Any non-engineers out there?
First of all, I LOVE reading about coding, systems, and engineering so in no way is there any judgement in my question! As someone who spends more time in the humanities (I'm a physician, writer, and theologian) I wonder if there might be others on this forum who have a different "lens" (or suggestions) about how they use their ZK.
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
I don't have a technical background, but I do find it fascinating and am learning programming as a hobby subject.
My background is actually finance. I think this has influenced my choice of the Zettelkasten as being 'for me', because it means you can refer to things years later, even decades later.
In finance, I've often been in a position where I needed to find an important document from years ago. I've also needed to deal with a large volume of documents, so even finding something from a few weeks or months ago can be difficult but critical.
This has made me spend a lot of time thinking about 'findability'. When I discovered the Zettelkasten method, I immediately saw the value in being able to refer to notes made years earlier. There isn't a single magic method, but the combination of titles, keywords, links, and folder structure means I can always come back to something I had before.
This background also means I'm always thinking about backups. Financial institutions were influential in the 3-2-1 Backup model becoming a standard. So naturally I back up my Zettelkasten with an automated program.
I've been professionally involved in testing corporate backup and emergency plans, and believe me when I say the results are often not pretty. This has made me run a lot of tests on my own backups, and I'm satisfied that my Zettelkasten can survive disasters, even if some corporate IT setups can't!
Nuclear reactors need to maintain electric power in an emergency so they can be controlled and shut down if need be. Typically the emergency backup was provided by dual independent 2MW generators. A 2 MW generator is a large, powerful beast. A plant has to demonstrate that its backup system work as intended.
But for the generators this was always a bone of contention because getting a 2MW generator from cold start to 90% full power in, IIRC, 10 seconds puts a huge stress on them and there is a real risk of damage. So now you may have a damaged backup generator and you don't want that!
It's been a long time since I was involved in the field and I don't know what they are doing about the testing these days.
I'm self-homeschooling in logic (real version
), language, history, geography, the "pedagogy of mathematics" - you name it, i'm into it.
See my own comment to "ghost in the box" and my self-introduction.
I'm a visual thinker and I like to listen to older style R&B, piano, and chamber, e.g Schumann.