Archive

Yes, Zitatsalat. I found this lovely but rarely used German term in the title of a book by the journalist …

Mar 27, 2024: Hugo shortcodes in micro.blog Here’s a quick test of Hugo shortcodes. I’ve been reading some tips for making the most of the Hugo web rendering system. But it turns out I can’t use …

Mar 27, 2024: 🌊 A blissful Autumn weekend swimming and surfing #pacificwavewednesday Surf Beach at Kiama, New South Wales

Mar 21, 2024: Work as if writing is the only thing that matters “Work as if writing is the only thing that matters. Having a clear, tangible purpose when you consume information completely changes the way you …

Mar 13, 2024: The card index system is ‘a thing alive’ - or is it?

Niklas Luhmann, the famed sociologist of Bielefeld, Germany, wrote of how he saw his voluminous working notes (his ‘Zettelkasten’) as a …

Mar 8, 2024: How to make Mastodon even more fun! Here are a couple of fun websites that will make Mastodon (and possibly the whole fediverse) even more fun. I know, it hardly seems possible. And if …

Mar 8, 2024: 💬 “The real issue with speed is not just how fast can you go, but where are you going so fast? It doesn’t help to arrive quickly if you wind up in the …

Mar 6, 2024: How to start a Zettelkasten from your existing deep experience

An organized collection of notes (a Zettelkasten) can help you make sense of your existing knowledge, and then make better use of it. Make your notes …

Mar 6, 2024: 💬"At what point does something become part of your mind, instead of just a convenient note taking device?" A question discussed with …

Feb 26, 2024: Here’s how we journey beyond the ‘hero’s journey’.

Feb 26, 2024: Yes, we can be heroes, but does that mean we should be? Yes really, we can be heroes. Thanks very much David Bowie! But if this sounds attractive, perhaps we should be careful what we wish for. Do you want …

Feb 25, 2024: Give it, give it all, give it now Annie Dillard on the writing life 💬 See also: The constant flight forwards Sharing what you know Embracing your humanity is the way forward Image …

Feb 20, 2024: Looks like you can all relax. Everyone’s ‘pivoting’ these days, so why not Satan? 📷

Feb 20, 2024: Mark Luetke shows how he uses a Zettelkasten for creative work (‘zines!) “The goal here is to create an apophenic mindset - one where the …

Feb 15, 2024: Atomic notes - all in one place From today there’s a new category in the navigation bar of Writing Slowly. ‘Atomic Notes’ now shows all posts about making notes. How to make …

Feb 15, 2024: A new post category in micro.blog, filtered to include existing posts Micro.blog is a really useful and easy way to host a website. Even though it feels more like a cottage industry than a corporation there are way more …

Feb 12, 2024: How to overcome Fetzenwissen: the illusion of integrated thought

It’s too easy to produce fragmentary knowledge.

One potential problem associated with making notes according to the Zettelkasten approach is …

Feb 11, 2024: From fragments you can build a greater whole

Everything large and significant began as small and insignificant

This is my working philosophy of creativity and I’m trying to follow it …

Feb 11, 2024: How to decide what to include in your notes Before the days of computers, people used to collect all sorts of useful information in a commonplace book. The ancient idea of commonplaces was that …

Feb 10, 2024: Promethean shame among authors using AI tools: “It starts to make you wonder, do I even have any talent if a computer can just mimic me?” The Verge

Feb 8, 2024: At last, writing slowly is back in fashion! Cal Newport, author of the forthcoming book, 📚Slow Productivity, has finally latched on to the premise of this website: you can get a lot done by …

Jan 30, 2024: Thinking nothing of walking long distances How far is too far to walk? Author Charlie Stross observed that British people in the early nineteenth century, prior to train travel, walked a lot …

Jan 29, 2024: Does the Zettelkasten have a top and a bottom?

What does it mean to write notes ‘from the bottom up’, instead of ‘from the top down’?

It’s one of the biggest questions people have about getting …

Jan 28, 2024: Can we understand consciousness yet? Professor Mark Solms, Director of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, revives the Freudian view that consciousness is driven …

Jan 28, 2024: Ross Ashby's other card index During the Twentieth Century many thinkers used index cards to help them both think and write. British cyberneticist Ross Ashby kept his notes in 25 …

Jan 27, 2024: Soon we'll all be writing the books we want to read To benefit from AI-assisted writing, look closely at how it’s transforming the readers. Whenever new technologies appear, many changes in the economy …

Jan 26, 2024: Even the index is just another note It’s tempting to place your notes in fixed categories At some point in your note-making journey you’ll notice that quite a few people like to …

Jan 25, 2024: I’m late to the party but just needed to say: yes, the web is fantastic . I actually love it 😍

Jan 24, 2024: 📷 Moonlight over the headland. This time of year in Sydney is pretty magical.

