Re: [silk] How do you collect and retrieve information from what you read?

[Srijith Nair]

Regards, 
Srijith K. Nair

On Wed, Feb 26, 2020, at 7:22 PM, Tomasz Rola wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 05:35:27PM +0100, Srijith Nair wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I would like to pick your brains on how you organise and retrieve
> > information that you read in books (physical or ebook) and long-form
> > articles online.  
> > 
> [...]
> > I was wondering what you have found useful in solving similar
> > problems on your end.
> > 
> > As I love to hack code, I have been working on a solution for the
> > last few weeks but it is far from perfect or complete. Before I go
> > further down this rabbit hole, I thought it makes sense to try and
> > understand if there are existing solutions out there that works for
> > you?
> 
> For stuff read online I mostly use org-mode, a special mode for notes
> taking, information organising etc in Emacs editor. I repurposed it
> into my personal wiki. It now exceeds thirty megabytes, so I had to
> increase Emacs's default max file size more than once. And editor with
> such biggie gets a bit slow sometimes. I put there all kinds of
> bookmarks, things to be read later, summaries of shopping lists and
> wish lists, extensive quotations and so on. Searching can be slow, too
> (big file, eh), 
> [..] 
> Having it all in simple text file has obvious benefits, at least to
> me. This kind of files can be read on most operating systems in use
> today and in foreseeable future. If necessary, it can be edited with
> most primitive text editors out there, too. So, I consider it to last
> long enough to be useful without having to hop tools and versions.

I agree, text has its simplicity going for it. The whole process reminds me of 
http://plain-text.co/

Thanks,

Srijith


> And I would rather tug a computer with me than rely important stuff to
> online services. YMMV. (please note, cell phone is not considered a
> computer in this context, it is part of online system and thus
> unreliable).
> 
> Few years ago I have also started to employ paper notes for various
> things, after some decades of relying mostly on computer based
> means. As it sometimes happens, as a teen I (re)invented the thing
> called "commonplace book" or "zibaldone". Since I had no idea such
> thing has this name, I named it with my own neologism in Polish. Then,
> many years later, I have learned about zibaldones.
> 
> It seems that lots of people were writing their zibaldones during last
> five hundred years or so (at least in Europe). I guess it would be
> hard to invent something better.
> 
> BTW, is there (or was there) a similar concept in other
> cultures/civilisations? I mean, a kind of personal encyclopaedia,
> collected from scraps of knowledge. In Japan, they have hobonichi, but
> as I understand it, it is more like daily planner and diary.
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
> Tomasz Rola
> 
> --
> ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.  **
> ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home**
> ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...  **
> ** **
> ** Tomasz Rola  mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
> 
>

Re: [silk] How do you collect and retrieve information from what you read?

[Srijith Nair]

Hi José,

On Wed, Feb 26, 2020, at 2:29 AM, José María Mateos wrote:
> >Hi all,
> >
> >I would like to pick your brains on how you organise and retrieve 
> >information that you read in books (physical or ebook) and long-form 
> >articles online.
> >
> >Over the years I have been getting increasingly frustrated at not being 
> >efficient in deriving meaningful value from what I have read and curated via 
> >notes and highlights from these readings. I wanted to get better at 
> >retaining what I read and also in being able to connect the dots and 
> >identifying overlapping and intersecting themes and topics across the 
> >various books and articles I have read. I also have the recurring problem of 
> >not being able to  remember/find that quote or that impressive eloquent 
> >passage in a book or article that I read a few weeks or months ago.
> 
> I'm on your same boat, but I have found out it makes no sense (for me) 
> to try to find a solution. I know I have very bad memory when I read 
> books, so I've made peace with it in two ways: for every book I read, 
> distill the contents to a mental paragraph that I could use to explain 
> to someone what the book is about; and also focus on two or three very 
> salient points the book makes, and treasure them. So I don't try to 
> remember most of what I read, it's pointless for me.

That is a refreshing contrarian view. 

Do you store the metal paragraph in some form or other somewhere other than in 
your head?

I am guessing you have not regretted not being able to recollect the material 
that you don't recall? Do you not need any such material for professional or 
daily use in some form?

Regards,
Srijith

Re: [silk] How do you collect and retrieve information from what you read?

