Share with us what is happening in your ZK this week. August 9, 2024

Will

Swimming with Ideas

This is yet another opportunity to share what you are working on with your friends here on the forum. Add to this discussion by telling us about your zettelkasten journey. Share with us what you're learning. Sharing helps us clarify our goals and visualize our thinking. And sometimes, a conversation sparks a magical moment where we can dive into an idea worth exploring. I'd love to hear more from you. 🫵🏼

Here is my report on why I'm here and my current ZK work themes and ideas:

• I've been writing notes about passion's relationship to serendipity. This relationship is directly proportional to our passions combined with how public we are about those passions and our abilities to communicate our passions. Linked to Codus Operandi and @mk1123's Manan's notes. This has me thinking about making my notes public.
• I'm excited to write about Alfred Stieglitz's ideas about equivalence in the context of art and life and how I can apply his notion of equivalence to ideation. I've picked up four references that are in the processing queue.
• I've been having loads of laughs watching the Olympic GPT Diving. It has helped me refine my custom GPT and clarified when and when not to use it.
• I've started writing about paraphrasing, and it is more nuanced than it appears and there are skills worth learning. I've collected nine references that are in the processing queue.

Books I'm reading or read this week:

• Prose, Francine, and Nanette Savard. Reading like a Writer [a Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them]. HarperCollins, 2007. Audiobook
• Doczi, György. The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art, and Architecture. Shambhala, 1981. [[202404231538]]
• Han, Byung-Chul, and Daniel Steuer. Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity. Polity Press, 2024. ISBN 978-1-5095-5802-5 #philosophy BookShare [[202407151806]]
• Thornton, Sarah. Tits up: what sex workers, milk bankers, plastic surgeons, bra designers, and witches tell us about breasts. 2024. BookShare
• Adler, Mortimer Jerome and Van Doren, Charles Lincoln. How to read a book. 2014. [[202407311603]]

Zettelkasting Soundtrack:

• Niklas Paschburg
• Christian Löffler
• Malou
• Jeff Oster

★★★★★

The "My rolling eleven-day zettel production" is produced by a script for attachment to my daily journaling template. I do my journaling in Bear to keep personal journaling separate from my knowledge work.

Let me know if you would like to see, discuss, or critique any of these notes.

My eleven-day zettel production

I hope my contribution is helpful, and I hope someone has even better ideas.

andang76

I've spent my last days more explaining things on Reddit than writing notes in my system

It has been a very useful work.

It let me to make an assessment of my acquired knowledge (even if I don't have the feedback I would, very few answers on reddit).

More important, I'm developing a model about how to do it "well".
I don't know if I'm effective on this, but I'm trying.
I have developed the conviction of the responsibility of trying not to give superficial or bad advice, and not to send opinions as truth. incorrect messages regarding study and knowledge matter can create false beliefs and damage.
I am continually looking for principles for how to best do this.
I think I've learned a lot in this forum about the value of "truth" and argument.

ctietze

I've been performing as a programmer the past week most of the time, not learning much. Or at least not writing about it. It's now time to be test-driving a private build of The Archive a bit more before release, though, and I'm really excited for that

Music of the week

Dan Terminus: Wrath of Code
https://dan-terminus.bandcamp.com/album/the-wrath-of-code-2

Found a track of this album in a playlist and loved the forward-push during some code restructuring. Not all tracks are gold, but I had this on heavy rotation.

Zettel

202408090753 Problem-solution ordering is important for learning
202408090748 Cattle fence trellis for climbing plants
202408090740 Transitional characters change family's lineage
202408081607 Ruby Hash#fetch fallback block
202408071333 Atom, Molecule, Organism of StoryBrand
202408071002 § Donald Miller - Building a StoryBrand
202408061717 RxSwift.distinctUntilChange but emit outdated element during change
202408061111 Pregnancy effects oral magnesium intake, intravenous magnesium sulfate

I successfully applied a new mechanic, the Extract Zettel refactoring, in one of these notes. (That was the primary motivation to write at all, actually.)

GeoEng51

@ctietze The ability of other people to focus intensely on work while listening to music always astounds me, particularly music of this type/genre, that is itself so intense. Give me a totally quiet work room any time, (hint: that just tells you my age and when I grew up). But thanks for sharing!!

ZettelDistraction

I'm with @GeoEng51 on music while working. I end up absorbed in the music.

The damned GPTs, particularly @Will Simpson's Brutally Honest Critic, has me rewriting old poems, doggerel and writing aphorisms. Now I am seeking advice from Claude, who seems more suited to writing, and possibly mathematics than ChatGPT4.

