I used to keep sketchbooks, but don't anymore. A couple years ago I took photos of every page of every sketchbook I had, then threw all of them out.
On keeping sketchbooks
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Re: On keeping sketchbooks
#72During the Renaissance/Enlightenment, there was a lot of discussion among intellectuals on how to best keep notebooks/journals. A widely used system was to carry a small pocket notebook which was filled logbook style, with things entered as they came up. The material from the pocket notebook would later be transcribed to topically arranged journals. I believe I've read reference to this practice going back to Classic…
I tried to keep a physical notebook/common-place book, several times, but after a while i just stopped. I like handwriting but since i started using obsidian i don't believe i will return. I'm thinking perhaps of using papers as first draft or impromptu writing, and then final drafts will be stored or transferred to Obsidian.
I use paper notebooks as the first point for very quick rough notes which I then build on in Notion, for me it works really well as I can quickly write the point down without really needing to look which is better for focus in meetings etc. The act of capturing it twice also seems to embed it better in my memory as well, but your mileage may vary with that.
Re: On keeping sketchbooks
#73Helps to reign in the inner dialogue. At some point, a soft, friendly voice was discovered. She'd tell me to be nicer to myself. Seemingly we're 3-4, maybe 5 ppl inside this skull. Lately she changed into a nice granny and I found that it would be nice if she became my dominant self. The current dominant self is all about herself, addicted to gaming, distracted, annyoing and anxious, and yearns for the end of life wh…
The hell you talking about.
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Re: On keeping sketchbooks
#74During the Renaissance/Enlightenment, there was a lot of discussion among intellectuals on how to best keep notebooks/journals. A widely used system was to carry a small pocket notebook which was filled logbook style, with things entered as they came up. The material from the pocket notebook would later be transcribed to topically arranged journals. I believe I've read reference to this practice going back to Classic…
Yes, for years I would carry around an index card or a small notebook. I would jot down significant thoughts or events in bullet point format. Later, I would write out longform a blog post about the ideas and events of the week, trying to weave it together into a coherent essay. Having something light on me at all times was critical to capture ideas. Letting them marinate for a while was typically a good thing, since I could continue thinking through the angles and making horizontal connections to other things going on in my life.
Re: On keeping sketchbooks
#75Any advice that has worked for you on learning to sketch? I have a journal while travelling, and I don't have a lot of artistic talent but have always wanted sketch landscapes, objects, or people in.
Re: On keeping sketchbooks
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
The hell you talking about.
Go get a notebook and a pen. Sit outside. Write about something that's on your mind from a different person's point of view. You'll discover what he's talking about. This isn't unusual or new-age at all. Writing from a second point of view or imagined conversations as a tool for thinking goes back to at least Plato's Dialogues.
I seem to have very little on my mind, probably why I struggle to maintain journalling.
Re: On keeping sketchbooks
#77During the Renaissance/Enlightenment, there was a lot of discussion among intellectuals on how to best keep notebooks/journals. A widely used system was to carry a small pocket notebook which was filled logbook style, with things entered as they came up. The material from the pocket notebook would later be transcribed to topically arranged journals. I believe I've read reference to this practice going back to Classic…
Can you recommend sources to find out more about this?
You may also consider looking into Morning Pages - part of The Artists Way
Re: On keeping sketchbooks
#78Big endian dates always make me laugh. They are okay, but exist mostly because American insist on using a terrible MM-DD-YYYY format usually and while DD-MM-YYYY makes more sense it'd be confusing while Americans continue to use MM-DD. Similarly, imperial units are terrible 12 inches to foot, 3 feet to yard. Fractions of inches for small lengths... And British driving on the left. A hold out that complicates the enti…
The date format and imperial/metric examples seem to me to be objectively better. Is driving on the right objectively better, or is it just a case of "more people do it that way"? Otherwise, why shouldn't everyone drive on the left?
Re: On keeping sketchbooks
#79Big endian dates always make me laugh. They are okay, but exist mostly because American insist on using a terrible MM-DD-YYYY format usually and while DD-MM-YYYY makes more sense it'd be confusing while Americans continue to use MM-DD. Similarly, imperial units are terrible 12 inches to foot, 3 feet to yard. Fractions of inches for small lengths... And British driving on the left. A hold out that complicates the enti…
MM-DD is not terrible.
It was a useful format for a very long time, and in contexts even today, it is still appropriate. Say I have a bunch of dates associated with things I want to organize, maybe physical things. First of all, in my organization, the year is either inconsequential or it's just implied - "the current year". Ok. What's next? The month. So the month and the day are most significant. And say I want to file things away in a cabinet for the implied or current year - we go by month first, then day, not day then month - that would be silly. And colloquially we say "month/day", and again, the year is implied. So then we write the way we speak things, and that yields MM-DD. When we do add the year, it just comes at the end. That's not terrible, it's useful for what we need it for.
In American, the format emerged organically, it was useful (still is), and it just stuck.
If you're a software engineer and you need YYYY-MM-DD dates because they're easier to work with and they collate more appropriately, that's great, that's your use-case. Engineers, however, are infamous for not considering others' use-cases, least of all the use-case of the users they're actually building their program for! Perhaps that's why so much modern software is just so user-hostile.
Perhaps the engineer should consider that his goals and use-cases are not necessarily the same as other people's. And perhaps he should stop trying to impose his own goals and use-cases onto others. And before he criticize others' specs, reqs, and use-cases, perhaps he should make an attempt to understand them to begin with.
Re: On keeping sketchbooks
#80Big endian dates always make me laugh. They are okay, but exist mostly because American insist on using a terrible MM-DD-YYYY format usually and while DD-MM-YYYY makes more sense it'd be confusing while Americans continue to use MM-DD. Similarly, imperial units are terrible 12 inches to foot, 3 feet to yard. Fractions of inches for small lengths... And British driving on the left. A hold out that complicates the enti…
Year-Month-Day for ordering files in a way that makes sense to me.
LHD countries include lots of parts of the former British Empire including most of Africa that's DRC or south. I believe only Guyana is LHD on the main American continents, and the only LHD-RHD switch in the Americas is on the border of Guyana and Brazil.