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Unbundling Tools for Thought

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Re: Unbundling Tools for Thought

#81

Post by Tomte »

D13Fd wrote: post #73

I found the perfect system for me and I stick to it. I use a folder of Markdown text notes organized by creation date, with a text editor (ideally something like nvAlt / Uulysses / Obsidian that does indexed searches). Titles are: 2022-12-26 Note Name.txt That way I can find what I’m looking for, usually instantly, even though I have a pile of thousands of notes in that folder spanning a decade.

I haven't found an iOS app that allows good search in plain text files.

About every app out there uses Apples standard search control, which finds files where text occurs. Not the line(s) with the occurrence itself, no forward/previous, only a list of files that contains the text.

Is Ulysses better in that regard?

Re: Unbundling Tools for Thought

#82

Post by damethos »

crazygringo wrote: post #31

A side note, but is anyone else experiencing a font size so large as to make it almost unreadable? Viewing it on my laptop, the CSS font size is set to 2 rem, which means each letter takes up four times as much space as default body text (which is 1 rem, usually 16 px -- so this is 32 px size). Even worse, if you zoom out, it detects that and compensates by setting it to 2.5 rem (40 px), or over 6 times as large in a…

I am experiencing the same thing but I read it anyway because It was an interesting article :)

Re: Unbundling Tools for Thought

#83

Post by cristianpascu »

Just realized something while reading the article, about “spaced repetition”.

For a while now I had the impression of not learning anything new and also of loosing the interest of doing so. It sort of came back to me as I am in a sabbatical period now, which gave me some mental clarity and also more space-time to think about things more thoroughly.

But, here’s the thing: I have never stopped learning new things. I have been checking HN for many years, and been reading daily SW news for the past 20 years. Many things come to my attention in different shapes and they build up in abstraction and in my memory/understanding to a wider and wider scale. Flash cards that I’d manage and check regularly would have not had the same effect as constantly checking my existing knowledge against random new areas of reality.

I am happy about realizing this, as it’s somehow difficult for me to understand my actual place in the SW industry.

Re: Unbundling Tools for Thought

#84

Post by blondin »

Tomte wrote: post #45
jerf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About once every year or two, I remember something I read maybe 15 years ago and realize it would be absolutely perfect for some reason, but I can't find it. And being an engineer and an HN poster, my brain immediately leaps to "Oh, if only I ran a system that archived everything I browsed so I could build my own personal search engine that could search on just what I've ever looked at." Then I smack it down, because…

Photos are the worst. I'm through at least three complete reorganizations where I even dusted off old backups and collected all photos (because I felt I was deleting photos too liberally last time), de-duplicated (and de-quadruplicated) them all, and built the new "forever" structure. It sucks that I just know I'll do it again at most five years from now.

this calls for an AI that recognizes pictures and categorizes them for us. what have we been solving all these captchas for?

photos and pictures organization should be a solved problem.

Re: Unbundling Tools for Thought

#85

Post by danking00 »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #62

I have a blog post that I've been sketching out in my head about this whole area of Tools for Thought, future of computing, cybernetics, etc. Basically I find that the thoughtleaders of this space seem to always claim that the true manifestation of their ideas is just out of reach (Project Xanadu, memex, object oriented programming, etc.), but then never deliver this true manifestation. Indeed it's rather remarkable…

I wonder if the trouble is not whether or not they are salesman but whether or not they are effective “managers,” for want of a better word. Many of the products we use today are built by companies of tens of thousands of people. Realizing Bush’s, Englebart’s, or Kay’s visions demands motivating and orchestrating armies of people with diverse skill sets.

Are any of these three known for their skill at orchestrating teams or organizations? Compare to some of the more famous scientists, engineers, etc., they’ve led large organizations. Like, Jeff Dean, Steve Jobs, J. Robert Oppenheimer, etc.

