date-created:: 2023-08-12

I have said a few times that Notion looked like overkill compared with Obsidian. I now admit that it was out of my ignorance: I didn't know how to make of Notion as it looked alien at a time before I came to learn about block-based or database-like PKM systems.

Hello, Notion!

My first distrust and distaste of Notion came a few weeks ago when it simply failed to delivery by bluntly showing this "Import failed" message without any explanation:

!400

I chose to import a CSV file that I converted using Google Sheets from an Anki TSV.

On several other occasions, Notion was stuck with importing (having accepted the import file at 100%) for hours (close to 24 hours). Another sign telling me the tool's design was seriously flawed.

I thought I was going to leave it for good, ready to chalk it as a completely overhyped, unusable tool.

Then, after trials and tribulations with Logseq, Tana, and recently with a new surprise from Anki, I chanced upon the cause of import failure: Notion "capriciously" gave more helpful error message:

!250

So, the failure was caused by inconsistent number of columns, which is strange coming from Anki, but I dug deeper and found why. It was due to my overly simple attempt to convert from TSV to CSV. To make a long story short, after using Sheets to read TSV, double-checking data consistency, and exporting as CSV, the CSV was magically processed by Notion, and I had my first Notion page with 3000 entries from Anki!

This was screaming-worthy. I skipped the celebratory drink (it was just 11AM) and quickly found out some pros and cons of Notion as initial impressions:

Pros

• Neat table and multi-view design
• Benefits of everything that comes with a typical database
• Search as you type (also: filter, formula)
• Can add to the database by importing CSV with matching columns/properties
• Not too slow

Cons

• No regex in the most needed places: search and filter.
  • Cumbersome regex in formula, as string arguments to functions.
• Search does not accept multiple words, not even English, defaulting to "AND" search, like Anki.
  • To simulate this requires constructing two filters that are ANDed.
  • It accepts only one unquoted search string as that can contain spaces, and uses it to do strict substring matching.

Quick verdict: 3 stars

Web publishing

Demo

Fred Jame's Notion site

• At first sight, I actually like it a lot. #todo Dig deeper.

Namanh Kapur

#people

• Video that may sell me on notion!
  • Reiterates why having a personal website is important
    • But having a website without good SEO is useless
• Video notes
  • Progression of building a website
    • v1: Git 2/5
    • v2: Script for Medium 3/5
    • v3: Ghost 3.5/5
      • Copy-and-paste from Medium
    • v4: Notion 4/5
      • Free
      • Templates
    • v5: super.so 4.9/5 (wrapper around Notion workspace)
      • Free!

More ...

• Refocusing on Glossary Management