Author: Pradeep

  • Update – Using my Bullet Journal as my Zettelkasten

    I had written on this blog about the practice of using my Bullet Journal as my zettelkasten on 19 May 2020. I had forgotten about it in the haze of the pandemic. I re-discovered the post as I was linking my thinking (h/t Nick Milo) in the past week or so.

    In the Spirals section of my weekly notes last week, I mention the Antinet and the zettelkasten videos I had been watching on YouTube.

    So, after binging on many videos in the last two to three weeks, I seem to have gotten exactly at the point I was at when I wrote my post on 19 May 2020. Before I forget the lessons I learnt, let me summarize the points I made in that blog post again.

    • I use many digital tools and hence my data is stuck on many different platforms (like Evernote, Roam Research, etc.)
    • Moving a zettelkasten into a bullet journal reduces the clutter of index cards.
    • Threading in zettelkasten reminded me about a video about threading in the bullet journal.
      • Index in a bullet journal is the master collection. Similar to an index card in the zettelkasten.
      • Collection threading is done by writing the reference of the page number next to the page number in the next collection.
      • Notebook threading is done by using book number + page number next to the page number.
      • A Tiny Ray of Sunshine has a detailed post on threading.

    I have been writing my notes about podcasts, YouTube videos, books, articles, etc. in my bullet journal since I started keeping one. These can be considered as bibliography notes or quick notes.

    What would make my bullet journal into my zettelkasten would be to introduce progressive summarization that Tiago Forte talks about in his book, Building a Second Brain.

    Another thing needed is to introduce a way to review the content in the bullet journal in a periodic manner and link my thinking.

    A thing I noticed that the spirals I go down are naturally linked to each other. This focus reduces the need of too much categorization naturally. I can look through instances by using the index without the need to opening or delving too deep into any particular notebook.

  • Weekly Notes 23/2023

    Reading/Listening

    I am currently reading/listening to:

    • The Bullet Journal Method – Ryder Carroll
    • Marathi Vangmayacha (Galeev) Itihas – Pu La Deshpande

    Writing

    I have been busy with professional commitments this week but was very happy to be able to write two posts on my blog:

    The book, Trackside got my writing and reading started again this week.

    Spirals

    I did not follow any new spirals this week. Most were continuations from the ones last week.

    I loved Varun Mayya’s explanation of AI on Nikhil Kamat’s YouTube channel. Here he talks about the Indus Valley Report for 2023.
    YouTube’s algorithm introduced me to Curly’s Analog channel. He implements Scheper’s Antinet.

    I stumbled on Neeldhara’s tweet about a resource she created on note-taking on her blog.

    Embed of Neeldhara’s tweet.
    FP was mentioned by Curly Analog in one of his videos. This may be a good video to begin going down the Zettelkasten playlist FP has created on YouTube. Detailed notes on his blog begin from Lesson #1.

    FP mentions that he backs up his notes digitally. Presently, he does them on Obsidian.

    Frontline has a nice interview with Ananyo Bhattacharya, who is the author of The Man from the Future, a book about John von Neumann. I plan to get this book.

    I argue that another of von Neumann’s contributions to computing, specifically his insistence on putting everything into the public domain and preventing the computer from being patented, has also had an enormous impact. He is the godfather of the open source movement, which is incredibly important today.

    Ananyo Bhattacharya, Frontline

    Some of the smartest people in technology say they are worried that AI is worse than pandemics and nuclear weapons. What I worry about is not AI extinguishing humans, but our humanity.

    Om Malik, Your Weekend AI reader

    Across India, there’s a new kind of tourism that’s seeing a boom- astrotourism. Amateur astronomers, citizens building telescopes, hobbyists, and private companies are organizing dark sky tourism with nightly sky watching and fun daytime experiences.

    Sandhya Ramesh, India’s new tourism boom is in the sky
    Twitter thread on the 2023 Odisha train collission.

  • Trackside – A Collection of Railway Stories (2013)

    This book came out in March 2013. I purchased it in September 2013 on my Kindle then. I follow the author of this book on Twitter and probably learned about the book from there.

    I was in a reading rut after my son was born. I could listen to audiobooks on Audible but couldn’t pay attention when I read any book (physical or digital). I wanted to break this rut. So, I went back to my Kindle device and searched back to the first book I purchased on the Kindle. It turned out to be this book.

