Using Anki to remember what you read • Hacker News Board

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#261

Post by lawtalkinghuman » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 9:31 AM UTC

awefiawejfl wrote: post #217

sequoia wrote: post #162

This article reminds me of posts about "bullet journalling" on sites like Pinterest: the optimization of the productivity process or tool (or in the case of "bullet journal" posts, the beauty of the tool) is the end itself, not a means to an end. The posts are about/by "productivity" or "journalling" enthusiasts and don't map well to people who are simply seeking a bit of an organization or productivity boost, not an…

My BS detector went off immediately when I read the link about Zettelkastens, and then I googled "Zettelkasten", and I skimmed through five different articles that were each pages long and talked over and over about how wonderful Zettelkastens are but didn't give any information about how they work or how to implement them practically. That's a pretty reliable indication that the service is the end, not a means to th…

Oh, so it's just a hipsterish new name for a personal wiki.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#262

Post by muldvarp » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 9:40 AM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #36

Just tried to use it. What's with the Anki UX? You can't just install the mobile app and start downloading shared decks to use.

Ankis UI and UX are notorourisly bad.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#263

Post by muldvarp » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 9:42 AM UTC

cprayingmantis wrote: post #230

When you just memorize you lose intuition which is the far more useful portion of learning.

You don't really lose anything by memorizing facts. You can still use your intuition for stuff you didn't memorize or forgot.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#264

Post by pjbk » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 9:44 AM UTC

01100011 wrote: post #225

Does anyone know if Anki or a similar app can handle importing from a text document or spreadsheet? I have a ton of things I need to learn for my job, and I already have a text document full of notes and definitions. I'd like to assemble everything on my PC and then have flashcards on my phone. I also need to control the syncing because I'd be making cards with the company secret sauce and can't sync to anything but…

The Anki app does indeed import from CSV files, and you can choose what delimiter character it will use to separate fields.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#265

Post by mellowhype » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 9:50 AM UTC

And in 2020 I stil struggle to export my Kindle highlights from sideloaded books (not bought from Amazon). And even if I did, I haven't found a note system that lets me centralize all the notes I gather from web, documents and my Kindle.

Maybe one of you can come up with a piece of service and make me tear up a little.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#266

Post by ZoomZoomZoom » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 9:51 AM UTC

I'm using Anki for language learning sparingly (I know it defeats the purpose, but still...) What I haven't figured out it how to automatically create Anki cards from the words I'm looking up in a dictionary. I'm at a point where I rarely stumble upon words I don't understand, and they are usually rare enough to not meet again for a long time, long enough to completely forget them.

What I want is something that could catch me opening dictionary by double-tapping in CoolReader and add the shown entry to my Anki. Doing it manually breaks the flow and immersion so I can't really do it while reading.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#267

Post by muldvarp » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 9:51 AM UTC

hedgedoops2 wrote: post #51

Has anyone ever created an anki deck from their college coursework that would have allowed them to pass verbal exams 10 years later?

Depends on the course, the exam as well as how long you used spaced repetition. The next time Anki will ask me what "å sløse" means is in over five years and I'm pretty sure I won't have forgotten it by then. For exams that rely less on memorization this might be different. I'm pretty sure that even if I remember all definitions from my measure theory course I still wouldn't be able to pass the exam in 10 years.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#268

Post by istjohn » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 9:52 AM UTC

rudnek wrote: post #254

yen223 wrote: post #35

I've used spaced repetition to help learn stuff in general. It's one of the most rewarding things I've done. Some general thoughts: 1. A lot of spaced repetition apps don't optimize for fast card creation. I like to make a card as soon as I come across something interesting, but the delay to get Anki started, and to create the card, etc just makes it frustrating. I wound up building my own app for this. 2. Cloze dele…

For speeding up the card creation I've recently made a CLI application [1]. It generates cards from Markdown files. I'd recommend having its own repository with Markdown files grouped by target domain using tags for every card. It'd help to search quickly relevant cards even in the same domain. [1] https://github.com/ashlinchak/mdanki

Nice! I made a similar thing for myself, but without nearly as much polish as your project [1].

I use a custom text file format to allow creation of cloze deletions and reversible cards as well as basic cards. I also annotate text files on export so that I can export the file again without creating duplicate cards.

The big shortcoming of my script is that it generates .tsv files and Anki only allows .tsv files to contain one note type. They also do not incorporate media.

I'd like to be able to sync edits made in Anki back to the text files and vice versa. It'd be really cool to integrate a text file parser and alternative card editing mode into Anki with a plugin.

Perhaps I'll send some PR's your way instead of duplicating effort.

1. https://github.com/isaiahstjohn/flashbang

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#269

Post by tadeo » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 9:58 AM UTC

mellowhype wrote: post #265

And in 2020 I stil struggle to export my Kindle highlights from sideloaded books (not bought from Amazon). And even if I did, I haven't found a note system that lets me centralize all the notes I gather from web, documents and my Kindle. Maybe one of you can come up with a piece of service and make me tear up a little.

Have you tried https://readwise.io? I export my kindle highlights from sideloaded books through an iphone app and send them to import@readwise.io. That's better then downloading and uploading the txt file. Web is also covered. Dunno about your docuemnts though.

Re: Using Anki to remember what you read

#270

Post by muldvarp » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 10:02 AM UTC

melling wrote: post #64

msaharia wrote: post #32

Is Anki a trademark? If someone wants to make a tool called AnkiSuper, is that allowed? I'm not a big fan of the UI/UX. So I am thinking of scratching an itch.

Is the format open source?

Here is a description of the format: https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/wiki/Database-Stru...

If you'd ask me it's a perfect example of how not to structure a database. It's not even in the first normal form.

I'd love to create an Anki clone that has better UI/UX and a better database format and I think that would remedy some of the biggest pain points about Anki. But since most Anki users (me included) use several plugins that are quite essential to their Anki experience, an Anki clone would have to support those plugins, too.