Wow. 1800+ words and I wasn't even trying. Sorry if it's a bit too much. I wonder how this post will appear on Bluesky...

I've taken a leap and have started organising all the things with a Johnny Decimal system.
It's been something I've been mulling over for some time, and with the Johnny Decimal workshop coming soon and an attempt to switch to a new OS, it seems like a perfect time to get organised.

I've read through the Johnny Decimal website a few times over the years, and I've been reading the workbook as well. But as with anything organisational, it's deeply personal and you have to take what works for you and throw away what doesn't. For example, the recommended process for organising with Johnny Decimal is to write a scope statement and brain dump all of your related stuff for a week before moving to the organisation process.
Well, my brain is impatient, and if I were to follow that I'd probably spend an hour writing down a bunch of stuff on the first day, write a few more on the second, and then probably forget about the process altogether until a couple of weeks later, at which point I feel guilty about it and don't want to touch it. It might sound overdramatic, but I'm pretty sure that's what happened when I tried to use Johnny Decimal to organise my Obsidian Vault in the past.
So, screw that, I just jumped into creating Areas and Categories straight away.
I haven't figured out embedding yet, so go follow this link for the clip I made. Spoiler warning: it contains quotes from Bluey and the Barbie movie.

To start with, I created a new Obsidian vault (knowing full well that this time it's going to be much more than just Obsidian). Rather than making an index note or a canvas (which I did start playing with, to be fair), I decided to just start with folders. I created folders for all the projects I've got going on from the top of my head. I created folders for documents and important resources. As I went, I grouped some things together that made sense, not worrying about how deep or broad anything went, yet. I went through my cloud storage folder for things I wasn't remembering and added those folders in.
When I thought I had enough stuff, I put more effort into the grouping. I realised I had a lot of categories and I didn't feel like I had enough room for only 10 areas. But I quickly noticed that a lot of the areas and categories were specifically for software development work, while others were more personal, life management stuff. I considered splitting each of the dev areas out into their own systems, but that seemed like overkill. Instead, I settled on a system for dev stuff, and a system for life, etc.

And so, I had my first base for IDs: W01 for all my work and dev related stuff, and L42 for Life, the Universe and Everything (geddit?).
The way I'd split up my areas, W01 was still looking a bit tight for areas, but workable. But I noticed something else. Quite a lot of the areas were for developments and projects that were out there in the open for everyone to see, while there were a few areas that were related to actual employed work that was not out in the open. So I had an idea: What if I split the work system into two: One for public and one for private? I could potentially publish notes in an Obsidian vault with the public stuff (Working with the garage door open), while not risking publishing private stuff, because it's entirely separate.
Rather than boring old W01 and W02, I couldn't help but think of HTTP Code 401 — meaning "Unauthorised" — because people would need to be authorised to see stuff in that system. Also, because of the nature of my public work, it made sense to label the public one 201 — meaning "Created".
I know that Jonny says that systems work best as letter-number-number, but the whole point is to keep things memorable, and I have a mnemonic for this, so I'm just rolling with it.

Now with my System IDs in place, I was ready to roll out the next levels of ids, to fit with the Johnny Decimal SYS.AC.ID format
When creating numbers for my areas, I stuck to Johnny's template of using 00-09 for stuff to do with the system. I also found a couple of categories I couldn't seem to fit into a particular area, so I created 90-99 Miscellany as an area to catch all that stuff. For example, L42.91 is a place to archive some old journal stuff; 201.91 is for a LEGO keyboard side-project which doesn't really fit into any of my other areas or categories.
Following on from that idea of using 9 for miscellany, I set up 201.99 as a place to hold random ideas about things to work on in the future.