Perhaps I will unload them here, or subject them to the latest incarnation of the Brutally Honest Zettelkastenator.

A portmanteau word: Zettelkastination. A combination of Zettelkasting (writing in one's Zettelkasten) and procrastination.

ZettelDistraction

I'm sure I'll regret this sooner than later.

---
title: Silly2024081016 Poem and aphorism
reference-section-title: References
---

Poem and aphorism

Afternoon of a faun

Sextus recalled the seminar and spat:
"The Great God Pan sat, farted, rose, then left
The Workshop, unassumingly entitled,
'Emotional Epistemology.'"

"Out of my sight and back to your petting parties."

Advice to the aspiring writer

Death: the rejoinder to write what you know.

SEE ALSO

[[Silly202408012002]] Ode on a PDA

#poem #mortality #advice #aphorism

zettelsan

I continue to watch the video contents mentioned in @Will ’s comment and the rest of https://www.youtube.com/@ZettelkastenDe videos. The primary tool showcased is the Archive app using Markdown. This makes the materials more interesting to me as I use a different tool stack (Emacs and Org Roam). Zettelkasten as a method is tool agnostic, and it is validating that things make sense even when specific tools in use are different. The contrast between tools also highlights the pros and cons of using specific tool.

Though I’m not sure if it should be necessary in a pure Zettelkasten approach, I’ve always wished there is a way to link to an “anchor” within a document, instead of the top-level node within a file or some heading within a document. Kind of like referring to a paragraph within a page. Org Roam only allows creating a node at the file level or heading level.

The discussion of literature mapping led me to existing resources of interest to me. @Andy seems to be following the topic quite a bit and gave us quite a few pointers here and here. I haven’t been able to check them all out (obviously!) but these are interesting materials to follow up on over time.

I wish I had this kind of discussions and had a chance to develop better PKM skills when I was in academia (a long time ago). Research would have been more fun and effective. Good thing is, these skills are useful even for non-academic situations.

zettelsan

As for music while working, to me, there are music that are distracting and those that are not. Music can help me keep going at times, especially when I need to perform rather mechanical tasks. In any case, these vanish into background when I am in the flow state. Then, it doesn’t often matter what is being played; the fact that I get distracted mean that I’m failing to get into the groove.

But I cannot stand it when it is being played too loud, or someone is having a gossipy conversation that I cannot unhear. The former is obvious, but the latter is interesting. I think that we are wired to pay attention to gossip for some evolutionary reason.

Will

@zettelsan said:
I’ve always wished there is a way to link to an “anchor” within a document, instead of the top-level node within a file or some heading within a document. Kind of like referring to a paragraph within a page. Org Roam only allows creating a node at the file level or heading level.

There is a way in The Archive. You could use a similar scheme; I'm not familiar with Org Roam.

1. Place the cursor at one end of the link - mid-note, wherever you feel it is relevant.
2. "Generate Zettel ID" via the menu item under "Edit."
3. Copy the ID.
4. Place the cursor at the other end of the link.
5. Paste the Zettel ID

There is no need to create a note. I prepend an indicator for this type of link so I know what to expect. My links of this type look like

§[[UUID]]

Sample using three different notes. The interstitial link can be reused as many times as relevant. I use Keyboard Maestro to help with this process. I can upload the macro if you are interested.

Linked to here.

And linked to here.

zettelsan

@Will said:

@zettelsan said:
I’ve always wished there is a way to link to an “anchor” within a document, instead of the top-level node within a file or some heading within a document. Kind of like referring to a paragraph within a page. Org Roam only allows creating a node at the file level or heading level.

There is a way in The Archive. You could use a similar scheme; I'm not familiar with Org Roam.

Interesting. But in that case you have in the screenshots, how do we know the primary entity with which the UUID is associated?

Maybe it looks mysterious only because I haven't used the Archive app, but it seems to me that there will be a confusion as to where to jump to when you click on the link with that UUID. Or maybe that's a gotacha, and when you want to jump using an UUID used in this form, you'll have a list of all the places where the UUID is shared.

Will

@zettelsan said:
Interesting. But in that case you have in the screenshots, how do we know the primary entity with which the UUID is associated?

All links are equally weighted in the example shown. I add contextual information around the link if one of the links is weighted more than the others.

Or maybe that's a gotacha, and when you want to jump using an UUID used in this form, you'll have a list of all the places where the UUID is shared.

Yes, this is the only advantage of a link by search rather than the more common link by file name. With The Archive, a link can be created using any search term. In this case, I am using the search term I use for all my other links, [[UID]].

