What are you working on this week (2021-02-01 - 2021-02-07)?

henrikenggaard

What are you all up to in the next week?

Remember, it is okay to do nothing

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I'm finishing up some signal processing code for an experiment, which will run in most of February. When that is running I can hopefully fit in some time to read papers and take notes again.

Friday I picked up The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming. The title feels a bit trite, but the content seems okay. It has already sparked a bunch of notes and I hope to make forum post about it in the next few days

Will

@henrikenggaard said:
Friday I picked up The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming. The title feels a bit trite, but the content seems okay. It has already sparked a bunch of notes, and I hope to make a forum post about it in the next few days

I look forward to hearing what you might think of Hamming's book. I read it in May of 2019 and took only four first-order notes out of the 300+ pages, and those notes have been so far integrated with twelve zettel. I'm sure the book contains a richer store of ideas, but at the time, I had less skill at fishing out the ideas.

This week, I'll be finishing up reading and processing a couple of books by William Kittredge, who left the planet, Dec 3, 2020. He was a writer and teacher in Western cultural and landscape genres. Then I'll start reading another of the great writers in these genres, Barry Lopez. Sadly, he died on Christmas day 2020.

I'm happy with how my class ENGL 473 Seminar in Pacific Northwest Literature is going because it teaches/forces me to read and process the ideas in books quicker with greater depth. By greater depth, I mean focusing on looking for what the author is trying to get across. There are two layers of meaning in literature and much modern science writing for the general public. First, there are in the presentation, the arguments, the scenes, the whole narrative. These are the words on the page, and with good writing, there is a lot there. Second is what is meant by the first layer and how I can use it to expand my understanding of the world. This is sometimes called the river below or subtext. Looking for where my thinking converges and where it diverges. Challenging and being challenged by new and novel ideas.

I wish you all luck and happiness in the coming week.

prometheanhindsight

Since I'm starting over my zettelkasten with a clean slate, I thought that now would be a good time to explore some alternate workflows and programs. I spent the weekend getting set up with emacs. There are still some very basic things that I have to figure out how to do (or if they're even feasible), but so far I'm very happy with emacs.

This week, I'm hoping to get my personal notes organized using emacs, and try taking some zettel to see if I want to use org-roam for my ZK or if I want to stick with other less difficult solutions.

Reading wise, I'm keeping things light with I'll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara. Most of my challenging-read bandwidth is being taken up by reading scientific literature for my new position.

jeannelking

• Doing a lot of systems (re)design work this week.
• Work. So much going on at work. Oh my goodness.
• Conducting a mock interview for my research class.
• Add just one thing to my ZK so it doesn't starve.

GeoEng51

I’m playing around with NotePlan this week - someone mentioned it in another post on this forum. It is an amazing note-taking app. I wouldn’t use it for my Zettelkasten (The Archive is much more suited to that), but it does allow linking between notes and it is amazingly integrated with Calendar. For people who like to GTD and for those into bullet-journaling, it is perfect. I think I’m going to replace Bear, Things and Fantastical all with NotePlan.

ProfMac

Still on semester vacation here, so while I have time to get things done, I also have time to slack off more than I should. Thankfully I am using time blocking as a more successful practice than I have in the past, and now posting in this group for accountability — thankfully both are helping.

• This week I was asked to do a peer review for a journal, so other tasks went on hold for the first part of the week so that I could complete that.
• Getting back on track with the things I started last week but did not get to finish — reading/listening to books and planning for the semester.
• Continuing to level up my Korean practice, I will be studying that soon after making this post.
• Bought an “Instant Pot” this week to hopefully (fingers crossed) start cooking more. I live in the faculty dorm, and only have a stovetop range and a microwave (no standard ovens) for preparing food. Thinking that this purchase will yield more options for home cooked meals — we will see.
• I am working on a few research papers that I need to make some writing progress on as well this week.

We are getting some snow here in the Land of the Morning Calm - I hope the weather is good where you are.

Happy week everyone!

ProfMac

@GeoEng51 said:
I’m playing around with NotePlan this week — someone mentioned it in another post on this forum. It is an amazing note-taking app. I wouldn’t use it for my Zettelkasten (The Archive is much more suited to that), but it does allow linking between notes, and it is amazingly integrated with Calendar. For people who like to GTD and for those into bullet-journaling, it is perfect. I think I’m going to replace Bear, Things and Fantastical all with NotePlan.

I also was inspired by a post to use NotePlan 3, maybe the same one? While there are some things that can be improved with the app (iOS is missing some macOS attributes like the weekly plan view, and a couple of other things) the developer says they are on the road map--he is very engaged with his users. It is simple to use right away, and I can easily get my planning notes into other places if I need them to be.

I love using it and really enjoy how it has simplified my planning routine -- I have made it too complicated in the past.

Glad to hear others are enjoying using it too.

jim

• Working through some useful new personal insights on why my weekends have been so painful lately.
• Mapping out some medium-term personal goals.

Next up -- my recent work with Anki and the ZK have helped me put some new words around the ephemerality of ideas and thinking. So I have some stub notes laying around with wide-ranging and interesting implications that I'm excited to get to.