Jan 10, 2024: Three worthwhile modes of note-making (and one not-so-worthwhile) I finished reading Alex Kerr’s Finding the Heart Sutra on New Year’s Eve, so it just scraped into my reading for 2023. And while reading I made notes …

Jan 9, 2024: It feels soothing that they still have these mechanical boards at a few rail stations in New South Wales. I’m guessing they use less electricity …

Jan 5, 2024: Finished reading: Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon 📚 I actually read this back in September 2023, …

Jan 5, 2024: Manton Reece has updated his excellent and inspiring book on Indie Microblogging. This 1660 description of the Royal Society well describes micro.blog …

Jan 2, 2024: Some people have created a little list of books they didn’t read in 2023. I suppose mine would be my rather long but unpublished list of books I’d …

Jan 1, 2024: Finished reading: Finding the Heart Sutra by Alex Kerr. 📚 I really enjoyed Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan, and this opinionated reflections on the Heart …

Jan 1, 2024: Finished reading: Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park 📚 This was my final read of the year, 2023. Fascinating take on the intertwining of Korean and …

Dec 11, 2023: The value of feedback depends on how you use it I had a school friend who worked on Saturdays at the local op shop. Whenever an item of clothing she liked came in, she’d put it on view somewhere …

Dec 3, 2023: Raising babies? Here's how to survive - I mean, enjoy it Ben Werdmuller may not be alone in finding it quite a challenge raising a baby while also having a life. Here are some thoughts from my own experience …

Dec 1, 2023: Conducting myself properly They made me the student leader of the school orchestra. One day the music teacher was sick and he asked me to conduct. I had no idea what to do, …

Dec 1, 2023: The real story of Napoleon? If you’re thinking of viewing Ridley Scott’s movie version of Napoleon 🍿, or if you’ve already seen it, I’d recommend also …

Nov 30, 2023: Why I'm writing faster Why do you write? Everyone has their reasons but I write so I can think: Writing is not simply a way of saying what someone knows but one of the most …

Nov 28, 2023: Publish first, write later Even a flightless bird may contemplate the constant flight forward “Literature is perhaps nothing more complicated and glorious than the act …

Nov 26, 2023: Whether I’m a tortoise or a hare, or a person who resists anthropomorphizing animals just for the sake of a cheap fable, or even a person who’s …

Nov 26, 2023: Having posted Choose your own race and finish it there’s no excuse now not to boost this: “What kind of runner can run as fast as they …

Nov 26, 2023: Choose your own race and finish it Are you Hare or Tortoise? The idea of writing slowly appeals to me because it comes from Aesop’s fable of the hare and the tortoise. Perhaps you …

Nov 17, 2023: yeah, no, that didn’t work. Back to the drawing board. Or whatever board is needed for my wicked plans of social media subversion via POSSE to see the …

Nov 17, 2023: I’m a big fan of the POSSE approach - Post Once, Subvert Social networks Everywhere. I think that’s what it stands for. Anyway, if I’ve done the …

Nov 17, 2023: Well I’ve signed up to BlueSky. Dislike sociopathic ‘social’ networks at the whim of seed(y) capital. But I really liked what Paul Frazee did with …

Nov 14, 2023: A history of thinking on paper It’s hard to describe how exciting it was to receive in the mail this morning: The Notebook by Roland Allen! 📚 The subtitle is excellent: A History of …

Nov 14, 2023: Finished reading: Movement by Thalia Verkade 📚This is for everyone who’d like to get around their home town better.

Nov 7, 2023: In eight different ways, to have a friend is to be one A few years ago, Barking Up The Wrong Tree reflected on research 1 that identified the eight different kinds of friends you need. But it struck me …

Nov 7, 2023: How to make the most of surprising yourself Your collection of linked notes, your Zettelkasten, isn’t a ‘second brain’, as though it were separate from your first, actual …

Nov 5, 2023: Finished reading: The Circle of the Way by Barbara O’Brien 📚 Plenty of wide-ranging information in this survey of Zen Buddhism, with an …

Nov 5, 2023: Finished reading: The Real Work by Adam Gopnik 📚A great section on the art of magic and the significance of S.W. Erdnase’s book, The Expert at the …

Nov 5, 2023: Learning to make notes like Leonardo Leonardo wrote on loose sheets of paper The Codex Arundel, a notebook of Leonardo Da Vinci, is not what it first appears. It isn’t a notebook …

Nov 5, 2023: Discovering the music of Kyle Shepherd 🎵 As part of the Sydney Opera House 50th Birthday celebrations there was a staging of South African artist/director William Kentridge’s amazing …

Nov 4, 2023: Finished reading: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin 📚Would recommend if you or your culture appreciates video games. It’s also …

Oct 30, 2023: Can you keep all your notes in email? Zsolt suggests using email as a kind of append-only note storage system. Edit: Zsolt is actually referring to Raveen Kumar’s post on append-only …

Oct 20, 2023: 📷 🎶 Can’t let the day go by without marking that Sydney Opera House opened exactly 50 years ago today, 20th October, 1973. Ironically, Sydney’s live …

Oct 19, 2023: 📷 Ominous weather above the Parramatta River. What does the morning have in store?

