2023-06

[Personal Knowledge Management] Things Left Unimplemented… and I'm Unsure if I Ever Will

Having been around the PKM block a few times, I’ve gone snipe hunting once or twice in the PKM space. Here are some pitfalls I’ve found. Importing Readwise Into BASB In the past, I’ve included importing Readwise comments in my implementations of BASB. It was often a pain to set up, created a lot of name conflicts when searching (which might be valuable to some, but wasn’t to me), had occasional problems with unsupported characters, and generally just didn’t give me anything useful.
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[Personal Knowledge Management] My BASB Implementation in Org Mode v2023-06

The meat and potatoes of the series! The stuff you’ve probably been waiting for! Rather than dump the entirety of my init folder on you, I’ve opted to give a more narrative explanation of how the system came to be. If you are unclear about anything, please reach out on the socials and I’ll do my best to clarify. Reminder: I use the term BASB to refer to the solution we’re building in Org.
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[Personal Knowledge Management] What Makes Org Mode Hard for PKM

Spoiler alert, it’s NOT the parentheses. Why BASB in Org is Hard The big thing that makes Org Mode difficult for PKM is the same thing that makes it strong: it’s flexibility. In particular, the concept of a single note from BASB when translated to Org Mode is… unclear! You could have it be a single file. Or a single headline. Or only some headlines, which you could delineate by property or by tag or by file.
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[Personal Knowledge Management] Should You Choose Org Mode?

To those who are emacs and Org mode curious, I’d like to give you a few things to consider about emacs and org mode. Be mindful, there are some dangerous opinions below. You can reach out on the socials if you want to challenge me on them. Reasons to Choose Emacs + Org The Basics It’s open source in the truest sense of the word It works on plain text files, a format you can bet on for the next 50 years It’s flexible enough to handle everything from notes to contacts to recipes to journaling and beyond It’s extensible, in small ways and big ones For many (especially programmers), this might be enough.
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[Personal Knowledge Management] My Path to Org Mode

Since this isn’t my first attempt at working with a PKM tool, I thought I would kick off this series by recapping the tools I’ve used thus far. Pre-2020… Org to Other Tools to Org Again My first attempt at using org mode was with a vanilla installation of emacs many many years ago… but it was a somewhat lackluster experience. In addition to having no idea what I was doing (and no community to ask for help), I insisted on using Org headlines as if Org was a pure outliner (with no folded text underneath headlines).
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2023-03

[Philosophy] You Are Not Your Lowest Point

You are not your lowest point. At any time, you can choose to change the path you’re on. Even right this second if you wish. You can’t change the past, but by the same token the past can’t dictate your next action. You do. Make it a good one.
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[Philosophy] Abstinence is Not the Only Form of Self-Control

When it comes to the Stoic virtue of Self-Control, our minds often turn to its most harsh form. Abstain from this. Cut off that. Completely avoid this. Abandon that. Often this advice has its merits. However, for those of us just starting on the Stoic journey, or who are working our way back from very ingrained habits, it’s worth remembering that scaling is also a valid approach to self-control. Instead of binging on a whole pizza, take it down to half, or just a slice or two.
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[Philosophy] How My Stoic Practice Paid Off

I find that Stoicism is a great philosophy for times of crisis. If you’re under pressure, dealing with a lot of expectations from a lot of people, or generally just having a rough go of things, I find the tenets and practices of Stoicism to be empowering, practical, and very useful in moving your life to a better place. That said, many adopt Stoicism in good times, including me. So I wanted to tell the story of how my Stoic practice really helped in a recent time of crisis, in case others could benefit from it.
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[Technology Personal Knowledge Management] Challenges Showing Text From a Simple JS Function in Logseq

There are some open source projects that are plain, simple, and describe well what they do. curl is the classic example (along with most Linux utilities), but File Converter is another. It does what it does, it doesn’t do what it doesn’t. And then, there is Logseq. All I wanted to do is dynamically create some text from a javascript function that’s different every day. I feel this is doable in there somewhere, but I’m absolutely stumped trying to connect the dots from A to B to make it happen.
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[Technology] VSCode as an MD Editor

So Kev made a post about how Typora was the missing UI link in his static site blogging journey. https://kevquirk.com/my-static-site-workflow/ It got me thinking… can’t VSCode do all that? Is that the linchpin I’ve been missing in my blogging workflow? Time to see if I can recreate his process and tweak it for myself!
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