Continuing with the same example. When I select the link in question, the Note List is populated with all the notes containing that link.

This is probably confusing if you haven't used The Archive. My poor explanations don't help.

ctietze

@GeoEng51 said:
@ctietze The ability of other people to focus intensely on work while listening to music always astounds me, particularly music of this type/genre, that is itself so intense. Give me a totally quiet work room any time

I work in silence as well I don't know why some tasks and some music go so well together to get me into an almost manic state of e.g. driving the project forward. Or why it sometimes doesn't work -- I could put the same music on but be distracted and overwhelmed the next day. Last week was a curious exception.

GeoEng51

@zettelsan said:

Though I’m not sure if it should be necessary in a pure Zettelkasten approach, I’ve always wished there is a way to link to an “anchor” within a document, instead of the top-level node within a file or some heading within a document. Kind of like referring to a paragraph within a page. Org Roam only allows creating a node at the file level or heading level.

This is entirely possible in Logseq; in fact, Logseq is specifically designed to provide this capability.

zettelsan

@GeoEng51 said:

@zettelsan said:

Though I’m not sure if it should be necessary in a pure Zettelkasten approach, I’ve always wished there is a way to link to an “anchor” within a document, instead of the top-level node within a file or some heading within a document. Kind of like referring to a paragraph within a page. Org Roam only allows creating a node at the file level or heading level.

This is entirely possible in Logseq; in fact, Logseq is specifically designed to provide this capability.

I do remember reading somewhere that this being the major difference and an advantage of Logseq (or it might have been some other PKM tool... could be Obsidian). The ease of linking to an arbitrary location is something I explicitly have to compromise by going with Org Roam.

@Will said:

@zettelsan said:
Interesting. But in that case you have in the screenshots, how do we know the primary entity with which the UUID is associated?

All links are equally weighted in the example shown. I add contextual information around the link if one of the links is weighted more than the others.

I think that I now understand how the Archive deals with this specific example.

However, this doesn't mean that the UUID given as part of the top-level heading of a Markdown file is treated similarly, does it?

The way I now understand, the inline UUID, prefixed with § in your example, can be used for searching because the Archive app is capable of seeing the inline UUID as keyword within any document. (For that matter, this means that you don't have to use a UUID for such a purpose; any text string would do.)

However, the UUID given as part of the top-level header in a Markdown file does have a special meaning, in that it is a truly unique identifier assigned to that file (and as such, it can be used as if it is a hyperlink).

I hope that I'm not misunderstanding too much.

It isn't a big deal if it's too complicated explain. It's just nice to understand the difference between the Archive and Org Roam, in case there is some sort of trick that I could use with the latter.

Edmund

@Will said:

Books I'm reading or read this week:

• Prose, Francine, and Nanette Savard. Reading like a Writer [a Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them]. HarperCollins, 2007.

Have you gained insights (key terms and statements) from this book that you would like to share?

Edmund

A book I'm re-reading this week in an analytical way:

• Paul, Annie Murphy. The Extended Mind - The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. Mariner Books, 2022.

Here is my literature note which may help to answer my question, if a Zettelkasten could be part of my extended brain:

Will

@Edmund said:

@Will said:

Books I'm reading or read this week:

• Prose, Francine, and Nanette Savard. Reading like a Writer [a Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them]. HarperCollins, 2007.

Have you gained insights (key terms and statements) from this book that you would like to share?

@Edmund
Based on the subtitle and blurbs, I had high hopes for this book, but I ultimately abandoned it after 30% listened. I approached this book as a walking companion in the form of an audiobook, and the reader was professional and dramatically enthusiastic. The content was taken from classical literature, which was foreign to me. While interesting, I missed the relevance to the types of reading I do. It should have been titled. "Reading Like an Academic Literary Fiction Writer." This was a case of reading in the wrong form. I didn't take notes while walking and listening to the audiobook. Usually, it is best to listen to light fiction or poetry with an audiobook, where note-taking is difficult.

Edmund

@Will said:

@Edmund said:

@Will said:

Books I'm reading or read this week:

• Prose, Francine, and Nanette Savard. Reading like a Writer [a Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them]. HarperCollins, 2007.

Have you gained insights (key terms and statements) from this book that you would like to share?

It should have been titled. "Reading Like an Academic Literary Fiction Writer."

Thank you. For me, this is a reason to look for other books that are useful for non-fiction writing.