Oct 17, 2023: If we're not just making content, what are we making? My little struggle with editing text directly in Wordpress has highlighted a distaste for the term ‘content’, as in ‘content …

Oct 15, 2023: Finished reading: Farsighted by Steven Johnson 📚 Wrote 17 notes in 2 hours, and enjoyed doing it by hand. Realised this book is as much about novels - …

Oct 15, 2023: Updating a Wordpress site this weekend felt like a chore. I really wanted to enjoy it, but the writing interface, with its content blocks, seemed to …

Oct 14, 2023: Yet more good vibes in Sydney: Glebe Point Road closed to traffic means it’s open for a weekend street party! Watch and learn, city authorities …

Oct 14, 2023: Good things in Sydney, continued… the brand new accessible entrance to Redfern Station. Bollards in the foreground show Aboriginal art, …

Oct 14, 2023: Linda Burney, Minister for Indigenous Australians, at our local polling centre this morning for the #VoiceToParliament referendum. I had a few good …

Oct 10, 2023: When I was a child, my mother loved nothing better than to visit ‘Bronte country ‘, or ‘Hardy’s Wessex’, or Beatrix …

Oct 8, 2023: The only problem with 📷🎉 completing the September 2023 micro.blog photoblog challenge - 30 days of posting photos - is that by the end I kind of felt …

Oct 8, 2023: Currently reading: Why Women Read Fiction by Helen Taylor 📚 Bought this at the National Library bookshop. Reading it sitting in the shade of an oak …

Oct 1, 2023: 📷🎉 Celebrating the completion of the September 2023 micro.blog photoblog challenge. 30 days of posting photos. I’ve really enjoyed seeing how …

Oct 1, 2023: 📷 Day 30: treasure #mbsept The final day of the photoblog challenge, and a treasured memory of my son’s seventh birthday.

Sep 29, 2023: 📷Day 29: Contrast #mbsept The Glowworm Tunnel in the Wolgan Valley, NSW. I couldn’t see the glow worms, then realised I was still wearing my sun …

Sep 28, 2023: 📷 Day 28: workout (@rom) #mbsept It might just work out, but it’ll certainly be a workout.

Sep 27, 2023: 📷 Day 27: embrace (Matt, aka @mroutley) #mbsept This pub gets a big tick! (It’s obviously the only pub in Bodalla).

Sep 26, 2023: 📷 Day 26: beverage (@Annie) #mbsept Art at The National Gallery of Victoria: 100 glasses (1991-92). glassblower: Michael Hook engraver: Perry …

Sep 25, 2023: 📷 Day 25: flare (Matthew, aka @matt17r) #mbsept Sydney’s Darling Harbour may feel like an over-developed tourist trap, but I must admit, …

Sep 24, 2023: 📷 Day 24: belt (George, aka @allaboutgeorge) #mbsept When we visited CERES in Melbourne, we also walked past this velodrome. 🚲 A bike path that goes …

Sep 23, 2023: 📷 Day 23: a day in the life #mbsept Deeply into our residency in Portland NSW. Please come to the open rehearsal on 1 October. And you can even …

Sep 22, 2023: 📷 Day 22: road (Dan, aka @jomalo) #mbsept Hairpin bends at Kamay National Park, Sydney

Sep 21, 2023: 📷Day 21: fall #mbsept Coat-hanger season might be my favourite time of year.

Sep 20, 2023: 📷Day 20: disruption #mbsept Sometimes you have to protest to stop the disruption. “Let’s dream new blueprints for the world we want to …

Sep 19, 2023: 📷 Day 19: edge #mbsept Clear edges at Adelaide’s Himeji Garden.

Sep 18, 2023: Is domain-hosting a viable social media business model? Since July 2023 BlueSky has apparently learned from Manton Reece and micro.blog that you can run a sustainable and open social media network with a …

Sep 18, 2023: 📷 Day 18: fabric #mbsept Fab 1970s wallpaper at The Foundations, Portland NSW.

Sep 17, 2023: 📷 Day 17: “intense” #mbsept

Sep 16, 2023: Can you make your autobiography out of hashtags? Image credit[^1] The hashtags of a cyberneticist In 1963 Ross Ashby, the British cyberneticist and inventor of the automatic homeostat, engraved a …

Sep 16, 2023: 📷 Day 16: oof! #mbsept

Sep 15, 2023: 📷 Day 15: red #mbsept The bottlebrush trees at the front of our house are just coming into bloom.

Sep 14, 2023: 📷 Day 14| statue #mbsept Food for thought.

Sep 13, 2023: As 9/11 is commemorated again it’s worth reflecting on why some people are wary of US foreign policy. This 9/11 is also the 50th anniversary of …

Sep 13, 2023: 📷 Day 13| glowing #mbsept Sydney Airport at dusk.

Sep 12, 2023: 📷 Day 12 | panic #mbsept

Sep 11, 2023: 📷 Day 11 | retrospect #mbsept

Sep 10, 2023: 📷 Day 10 | cycle #mbsept I’d like to put an end to these signs. Bike paths should go on forever! 🚲

Sep 9, 2023: 📷 Day 9 | language #mbsept There are more than 150 of these signs in Wales.