Re: Unbundling Tools for Thought

#86

Post by jodrellblank »

blondin wrote: post #84
Tomte wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photos are the worst. I'm through at least three complete reorganizations where I even dusted off old backups and collected all photos (because I felt I was deleting photos too liberally last time), de-duplicated (and de-quadruplicated) them all, and built the new "forever" structure. It sucks that I just know I'll do it again at most five years from now.

this calls for an AI that recognizes pictures and categorizes them for us. what have we been solving all these captchas for? photos and pictures organization should be a solved problem.

Does your smartphone not already do that for you? iPhone does, I think Android does and I think iPhoto on macOS does as well. It wouldn’t surprise me if Google online photos or Facebook do also.

(That is, let you search using words for things in the photo or themes like “winter”).

Re: Unbundling Tools for Thought

#87

Post by simonster »

danking00 wrote: post #85
hardwaregeek wrote: post #62

I have a blog post that I've been sketching out in my head about this whole area of Tools for Thought, future of computing, cybernetics, etc. Basically I find that the thoughtleaders of this space seem to always claim that the true manifestation of their ideas is just out of reach (Project Xanadu, memex, object oriented programming, etc.), but then never deliver this true manifestation. Indeed it's rather remarkable…

I wonder if the trouble is not whether or not they are salesman but whether or not they are effective “managers,” for want of a better word. Many of the products we use today are built by companies of tens of thousands of people. Realizing Bush’s, Englebart’s, or Kay’s visions demands motivating and orchestrating armies of people with diverse skill sets. Are any of these three known for their skill at orchestrating t…

A brief look at the first few paragraphs of Vannevar Bush's Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush) would clearly establish that the answer to your question is yes.

Re: Unbundling Tools for Thought

#88

Post by cf »

I've used a personal wiki for several years now, and I think it works just fine. Surprisingly, I don't really link pages together all that much, but I make heavy use of tagging and categorising. I find that's been enough for me.

I don't really follow links, and mostly I just use the search bar when I need anything. I think one thing that's tripping lots of people up is they are trying to use these tools the way they think is expected of them. Instead, it's better to just make it as frictionless as possible to add notes, and as frictionless as possible to read notes you've written before.

Everything else is just procrastination with "productivity tools"

Re: Unbundling Tools for Thought

#89

Post by titanomachy »

bleeding wrote: post #67

I've tried to use a "personal wiki" in professional life and found that I did not really use the functionality. What re-occurring concepts need to be linked back to? AWS? APIs? Perhaps I'm just not a very good professional note-taker, but my brief experimentation didn't really feel useful. What I _have_found it very useful for is D&D notes. People, places, objects come up on a re-occurring basis and it is often usefu…

I started using one professionally and found it fairly helpful. Mostly I just type all my meeting notes and useful things I discover into my daily notes, and try to tag the top-level node with at least the name of the project and maybe the people I’m meeting with. Then I can go to the project page and see a history of the discussion, which has been helpful on numerous occasions: instead of “I think I remember someone saying that foo service is going to be deprecated soon”, I can tell my teammates “Alice from the baz team told me two months ago that foo service will be deprecated in favor of bar, here’s a link to the doc outlining the reasons”. Probably 80% of the benefit just comes from having searchable daily notes, but the linking is pretty nice too.

Also helpful in 1:1s with people, I can easily see a record of all interactions I’ve had with a person so it reminds me to follow up on things when we chat.

Re: Unbundling Tools for Thought

#90

Post by hardwaregeek »

simonster wrote: post #87
danking00 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the trouble is not whether or not they are salesman but whether or not they are effective “managers,” for want of a better word. Many of the products we use today are built by companies of tens of thousands of people. Realizing Bush’s, Englebart’s, or Kay’s visions demands motivating and orchestrating armies of people with diverse skill sets. Are any of these three known for their skill at orchestrating t…

A brief look at the first few paragraphs of Vannevar Bush's Wikipedia article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush ) would clearly establish that the answer to your question is yes.

Yeah Vannevar Bush is maybe an unfair example because he was truly before his time and he did build some stuff. I just felt he was worth pointing out as one of the originators of the whole knowledge graph tool for thought movement. I don’t know if he would have actually executed in modern times.
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