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typewriter-museum.lv typewriter-museum.lv
- Aug 2024
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analogoffice.net analogoffice.net
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Index card system to track daily, weekly, and monthly routines by [[Anna Havron]]
Brief outline of a tickler file system for today, daily, weekly, and monthly to do items.
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ugmonk.com ugmonk.com
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Ugmonk released a limited edition of 100 archive boxes for their Analog productivity cards today at 7AM (Pacific) for $229.00 (including 12 card packs and a metal divider). It sold out within two and a half hours.
With the inclusion of this archive box it makes the system much more like the original Memindex system.
https://ugmonk.com/products/analog-archive-box-walnut?variant=43942761562262
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www.thoughtco.com www.thoughtco.com
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Russian-born American author Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977) dictates from notecards while his wife Vera (nee Slonim, 1902 - 1991 types on a manual typewriter, Ithaca, New York, 1958. Carl Mydans / Getty Images
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- Jul 2024
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Given my current r/typewriter flair ("typewriters + card index = magic"), I couldn't help but appreciate that Lucas Dul features a 3x5" card index (aka database) of typewriter typefaces in a recent video on the 1896 Williams 3 typewriter: https://youtu.be/T1zzXwB3Xh8?si=K4FeiS-V_aev9_SZ&t=506. Those who have been following along on the typeface front will recognize some of the samples from this small index having been featured in a video on typewriter typefaces at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scrguKgDNIY.
I'm reminded of a similar card index (or Zettelkasten if you speak German) database of type I saw last year via the Letterform Archive article at Schriftenkartei [Typeface Index], 1958–1971 and a related Flickr version of it at https://www.flickr.com/photos/letterformarchive/albums/72177720310834741/
Lest you think these sorts of analog office pairings are completely obsolete, I feel compelled to mention that I've recently noticed that Pam Beasley's character had both an IBM typewriter and a metal 1970s/80s era two drawer metal card file behind her desk in the TV series The Office (NBC, 2005-2013).
If typewriters and card indexes are your sort of thing, I've got a small personal collection as well as some research and writing about them which can be found at https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/#Boxes
If you follow my collections and work, you know I'm not beyond pairing up a nice typewriter with a card index (or two).
Image of a 1948 Royal and a matching Steelcase card index.
Syndication link: https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1e5u5z3/era_appropriate_database_for_typewriter_typefaces/
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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You have to love the fact that Lucas Dul has a HON card index file of 3x5" index cards with typeface samples organized by decade.
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www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
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This lovely old file cabinet is 52" high x 14-3/4" wide x 27-1/2" deep. Each drawer is 6-1/8" wide x 4-6/8" high x 18-1/4" deep. It has a few scratches on the side, but nothing that can't be touched up. Otherwise, it's in good condition. In the early 80's, I worked on a TV series called "Cassie & Co." starring Angie Dickinson. This (and another antique file cabinet) was purchased and used as set dressing in Angie/Cassie's office. When the show was canceled, I bought the cabinets and have had them ever since. I don't have specific background info on them.
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/3801438776811728/
Sold · Antique 16-Drawer Library Card File Cabinet
Purchased for $250
cost per drawer $15.63
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- May 2024
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images.google.com images.google.com
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Uladimir Nabokov Ithaca, New YorkDate taken:1958Photographer:Carl Mydans
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images.google.com images.google.com
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Author Vladimir Nabokov's doodlings.Location:Ithaca, NY, USDate taken:September 1958Photographer:Carl Mydans
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images.google.com images.google.com
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Author Vladimir Nabokov's researched materials on file cards for his book 'Lolita'.Location:Ithaca, NY, USDate taken:September 1958Photographer:Carl Mydans
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images.google.com images.google.com
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Author Vladimir Nabokov at work, writing on index cards in his car.Location:Ithaca, NY, USDate taken:September 1958Photographer:Carl MydansSize:1280 x 889 pixels (17.8 x 12.3 inches)
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www.loc.gov www.loc.gov
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Nabokov’s working notecards for “Lolita.”
Nabokov used index cards for his research and writing. In one index card for research on Lolita, he creates a "weight-heigh-age table for girls of school age" to be able to specify Lolita's measurements. He also researched the Colt catalog of 1940 to get gun specifications to make those small points realistic in his writing.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I have run across Jeff Shelton's Analog system (originally via Kickstarter) before. Thanks for the reminder.
There's also a slew of others, especially for folks looking at commercially preprinted cards (though I tend to think they're overpriced compared to blank cards): - The Hipster PDA (Parietal Disgorgement Aid) https://web.archive.org/web/20040906150523/https://merlin.blogs.com/43folders/2004/09/introducing_the.html - Pile of Index Cards (PoIC) https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/albums/72157594200490122/ - Levenger https://www.levenger.com/products/triple-decker-pocket-planner?variant=42485422424213 (among others they carry including pocket briefcases) - Notsu https://notsubrand.com/ - Baronfig / Strategist: https://baronfig.com/products/strategist?variant=39787199529043 - Jeff Shelton's Analog system https://ugmonk.com/ - 3x5 Life https://www.3x5life.com/ - Foglietto https://www.nerosnotes.co.uk/collections/foglietto - Jot & Mark https://amzn.to/3Qs26Je
Am I missing any significant or influential examples, particularly branded ones?