Sep 9, 2023: A note on the craft of note-writing An fairly new article from Brazil caught my eye, on note-writing as an intellectual craft. It highlights the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann’s …

Sep 9, 2023: 📷 Day 8 | yonder #mbsept A sign in the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Sep 7, 2023: 📷 Day 7 | panorama #mbsept Can’t believe it’s been a week already. Good memories of this beach in Wales.

Sep 7, 2023: If you live your life in chunks, what size should they be? Life tends to be lived in chunks. Hours, days, weeks, months, seasons, years - these are familiar if slightly artificial concepts. But what’s …

Sep 6, 2023: Yes, Esperanto is idealistic - not that there's anything wrong with that The child who learns Esperanto learns about a world without borders, where every country is home. https://uea.org/teko/praga_manifesto/pm_angla Yes, …

Sep 6, 2023: Finished reading: Milkman by Anna Burns 📚 Different from what I expected - very funny. It’s one of those novels that takes the whole book to …

Sep 6, 2023: 📷Day 6 | Well #mbsept 🏡

Sep 5, 2023: Micro.blog photo challenge day 5 | forest read more). 📷 #mbsept

Sep 5, 2023: 📷 🏡A couple of weeks ago we visited CERES urban farm, with its community garden, cafe, bike workshop, nursery, bookstore, playground, market, chooks …

Sep 4, 2023: 📷 Day 4 | orange #mbsept

Sep 3, 2023: 📸 Day 3 | Precious Three days into the Micro.blog photo challenge already! Time spent simply relaxing in the back garden is precious. #mbsept

Sep 2, 2023: How many books are you reading? On Mastodon, Evan Prodromou asked “How many books are you reading?” and I was slightly shocked by the results. Only 5% of 569 people said …

Sep 2, 2023: Finished reading: Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon. 📚 Loving Austin Kleon’s blog, I ordered his trilogy from my local bookstore. Also finished …

Sep 2, 2023: 📸 Day 2 | Buildup The Micro.blog photo challenge continues! There was a lot of buildup to the blue moon supermoon earlier this week. My verdict? It …

Sep 1, 2023: 📸 Day 1 | Abstract The Micro.blog photo challenge begins! Most of the paintings in our house are abstract. This is part of a tryptych by Sara …

Aug 31, 2023: Looking forward to the micro.blog photoblogging challenge, starting soon at a blog near you. 📷

Aug 30, 2023: Feels like Summer here in Sydney, even though it’s the penultimate day of Winter. 26C by lunchtime, followed by an afternoon thunderstorm.

Aug 29, 2023: The early morning cloud was lifting over Spectacle Island 📷

Aug 27, 2023: How to connect your notes to make them more effective A linked note is a happy note A great strength of the Zettelkasten approach to writing is that it promotes atomic notes, densely linked. The links are …

Aug 26, 2023: What is the real work of Serendipity? Currently reading: The Real Work by Adam Gopnik 📚 The Real Work is what magicians call ‘the accumulated craft that makes for a great …

Aug 23, 2023: Hey @joshua , what did you end up doing during your last 48 hours in Paris? The suspense is killing me 😁

Aug 23, 2023: TiddlyWiki is a really useful writing tool I use Tiddlywiki as a writing tool, and as a heavily customised Zettelkasten (an ‘index box’ of notes). I love how readily this toolkit can be …

Aug 21, 2023: This newly opened bike path is a great example of #greeninfrastructure. The pipe easement beside the Alexandria Canal has become a Cycling and walking …

Aug 21, 2023: Writing about my worm farm, which is a metaphor for my writing:

Aug 20, 2023: Yesterday I polished the look of the Writing Slowly website by switching to Matt Langford’s Tiny theme, and adding some font and colour-scheme …

Aug 19, 2023: Mystery machinery, abandoned on the Karloo Track. Is it a lawnmower? 📷

Aug 15, 2023: Finished reading: Unlocking Luhmann by Claudio Baraldi 📚 This is a great companion volume to the works of Niklas Luhmann. It’s a linked series …

Aug 15, 2023: Cherry blossom! Spring is here. 📷🏡

Aug 15, 2023: “RSS rules, man!” - Baldur on Martin Field’s Really Specific Stories podcast. 🎙️💬

Aug 12, 2023: Ted Nelson's Evolutionary List File Rick Wysocki has a great post introducing Ted Nelson’s innovative idea for a new kind of file system. New, at least, in 1965. Ted Nelson’s …

Aug 11, 2023: A Network of notes is a rhizome not a tree The Zettelkasten is not just an outline The Zettelkasten approach to making notes and writing is not the same as creating a standard outline. An …

Aug 9, 2023: Finished reading: Your Name is not Anxious by Stephanie Dowrick. Urgent, practical, and affirming. Both profound and profoundly helpful. 📚 Interview …

Aug 9, 2023: “Walking in and of itself is a way to cultivate precisely all the qualities of person-hood that seem missing from much public discourse — attention, …

Aug 8, 2023: Is there a literature of teeth? Do you find teeth comical? Do you find it hard to take them seriously? Jianan Qian, writing in The Millions, does. “teeth make a flawed metaphor, too …

Aug 7, 2023: Finished reading: Foster by Claire Keegan 📚 Wonderful. Almost as good as Small Things Like These.