Also, I decided to follow the A0 categories (10, 20, etc) as being reserved for system information about the area (not that I'm really using it yet). But I also took this one step further and reserved the AC.0x IDs for special standards within a particular category. I plan to use AC.01 for notes about a particular category. Especially if I'm eventually planning to publish stuff under this format, it makes sense to have at least a note explaining the context of a category. Using my LEGO Keyboard example, 201.91.01 would be the ID for a note explaining the general idea and reasoning around the project.
Similarly, I'm using L42.00.01 to store a note about the system, documenting non-Johnny standards like this. while keeping 00.00 free as the index.
I'm also planning on using AC.10 as a category inbox, for stuff that I still have to sort and/or assign an ID to. This means all my IDs start at 11, which is a little odd, but it just means every digit in the id starts with 1 and goes up from there when giving a thing an ID. if there's a zero in it, it's some sort of meta thing, or information about the thing. (I mean, that's not strictly true because 20, 30, etc exist, but it works in my head, okay?)

As I went along like this, I also noticed that in a few of the areas, I had created a folder for general resources and/or documentation that would assist me in that area. For example, in 201.20-29 Game Dev I had a category for documentation of the game engines I was using.
Even in my life system, I had a couple of categories for things like the ringtones I keep around to use on my phone. And so, just as 9 was my standard number for miscellany, so to 8 has become my number for resources and documentation.
That game engine documentation is all going to go in 201.28. Plus I also have an entire area (201.80-89) for resources and docs on various technologies, tools and development resources (all the music, SFX and resource packs I've purchased from Humble over the years are going to live in 201.88). My ringtones are in L42.87.
I'm also planning on using AC.08 as a sort of container for "category bookmarks". Links to a GitHub repository, or a ClickUp task list, that kind of thing.

So we have some standards going! 0 means meta, 9 means misc and 8 means some sort of resource. It won't always work that way, but it's enough to be able to look at the system as a whole (i.e. all three systems) and see consistency and patterns. And that's what we want, right?
If I want the DragonRuby documentation, it's a resource, so will have an 8 in it, and it's to do with my game dev work, which is public, so it's probably in 201.28 somewhere. There's probably even a direct link in my bookmarks in 201.28.08. If it's not, for whatever reason, there are at most two or three other locations it could be (somewhere in the 201.80s, perhaps?) and even if it is, I should probably also duplicate it where I looked first.

The only thing I was having trouble categorising so far was my blog posts. Looking at the Johnny Decimal website for inspiration, it seems the blog posts are identified with an example of: D01.22.00.0031 (if I include the system identifier, which isn't done on the website). It's a lot. It kinda has to be, really. Theoretically 22.00 is an index, but it hasn't been built yet, and all the posts are identified by four-digit numbers under that.
So for me, 201 is my public dev, 10-19 is general stuff, 14 is my website. So, like 201.14.11.0001 or even 201.14.00.0001? It just feels like a lot. Plus, I kind of have another level in there because I've had a couple of different blogs over the years, and I feel like consolidating them. But keeping them as sequential doesn't make sense to me, as each blog had its own context.
So, I'm gonna cheat. I'm making a new area just for my blog: 201.B0-B9. Yep, I'm putting letters in the categories; time to call the men in the white coats to come and take me away.
But seriously, the reason I'm doing this is because the letter makes it unique, and while it will live in my 201 system, none of the resulting IDs need to reference that to be unique. B1 is the category for my oldest blog (at least the oldest one I can find), with B1.01 being the content of the "About" page for that old blog, providing the context for the rest of the posts in that category. Right now, this post is B4.12, which is much better than 201.14.14.0002 (though I am considering using the 4 digits like JD does, so B4.0012).
It's going to be so great when I fix it all up on my website and can link directly to https://death.id.au/B4.0012 — but that's still way off in the future.

For now, most of my folders are empty and still need to be populated with stuff. I also need to build an index that I can easily update and add IDs to. And I need to start using the IDs in other contexts; like e-mail, ClickUp, code repositories, etc. Plus, you know, there is actual work to be done, aside from organising all my work.
Just replace the word "children" with "work" in this clip.

But I'm going to try moving my stuff over as I go, tagging things with JD.IDs as I need them.
I'm trying to embrace "Working with the garage door open", at least in part so I stick with it.
I'll try to keep updated.

Some random ideas that have popped up are sort of coalescing. Into what, I'm not sure yet. But I fell down a rabbit hole, and this article represents my climb back up. As such, I wouldn't consider this a proper, professional think piece. Just some notes, thoughts and scratchings that I decided to share.