Hubnote for 3 x 5" index cards for productivity
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- Apr 2024
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The Varidex is the name given to onemethod-a direct expanding index made inletter , bill and le gal sizes. In this systemthe general plan of tab positions is similarto the direct alphabetic system. It main-tains the fam iliar sectional arrangementfor guide s, individual and )Jliscellaneousfo ld er s.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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scihuy 0 points1 point2 points 2 hours ago (1 child)Hi, Can you point out any articles on note-taking in the sciences as opposed to history or social sciences? Any pointers would be very helpful
reply to u/scihuy at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1c2b2d6/note_taking_in_the_past/kzcg3qa/
I posed your question to my own card index:
Generally scientists haven't spent the time to talk about their methods the way those in the social sciences and humanities are apt to do. This being said, their methods are unsurprisingly all the same.
If you want to look up examples, you can delve into the nachlass (digitized or not) of most of the famous scientists and mathematicians out there to verify this. Ramon Llull certainly wrote, but broadly memorized all of his work; Newton had his wastebooks; Leibnitz used Thomas Harrison's Ark of Studies cabinet; Carl Linnaeus "invented" index cards for his work (search for the work of Staffan Müller-Wille and Isabelle Charmantier); Erasmus Darwin and Charles Darwin both used commonplace books; physicist Mario Bunge had a significant zettelkasten practice; Richard Feynman used notebooks; engineer Ross Ashby used a combination of notebooks which he indexed using a card index.
For historical reasons, most used a commonplace book method in which they indexed against keywords rather than Luhmann's variation, but broadly the results are the same either way.
Computer scientist Gerald Weinberg is one of the few I'm aware of within the sciences who's written a note taking manual, but again, his method is broadly the same as that described by other writers for centuries:
Weinberg, Gerald M. Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method. New York, N.Y: Dorset House, 2005.
I identify as both a mathematician and an engineer, and I have a paper-based zettelkasten for these areas, primarily as I prefer writing out equations versus attempting to write everything out as LaTeX. I'm sure others here could add their experiences as well. I've previously written about zettelkasten from the framing of set theory, topology, dense sets, and have even touched on it with respect to the ideas of equivalence classes and category theory, though I haven't published much in depth here as most don't have the mathematical sophistication to appreciate the structures and analogies.
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www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/8120601076/
Edward Lane's Arabic English Lexicon sounds like it was compiled by means of card index. Worth looking into the scholarly method behind compiling it.
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www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com
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Michael Macdonald amassed a vast collection of photographs of these texts and launched a digital Safaitic database, with the help of Laïla Nehmé, a French archeologist and one of the world’s leading experts on early Arabic inscriptions. “When we started working, Michael’s corpus was all on index cards,” Nehmé recalled. “With the database, you could search for sequences of words across the whole collection, and you could study them statistically. It worked beautifully.”
Researcher Michael Macdonald created a card index database of safaitic inscriptions which he and French archaeologist Laïla Nehmé eventually morphed into a digital database which included a collection of photographs of the extant texts.
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"I made a great study of theology at one time," said Mr Brooke, as if to explain the insight just manifested. "I know something of all schools. I knewWilberforce in his best days.6Do you know Wilberforce?"Mr Casaubon said, "No.""Well, Wilberforce was perhaps not enough of a thinker; but if I went intoParliament, as I have been asked to do, I should sit on the independent bench,as Wilberforce did, and work at philanthropy."Mr Casaubon bowed, and observed that it was a wide field."Yes," said Mr Brooke, with an easy smile, "but I have documents. I began along while ago to collect documents. They want arranging, but when a question has struck me, I have written to somebody and got an answer. I have documents at my back. But now, how do you arrange your documents?""In pigeon-holes partly," said Mr Casaubon, with rather a startled air of effort."Ah, pigeon-holes will not do. I have tried pigeon-holes, but everything getsmixed in pigeon-holes: I never know whether a paper is in A or Z.""I wish you would let me sort your papers for you, uncle," said Dorothea. "Iwould letter them all, and then make a list of subjects under each letter."Mr Casaubon gravely smiled approval, and said to Mr Brooke, "You have anexcellent secretary at hand, you perceive.""No, no," said Mr Brooke, shaking his head; "I cannot let young ladies meddle with my documents. Young ladies are too flighty."Dorothea felt hurt. Mr Casaubon would think that her uncle had some special reason for delivering this opinion, whereas the remark lay in his mind aslightly as the broken wing of an insect among all the other fragments there, anda chance current had sent it alighting on her.When the two girls were in the drawing-room alone, Celia said —"How very ugly Mr Casaubon is!""Celia! He is one of the most distinguished-looking men I ever saw. He is remarkably like the portrait of Locke. He has the same deep eye-sockets."
Fascinating that within a section or prose about indexing within MiddleMarch (set in 1829 to 1832 and published in 1871-1872), George Eliot compares a character's distinguished appearance to that of John Locke!
Mr. Brooke asks for advice about arranging notes as he has tried pigeon holes but has the common issue of multiple storage and can't remember under which letter he's filed his particular note. Mr. Casaubon indicates that he uses pigeon-holes.
Dorothea Brooke mentions that she knows how to properly index papers so that they might be searched for and found later. She is likely aware of John Locke's indexing method from 1685 (or in English in 1706) and in the same scene compares Mr. Casaubon's appearance to Locke.