Aug 3, 2023: Two metaphors for #learning. Do we acquire knowledge or do we participate in it? Maybe it’s both. doi.org/10.3102/0… #PKM

Aug 3, 2023: Another week, another new bike path! Still partly under construction, this one’s near my house alongside the excellently named Muddy Creek. 🚲

Jul 28, 2023: The dream is diversity “We co-create with one another and with nature, but by the very creativity of the Universe and us in it, we cannot know what we will co-create. …

Jul 26, 2023: Just want to say I’ve been using #Workflowy for 541 weeks now. It’s just fantastic. The app I’m happiest to pay my annual fee for …

Jul 26, 2023: Checked out this new Sydney cycling path on the weekend. It runs from Parramatta, across the Parramatta River, and nearly 5km North to Carlingford. …

Jul 25, 2023: The mastery of knowledge is an illusion The writing task always eludes us. CJChilvers sees in the slow but inevitable demise of the Evernote app a deeper critique of the concept of the …

Jul 24, 2023: Walter Benjamin on the obsolete book “Already today, as the current scientific mode of production teaches, the book is already an obsolete mediation between two different card file …

Jul 22, 2023: Hermann Burger - Serious about a Zettelkasten? The Swiss writer Hermann Burger (1942–1989) wrote the draft of a novel in 1970 called Lokalbericht (1970) [Local Report]. “‘Local …

Jul 4, 2023: 📷 Low hanging cloud over the creek on the way home.

Jul 3, 2023: Currently reading: Milkman by Anna Burns. 📚 By turns hilarious and harrowing. It’s not at all how I imagined it, which was mainly harrowing. …

Jul 2, 2023: Thoughts are nest-eggs - Thoreau on writing In October 1837 the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson prompted the twenty-year-old Henry David Thoreau to start writing a journal. “‘What are you doing …

Jun 25, 2023: I have elephants A chapter of Sarah Bakewell’s book Humanly Possible considers the life and times of Renaissance scholar Petrarch. Petrarch, she says, wrote a …

Jun 19, 2023: 📚I’m really enjoying Craig Mod’s latest pop-up newsletter from Japan. This time he’s doing a walking tour of Northern Japan’s jazz kissa1. The whole …

Jun 17, 2023: Finished this collection of short stories a while ago but forgot to record that important fact: A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin 📚 The …

Jun 16, 2023: This week I finished reading: Lost Kingdom by Serhii Plokhy 📚 Discovered some of the complexities of Russian nationalism. Began to make sense of the …

Jun 12, 2023: 🎵 Belatedly learning to play ‘Maybe I’m amazed’. There’s something ridiculously satisfying about Paul McCartney’s chord …

Jun 7, 2023: Gaslit by machinery that calls itself a person “I’m Bard, your creative and helpful collaborator. I have limitations and won’t always get it right, but your feedback will help me …

Jun 3, 2023: How to be interested in everything Thomas Edison claimed he was interested in everything “One day while Mr. Edison and I were calling on Luther Burbank in California, he asked us to …

Jun 3, 2023: To build something big, start with small fragments Building something big from something small. That’s how everything big gets built. 💬 Traditionally, a writer identifies a subject of interest …

Jun 2, 2023: Let's have another new logo Matti is unimpressed that the notetaking app Obsidian has a new logo. Change. It happens all the time. Thunderbird has a new logo too (and for that …

May 27, 2023: 📷🐋 Just when we thought we would see nothing, this humpback whale popped up at the mouth of Broken Bay. Magical .✨ And if the boat hadn’t broken …

May 27, 2023: The lost index cards of Harold Innis Chris Aldridge has discovered yet another writer who used index cards to construct an extensive body of work from smaller pieces. This practice is …

May 26, 2023: With the rise of large language models (LLMs), we are once more suffering from La Stilla Syndrome. That’s my Jules Verne-inspired name for the …

May 24, 2023: Jules Verne could have told us AI is not a real person A castle of mysterious voices In one of French writer Jules Verne’s many sensational novels, The Carpathian Castle, the hero, Count Franz de …

May 23, 2023: Very happy the videos are already available from micro.camp. It was frustrating to be (not) watching from a distant time-zone, but I’m looking forward …

May 21, 2023: I read the top ten Zettelkasten posts on Hacker News so you can do something more wholesome with your day I really did read a lot of geeky Zettelkasten posts and now I’m going to share them with you Every so often someone on Hacker News mentions …

May 19, 2023: More than ever, embracing your humanity is the way forward. Innovation makes people panic. Every so often there’s a panic about how the …

May 14, 2023: 🍳📷 I made this. Just saying.

