Category: Note Keeping

Pile of Index Cards System

Pile of Index Cards System (PoIC)

This is a note taking system using index cards.  I’m copying this down because the original website and wiki for the PoIC system are gone and most other sites just refer to it with a now dead link.

How it works
Hawk describes four types of cards in his system:

The Record Card. He describes it as “a diary, note, account, health, weather, cook, any kind of records about us belongs to this class.” I’d say this is the incoming “stuff” of the day: appointments, notes to follow up on, etc.
The Discover Card. Hawk describes the Discover Card as “Things from my brain, mind, spirit, anything emerge from inside me, are classified into this class.” This is the result of a mind dump. Don’t worry about classifying when filling out a Discover Card. Just get whatever is on your mind out and onto paper.
The GTD Card. Here he combines the title of a project and several actions that pertain to it (here’s a look at the template in English). This reminds me of the “Hipstper PDA Template” I used religiously about 10 years ago.
The Cite Card captures other people’s ideas that warrant attention. He says, “Important here is distinguishing ‘your idea (Discovery Card)’ and ‘someone else’s idea (Cite Card).’ Source of the information must be included in the Cite Card. A book, for example, author, year, page(s) are recorded for later use.”

In essence this is a Commonplace book broken up into card sized chunks.

Speculation:  You could probably make a digital version of this system much like Cyberzettel.com using Wordpress.

 

Zetttelkasten as memoir

You could dedicate a zettelkasten as a sort of non-linear memoir.  Most of our memories are about an event or a scene.  You could use a zettelkasten to record one scene or memory from your life for each “slip” or card.  These could later be assembled for publication if needs be, or left as vignettes for retrieval via cross indexing.

This is different from journaling, diaries or blogs which are all linear time-wise.

Example:  My father, a child of the Great Depression, taught me, as a lad, to always check the coin returns on payphones for change left behind.  I later did this when walking through a restaurant lobby and my mother and grandmother were appalled my grandfather was amused.  Note: I made quite a bit of money in change over the years.

Adding Analog Directory Category

Thinking about adding a category “Analog” to Indieseek.xyz.

It would include paper things like:  paper journals, fountain pens, other writing implements, office supply p*rn, typewriters, analog zettelkasten, notebooks.

Also things like analog watches and clocks.

Other stuff?

 

Added: 30 August 2022

Analog

  • Paper Journals
  • Paper Notebooks
  • Pens
  • Pencils?
  • Office Supplies
  • Typewriters
  • Paper Notes?

Are Webrings for Digital Gardens?

Keeping your garden on the open web also sets you up to take part in the future of gardening. At the moment our gardens are rather solo affairs. We haven’t figure out how to make them multi-player. But there’s an enthusiastic community of developers and designers trying to fix that. It’s hard to say what kind of libraries, frameworks, and design patterns might emerge out of that effort, but it certainly isn’t going to happen behind a Medium paywall.

from  A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden.

There is currently no way to interconnect digital gardens and other personal knowledge bases, however a stopgap solution might be a webring of the same.  I know this is not quite what the author was eluding to but it triggered the thought.  Also a link is a link.

  1. A webring as a pathway from one garden to another.
  2. Webrings are also a community of a sort.
  3. Webrings are voluntary associations.  The garden owner must want to be associated with the other garden owners.  Must want to have a gate to the garden along the webring path.
  4. Webrings are free, simple and familiar.