/reader

 

I wrote the following in 2021 but can’t find where I posted it, and I’m feeling it again, so I’m recording it here

It feels like everyone (or at least those in my bubble) is consumed by the “how” of note-taking. Tools, workflows, processes, backlinks, and on and on. Obsidian? Roam? Paper? It’s fun to explore and interesting to read about and there is no end of things to distract myself with.

None if it really matters, though. We endlessly split hairs and wring our hands and gaze at our navels over irrelevant minutiae around taking notes. It’s exhausting.

As an attempt to extract myself from this loop, I think I’ll stop taking notes for a while. This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing/blogging. Blogging isn’t note-taking. Nor is journaling. I’ll still do that. What I won’t be doing is jotting down my recent thoughts about minimalism or digital record-keeping or the details of a conversation I had with a colleague or how much I paid for the printer paper I just ordered. Who cares?

No more Org vs Obsidian vs Tinderbox vs The Archive or what-have-you until I stop obsessing over which is better or more private or more open source or if it uses the right flavor of Markdown. No more worrying about whether I’m taking “smart” enough notes or if this note should be “evergreen” or not. How long should a zettel be, anyway?

There are lots of smart, productive, happy people around who take very few notes and aren’t missing anything. I’d like to be one of those people for a minute.

Examples?

After many years of wanting a Rolleiflex, I bought one a couple weeks ago. I’m excited about it and I have thoughts about it, so why haven’t I posted anything?

I’ve started using Howm (rather than Denote) for most of my notes. This is big, right? Yet as far as blogging about it? Crickets.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I just don’t feel like doing the work. This would be fine if I was doing something else instead. But I’m not. Instead of writing, I’m not writing, is all.

Anyway, I’m sure this is just a phase. At least I hope that’s all it is. For once I’m not changing platforms again as an excuse to post something, so that’s good, I guess.

 

There are things I want to talk about, but I don’t feel like writing any of it.

Mike Hall: There’s an addressable market of 1.

What finally made it “work,” if our definition of “work” is “make code that does what I want with about as many obvious bugs or issues as if I’d devoted months to this project starting from scratch…”

You see, that’s what LLMs are good for. They may not be smart enough to write production-level, professional code, but goddamn if they’re not great for helping normal people whip up things that would have been next to impossible for them just a year ago. I do it all the time.

LLMs today are like desktop publishing software in the late 1980s. Using Claude feels like when I first got hold of an Apple LaserWriter and PageMaker. Suddenly, I could make things, all by myself. Didn’t matter whether I was “qualified” or not.

Why have I done this? I don’t really know. Many years ago (early 2000s), I ran FreeBSD for all our client’s servers. We only moved to Linux because “that’s where everyone was headed” at the time. I’d always liked FreeBSD, so I wanted to try it again.

So far, it’s as simple as I remember. Everything feels tight, if that makes sense.

Anyway, it was a good excuse to learn something new.