[Srijith Nair]

Hi Ashwin,

> I have terrible memory, so how best to take notes and be able to search and
> find them later is probably something I worry about every single day.
> 
> Your current query is about: books and long-form online articles. I am
> guessing you mean non-fiction works.

Most of the time it is non-fiction indeed. But I am also trying to capture some 
rather eloquent passages in fiction.
 
>- *Non-fiction books*
>   - *Physical*: I use highlighter/pen/pencil to underline and take
>   notes on the pages. Decades ago, I used to consider writing in a book a
>   sacrilege. Now I am the polar opposite :-)
>   - *Ebook*: I avoid epub/ebook formats and get the PDF version. If
>   there is no PDF, I export ebook to PDF. The PDF format supports
>   annotations. You can annotate (highlight, underline, text, draw,
> jot) on a
>   PDF using PDF programs on desktop (Windows/Linux) and tablets (Android).
>   And these annotated PDFs are viewable in standard PDF viewers on _all_
>   platforms. I love this versatility of the PDF format.

This is rather interesting workflow. I have not seen a lot of people convert 
from epub and other formats to PDF for reading. Is this in influenced by your 
academic reading workflow by any chance, as a way to unify both the process for 
all forms of reading?

>   - For both types of books, if I like the book, I usually write an 
> *online
>   post/review*  with a summary.
>   So this is the place I first head to.

Wow, that is one disciplined record keeping! I am in awe.

>- *Long-form online articles*
>   - After reading the article, if I like it, I keep a Markdown file
>   where I take notes (link to article and bullet list of my summary). This
>   used to be a ASCIIDoc file, but now that Markdown is supported
> everywhere,
>   I use that. Recently I switched to a Git repo hosted on Github for these
>   Markdown files. Github has online Markdown viewer and editor, so I can
>   search, read and edit all in the browser itself!

Thanks for sharing the process. Markdown is indeed rather useful in such 
context and makes search very easy.

Regards,
Srijith

> 
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 8:36 AM Srijith Nair  wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I would like to pick your brains on how you organise and retrieve
> > information that you read in books (physical or ebook) and long-form
> > articles online.
> >
> > Over the years I have been getting increasingly frustrated at not being
> > efficient in deriving meaningful value from what I have read and curated
> > via notes and highlights from these readings. I wanted to get better at
> > retaining what I read and also in being able to connect the dots and
> > identifying overlapping and intersecting themes and topics across the
> > various books and articles I have read. I also have the recurring problem
> > of not being able to  remember/find that quote or that impressive eloquent
> > passage in a book or article that I read a few weeks or months ago.
> >
> > Attempts at using Evernote, Notion and other collect-everything tools have
> > solved parts of the problem but it does get tedious and, because it is not
> > a tool built-for-purpose, it involves a fair bit of personalisation.
> > Services like readwise.io attack a slightly different problem from a
> > different angle (helping learn by repetition etc).
> >
> > I was wondering what you have found useful in solving similar problems on
> > your end.
> >
> > As I love to hack code, I have been working on a solution for the last few
> > weeks but it is far from perfect or complete. Before I go further down this
> > rabbit hole, I thought it makes sense to try and understand if there are
> > existing solutions out there that works for you?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Srijith
> >
> >
>

Re: [silk] How do you collect and retrieve information from what you read?

[Alok Singh]

On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 11:52 PM Tomasz Rola  wrote:

> BTW, is there (or was there) a similar concept in other
> cultures/civilisations?


Sort of tangential but there is an oral tradition called ಹೆಳುವವರು
(heLuvavaru) who are these wandering folk (I think they were shepherds) who
go from house to house, listening to their stories and would then repeat
the memorable ones, long after the participants had passed. This is from
the Davangere region of Karnataka.

Re: [silk] How do you collect and retrieve information from what you read?

[Tomasz Rola]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 05:35:27PM +0100, Srijith Nair wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I would like to pick your brains on how you organise and retrieve
> information that you read in books (physical or ebook) and long-form
> articles online.  
> 
[...]
> I was wondering what you have found useful in solving similar
> problems on your end.
> 
> As I love to hack code, I have been working on a solution for the
> last few weeks but it is far from perfect or complete. Before I go
> further down this rabbit hole, I thought it makes sense to try and
> understand if there are existing solutions out there that works for
> you?