    Cover of the book, Trackside: A Collection of Railway Stories, by Bharath Moro

    I loved some of the descriptions that he uses to describe the trains and railway buildings. He gave me the vocabulary to talk about sights that I see in my travels.

    The red and cream locomotive screams into the platform with its assortment of coaches bobbing wildly.

    Chapter 1: In Favour of Koraput and Bodinayakannur

    Unlike the disjointed feeling one gets after a long flight, the railways allows for a gradual takeover. The landscape keeps changing, the houses seem different after a while, the food on the platform becomes less palatable (or the reverse) and the tea tastes better (or worse). And, by the time you arrive, you haven’t so much arrived as you have assimilated the destination.

    Chapter 1: In Favour of Koraput and Bodinayakannur

    The quaint old structures that used to house the station master’s office and booking counters have been demolished and replaced by banal, CPWD type boxy buildings, painted in a hideous urine yellow hue.

    Chapter 7 : Dispatches from the Cauvery Delta

    The book was an absorbing read and got me unstuck from my reading rut.

  • Thinking about my First Home

    I have been seriously thinking about the rent vs. own debate. I currently live in a rented house. I visit people who enjoy their rented lives and am happy that I also rent. I also visit people who own their own homes and feel I had the freedom to do the things in my house that they can do at their own home.

    A couple holding the keys to their home.
    Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

    One of the reasons that this is a debate is because of the cost of housing.

    I read a blog post by Ashish on his blog, Econ for Everybody, called Not Quite As Simple As One Would Like It To Be. He begins by arguing that optimal regulation, although difficult, is the best solution to the problem of regulation. He says:

    You’ll meet economists who tell you that housing can only be solved by removing as much regulation as possible. You’ll meet other economists who tell you that public housing is the only solution to the problem. And you’ll get bloggers like me, who will tell you that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

    Ashish, Not Quite as Simple as one would Like it to be, Econ for Everybody

    I read an article by Zachary Carter in the New Yorker called What if We’re Thinking About Inflation all Wrong? The article is a profile of the economist, Isabella Weber.

    The pandemic created a situation where the people expected an increase in prices as supply chains were disrupted. Weber says that the pandemic created a temporary monopoly, that allowed corporates to raise prices higher than the rise in cost of raw materials, without fear of losing market share. Weber calls this seller’s inflation. She suggests regulation of prices as a way to control this inflation.

    One of the places she applied this theory was to regulate the price of natural gas in Germany:

    She presented a detailed scheme for regulating the price of natural gas in Germany: households and businesses would be guaranteed a limited supply at an affordable, government-controlled price. Anything they burned in excess of that quota would be subject to the soaring market price. (Producers of natural gas would receive government subsidies to make up for the lost profits.)

    Zachary Carter, The New Yorker, What if we’re Thinking about Inflation all Wrong?

    I think what we’re seeing in the real estate market in India could be the result of seller’s inflation. Although, too much regulation in India runs into trouble with issues of state capacity and ego-maniacal regulators, I think it could be done to help first time home owners. I am not an economist and would not venture to suggest a detailed policy proposal. I am only suggesting this as a possible solution.

    The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana does do part of this by providing a government subsidy to first time home-owners. But, it does not feel like enough because it does not regulate the price of the sold unit, which keeps on soaring.

  • Weekly Notes 22/2023

    Reading/Listening

    I am currently reading/listening to:

    • The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (Audible)
    • The Bullet Journal Method – Ryder Carroll (Kindle)

    I finished listening to Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson and reading Trackside by Bharath Moro. I have updated the books list on the blog, accordingly. I was stuck in a reading rut for a long time. Trackside helped me break out of it.

    I have also started reading The Hindu e-paper and Frontline magazine again. I am sharing articles that I like on my Twitter and Mastodon feeds. I might add them here in future editions of the Weekly Notes.

    OTT

    I watched:

    • Fubar (English)
    • High Crime (English)
    • Kathal (Hindi)
    • The Mother (English)
    • Mother’s Day (English)
    • Ponniyin Selvan 2 (Tamil)
    • Pachuvum Athbhutha Vilakkum (Malayalam)
    • Neelavelicham (Malayalam)
    • Enthadaa Saji (Malayalam)
    • Pakalum Paathiravum (Malayalam)
    • Pookkaalam (Malayalam)

    Spirals

    Spirals are what you would call rabbit holes today. Perhaps they are much more deeper? I hope this section clarifies what I meant by the title of this blog, Parallel Spirals?