OBTF

@Ellane W has been documenting her experiments with OBTF (One Big Text File) (link). She links off to others who are doing this, and it's something I've seen before and not paid too much attention to. But now I'm seriously considering it.

One thing she's doing that stuck out to me, is following bullet-journaling principals and marking each entry with a single letter followed by a period (e.g. N. for note, T. for task, E. for event...). She chose letters rather than symbols so they could be quickly and easily entered on a phone without too much hunting. Double-tapping space will enter the period for her. Plus it's simple to search write queries for.

Subtext

Entirely separate to that whole thing, I stumbled across Subtext, which bills itself as "markup for note taking". The general idea is to treat each line as its own block with a "sigil" at the start indicating the block's purpose (e.g. # for heading, - for list item, > for quote). It bears a resemblance to markdown, except for that focus on blocks, and a complete lack of formatting (it's an index card, not a page).

It also supports linking, through simple URLs (or surrounding unusual URLS in <>), as well as shorthand "slashlinks" to local files. The intention is for links to be transcluded. This allows things like tables to be included by linking to a CSV file. Or if you really need presentation formatting, you can link to a markdown file or PDF or something.

ELF

Subtext is conceptually similar to Ted Nelson's idea of an ELF (Evolutionary List File). An ELF has three elements:
- Entries: A discrete unit of information designated by the user. Text (long or short), symbols, pictures, anything. I could see these as "files" as they exist today. Remember, Ted was living in the 60s and 70s and imagining the future of computers at this point.
- Lists: An ordered set of entries as designated by the user. An entry can exist in any number of lists. #MOC s?
- Links: A connector, designated by the user, between two entries in different lists. An entry in one list may be linked to only one entry in another list. Of course, entries in lists can be linked to from multiple places
I think of Notion. Every Notion "document" is actually a list of blocks that can be of different types. Blocks can be linked to specifically.
Backlinks are a big thing, too. Seeing everything that links to the entry you're looking at is important. Of course, Ted is all about that transclusion, too. So this is where the "slashlinks" of Subtext come into it. A Subtext file is a list of entries. There is one entry per line - mostly plain-text, with specified "sigils" to indicate different types of meanings, or URLs/slashlinks, which can transclude files as different kinds of entries. As a plain-text file, it can't really block-reference entries in other list files, so it doesn't quite fit the ELF 100%, but it's close.

Putting it all together

Can we use the Subtext and ELF principals in OBTF? Subtext "sigils" are basically just the bullet types Ellaine was using for her bullet-journal-style approach to the OBTF. Also keep in mind that the OBTF isn't the entire knowledge base - it's just an inbox; a staging area; a replacement for your daily notes; an ever-evolving #MOC of your day-to-day life.
It's a highly personal thing. You could make a note in your OBTF, then later refactor it out into its own note file (I would leave the OBTF entry as-is and just link it to the new note). You can quick-capture tasks, which you keep track of through other means (by Dataview queries in Obsidian, or moving them over to a task management app as part of a daily process). It's all up to you.

I think I'm inspired to start my own OBTF experiment. I've been off-and-on looking for a new journaling practice since I fell off that bandwagon many years ago, but nothing has quite stuck. Maybe I could try some form of interstitial journaling, along with capturing tasks, ideas, meeting notes, etc in a OBTF list, using bullet journaling principals for each entry. As I intend to keep this file in Obsidian, I intend to use markdown-compatible "sigils" from Subtext (e.g. # for heading, - for list item, > for quote), as well as others like - [ ] for tasks.
There are some plugins/styles for rendering different kinds of "task statuses", too. I could render - [i] as a lightbulb (💡) for example. Simple to search for and query, as well. A bit cumbersome to type on mobile, but I could put in some work to customize the toolbar in obsidian mobile...

Alternately, I could just keep things like "ideas" as basic text blocks with a hashtag (e.g. #idea) at the end of the line if it's something I'll want to search for later. It might resemble a more free-form journal that way.

As I stated at the start, this was a collection of ideas I needed to braindump and decided to share. So I don't really have a proper conclusion for you.