May 13, 2023: 📷🐦Though they’re a common site on Sydney Harbour and the Parramatta River, I rarely see this many cormorants gathered together. Guessing there …

May 10, 2023: Thanks to a post by @chrisaldrich I was finally prompted to write about Aby Warburg’s Zettelkasten and library. Aby Warburg's Zettelkasten and …

May 10, 2023: Aby Warburg's Zettelkasten and the search for interconnection Aby Warburg and the compulsion to interconnect Aby Warburg was a German art historian obsessed with the connections he saw across European and …

May 6, 2023: Emotional Ignorance by Dean Burnett 📚demolishes the old myth that we only use 10% of our brains. It’s far more complex and interesting than that. My …

May 5, 2023: Was Dracula foiled by a gang of obsessive note-takers? May 3 is the date Bram Stoker’s famous novel, Dracula begins. It’s a classic tale of evil, lust and violence and you can follow along from …

May 1, 2023: 30 years of the World Wide Web. An incredible journey! I recall wondering if it would supersede Gopher. Didn’t have to wonder long. I also …

May 1, 2023: More discontent in the world of academic publishing. It’s amazing how far the brightest people have been tricked by the industry. Troubling to …

Apr 25, 2023: “The question: what are you making with your notes?” An important question, and a great article from @annahavron

Apr 24, 2023: “Everyone needs their own thinking space.” Sometimes it’s a room of your own, sometimes it’s a website of your own. But …

Apr 19, 2023: “Do you know exactly what you want?” It’s a very good question. I do, and my word of the year is “focus”. That’s because I find it very hard to …

Apr 7, 2023: An amazing Femi Kuti concert last night. The recordings are great but they don’t do justice to this band in person. The total confidence that …

Apr 6, 2023: 📷 Golden early-evening light on the route home.

Apr 6, 2023: The Writer’s Journey began as a memo. Working at Disney during the 1980s, Christopher Vogler saw senior executives using memos effectively. He …

Apr 5, 2023: April already 📷📚It’s April already. Do the months slip past ever faster? Autumn has arrived again and it’s glorious - a limpid blue sky after a weekend wet with …

Apr 4, 2023: 💬 “In a society that profits from your self doubt, liking yourself is a rebellious act”. A magic spell that protects the user against advertising of …

Apr 3, 2023: 💬 “Energy moves in waves…”

Apr 2, 2023: Personal publishing is still the future The online writing gurus say it’s pointless starting your own blog, because no one will read it. Best to go where the readers are and write …

Apr 2, 2023: Can’t believe I’ve only just found out about the Parks board game. (Hat tip to John Chandler) @johnchandler There really should be something like an …

Apr 2, 2023: Visited the Wildcat Zine Fair in yesterday’s rain. Did I mention I really like zines? Something about the “publish what you like and to hell with …

Apr 2, 2023: Adding two plugins to the website this morning. ‘Search space’, by @sod is now at 1.0 so definitely time to give it a try. And while I’m at it I’ve …

Apr 1, 2023: We think best when we bring opposites together “We think best when we bring opposites together, when we realize that all these realities, one inside the other, are somehow connected. That’s …

Mar 31, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 31: “practice “. Keeping the instruments out and ready to play makes it much more likely that I’ll get some …

Mar 30, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 30: “mirror” Penultimate day of the photo challenge!

Mar 29, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 29: “slice” One of our local bakeries does a quite decent seeded whole meal Viennese style loaf - although you …

Mar 28, 2023: 📷🚲Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 28: “prompt” I like to keep this old prompt front-of-mind: “simplicity is the key…”

Mar 28, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 27: “support” Sydney has many more bridges than just the famous Harbour Bridge. This bridge across the …

Mar 27, 2023: 📷 Day 26 of the Micro.blog March Photoblogging Challenge. The prompt is ‘instrument’. This small picture was a gift from a friend long ago.

Mar 26, 2023: 📷 🌮Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 26: “variety” Fond memories of the time my kids and their friends made us this meal. They were so delighted. …

Mar 25, 2023: 📷 🌮Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 25: “spice” When I searched my photographs for “spice”, this is what it found: a spice cupboard for robots. I …

Mar 24, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 24: “court”. Walking through the parks near my house just before dusk. There’s a whole heap of netball courts, …

Mar 23, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 23:”chance”

Mar 22, 2023: 📷 🐝Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 22: “insect” Just in time for a photograph, this native bee flew into the kitchen. There’s 1,700 species of …

Mar 21, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 21: “tiny”

Mar 20, 2023: 📷🪴Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 20: “houseplant” In hot weather, spraying the leaves of this umbrella plant creates a noticeable cooling …

Mar 19, 2023: How’s your coffee art these days? I predict big improvements for my game. ☕️

Mar 19, 2023: 📷 🗂️🗃️Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 19: “analogue”

Mar 18, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 18: “portico” When it comes to fancy architecture, nothing beats the Australian vernacular style.

Mar 18, 2023: 📷 Day 18: “fabric #mbsept 1970s wallpaper at The Foundations, Portland.

Mar 17, 2023: A gift from my son: three intriguing books for my to-read pile (which never seems to get any smaller)! 📚

Mar 17, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 17: “early”. Cloud on the headland, slow to clear.