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archive.org archive.org
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[Narrator]: The Cluttered Desk, Index Card,file folders, the in-out basket, the calculator.These are the tools of the office professional's past.Since the dawn of the computer age, better machines have always meant bigger and more powerful.But the software could not accommodate the needs of office professionals who are responsiblefor the look, shape and feel of tomorrow.
In 1983, at the dawn of the personal computer age, Apple Inc. in promotional film entitled "Lisa Soul Of A New Machine" touted their new computer, a 16-bit dual disk drive "personal office system", as something that would do away with "the cluttered desk, index cards, file folders, the in-out basket, [and] the calculator." (00:01)
Some of these things moved to the realm of the computer including the messy desk(top) now giving people two messy desks, a real one and a virtual one. The database-like structure of the card index also moved over, but the subjective index and its search power were substituted for a lower level concordance search.
30 years on, for most people, the value of the database idea behind the humble "index card" has long since disappeared and so it seems here as if it's "just" another piece of cluttery paper.
Appreciate the rosy framing of the juxtaposition of "past" and "future" jumping over the idea of the here and now which includes the thing they're selling, the Lisa computer. They're selling the idealized and unclear future even though it's really just today.
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archive.org archive.org
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(13:39) Hands flipping through a card index with overlapping dialogue about prospects
https://archive.org/details/0800_Beware_of_Mental-itis_06_00_55_00
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Local file Local file
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For the purpose of indexing we shall divide 73our stock of names or terms into those ofconcretes, processes and countries, concretes being the com-modities with which we are concerned, processes indicatingtheir actions, and countries indicating the localities with whichthe concretes are connected (295 et seq.) .
There are likely other metadata he may be missing here: - in particular dates/times/time periods which may be useful for the historians. - others? - general forms of useful metadata from a database perspective?
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You cannot buy a ready-made intelligence departmenton which to run your business.
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The subject is treated quite dispassionately,no particular file or cabinet is thrust upon the reader, but the re-quirements of ideal appliances and the state of existing ones aredescribed.
Further evidence to the claim at https://hypothes.is/a/iQwqzvC4Ee6PrNfzDQurog
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Automobile and Carriage Builders' Journal, October 1908. Duringthe last five or six years the carriage builder has been adopting,perhaps slowly, and often unwillingly, the card system in his office.,owing to the extra detail the motor business has brought with it.It will have probably been introduced by a new partner who hasbrought new money into the business, when extra funds were necessaryto cope with the new state of affairs. The motor manufacturer usesit instinctively, for he brings with him,
as a rule, the law, order, and precision of an engineer's office.
There's an interesting dichotomy presented here about the tech forwardness of the automobile industry in 1908 versus the tech reticence of the carriage builders in regard to adopting card indexes with respect to their related (though different) industries.
Me (sarcastically):<br /> "Oh, those backwards carriage builders will get with the 'program' any day now..."
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card system are indebted tothese catalogues for their information. But all these publications areprimarily concerned with the particular cabinet or file of the firm inwhose interest they are published.
Variations of card index systems were published in booklet form by filing cabinet manufacturers as a means of selling not only their cabinets, but their systems for using them was common in the early 1900s. Examples of magazine advertisements in System Magazine back this up. It is also specifically highlighted in a review of J. Kaiser's book "The Card System at the Office" from Ironmonger (1909-10-03) which appreciates a more fully fleshed out version of a card index system in book form without mention of specific manufacturing firms.
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o businesses of varied sizes are set forth and their working illustrated."We note with appreciation the author's use of "flags" as indic.itors.Our experience of these handy and ingenious little devices datesfrom their first introduction in the States, and we can endorse all that"he says in their favour.
When were bookmark-like "flags" introduced in America? (Certainly prior to 1908, based on this reference.)
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Yet it is doubtful whether since theintroduction of the typewriter there has been an invention so beneficialto modern business as the card-index system.
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So far as we are aware, this is the first adequatebook on the card system which has been published in this country.In the main, information on the subject has only been procurablefrom the catalogues and booklets (many of them excellent andinforming; issued by the manufacturers of the impedimenta of thesystem,
anecdotal evidence from Ironmonger (1908) that this is the first card index book and prior versions are only of shorter booklet-like forms.
(Naturally, I don't trust this in the fullest sense.)
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Kaiser, J. Systematic Indexing. The Card System Series 2. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1911. http://archive.org/details/systematicindexi00kaisuoft.
Annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:2acc267d4cbe455af640e4a707a84692
See alternate version at: # or https://www.google.com/books/edition/Systematic_Indexing/iwFDAAAAIAAJ?hl=en Google-Books-ID: iwFDAAAAIAAJ
(Switched for better OCR)
Tags
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Local file Local file
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Kaiser, J. Systematic Indexing. The Card System Series 2. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1911. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Systematic_Indexing/iwFDAAAAIAAJ?hl=en Google-Books-ID: iwFDAAAAIAAJ
Annotation url: urn:x-pdf:5e00705cb3b4484c6753104643a1e1a6
Switching editions for better OCR. see: Internet Archive or
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Local file Local file
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Kaiser, J. Card System at the Office. The Card System Series 1. London: Vacher and Sons, 1908. http://archive.org/details/cardsystematoffi00kaisrich.
