Thursday, March 4, 2021

Amazing! This will work very well.

Checking in

Tonight in these wee hours when the babby somewhat slumbers at my elbow I am:

• reconsidering where to rehost my Roam graph and how to use it
• learning about Zettelkasten and how to read and write more effectively
• looking at digital gardens, wherein we can share our incomplete and freeform ideas in order to see what grows
  • is Atmanaut.me a garden? kind of. a metaphysical gardeno
  • is Easeness.business? perchance. kinda focused on an ethos
• Next to integrate the Obsidian vault with this repo.
• start hoeing up the turf to plant my digital garden

Commonplace Book

• surveying Zettelkasten (card index) tools

  • Obsidian
    • Mac app that uses md, so closed source
    • similar to Roam, but uses md and not everything is a bullet
    • autoconverts Roam and Bear syntax to md-friendly format
  • Athens
    • Mac app that simulates Roam
    • an open source Roam clone
    • doesn't seem to offer advantages beyond Roam and lags behind the features of Roam
  • Foam
    • MDX in VS Code + Git
    • open source, Roamy, and also quirky and garnering its own community
    • plays well with Obsidian since they both use md and can be versioned with Git
  • there are many more that I've weeded out and will not detail here

• I'm going to start out with a combo of:

  • Obsidian for local editing and the main event
  • Foam for publishing to a web-friendly digital garden and syncing with Github
  • Foamy NextJS for providing the graph in a readable format
    • and Netlify for publishing the NextJS app
    • or maybe I'll use adapt this graph-friendly Jekyll theme for Github Pages and call it Jekyllkasten which is hard to deny

• Reading better

  • tear-out notes instead of margin notes
  • color-coded highlighting
  • after reading do a processing phase
    • follow/develop a process
    • collect notes
    • write a summary
  • Barbell Method
    • read swiftly once, marking notable passages
    • read the marked passages again, processing and expanding your insights

• Writing notes

  • A Zettel has:
    • metadata
      • title
      • date
      • tags
    • content
    • source
      • citation in MultiMarkdown? - more on citations

Gratitude

Today I feel grateful for Zephyr Bear's tiny steady nose breaths while he sleeps peacefully in his Dock-a-tot on the table next to my elbow. That at barely three weeks old he is sleeping at night and breathing through his nose, I am beyond amazed. And he can nearly hold his head up. What a wonder this kid is and will be.

And I feel grateful for diligent folks sharing their adventures. Folks like Maggie Appleton and Yenly who have graciously led me toward the digital-garden that will be home for so many scattered noodlings and loose leaves.