For stuff read online I mostly use org-mode, a special mode for notes
taking, information organising etc in Emacs editor. I repurposed it
into my personal wiki. It now exceeds thirty megabytes, so I had to
increase Emacs's default max file size more than once. And editor with
such biggie gets a bit slow sometimes. I put there all kinds of
bookmarks, things to be read later, summaries of shopping lists and
wish lists, extensive quotations and so on. Searching can be slow, too
(big file, eh), so I started using standard Unix tools for certain
cases (/bin/grep, /usr/bin/less work much faster, and /usr/bin/awk
might come to the rescue a bit later, too). Emacs is "programmable"
and I am not afraid of Lisp, so this approach has additional benefit
of putting some of my code where my data already is. I also keep this
wiki in version control (in this case, RCS, because it is relatively
simple and does not require much planning).

Having it all in simple text file has obvious benefits, at least to
me. This kind of files can be read on most operating systems in use
today and in foreseeable future. If necessary, it can be edited with
most primitive text editors out there, too. So, I consider it to last
long enough to be useful without having to hop tools and versions.

And I would rather tug a computer with me than rely important stuff to
online services. YMMV. (please note, cell phone is not considered a
computer in this context, it is part of online system and thus
unreliable).

Few years ago I have also started to employ paper notes for various
things, after some decades of relying mostly on computer based
means. As it sometimes happens, as a teen I (re)invented the thing
called "commonplace book" or "zibaldone". Since I had no idea such
thing has this name, I named it with my own neologism in Polish. Then,
many years later, I have learned about zibaldones.

It seems that lots of people were writing their zibaldones during last
five hundred years or so (at least in Europe). I guess it would be
hard to invent something better.

BTW, is there (or was there) a similar concept in other
cultures/civilisations? I mean, a kind of personal encyclopaedia,
collected from scraps of knowledge. In Japan, they have hobonichi, but
as I understand it, it is more like daily planner and diary.

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.  **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home**
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...  **
** **
** Tomasz Rola  mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Charles Haynes]

On Wed, 26 Feb 2020 at 10:11 am, Thaths  wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 9:47 PM Alok Prasanna Kumar  >
> wrote:
>
> > To add to the already fantastic books on this list (in no particular
> order)
> > ...
> > 2. India Moving: A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
> >
> ...
>
> If any of you are interested in the music of the Indian diaspora, this
> episode of Afropop Worldwide might be of interest to you:
>
>
> https://afropop.org/audio-programs/diaspora-encounters-the-indo-caribbean-world


That's great, thanks for sharing it. If you're interested in the
intersection between modern technology and African music, I can strongly
recommend "Music From Saharan WhatsApp" and it's predecessor "Music from
Saharan Cellphones."

https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/sahel-sounds-music-from-saharan-whatsapp-interview

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2010/nov/01/music-from-saharan-cellphones-mali

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Thaths]

On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 9:47 PM Alok Prasanna Kumar 
wrote:

> To add to the already fantastic books on this list (in no particular order)
> ...
> 2. India Moving: A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
>
...

If any of you are interested in the music of the Indian diaspora, this
episode of Afropop Worldwide might be of interest to you:

https://afropop.org/audio-programs/diaspora-encounters-the-indo-caribbean-world

Competition between communities of Indian and African descent has been a
mainstay of politics and culture in the former British colonies of Trinidad
and Tobago, and Guyana. This rivalry plays out in institutions from the
University of the West Indies to the West Indies cricket team, and of
course, popular music. At the time of Trinidad's Independence, the
Afro-Caribbean political elite of the day sought to enshrine calypso as the
country's national music, but new genres have emerged, from the steel-pan
jazz and calypso of the 1960s to soca and its successor, chutney-soca,
which for the first time in the 1980s fully integrated Indian and African
influences in a local popular music. This Hip Deep edition explores all of
these styles, and also the music of diaspora communities in the U.S. and
the U.K.. Ethnomusicologist Peter Manuel of the City University of New York
shares his ground-breaking research on Indo-Caribbean music in all of its
geographic and social contexts. His music and insights reveal a
fascinating, overlooked story of hybrid Caribbean culture.


S.

-- 
Homer: Hey, what does this job pay?
Carl:  Nuthin'.
Homer: D'oh!
Carl:  Unless you're crooked.
Homer: Woo-hoo!