault import completed (all sources discovered).

Connections 6/10

O Copied Connections results as a list of links.

✓ Dragged a Smart Connections result into a note to create a link.

✓ Hidden a connection item from the list.

O Previewed a connection by holding cmd/ctrl while hovering the result.

✓ Installed Smart Connections (core plugin).

✓ Opened a random connection from Smart Connections.

✓ Opened a Smart Connections result from the UI (list item or inline popover).

✓ Opened the connections view.

O Pinned a connection item in the list.

✓ Sent Connections results to Smart Context (turn discovery into a context pack).

Lookup 0/4

O Dragged a Smart Lookup result into a note to create a link.

✓ Submitted a lookup query (started a semantic search).

✓ Previewed a Smart Lookup result by holding cmd/ctrl while hovering.

O Opened a Lookup result.

I haven't incorporated the Obsidian Canvas into my daily planning sessions--yet. However, it's very effective as an entry point for new users. Obsidian Canvas will feature in an intensive desktop update for Obsidian that I will share with Frances O'Donnell.

I continue to use my Obsidian several times a day. I keep separate vaults for each of my main areas of interest. I hope to be among the daily drivers of Obsidian when it reveals the service is accommodating one billion of people daily,

Teaching the ninth cohort of AI for Personal Productivity

Wed, 13 May 2026 09:48:00 +0100

Back in November 2023, Dermot Casey asked me what I was covering when he saw me delivering a post-graduate academic module in digital transformation. I told him about my syllabus and that it integrated ChatGPT in the hands-on workshops. Dermot asked me to propose a short course AI for Personal Productivity and the Irish Research and Development Innovation Skillnet began offering the training in January 2024. We are running the ninth cohort of that training programme currently.

For posterity, I’m sharing a half hour video walk-through of one of the sessions that deals with setting up specific profiles for each of the four AI services that attendees normally use.

I’m using my Insideview.ie microblog to offer behind the scenes supercuts that often show how Larry Maguire and I are putting together the training materials. I’m also experimenting with field recording some of my behind the scenes moments. I used my DJI Osmo 360 for this short video.

Big fan of Veed.io for solving CODEC problems #win

Mon, 11 May 2026 08:25:42 +0100

I create and post-produce content for training programmes several times a week. During the past three months, the MP4 videos I create with Camtasia have been incompatible with H5P’s playback window. I solved the incompatibility by simply uploading to Veed and exporting from that service.

Keeping social parity intact

Sat, 09 May 2026 07:37:59 +0100

I have achieved social parity on three online networks. The top photo shows that I have an equal number of followers to following people on Bluesky.

I left Twitter with my social parity intact.

Not that I care, but I have more followers than people I’m following on Facebook. That’s because a horde of people have left Facebook and they deactivated their accounts.

And I clicked on the follower count with LinkedIn where I’m balanced around 5,000 in both directions.

With social parity, it feels like I’m in a conversation zone. I’m not just scrolling. I’m interacting.