Annotation url: urn:x-pdf:01c6d04ce30f5072bccfd0b7ea69d9d2
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To run a system effectively, we must be prepared 355Servant to uphold it ourselves, we must give the examplein effective work, we must be the first to submitto it although we supply the directing energy to run it. If we thinkourselves above our own system, then it has already ceased to exist.We must bear in mind therefore that any rules we may make, anyinstructions we may give, any supervision we may effect, applyto ourselves equally with others. We may be the masters of thesystem, we are also its servants, but for all that we need not beslaves to it.
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It is therefore best to prepare a Daily List
The description here is almost similar to interdepartmental memos or corporate emails which are sent out now instead. This information flows out, but broadly isn't kept or filed in the same sorts of ways.
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A four drawer cabinetis as a rule ample for the purposes of the key cabinet.
Key cabinets are used to control the information found in other card indexes as well as for private business information which should be restricted within a firm.
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Business In former years the account ledger representedLedger
Business Ledger
This section looks at index cards for communication to/from clients and appropriate follow up with respect to sales management in a manufacturing firm. It broadly represents some examples of how one would do larger scale project management and follow up with index cards.
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Chronological registers or directories may beRegisters used for a variety of purposes in almost everyoffice, not only as future reminders^ but alsoas records of past events.
Broadly this sounds like an indexed corporate diary of sorts, but his use of future reminders (or ticklers in the footnote) certainly points to the use of index cards in a Memindex-like fashion.
Keep in mind that he's writing in Britain and the Memindex from 1903 was a US-based product, though similar ideas may have been used at the time across the pond.
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Summaries*
examples of specific workflows within Kaiser's card system
Tags
- zettelkasten
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Annotators
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- Mar 2024
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/276403515343 <br /> archived copy
In 1984, Memindex was selling monthly planning calendars (pocket notebook size with spiral binding and a case) rather than their older small index card sized formats. Their calendar format looks eerily like what Day-Timer, a division of ACCO Brands, has been selling since at least the early 1990s.
This goes down to even the "cut here" triangles in the lower right corners of pages to help bookmark the current page.
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Local file Local file
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163
Early 20th century mail merge using a card index!
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It was said (76) that it isimpossible to devise a system wliich could be applied universally,the card registers give a very clear illustration of tliis.
This is a restatement that a particular system should be customized to its users.
There is potential that a system could be applied universally, but it requires a very large amount of data and metadata to suit the needs of a greater number of people and use cases. It also requires a reasonable amount of work in practical use to make it operate as expected.
The Mundaneum was likely close on paper and Google comes close to this, but still isn't perfect.
quote via ¶76 and 92
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Devising Once a proper system has been devised, it requiresCard Systems
Devising Card Systems
Many modern-day note takers and knowledge workers might take solace in the broad advice provided by J. Kaiser in 1908. In describing some of the broad categories of uses of card index filing systems for business use he says that each entity "has its individual character and individual requirements, and its individual character" (ie, everyone is different and has different needs), therefore everyone "must devise [their] system in accordance with [their] own requirements" and should "be the best judge as to what these requirements are." He continues on in the rest of the book to outline a variety of suggestions and methods which one might use or adopt, but he doesn't dictate specific methods and leaves those decisions up to the end user.
When devising their own systems, one certainly ought to heed this advice when looking at a variety of alternative methods like Forte's P.A.R.A., Milo's LYT, or even in mimicking Luhmann's idiosyncratic Zettelkasten set up. Are these methods best for your particular use cases? Are they simple enough for what you want to do, or are they overly structured and complicated? The key is to be able to classify and file things quickly so that they can be easily accessed in the future, all the rest becomes additional details and overhead to support on an ongoing basis.
(¶76)
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Elaborate library classifications were either inapplicable or much 74too complicated and therefore unmanageable. Their applicationto business was out of the question. Something simple, easy toimderstand and easy to handle was required. This was foundin the numerical arrangement. The numerical classification inspite of its arbitrary character will always have this advantagethat it ensures accuracy with the least trouble, and this is stillmore the case where large quantities are handled. It was quitenatural therefore that this should be preferred for business purposes.As there are many sets of things arranged numerically, it isnecessary to distinguish one set from the other, so as to know towhat set a given number refers. This is done by affixing dis-tinguishing initials to the numbers, each class being assigned somecharacteristic initial of its own.
In describing classification schemes for card index-based business uses, Julius Kaiser indicated in 1908 that "elaborate library classifications were either inapplicable or much too complicated and therefore unmanageable." This is in part because of the standardization of the Dewey Decimal System, which may have provided efficiencies for library systems, but proved too rigid for the idiosyncrasies of a variety of businesses. Instead he describes an alpha-numeric system in which numbers provide simple means of finding while the initial alphabetic codes assign specific office-related classes (correspondence, press cuttings, catalogs, etc.) to the indexed materials.
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But by means of the cards, these materials canbe arranged and re-arranged in almost endless variety, we mayclassify them roughly or minutely, we may arrange them by thealphabet, by numbers, trades or professions, territories, we maylimit ourselves to certain trades or territories only
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The card system has undoubtedly come to stayand will more and more replace the book system.
grin
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It must not be forgotten that the directaim of the card system is : maximum of work with minimumof labour (60).
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It will be seen from the foregoing that care isrequired in the appKcation of the card system,and that neglect must sooner or later lead to failure. There wasindeed a time when it seemed doubtful whether the card systemwould survive the first attempts. It was even tried and abandonedby some. These early failures were in the main due to the absenceof expert labour and to the higher order of accuracy required ascompared with the book system. The systems were not thenplanned out with that care that is bestowed upon them now. Onesystem would be started and presently there would be a decisionto alter it so as to fall in with riper experience. In the absenceof one system consistently adhered to the files soon got into achaotic condition until at last they had to be abandoned, for infact they had become useless.