    Commonplace Books

    I have mentioned Megan Rhiannon’s videos in the YouTube section of my previous post. She integrates her planner, commonplace book, etc. into one document. She includes stickers and cut-outs in her commonplace book. This got me interested into commonplace books. I watched many videos on this, but these made sense:

    Jared Henderson on Commonplace Books
    Ryan Holiday’s method is touched upon here. But he has other videos on this as well.

    I discovered another person who used a notebook instead of a phone for a period of time, while searching about commonplace books. The last time this came up on my radar was on Weekly Notes 02/2023.

    Religion

    I had gone through some reading on Indian philosophical traditions last year. The YouTube algorithm suggested a video about the Kashmir Shaivism’s poet Lal Ded. I enjoyed the videos from the Let’s Talk Religion YouTube channel. Watching Acharya Prashant’s interview had diverted my focus towards Vedanta. Three specific videos on the Let’s Talk Religion spends time on the three schools under Vedanta that caught my attention.

    Shankara and Advaita Vedanta
    Ramanuja and Vishistadvaita Vedanta
    Madhva and Dvaita Vedanta

    Nikhil Kamat

    I enjoyed watching all episodes of the podcast hosted by Nikhil Kamat. But, I liked this episode the most.

    Ep #4 WTF is ChatGPT?

    I think Varun Mayya’s explanation (of which there is a clip) of how ChatGPT works may be better than Cal Newport’s explanation.

    Antinet/Analog Zettelkasten

    I found Scott P. Scheper’s YouTube channel through watching Morgan’s YouTube channel. She has been explaining how to setup a physical Zettelkasten to her mother and mentioned Scott’s YouTube channel as an inspiration.

    Morgan explaining her physical Zettelkasten method

    I found Scott’s method more thorough. But, before I got there I went through videos by Nicole van der Hooven for more ideas on digital Zettelkastens. Her video on why she personally used Obsidian over Roam, has had me open Obsidian after a very long time:

    Obsidian over Roam

    I even sampled Tiago Forte’s video on visual note-taking and signed up for Milanote. I might use it to write my first sci-fi novel.

    Tiago Forte on Milanote

    This brings us back to Scott:

    First video on a playlist on how to put together an analog Zettelkasten. I downloaded his free PDF which gave me a better idea than many of his YouTube videos.

    Graphene

    An editorial written by a former Defence Secretary Ajay Kumar in The Hindu sent me down the materials spiral. I was once (around 2007-08) interested in material sciences. I watched a few videos on NPTEL on material sciences and specifically on graphene and Carbon nanotubes.

    NPTEL on Graphene

    WordPress

    I attended the 20th anniversary celebrations of WordPress in Pune. I had thought that I joined WordPress in November 2006, but it seems that I had actually joined WordPress in June 2006.

    I was on Blogger before I was here. I had started blogging around 2005, if memory serves me correctly. But, as you can see above, I could be wrong.

  • Weekly Notes 18/2023

    Writing

    I wrote one blog post. No newsletter edition.

    Reading

    I am currently reading/listening to:

    • Pacific Edge – Kim Stanley Robinson
    • So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Cal Newport

    OTT

    I watched the following on OTT:

    • The Diplomat (English)
    • Patthu Thala (Tamil)
    • How to Get Rich (English)

    YouTube

    These had nice back stories about Roja, etc. Also, showed another side of Rahman
    A nice introduction to Microsoft Bing Chat. I need to watch it again after I use it.
    This is the weekly notes in video format. This is an interesting watch.
    Ryan Holiday shares how he wrote Discipline is Destiny.
    Part of the deep dive into the Ribbonfarm Extended Universe
    This video started my deep dive into the Ribbonfarm Extended Universe
    A very good section that deep dives into when you should give your child smartphones. Suggested age: 16.
    19 million views for people cleaning (pressure cleaning) people’s back and front yards. Almost went into a rabbit hole of watching these videos.
    This video was the entry point to the Attic Archives weekly vlogs above. Keep wondering why the Hobonichi costs more than INR 3,000 on Amazon.
    Almost took me back to my ancient love for archaeology.

    I watched a lot of YouTube this week. I am not able to watch so many videos.

  • Substack post vs blog post

    When people used the word blog posts to refer to their Substack posts, I found it difficult to understand why. I thought of each post on Substack as an edition or as an issue. When people pushed back to ask me for the difference between a Substack post and a blog post, I felt that it was fundamentally wrong but could not articulate the reasons for the same. I was reading Venkatesh Rao’s blog, Ribbonfarm, where he has articulated the reasons much better than I have.

