In August I had my last week of summer vacation. I read a book that made me want to improve my note taking tool, I did some programming on hobby projects, and I migrated my blog to a new platform. All while doing many runs.
I read A System for Writing by Bob Doto. This review is what made me buy the book:
When I first tried to get my head around Zettelkasten, I consulted Sönke Ahrens’ extremely useful book How to Take Smart Notes. This was—and still is—seen as the book to read on the subject. I predict A System for Writing will replace it.
I liked Sönke's book, and I was curious to learn more about this topic from a source that seemed credible.
I got some new insights about the Zettelkasten method. In particular the idea that it is important to articulate how two ideas relate. I've previously mostly connected ideas without context. The connection was obvious when I made it, but most likely less obvious when I come back to it.
I tried to research this a bit more and found the article Backlinking Is Not Very Useful -- Often Even Harmful:
A good link context explains what you can expect if you follow the link. But it can also explain the nature of the relationship between both notes.
I wanted to try this out.
I use my Smart Notes app to take notes using the Zettelkasten method. When I studied the method more, I got some new ideas that I implemented:
I configured different note types to show in different colors. Zettelkasten has a few different kinds of notes, and quickly being able to see, by color, which it is, has been helpful.
I added the ability to change the order of notes. This was needed to be able to create structure notes with links in specific order.
I added the ability to give links a text description. This is what allowed me to experiment with articulating how two ideas relate to each other. I wrote more about the evolution of this feature in Linking (and how it has evolved) in Smart Notes.
I continued to work on One-File Programs.
I worked on an engine app that can automatically reload other apps when they change. This gives faster feedback, especially when working on graphical applications. It is similar to an approach I've written about previously in How to get fast feedback on graphical code?
I also worked on the no scrollbars app. I wanted to see if we can get rid of scrollbars in some GUI elements. The idea is to make items larger around the area of the mouse so that they can more easily get selected. Here is one screenshot:
I want do continue work with this repo, but the rest of the time this month, I spent on my blog.
I found out about Micro.blog and moved my blog to it.
I documented how I did a redirect to my old archived site for pages that I have not yet migrated to the new blog in Poor man's redirect in a static site.
I started a "photo blog" documenting my runs and how my life improves from them.
Some reflections on Micro.blog:
I can share and develop my interests. I can structure content with categories and pages. Others can come have a look. Comment if they wish. And you can see conversations that I've had with visitors.