This sort of failure is still seen today with people setting up note taking systems in a variety of digital environments.
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It is there-fore to be expected that the initial cost of the card system is nota fair criterion of its cost when in working order.
Setting up and learning a note taking or card index system has a reasonably large up-front cost, but learning it well and being able to rely on it over long periods of time will eventually reap larger and cheaper long-term outcomes and benefits.
Unless changing systems creates dramatically larger improvements, the cost of change will surely swamp the benefits making the switch useless. This advice given by Kaiser is still as true today as it was in 1908, we tend not to think about the efficiency as much now as he may have then however and fall trap to shiny object syndrome.
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Accuracy This is one of the chief claims of the card system. 63To increase accuracy in fUing, the materials arealways arranged numerically. We thereby approach as nearlyas possible to mathematical exactness. The advantages of thecard system become more and more apparejit as the files increasein bulk, and accuracy must remain a constant factor in aU workconnected with it. It will also bring its reward in the smoothworking of the files and the immediate accessibility of anythingrequired. In accuracy might be included consistency, which isindispensable for effective work (356).
In modern, digital settings, the work of approapriately indexing content is lost in exchange for other forms of organization (tagging, for example), this means one is less reliant on an index for looking up material and more reliant on concordance search of particular words within an ever-growing corpus of collected knowledge.
Over time and with scale, simple tagging may become overwhelming as a search method for finding the requisite material, even when one knows it exists.
As a result a repository may do better in the long run with a small handful of carefully applied rules from the start.
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Labour saving therefore means systematic application of expertlabour.
This quote is broadly recognized in economic settings as true, but few in the knowledge management space place emphasis or focus on designing both simple systems which are easy to master and use on a regular, ongoing basis. This allows the knowledge worker the ability to more quickly (almost blindly) handle their indexing and filing operations so that things are precisely where they need them when required for use.
Poor design will not only decrease the ease of use, but also discourage the user from both efficiently using and benefiting from their systems.
Even simple and efficient filing systems require familiarity and expertise for them to effect useful gains to their users, and prove their effectiveness over time. If a user can't get to a basic level of functionality in short time, they're likely to give up on it and never see the ultimate benefits.
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The development of the card system and itsmore universal adoption within recent years isundoubtedly due in the mail to the development in modernbusiness and factory organisation ; it may be regarded as anoffspring of manufacture in quantities. (Massenfabrikation, Gross-industrie.) The recognised principle in manufacture in quantities ismaximum of output with minimum of labour. The means to attainthis end is specialisation, which in its turn yields greater precisionand accuracy as it^ result. All this is equally applicable to thecard system, and the last factor, greater precision and accuracy,is one of its most conspicuous claims.
Julius Kaiser contemporaneously posits that mass manufacture and maximizing efficiency (greater output for minimum input) are the primary drivers of card index system use in the early 20th century. These also improve both precision and accuracy in handling information which allow for better company or factory operation, which would have been rising concerns for businesses and manufacturing operations at the rise of scientific management during the time period.
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Card Each drawer should be provided with a catchDrawers
Given this date, he's potentially either giving advice to consumers about what to buy or manufacturers about how to design and improve their systems.
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It requires but a moment's reflection to perceivethat even the vertical files with the correspondence binders arebut an imitation of a set of cards, on a larger scale. The set ofcards can fairly be regarded as the basis of the entire system,hence it is properly called the card system.
He notes the general equivalency of cards and papers in vertical files.
One of the primary affordances that individual atomic cards have is the ability to more easily re-arrange and reuse them for various purposes in comparison with larger sheets with greater amounts of data on them.
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When the card guidesare also used for classification purposes (144) a specially strongguide should be selected, as their replacing entails a great dealof re-writing.
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The quality of the cardshould correspond to the performances required of it. Cardsused for permanent registers or indexes should be of good strongquality, for temporary work a cheaper card can usually be employed.
Index card quality can be important for cards that are repeatedly used.
This admonition was more frequently attended to with respect to library card catalogs, but potentially less followed in personal use—Niklas Luhmann's self-cut paper slips which wore ragged over time come quickly to mind here.
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All screws used on the face of the drawers should be sunk in.Round headed screws are apt to tear the skin of the fingers.
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It is best to have the verticalcabinets and the card cabinets entirely separate.
I've seen some mixed cabinet in the early 1900s, but apparently by 1908, it was common practice to separate vertical filing cabinets and card cabinets.
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The text in this book is numbered by paragraphs and where asubject is treated in more than one place, the numbers in bracketsindicate the additional paragraphs bearing on the subject underdiscussion.
¶5
The book is ostensibly in the form of a card index with numbers laid out in running order to create a book. The index is also done keyed to these paragraph numbers rather than by page as has traditionally been done.
As a result, one could cut up the book (or two copies to get both sides) and turn it back into a card index with very little work.