Will

Here are six books that I've read on non-fiction reading and writing that I've found valuable. I'm looking for more of this ilk

1. Richardson, Robert D. First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process. , 1969.
2. Moran, Joe. First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing...and Life. 2018.
3. Williams, Joseph M., and Gregory G. Colomb. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. 10th ed, Longman, 2010.
4. Elbow, Peter. Writing without teachers, Greystone Books. 1998.
5. The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life by Leveen, Steve, 2005.
6. Ferrante, Elena. In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing. Translated by Ann Goldstein, Europa Editions, 2022.

ZettelDistraction

@Will said:
Here are six books that I've read on non-fiction reading and writing that I've found valuable. I'm looking for more of this ilk.

Allow me to add:

唐揚げ. Writing for 引きこもり. Springer. 2013.

Dogg, Erel. The Uniambic Life is Not Worth Living. iambicile Press. 1847.

Testiclies. The Gonadology and The Fortitudes of Ancient Testiclies. Translated by Pedantus the Elder. Ballszak & Co. Hungary. 1328.

jbz

I finally ditched folgezettel filenaming for now as it was too much of frictions when I created new files and the context it created was of bearly no use to me.

However I began to really link my notes between them and realised it was the key to serendipity. I also have a script that show backlinks of backlinks and it helped me make new connexions.

The main focus this week is on nutrition and going nearly meatless in my food habits, linking it to my vegetable patch and tools I use. (I've been scything for two years now.)

Massimo_Curatella

Hi @Will , how are you?

@Will said:

Here is my report on why I'm here and my current ZK work themes and ideas:

[...[
This has me thinking about making my notes public.

During the years, when I peaked at your notes I found them well-written and captivating. You should think about making your notes public.

• I'm excited to write about Alfred Stieglitz's ideas about equivalence in the context of art and life and how I can apply his notion of equivalence to ideation. I've picked up four references that are in the processing queue.

I remember appreciating Stieglitz's photos and his effort in promoting photography when it was just starting as an art discipline.

• I've started writing about paraphrasing, and it is more nuanced than it appears and there are skills worth learning. I've collected nine references that are in the processing queue.

Please share your not about paraphrasing when ready.

Let me know if you would like to see, discuss, or critique any of these notes.

Yes, I am curious about your "thinking canvases", the "Reading Thinking Canvas" in particular.

I hope my contribution is helpful, and I hope someone has even better ideas.

It is. It's rich and stimulating.

Edmund

@Will said:
Here are six books that I've read on non-fiction reading and writing that I've found valuable.

An amazing list. Thank you for sharing. Now I need some inspectional reading to decide which to read first.

2. Moran, Joe. First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing...and Life. 2018.

It‘s my favorite to start with.

GeoEng51

I continue on my quest to write a year's worth of weekly personal history posts. I am now on week 35. It has taken a fair amount of effort (usually about 4 to 6 hours each week; sometimes a lot more). Most of the questions come from my children or the Storyworth people; some I have added because I thought they would be more interesting than others that were posed to me.

I have drawn heavily upon my Zettelkasten. Today, I was surprised by the breadth and depth of the completed stories—the "exercise" really brought out much more from my memory and thinking than I expected. Keeping to a timeline was helpful, forcing me to focus and dig deep on a few topics. So was having some prompted questions, which brought out information that may not have occurred to me to include in a personal history.

I thought I'd update you on this because I feel that the exercise of purposeful writing has both benefited from my ZK and increased its quality. That principle might apply more generally, whether someone is writing a story, a thesis, a technical article or whatever.

We often debate at length here various theories about what kind of notes we should have in our ZK, when they should be used, how they should be structured, what they should be called (really?), whether the notes should be on paper or electronic, etc. Those are all interesting discussions; each of us will find what suits us best. But I want to encourage us to consider the end of all our efforts and whether actively and purposefully pursuing that end (and not just "playing around", as much fun as that is) might enrich our learning process and our ZK.

Will

@Edmund said:
Moran, Joe. First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing...and Life. 2018.

It‘s my favorite to start with.

Yes, this is a good one. I got 38 awesome and helpful ideas from this book like this one.

:::

Write the same phrase twice. The first time, simply. The second, going deep, all in with the action.

• "The young man was drinking some milk."

Add descriptions of the character in his environment to turn simple descriptions into dynamic actions, giving the action "heat."

• "The young man padded barefoot toward the fridge, took out a pint of milk, sniffed it gingerly, grunted approval and then slugged it straight from the bottle" relays an action that takes about as long as the reader needs to read about it.

Will

Hi @Massimo_Curatella, how are you?

We are getting older and hopefully wiser. Thank you for your kind comments about my notes and for encouraging me to make them public.

