Zettlekasten

There are 24 posts filed in Zettlekasten (this is page 1 of 3).

What to do with too many open browser tabs

For me, I tend to open browser tabs when I am using my RSS reader River5 through my reading list app. I then keep the tabs open until I read the tab, and save it somehow if I want to keep the URL. For most of my browsing life, the “save” action is to copy the URL to a link dump file. I have used text files, Libre Office word documents, and a notes app on my phone. I used to let these files get really big, then I decided to stop doing that and creating a new file at the beginning of the month. You can probably tell that I have quite a collection of links. And, after copying links to the file, I rarely (IF EVER) would go back to those links (so mostly a write-only file). In 2022, I did try using a “zettlekasten” approach to collecting links by category (using an OPML file and a static website). However, I eventually went back to link dumps…

This weekend, with a lot of cold weather coming, anticipating I would not be going anywhere, I decided to bite the bullet and review all my open tabs, and create posts on my website for each link I wanted to save. If you are one of my 3-4 regular readers, I apologize for the link flood. I added categories for each link (all of them also have the “Links” category), started with using the Status post type, then switched to Link post type later in the day. I will be finishing the tab review today, then hope to keep up with adding links to my site. I will have to see how I like the look on the website (in other words, if I want to create a separate view for posts with the category “Links”), but I am hoping to give this a good try for the rest of the month.

Let me know if you have any ideas/techniques for managing links that you want to save!

Zettlekaste.de: Building a Second Brain and the Zettelkasten Method – This post goes into great detail contrasting the “Building a Second Brain” ideas of Tiago Forte and the Zettelkasten Method as practiced by Niklas Luhmann. The author states that both methods can be used simultaneously with little to no overlap (BASB is project focused, ZKM is knowledge-focused). It’s worth the time to read!

NetLogo is a multi-agent programmable modeling environment. It is used by many hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, and researchers worldwide.

Feedback on my zettelkasten experiment

I have decided to slow down my updates on this project, but I do have a few observations. Adding links to the OPML file was pretty easy in Drummer. I missed adding tags to some links, but will make a sweep of the over the next week. I did some re-arranging of categories, as well as added a lot of categories after the start. In the rendered file, I noticed (as well as a reader) that all the entries are fully expanded. I may experiment with trying to flatten the categories. Also, I have not explored using XSLT style sheets to render the OPML file. Still, my biggest benefit so far is that I am now entering links into the OPML file that I would have pasted in some other file, and they are categorized, which helps in navigation.

My Hugo-based zettelkasten site is lagging in updates. I chose to create a single Markdown file for each entry, and I found that it was a significant amount of typing, even though I was starting with text from the OPML file. My favorite feature of the site is being able to view links by tag. I will continue working to get this caught up with the OPML zettelkasten.

Final note: there are lots of good tools out there, this is what I chose to start with, so far it is working for me!

OPML Zettelkasten Update – Day 13

Added over 10 links today for my ZK file, new links in Mastodon, Blogging, and Writing, and added Agriculture and Directories categories. I reorganized the Podcasting section into Resources and History subsections to group the links better. There are 143 links in the OPML ZK, more than 10 links a day on average – wow! I also updated the Blogging category on my Hugo ZK site, still need to finish migrating the OPML content over. Also on the to-do list – playing with XSLT style sheets to view the OPML content by tags. However, the full ZK file list still looks pretty good.

OPML Zettelkasten Update – Day 12

Added over 10 links in today for my ZK file, new links in Mastodon, and added Software Engineering, Programming, and Music categories. I am really working on trying to clear out tabs from my daily browsing by using my ZK, so far I am keeping up!

The historical record of podcasting

As I was working on my Podcasting category in my zettelkasten file, I realized that I did not have a link to the history of podcasting. I started doing some searching, and decided that I should try to collect “original sources”, as they say in historical research. Here, then, is a start at a chronological collection of links to pages on podcasting from original sources and some versions of documenting the historical record. Feedback is welcome!

DaveNet – Initial description of early meeting with Adam Curry at a Scripting News meetup, includes description of “the last mile” (2000)

The Two-Way Web – Payloads for RSS – Initial description of podcasting technology (January 2001)

Grateful Dead Podcast Feed – Creation date of May 18, 2001

Adam Curry – Description of podcasting for a session at BloggerCon in 2004

Scripting News – More info on early podcasting (people/timeline) (2005)

Scripting News – The origin of podcasting (2010)

References the meeting with Adam Curry, and also this post on “virtual bandwidth”, which has more detail on the Adam Curry meeting in 2001

Harvard/Berkman Center – Essay on Dave Winer/Chris Lydon collaboration (2010)

Scripting News – No silos – comments on the rise of podcasting companies trying to lock in users (2017)

Scripting News – An addendum to the creation story of podcasting (2017)

Mentions Adam Curry, Doug Kaye, Chris Lydon among others

Scripting News – Podcasts are feeds. If there is no feed, it’s not a podcast (2018)

Scripting News – CBC podcast on the origin of podcasting (2017)

Andy Sylvester – Comments on “Alternate Histories of Podcasting” podcast (Radio Survivor), pointing out that Andrew Bottomley’s research on audio file usage on the Internet was not podcasting (no RSS feed! see Podcasts Are Feeds item) (2018)

Scripting News – Twenty years ago in podcasting (2021)

Dave Winer’s side of the story in how podcasting got started, also references Podnews story on first podcast feed

Podnews – The story of the first podcast feed (2021)

Covers first meeting between Dave Winer and Adam Curry in 2001 and first feed using Grateful Dead songs