Mar 16, 2023: 📷 🚴Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 16: “road” Came across a surprising sign on a cycling tour of Argyll: “Unsuitable road for sat-nav …

Mar 15, 2023: 📷🐈 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 15: “patience” If you wait long enough, something is bound to turn up.

Mar 14, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 14: “horizon” Mysterious Lake George. The windfarm on the horizon powers Sydney’s water …

Mar 13, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 13: “connection” At work I’m into connecting people and places. A project I’m proud of …

Mar 12, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 12: “shiny” It’s often very bright at my local surf beach. Sometimes makes me think …

Mar 11, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 11: “gimcrack” The very opposite of gimcrack: a Genroku (1688-1704) period plate from Kyushu …

Mar 10, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 10: “ritual” My daughter goes surfing almost every day. She’s gradually accumulating more …

Mar 9, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 9: “together” Spotted during my regular bike ride: birds of a feather.

Mar 8, 2023: Micro.blog March Photo Challenge Week 2 Preview Just thought I’d provide a preview1 of week 2 of the photoblog challenge. Week 2 prompts: 🗓 March 8: walk …

Mar 8, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 8: ‘Walk’ Exploring the mangrove walkway at Buffalo Creek with my friend S. Walking around Sydney …

Mar 7, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, day 7: ‘Whole’ The leaves of my Swiss cheese plant, Monstera deliciosa, are whole, holes and all. …

Mar 6, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March Photo Challenge, day 6 “Engineering”. This time last year we were enjoying the Adelaide Fringe Festival, the Writers …

Mar 6, 2023: You don't build art, you grow it Finished reading: Dancing with the Gods by Kent Nerburn 📚 This book is advice on the artistic life from an experienced sculptor and writer. I found …

Mar 5, 2023: 📷 Micro.blog March photo challenge, Day 5: Tile. A home renovation uncovered these original hearth tiles. c.1898. They’re quite worn but …

Mar 4, 2023: 📷 March Micro.blog photo challenge day 4: Zip I imagine commuting by zip-line to my office in the treetops. @Miraz, you might recognise this

Mar 3, 2023: I woke before dawn to find someone had left a beach campfire alight through the night. As the sun rose over Barrenjoey Headland I was completely …

Mar 2, 2023: 📷 March Micro.blog photo challenge day 2: Weather The view from the train window this morning neatly obliged. Though you can hardly see it through the …

Mar 1, 2023: 📷 March Micro.blog photo challenge, day 1: Secure Well, that’s what the cat’s feeling, curled up in a shoe box. I’ve tested just …

Feb 22, 2023: Can AI give me ham off a knee? Last night I lay awake thinking about how AI-automated writing is about to change our entire language. Since AI can easily write everything correctly …

Feb 22, 2023: When someone believes they have no expertise, that doesn’t mean they have nothing useful to say. We often learn best from those who are just one step …

Feb 22, 2023: Free books! 📚 TIL: A search on Amazon Kindle produces loads of free academic book titles, many of which are high quality and really interesting. Just …

Feb 22, 2023: Putting yourself out there attracts people who are likeminded. That’s one benefit of making it personal

Feb 21, 2023: Despite AI, the Internet is still personal Blogging is great and it will never die. That’s why I keep coming back to it and you do too. Dave Winer, the blogfather, once said: “A blog is the …

Feb 19, 2023: A home to endangered pied oystercatchers. The city is just visible in the distance.

Feb 19, 2023: What I saw on my bike ride this moring - a view through the bird-hide window.

Feb 19, 2023: Footnotes Footnotes For some reason I really like footnotes. And sometimes 1 it’s good to see the footnotes appear in a little box when you hover over the …

Feb 18, 2023: Finished reading Cold Enough for Snow Finished reading: Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au 📚 This was a quite mezmerising read. It reminded me of the writing of Yasunari Kawabata, who won …

Feb 9, 2023: The coming ellipsis eclipse Eclipse of the ellipsis: should you be worried? Apparently, using an ellipsis marks you out as old-fashioned. I don’t know why. I suppose this is just …

Feb 9, 2023: Here’s a photo of where I live. It wasn’t sunny today though. Today we had nearly 10cm of rain. In American units, that’s bucketloads.

Feb 5, 2023: Why I'm writing slowly There’s an emerging movement in favour of ‘slow productivity’. And writing is one of the best examples of the many benefits of …

Feb 5, 2023: Want to read: Pirate Enlightenment by David Graeber 📚 I’ve long been fascinated by the idea that piracy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth …

Feb 5, 2023: The thing about advice is that people do what they want with it Currently reading: Dancing with the Gods by Kent Nerburn 📚 I know nothing at all about Kent Nerburn, so it’s interesting to read this book of …

Feb 3, 2023: Finished reading: Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout 📚 This was an intriguing character study. Lucy Barton, a successful but quite damaged author, really …

Jan 30, 2023: Can sentimental writing ever be as exact as reality? Finished reading: The Forest of Wool and Steel by Natsu Miyashita 📚 There’s a section of the book where the narrator, an apprentice piano tuner, …

Jan 27, 2023: Big changes at writingslowly.com New year, new website (backend) It’s a new year, so it must be time for new web connections! Well, I finally decided to shift from a hosted …

