How to get Strata for micro.blog up and running
I’ve decided to make use of the ‘notes’ feature in micro.blog.
This is like making private posts in a blog. But my main use case is brainstorming future blog posts. I want to take notes of half-formed ideas, which may or may not end up as blog posts. They’re not quite draft quality, but I have a hunch they’ll end up as public posts, not just remain as private notes.
The Notes feature is very easy to use. You make notes from the main page by clicking on the ‘Notes’ menu item.
And you can set up multiple ’notebooks’, which you can rename at will.
But there’s also an iOS app called Strata to make the experience easy and fun. That’s what I wanted to try.
📷 Kookaburra of the day
I know nothing about breakdancing 🤣 but back in October I attended the qualifying event for the Australian breakdancing Olympic team, where I saw Raygun win. So… AMA
Great evening light on the way home 📷
Feel the importance of every day, and every hour as it passes: Jane Austen's timely advice for writers and creators
Jane Austen died in the cathedral city of Winchester on July 18, 1817; she was 41 years old.
Towards the end of her too-short life, in a brief five-year period between 1811 and 1816, she published four great novels. Originally released anonymously to a just a handful of positive reviews and scant financial success, these works are now among the most celebrated in the English language.
My favourite tool is this notebook I made
I couldn’t find a note-making app that really suited me so I made one myself.
OK, that’s a bit of a stretch. It’s really just a heavily modified version of TiddlyWiki but it feels tailor-made. And working with it fits me like a glove. It’s a great example of making a creative working environment. That’s important. You have to make your own environment. Some people hate TiddlyWiki. That’s fine too.
I wanted a notemaking environment that would let me:
- write atomic notes,
- write in Markdown syntax,
- link notes easily,
- re-combine notes by transclusion,
- easily search through all my notes without clutter; and
- export notes without stress.
Here’s how I made my personalised notemaking app.
Notemaking helps you remember - and helps you forget
Do we really need to remember everything?
This is the question posed by Lewis Hyde’s memorable book, A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past 📚
He says:
“Every act of memory is an act of forgetting. The tree of memory set its roots in blood. To secure an ideal, surround it with a moat of forgetfulness. To study the self is to forget the self. In forgetting lies the liquefaction of time. The Furies bloat the present with the undigested past. “Memory and oblivion, we call that imagination.” We dream in order to forget.” ― Lewis Hyde, A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past
Forgetting is the essence of what makes us human
The subtitle of Joshua Foer’s book, Moonwalking with Einstein, promotes the art and science of ‘remembering everything’. Yet Foer accepts that forgetting is an essential aspect of memory. He quotes the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges:
“It is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world, we must filter it. “To think,” Borges writes, “is to forget.” – Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
Making notes will aid your short-term memory, even when you haven't got one
This week I was making notes about a presentation when my colleague looked over and offered to just give me the slides. I said thanks, of course. But really I was making my notes to help me remember the key information. If I just referred to the slides, I’d never assimilate the presentation - I’d just listen then forget. Conversely, while I might never look at the notes again, since it was me that made them, some of it has now sunk in.
Many people make notes to help them remember things, but how do you do it?
Thanks to @guidostevens@kolektiva.social I found this great quote from Cal Newport, from his book Slow Productivity.
“You should give your efforts the breathing room and respect required to make them part of a life well lived, not an obstacle to it.” - Cal Newport
See also: writing slowly is back in fashion.