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Volume 2 will be almost entirelydevoted to the work of indexing in the sense of analysing literatureand will go more fully into the question of classification and themanagement of guide cards. The present volume is confined asfar as practicable to the use of plain cards. Tabulated cards,methods of tabulating and the application of tabulated cards topractical business will be dealt with in volume 3, " The CardSystem at the Factory."
companion volumes treated the topics of "analysing literature" and the application of tabulated cards to practical business "at the Factory".
see: Kaiser, J. Systematic Indexing. The Card System Series 2. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1911. http://archive.org/details/systematicindexi00kaisuoft.
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Office Organisation, of which the work here discussed forms part, 2has been considerably modified within recent years, and Avhatis called the " card system " has now come very much into vogue.
The nebulous, but colloquial "card system" was a common, but now lost moniker for the use of a card index in business settings in the early 1900s.
Tags
- index cards vs vertical files
- card index affordances
- concordances vs. subjective indexes
- card index for writing
- universal systems
- expertise
- filing cabinets
- historical linguistics
- Julius Kaiser
- zettelkasten for academia
- quote
- accuracy
- mail merge
- specialization
- cost effectiveness
- card system
- indexes
- circulars
- screws
- card index
- note taking advice
- the more things change the more they stay the same
- scientific management
- card index purchasing
- 1908
- card index expertise
- shiny object syndrome
- zettelkasten numbering
- card guides
- index card quality
- zettelkasten
- zettelkasten numbering affordances
- safety
- rolodexes
- efficiency
- pouring out one's zettelkasten
- Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten
- card index as database
- definitions
- card index vs. notebooks
- card index for business
- card index purpose
- card index abandonment
- categorization
- vertical filing cabinets
- card index why
- card index efficiency
- failure
- taxonomies
- card index manufacturing
- index cards vs paper
- countersinking screws
- precision
- perfect system fallacy
- knowledge specialization
Annotators
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pipdecks.com pipdecks.com
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Also targeting business executives (via YouTube) as a storytelling deck: https://pipdecks.com/pages/storyteller-tactics-card-deck
Described as "expert knowledge in your back pocket", and sold as a "toolkit" with "practical step-by-step recipes", and "templates."
They offer 7 decks of tactics for Brand, Team, Storytelling, Innovation, Productivity, Team, Workshop, Strategy.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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'картотек' (card index), to find the relevant section (it's section 51. The fascination with index cards, p.68). This is pretty much the only part of the booklet that discusses index cards, though.
card index in Russian is 'картотек'
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qnnnp.medium.com qnnnp.medium.com
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Paul Otlet, another great information visionary, to create a worldwide database for allsubjects.
Otlet's effort was more than a "database for all subjects", wasn't it? This seems a bit simplistic.
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- Feb 2024
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Local file Local file
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Duncan, Dennis. Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age. 1st ed. London: Allen Lane, 2021. https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324002543.
annotation link: urn:x-pdf:a4bd1877f0712efcc681d33d58777e55
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Local file Local file
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The authors made one serious mistake, however. Although theyhad taken great pains to be sure that within their massive workevery book and manuscript stored in their building was representedby a three-by- ve page, and often by several pages, describing it,they had forgotten to devote any page, anywhere, to the very book
that they had themselves been writing all those years.
Baker describes the library card catalog as a massive book made up of 3 x 5 inch pages describing all the other books. Sadly he laments, they never bothered to catalog this meta-book itself.
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Would it bestretching things too much, you suddenly wonder, to call yourRolodex a form of autobiography—a manuscript that you have beenwriting these fteen years, tinkering with, revising?
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www.lapl.org www.lapl.org
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The smallest collection of card catalogs is near the librarian’s information desk in the Social Science/Philosophy/Religion department on lower level three. It is rarely used and usually only by librarians. It contains hundreds of cards that reflect some of the most commonly asked questions of the department librarians. Most of the departments on the lower levels have similar small collections. Card catalog behind the reference desk on lower level three, photo credit: Tina Lernø
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The surname Index for the library’s genealogy includes 315 drawers of about 750 cards each for a total of more than 236,250 cards patrons can use when they visit the History/Map/Travel section, photo credit: Diana Rosen
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www.levenger.com www.levenger.com
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https://www.levenger.com/products/card-catalog-box?variant=43007544066197
A bit on the small side, but has a built in pen holder:
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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u/enabeh and u/Busy-Feeling-1413 interested in zettelkasten pedagogy
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Local file Local file
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Francis March also helped with the etymologies inWilliam Dwight Whitney’s Century Dictionary (1889–91) and IsaacFunk’s Standard Dictionary of the English Language (first volume publishedin 1893).
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during theyears that Leslie Stephen contributed to the OED, he started his owncrowdsourced project, the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). Just asMurray’s Dictionary traced the lives of thousands of words, Stephen’sdictionary traced the lives of thousands of people who made a notable impacton British history. Stephen invited 653 people to write 29,120 articles. Sixty-three volumes comprising 29,108 pages were published, the first volume in1885 and the last in 1900. The DNB is still going today, under the aegis ofOxford University Press, and it now covers the lives of 55,000 people.
Presumably this dictionary also used a card index for collection? (check...)
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Readers were asked to choose words they considered ‘rare’ and the choice ofthese words was random – they were not guided by Murray on what wasneeded. This resulted in a dearth of quotations for common words whichultimately had to be found by Murray and his assistants. In the first part of theDictionary alone, ‘nearly the whole quotations for about, after, all, also, and,in Part I, and for any, as, in Part II, have had to be found by myself and myassistants’, he explained to the Philological Society. If he had his time again,he said that he would have directed his Readers differently, with theinstructions, ‘Take out quotations for all words that do not strike you as rare,peculiar, or peculiarly used.’
