What are you working on this week (2020-11-16 - 2020-11-22)?

GeoEng51

This is more a "report back" than a "look forward", but I did finish up the project I was writing, discussed in last week's thread, with satisfying results (for me and hopefully others). I learned again how powerful Scrivener is for the final creative and editing work, and how nicely it imports and works with zettels.

Sascha

• ZK

  • Streamlining the process from excerpt to note.
  • Research on the various PDF-Annotation tools (currently using Skim). Major Feature Bloat with any App I tested so far. Why are there no tools that live in the spirit of distraction free writing? Or why I am to incompetent to find any?
  • Formalising my coaching material on excerpts

• Research

  • Bestiality
  • MacDonald Triad

• Hobby

  • Drawing a map for my epic fantasy project

zk_1000

Research on the various PDF-Annotation tools (currently using Skim). Major Feature Bloat with any App I tested so far. Why are there no tools that live in the spirit of distraction free writing? Or why I am to incompetent to find any?

What is your workflow? Are you looking for annotating PDF documents you are currently writing on?

henrikenggaard

Had a paper rejected and is now considering how to move it in a different direction. Either expanding it to cover a more complete study or tightening the case.

At the same time, reading up on and writing notes about some fundamentals of communication signal processing -- hopefully there are some interesting assumptions to uncover.

Sascha

@zk_1000 said:

Research on the various PDF-Annotation tools (currently using Skim). Major Feature Bloat with any App I tested so far. Why are there no tools that live in the spirit of distraction free writing? Or why I am to incompetent to find any?

What is your workflow? Are you looking for annotating PDF documents you are currently writing on?

Ah, I need a PDF-Tool to process scientific articles. So, I annotate, may create an excerpt in between (first reading) and later process either the annotated article or the exerpt (second reading) to individual notes. Not really a flow but more like a two step process.

henrikenggaard

@Sascha re: article processing workflow.

I gave up on finding "integrated" PDF processing tools and stuck to the lowest common denominator: notes in PDF and highlights. It is simple, but it works everywhere and all PDF programs can open it.

In my reference manager, I have two tags "To read" and "To process". "To read" is for papers that I want to read. While reading I take notes in the PDF and/or in a note attached in the reference manager. Notes in the PDF are mainly annotations and comments; notes in the reference manager are the "study notes". When there are unprocessed notes, I add the "To process" tag.

I've found that this is approach is nice and simple. Going through the "to read" and "to process" should of course be done somewhat regularly. Since it is all done in the reference manager I have a single spot for all my (work-related) "to read" needs.

zk_1000

I already went through this in the past because i switched from Windows to Linux. It drove me nuts. Competence wont help here because the shortcomings of an app are not apparent before using it. Maybe i can add some input on this. Still unsure what you are (not) looking for, lots of reader support PDF annotations. I write my excerpts in Markdown.

zk_1000

@henrikenggaard exactly my workflow also.

Sascha

I try to reach out to make it happen. In the overarching project of Zettelkasten.de such a tool would be very beneficial.

ctietze

For the Zettelkasten project:

• Course platform preparations are picking up speed
• Am working on images in The Archive

Using my Zettelkasten:

• learning about "servers" in 2020, and technologies like IPv6 (I didn't even know that each device in my local network has an IPv6 address that is publicly available and unique! What progress from the early 2000s!)
• processing technical details and general information about how transactions in a (Bitcoin) blockchain work
• processing the Apple documentation on basically "how to make a text editor, parts 3 to 42"; I am genuinely surprised by how much I already have from 2017, and astonished how bad some note titles from 2017 still are!, and I'm enjoying the process to add even more stuff to this sub-department of my Zettelkasten

10 years ago, I wouldn't have imagined that my Zettelkasten work would be so much about ... technology and programming details. It makes sense, because that's my work, and my Zettelkasten is the biggest helper in my day-to-day work. But I would've thought that there'd be more philosophy by now and far less command line tricks