    I don’t agree with all of his points but these are good points to begin thinking about this.

    1. Blogs are ontic media; newsletters are epistemic media
    2. Blogs encourage you to invent concepts and coin terms; newsletters encourage you to use existing concepts and terms to lay out persuasive arguments
    3. Blogs are portals; newsletters are flags. Blogs encourage you to build seductive worlds to draw people into. Newsletters mark out territory in existing shared worlds.
    4. Blogs encourage true essays in the original sense of the term — explorations; newsletters encourage explainers, sermons, speeches
    5. Blogs are promiscuously and publicly social; newsletters are clannish and tribal
    6. Blogs are stocks; newsletters are flows
    7. Blogs invite internal and external hyperlinking; newsletters fight both
    8. Blogs are relational; newsletters are transactional
    2021 Ribbonfarm Extended Universe Annual Roundup, Venkatesh Rao

  • Weekly Notes 17/2023

    I missed sending out Weekly Notes 16/2023, as I was not well.

    Writing

    I wrote one blog post.

    I wrote one newsletter edition.

    Reading

    I am currently reading/listening to:

    • Pacific Edge – Kim Stanley Robinson
    • So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Cal Newport

    OTT

    • Pranaya Vilasam (Malayalam)
    • Vellari Patanam (Malayalam)
    • Mrs. Undercover (Hindi)
    • Rana Naidu (Hyderabadi)
    • Dear Vaappi (Malayalam)
    • How to Get Rich (English)

    YouTube

    Each video deepens my understanding of the book, Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte
    Seventeenth century science fiction and philosophy by Margaret Cavendish

  • Is the Hinduism we practise today, Vedic?

    Ranveer Allahbadia did a recent interview with Acharya Prashant in Hindi, titled Forgotten Hinduism. Ranveer tries to talk to Acharya about hot takes and it takes time for him to reach the point about the question of whether the Hinduism we practice today Vedic?

    Acharya Prashant says that the Hinduism we practise today is not Vedantic. He says that the Hinduism we practise today involves praying to Puranic Gods following Tantric rituals and methods.

    He defines the periods from an average of 2000 B.C.E. He refers to the period from second to eight century CE is the Puranic period.

    He says that we no longer pray to Vedic gods (like Indra, Varun etc.). He claims that worship in the Vedic era was mostly the worship of the natural phenomena. He claim that Vedic worship did not have the concept of idol worship and does not involve temple worship.

    He suggests that Vedic practice begins with reading a few suggested Upanishads and books by the Adi Shankara.

    • Atma-bodha by Adi Shankara
    • Tatva-bodha by Adi Shankara
    • Niralamba Upanishad
    • Sarvasara Upanishad
    • Ishavasya/Isha Upanishad
    • Kena Upanishad
    • Katha Upanishad
    • Ashtavakra Upanishad

    After the initial reading on Indian philosophy, this is what I plan to start reading this year. I may not read it all in two months like the Acharya suggests, but I will read through these after I begin with the Mandukya Upanishad.

  • Weekly Notes 15/2023

    Writing

    Writing at work was good.

    I wrote a blog post on the tree walk I went with my daughter.

    I wrote the 50th edition of my space newsletter, since July 2019.

    Reading

    I read/listened to:

    • So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Cal Newport (now reading)
    • The Great Derangement – Amitav Ghosh (now listening)

    Badminton and Cycling

    I did not cycle nor play badminton because of a muscle spasm in the back.

    OTT

    I watched:

    • Khalipurse of Billionaires (Malayalam)
    • Romancham (Malayalam)
    • Purusha Pretham (Malayalam)
    • Maheshinte Maruthi (Malayalam)

    YouTube

    Soviet Rocket Engines

    Scott Manley – Why 21st Century American Rockets Still Use 1980s Soviet Engines
    About the Soviet engines sold to the US based Aerodyne in 1995
    Tanmay’s interview with Sahil Bloom (creator)

    P Sainath

    Interview by Kunal Kamra
    Nero’s Guest on Sainath’s coverage of the farmer suicides in Maharashtra

    What does a Quantum Computer look like?

    How to think about quantum computers and what they’re good at?

    IndieWeb

    Jeremy Keith does a good job of explaining IndieWeb terms like WebMentions, authentication, and POSSE etc.