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By the time the OED project commenced, Europe already had majordictionaries under way or completed in German, French, Italian, Russian, andDutch, all of which were taking advantage of the new methodologies ofContinental philology. In Germany, the Brothers Grimm had begun theDeutsches Wörterbuch in 1838. In France, Émile Littré had begun theDictionnaire de la langue française in 1841 (a dictionary of post-1600French). In the Netherlands, Matthias de Vries had begun Woordenboek derNederlandsche Taal in 1852 (a dictionary of post-medieval Dutch).
Oxford English Dictionary (1857 - )
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There was a dramatic wall of vastnumbers of slips, or ‘zettel’, hanging from long nails.
The Grimmwelt Museum in Kassel, Germany is the home of some of the work of Grimm Brothers work on the Deutsches Wörterbuch which features a large wall of zettel or slips hanging from long nails.
The slips hanging on nails sounds similar to Thomas Harrison's 1740's wooden cabinet of hanging slips used for excerpts and isn't far off from the organizational structure used by the subsequent Oxford English Dictionary's pigeonhole system of organization for their slip collection.
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Ogilvie, Sarah. The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 2023. https://amzn.to/3Un0sv9.
Read from 2023-12-04 to 2024-02-01
Annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:c95483c701c7fc677e89f2c44f98a30b
Tags
- etymology
- philology
- 1893
- Dictionnaire de la langue française
- Leslie Stephen
- zettelkasten for lexicography
- Thomas Harrison's Ark of Studies
- Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal
- historical linguistics
- read
- Deutsches Wörterbuch (DWB)
- Deutsches Wörterbuch zettelkasten
- Oxford English Dictionary
- open questions
- Francis March
- Dictionary of National Biography (DNB)
- collector's fallacy
- XIX
- Oxford English Dictionary zettelkasten
- Isaac Funk
- dictionaries
- Grimmwelt Museum
- Sarah Ogilvie
- zettelkasten examples
- card index for dictionaries
- 1889
- William Dwight Whitney
Annotators
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www.demco.com www.demco.com
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https://www.demco.com/demco-reg-permalife-catalog-cards
The old school Library of Congress card catalog cards with the red ruling.
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findingaids.lib.umich.edu findingaids.lib.umich.edu
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https://pages.oup.com/ol/cus/1646173949115570121/submit-words-and-evidence-to-the-oed
The modern day digital version of an OED contribution slip includes database fields for the following:
- Submission type (new word or sense of a word; information about origin/etymology; other)
- the word or phrase itself
- the part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, other)
- pronunciation (recording, IPA, rhyming words, etc.)
- the definition or sense number as defined in the OED
- quotation evidence with full text, and bibliographical references/links)
- additional notes
Only the first two fields are mandatory.
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- Jan 2024
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Chris, I read it some 40 years ago when as a school boy I began with my Zettelkasten journey. It is about the technique as well as the intellectuell framework behind it and was surely pointed to business aspects as well as running the civil service but also outspoken to the worker of the mind, the scientist and philosopher. Filing and indexing is crucial to all of these varied aspects of cultural life. But don't expect hitherto unknown magical practices to be revealed. It was commune practice then and you could find handbooks on indexing and filing in organisations also in America and England at that time. The new found way of personal knowlegde management just doesn't know about its predecessors with pen, ink, typewriter and other unbeliefable tricks.
quote from Martin <br /> https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19435#Comment_19435 on 2024-01-28
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jillianhess.substack.com jillianhess.substack.com
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one of King’s note cards on the Old Testament’s Book of Amos which includes the linesBut let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. These lines would feature in many of King’s speeches—including his famous “I Have a Dream Speech,” where King said: …we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Some of King's note cards later figured in his speeches including his "I Have a Dream" speech.
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bavatuesdays.com bavatuesdays.com
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I could totally see this UI with a video generated version of Niklas Luhmann answering questions using the training set of notes in his online zettelkasten at https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/tutorial
syndication link: https://bavatuesdays.com/ai106-long-live-the-new-flesh/comment-page-1/#comment-388943
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communicationnation.blogspot.com communicationnation.blogspot.com
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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each sub-portion has its own topology. The index is decentralized in nature, while the bibliographical section/notes are all somewhat centralized in form.
I imagine this diversity of structure is what made Luhmann's slipbox so potent. In an ecosystem, neither an arboreal root system nor a mycorrhizal network are enough to stage nutrient flow; they must intertwine with each other.—oxytonic on 2024-01-08
Luhmann's system wasn't very unique (really only in his filing system) compared with the thousands of others in use at the time or for centuries prior. The more interesting space of intertwining is between the ideas in the box and those held in memory and worked on in coordination with the brain. Too many get wrapped up in his physically visible box and forget the work done by the by the "invisible" brain.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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827Posted byu/Loose_Buy62922 years agoArchivedComments are lockedNeed to dump the Flylady .t3_qgy51n._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #edeeef; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; } Rant / VentI have always used the Flylady's system, until seeing her video on youtube last night, 'It's Time'. She went full-on Chriatian Nationalist Q whacko conspiracy theorist. I was SHOCKED. Praising Jim Caviesel and comparing him to Jesus, after watching his recent rant that was laced with violence and conspiracy junk. He is crazy, and she was crying over how wonderful he is. Deifying him in an uncomfortable way. It was all terrifying and overwhelming.Is there someone else who has a similar system? I don't want to support her business anymore.
