I’ve been using Tomboy, then Evernote, then plain Markdown flies and now I have migrated everything to Notion (notion.so). I think I’ll stick with the latter for a while as their organisation system resonates with me quite well.
Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
81–90 of 113 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#82Multiple tools, I guess.
I've used Tomboy for 8 years now to:
- brief note usage - blog drafts - turning those moments of inspiration and excitement into lasting documents
In the past year I've adopted Anki for committing knowledge to memory. Topics include:
- family birthdates - UNIX core utilities - python builtin functions - multiplication up to 20x20 (still a WIP) - US bill of rights - AI/ML terminology - Puppet concepts / idioms
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#83I've been using a git repository of org-mode files for 5 years. It's currently over 600 thousand words, some of this written by me, some copy-pasted from e-books and webpages. I like this format because it has a multitude of useful features like intra-document links, project planning, tables with formulas, embedded LaTeX, and code than can be run directly inside the document, while being plain-text and very readable even without editor support. To make note-taking as frictionless as possible, I've also added a global keyboard shortcut which commits all changes with an autogenerated message, then executes pull --rebase and push.
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#84My whole system, minus the Apple Pencil bits, is described here: https://cpbotha.net/2019/09/21/note-taking-strategy-2019/
In short:
- Emacs OrgMode with a specific setup as the core of everything.
- I store interesting web-pages as PDFs on my local drive, currently synced using Dropbox.
- Academic articles go in Zotero, with PDFs on local drive, synced using Dropbox.
- On mobile, I use the Dropbox app to create and edit markdown files (I wish they would just treat .org files as normal text files!), and to save any web page to PDF.
- I sometimes draw flow charts, architecture diagrams and UI using an Apple Pencil and the Notability app on a 2018 entry-level iPad, which syncs these sketches as searchable PDFs to ... Dropbox.
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#85I'm surprised VoodooPad [1] does not get mentioned more often when this question gets asked.
It is by far the most straightforward wiki I have used. The two features I rely on most are (i) creating new pages that link back to a piece of text simply by highlighting the text and entering a shortcut and (ii) adding aliases to pages, so that each time either the page name or its aliases are mentioned anywhere in the wiki, a link is automatically created back to the page.
Using these two workflows, pages can fulfil a similar function tags do: If a concept appears again and again across many different pages, I simply create a page which is named after the concept or has the concept as one of its aliases. When I open this new page, I can see all pages that link to it in a panel that lists all back-links. I then go on to edit the page, going into more detail.
This has turned out to be the most organic way for me to write a wiki where editing, linking, and exploring works almost frictionlessly.
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#86I use a few giant PDF files that total up to 1500 pages and 600000 words. They are made with plain LaTeX and no special tools. [0]
To me the main choice you make for a knowledge base is the linking structure: do you want just an unorganized pile, a web, something hierarchical, or something linear? In general CS/programming people prefer less structured forms like webs (as can be seen in these comments), while physics/math people prefer the opposite. For example, the Stacks and Kerodon projects are huge collaborative knowledge bases for certain subfields, but they're organized like a standard textbook.
This is partly because physics/math people prefer more stable software, since they don't have time to keep up with or build the latest thing. LaTeX has been stable for decades. Furthermore, the material in physics and math really is more ordered and hierarchical, while CS seems to have a broader, more organic structure from its youth.
I love the linear format, and I'd encourage you to try it too. It requires no special software. It forces you to think about what is most foundational, and how certain insights lead directionally to others -- issues which you can ignore if you give yourself the freedom of a web. And as you move forward to more advanced things, spaced repetition of the more foundational things will happen automatically.
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#87I have been building and using an open source solution called Dnote [0] for the past two years. Maybe it could help you and others in search for a solution. I used to write down information in note-taking apps but doing so didn't help me retain more knowledge. The reasons were: (a) no spaced repetition, because I never went back to my old notes once I wrote them. (b) environment switch due to having to launch externa…
I have used dnote locally for a short while and love it. Unfortunately I cannot connect to the "pro" server (company restrictions), so I am running my own dnote server for this. Works very nice except for a few minor bugs (which reminded me to get them reported on github).
Any plans to make the browser extention configurable so it can work with a self-hosted server?
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#88I'm using Notion.so It's not a self-hosted platform and not personal in that sense but it has export to markdown capability so I feel safe storing my knowledgebase there knowing that I can download the data, files, images and everything else I have uploaded in a non-propriatry format
Here we go again. Hackernews users are not so stupid to fall for this marketing bullshit. Go back to reddit to shill your startup. You have been reposting the same thing in the last week, several times. It's annoying. It should be flagged.
This comment breaks several of the site guidelines quite badly. I appreciate your fine intention to protect the quality of HN—but the downside of being wrong (or even right) about a comment like this is orders of magnitude worse than the upside of being right. You simply can't attack a fellow user like this here. Comments need to remain respectful and assume good faith.
If you're worried about abuse, the thing to do is to email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. That's in the guidelines too.
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#89I realize this may not be the place for this comment, but a few of these comments got me thinking. Human memory is squishy, and that's great. You retain facts + feelings that help you make future decisions and everything else is integrated into smaller and smaller summaries until it fades away entirely. I spent years clinging to every experience wanting not to forget anything, and being horrified when I couldn't reme…
Thank you for posting this, as I had similar thoughts also when reading the last knowledge bank post.
I love learning and will regularly do courses to pick up something completely different, or something applicable to my career.
However, I do think it's okay to allow some of the things I've learnt to fade away. Technology or previous interests become less relevant, and trying to retain everything keeps me too focused on the past, making me feel like I get worse over time, rather than keep a positive learning attitude towards the future.
Also, relearning things I've used a long time ago, because it has now become relevant again, is a lot of fun. The second time I've looked at trigonometry, I actually really enjoyed it.
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#90Tiddlywiki: https://philosopher.life/ About 3 years, and I use it every day. The experiences with the tool are documented in the tool.
I am also using TiddlyWiki, but I just use it locally with almost all the defaults and no fancy formatting. It's a little different than a traditional wiki in that each "page" (called a "tiddler") is not really designed as a "page" that you view, but rather a snippet, which can be of any length. You can link between them and whatnot as in any wiki. The killer features for me are support for * code syntax highlighting…
This is what I've come to love about TiddlyWiki so much. I use it as my personal Zettelkasten for my finance studies, with each Tiddler being a single thought. For example, a recent Tiddler I created was simply:
"Banks have three alternatives for determining operational risk regulatory capital under Basel II
1 - Basic Indicator Approach 2 - Standardised Approach 3 - Advanced Measurement Approach (AMA)"
I make sure that each Tiddler has a link off to at least one other Tiddler. This one in particular has links off to my entries on the three particular approaches, which in turn link off to mathematical formulas and other related thoughts. I find by doing it this way I naturally tend to dive more and more in-depth to a particular topic until my Tiddlers are getting extremely specific but then one may link back to a very broad topic and the cycle repeats itself.
By doing this, when I read over my notes, I find it almost feels like I'm having a conversation with them. Just like a normal conversation that you and your partner are deeply interested in, you'll dive deeper and deeper into specifics until another random, broader thought pops up and you repeat the process. I'm continuously surprised about the thoughts I run into as I randomly walk through my notes.
But by far the most important thing for me is that this process has actually made note taking fun! I love it now. Every other system I've ever tried has felt like a chore. I enjoy it so much I'm usually adding several hundred new Tiddlers a day.