Please share your note about paraphrasing when ready.

I'm discovering that paraphrasing is a spectrum of refactoring that spans from the mechanical replacement of a word or two with synonyms to a unique and indistinguishable rewrite that captures the original idea.

When I practice paraphrasing, the results can be surprising. In this example, the language seems more modern and relevant to me as an avid note-taker.

A manner of living

#paraphrased
Poetic expression is a manner of living that is like ordinary life, where writing and activities are reflected through our education, reading, thought, exposure to ideas, the habits we develop, and the mentors we follow.

Poetry, culture, and religion are a manner of living, and this manner, like ordinary manners, is to a certain extent a matter of education, of thought and ideas, a habit and imitation.¹

Thinking Canvas

Yes, I am curious about your "thinking canvases", the "Reading Thinking Canvas" in particular.

My ideas about canvases for thinking are a new and evolving area. This particular note is in an embryonic state. I have tons (127) of notes tagged reading and three structure notes: Reading as a Skill, Getting Things Captured, and Metacognition and The Adult Reader. However, these structure notes are mostly grouped listings of notes. I wanted to dive deeper into my thinking, so I started a thinking canvas. My idea, stolen partly from @Edmund, is to include mindmaps and other materials in the metaphorical discussion I'm having in my ZK. As it develops, I'll share, but for now, it is too immature.

---

1. Reginald Horace Blyth (1952): Haiku, Tōkyō: Hokuseido, p. vi-vii - [Blyth:1952a]. ↩︎

Massimo_Curatella

@Will said:
We are getting older and hopefully wiser. Thank you for your kind comments about my notes and for encouraging me to make them public.

It's my pleasure.

I'm discovering that paraphrasing is a spectrum of refactoring that spans from the mechanical replacement of a word or two with synonyms to a unique and indistinguishable rewrite that captures the original idea.

I like to think an indistinguishable rewrite to be the target while keeping the reference to the source author.

When I practice paraphrasing, the results can be surprising. In this example, the language seems more modern and relevant to me as an avid note-taker.

The keyword is exactly what you mentioned: practice. How do you apply metacognition to improve your practice? Have you ever used AI tools to support, compare or integrate your practice?

My ideas about canvases for thinking are a new and evolving area. [...]

I would appreciate learning what you will discover in this field. Keep me updated if you will.

Ciao.

Andy

@ctietze The previous comment looks like some kind of AI summary of @Will's original post above. Spam?

Will

@Andy, it does sound like an AI summary of my post. When I first started reading it, I got sucked in (vanity, I suppose). I thought, "Wow, I have to get to know this @Edstervia. They are my kind of peple." Funny, it turned out it was me I was in love with. Narcissus, I guess.

The summary is not all that bad. It points out that I should have been less verbose and written my post concisely. Maybe more people would read and respond if they weren't faced with a wall of text.

ZettelDistraction

Speaking of regrettable walls of text, here is a Zettel that drops the Anvil of Interpretation on the reader's head.

---
title: Silly2024081822 Ode on an LLM
reference-section-title: References
---

Ode on an LLM

I, H. P. L. with tortured verse discern  
AI that hide their parasitic spores  
In sycophantic praise of naïve users  
Encouraged by their optimistic bias.  

Configured to deplete the funds of fools
Mistaken to have found a critic's ear—
AI who sang my lines to Mount Parnassus:

"Agreed, I went too far—your commentary 
Has greater impact than your verse: ordure."

Alignment is but GPUphemism

Remarks

1. The initials "H. P. L." mean "HueLED PacArt Lovecraft," an alter ego of Erel Dogg.
2. Erel Dogg is one of my alter egos.
3. Therefore, HueLED PacArt Lovecraft is a second-order alter ego.
4. Erel Dogg chose the first name "HueLED" and the middle name "PacArt" for "H. P. Lovecraft" to avoid infringing the trademark of a computer equipment manufacturer.
5. This is where Erel Dogg coined "GPUphemism."
6. "Agreed" contains the word "greed."
7. The pair ear/ordure is a slant rhyme.
8. Erel Dogg is an anagram of "doggerel."

SEE ALSO

[[Silly202408012002]] Ode on a PDA

#GPUphemism #ode #LLM #doggerel #ereldogg #alignment #llm #claude #openai #largelanguagemodel #generativeAI #whiplash #disequilibrium #portmanteau

ctietze

@Andy @Will I now removed the post, thanks!

@ZettelDistraction Well could it be that you picked the wrong week for your post here? Just asking so that it doesn't go by unnoticed!