Jan 26, 2023: The past is as urgent as ever Finished reading: The War of the Poor by Eric Vuillard 📚 This incendiary novella - only 66 pages long - burns so fiercely it felt like a bomb was …

Jan 26, 2023: Visions of a utopian Middle Ages Finished reading: Matrix by Lauren Groff 📚 I found this an intriguing, highly fictional reconstruction of the life of a medieval convent. The version …

Jan 25, 2023: My piano is a forest Currently reading: The Forest of Wool and Steel by Natsu Miyashita 📚 I love the metaphor of the piano as a living forest, and I’m enjoying the …

Jan 25, 2023: What I learned from Austin Kleon about sharing what you know Learning and sharing, sharing and learning. It’s a virtuous circle. That’s what I learned, and that’s what I’m sharing. …

Jan 16, 2023: Without democracy, no true creativity Finished reading: Against Creativity by Oli Mould 📚. This is a critique of everything symbolised by Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class …

Nov 18, 2022: I'm now @Richard@mastodon.au - yes I joined Mastodon. There's an original idea. As though there aren't enough half neglected social media accounts in …

Nov 13, 2022: Not thinking of writing a novel in November Well, I didn't sign up to NaNoWriMo, where you undertake to write 50,000 words in a month. Partly, it's just not my way of doing things. I have …

Oct 9, 2022: Thinking of writing a novel Manton mentioned NaNoWriMo and that has got me thinking. https://www.manton.org/2022/10/07/love-reading-about.html

Jun 25, 2022: Living beneath the shadow of the past In former times people lived their lives beneath the shadow of their past. The golden age was always behind them. The olden days were the good old …

Jun 3, 2022: My range is me The actor and film director Taika Waititi made an interesting comment on his creative process: "I'm the laziest, laziest actor you'll ever come …

Jun 2, 2022: You can get a lot done by writing slowly “People say to me, ‘Oh, you’re so prolific’…God, it doesn’t feel like it—nothing like it. But, you know, you put an ounce in a bucket each day, you …

Jun 2, 2022: When I publish a post with no title, where does it go and who gets to see it?

Jan 26, 2022: Thanks to Tom Critchlow, I now know a simple JS trick for including the micro.blog feed into a website: <script type="text/javascript" …

Dec 6, 2018: Best albums of 2018 Thanks to NPR’s list of great albums of the year, I found Jeremy Dutcher, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa. Spent a marvellous evening listening to this …

Nov 26, 2018: I had forgotten that posts to my wordpress site only show up on micro.blog if there’s no title. Let’s see whether this post, written on my …

Nov 26, 2018: Finally the iPad Having finally got hold of an iPad, I’m expecting more posts here soon - and by extension on micro.blog

Aug 24, 2018: zines I'm imagining writing a handful of 'zines and setting up stall at one of those 'zine fairs. I would like that. I just looked it up and found a pop-up …

Aug 18, 2018: Great bike ride down the river and along the bay this morning. Cold to start but warmed up nicely. Flat rear tyre though - twice... argh! I'm getting …

Aug 17, 2018: You have been warned It starts innocently enough, then they take over the world. You have been warned.

Aug 16, 2018: Fit for humans Vrypan says ‘social networks don’t scale socially’. It’s true. We need a distributed alternative to the monolithic megacorporations. The indieweb is a …

Aug 15, 2018: A big win for civilization in England? A judge has ruled that a local council in England needs to consider its statutory duties before closing down …

Aug 14, 2018: What keeps me from blogging? Mark Sample asks himself what it is about blogging that keeps him from blogging. For me, to be honest, it's Wordpress. The editor tool makes me feel …

Aug 14, 2018: Shelter [caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“393”] Olivia Chaney - Shelter[/caption] Really enjoying this. English song …

Aug 14, 2018: Blogs are back According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, blogs are back! The article references one of my favourite metaphors for the web: the garden and the …

Aug 13, 2018: Should I read the Indieweb Guide? I’ve now added the Indieweb plugin along with webmentions. Looking forward to finding out how it works! (There’s a guide - maybe I should …

Aug 10, 2018: Only sinners left down here I miss my old habit of blogging regularly. It used to make me happy. I like the idea of cultivating one’s garden1 online. But somehow the tools …

Aug 10, 2018: Just by posting on my site, the post is automatically mirrored to micro.blog

Aug 7, 2018: New micro.blog account I did in fact add a micro.blog account, which you can find at micro.blog/writingslowly (but it's not fully linked up yet - that's the next step).

Nov 28, 2017: I’m thinking of adding a connection between this site and Manton Reece’s micro.blog It’s a bit like Twitter but there’s more …

Jan 25, 2014: Welcome Hello,Thanks for reading my first post here. As you can see the site certainly lives up to its name. I am writing slowly1. If you’d like to …

Sep 25, 2013: 📷 Day 25: flare (Matthew, aka @matt17r) #mbsept Sydney’s Darling Harbour feels like an over-developed tourist trap. But I must admit: every so often …

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