Wowzers!
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de.wikipedia.org de.wikipedia.org
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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X17-Mind-Papers - die Wiederentdeckung der Karteikarte<br /> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxZMia35usc
Mind Papers has a variety of small leather covers (folders) with binder clips for storing one's note cards. They range from smaller than A7 up to A5 sizes.
They're broadly reminiscent of smaller versions of the Everbook, though I suspect these came first given the 2014 post date.
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thetodaysystem.com thetodaysystem.com
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https://betterhumans.pub/i-built-my-own-personal-productivity-system-around-a-3-x-5-index-card-147d7a8d83de
Melange of GTD, card index, and gamification....
Update 2024-01-04: I knew I had heard/seen this system before, but not delved into it deeply. I hadn't seen anyone either using it or refer to it by name in the wild until yesterday. All the prior mentions were people sharing the URLs as a thing rather than as something they used.
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thetodaysystem.com thetodaysystem.com
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The Today System:
A simple, yet scalable personal productivity system, centered around a single 3 x 5″ index card.
used by u/runslack
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FireKing File Cabinet, 1-Hour Fire Protection, 6-Drawer, Small Document Size, 31" Deep<br /> https://www.filing.com/FireKing-Card-Check-Note-Cabinet-6-Drawer-p/6-2552-c.htm
A modern index card catalog filing solution with locks and fireproofing offered by FireKing for $6,218.00 with shipment in 2-4 weeks. 6 Drawers with three sections each. Weighs 860 lbs.
at 0.0072" per average card, with filing space of 25 15/16" per section with 18 sections, this should hold 64,843 index cards.
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shop.canvascorpbrands.com shop.canvascorpbrands.com
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- Dec 2023
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www.avery.com www.avery.com
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Avery Templates for 4 x 6" products:
- Avery 8386 postcards 2 per sheet (template compatibility 5889)
- Avery 5292 Shipping Labels 1 per Sheet White (template compatibility 5454, 5614)
- Avery 5454 Print or Write Multi-Use Labels 6" x 4" 1 per Sheet White (template compatibility 5292, 5614)
- Avery 5389 Postcards 4" x 6" 2 per Sheet White (template compatibility 15389)
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archive.org archive.org
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White highlights the ability to easily shuffle and reshuffle cards in a variety of orders (alphabetical, by source type) and this is one of the benefits of using note cards. (p51)
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www.psychologytoday.com www.psychologytoday.com
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A file card system took up an entire wall. It included records of previous games for endless analytical pleasure and even an index of potential competitors' tournament histories.
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www.bstephen.me.uk www.bstephen.me.uk
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There will be errors in MESON – those I have copied from books, magazines and the card collections I have access to, those I have copied from the other free online databases and those I have perpetrated myself. If you find an error, do contact me about it, quoting the problem ids (PIDs).
MESON is comprised in part of card index collections of chess problems and puzzles.
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http://www.bstephen.me.uk/meson/meson.pl?opt=top MESON Chess Problem Database
Compiled using a variety of sources including card indexes.
found via
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>As for the Pirnie collection, not counted it, but I am slowly going through it for my online #ChessProblem database: https://t.co/eTDrPnX09b . Also going through several boxes of the White-Hume Collection which I have.
— Brian Stephenson (@bstephen2) August 5, 2020
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twitter.com twitter.com
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Brian Stephenson@bstephen2·Aug 4, 2020The Pirnie Collection of #ChessProblem s is index cards in Clark's shoe boxes and is held in my house. The late JP Toft created a huge card database of #ChessProblem s in Scandinavia and is now held in a public library.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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It Took Decades To Create This Chess Puzzle Database (30 Thousand), 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9craX0M_2A.
A chess School named after Genrikh Kasparyan (alternately Henrik Kasparian) houses his card index of chess puzzles with over 30,000 cards.
The cards are stored in stacked wooden trays in a two door cabinet with 4 shelves.
There are at least 23 small wooden trays of cards pictured in the video, though there are possibly many more. (Possibly as many as about 35 based on the layout of the cabinet and those easily visible.)
Kasparyan's son Sergei donated the card index to the chess school.
Each index card in the collection, filed in portrait orientation, begins with the name of the puzzle composer, lists its first publication, has a chess board diagram with the pieces arranges, and beneath that the solution of the puzzle. The cards are arranged alphabetically by the name of the puzzle composer.
The individual puzzle diagrams appear to have been done with a stamp of the board done in light blue ink with darker blue (or purple?) and red inked stamped pieces arranged on top of it.
ᔥu/ManuelRodriguez331 in r/Zettelkasten - Chess players are memorizing games with index cards
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxsCVEBM510<br /> How To Use An Antinet Zettelkasten For Personal Growth by Haile Rene on 2023-12-21<br /> featured on Scott P. Scheper (channel)
Video intro for Soul Cards book...
ugh...
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGGQNqBaFDA<br /> Homekeeping Schedule by FindingKellyAnn<br /> posted Jul 25, 2013
Example of a user's Sidetracked Home Executives card index.
Includes a section of notes she took on a book at one time. She used it for a while and reported that it was successful, but she no longer uses it and has a binder method instead.
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/305300436363
Vintage Imperial card catalog for 5 x 8" index cards
Listed for auction in December 2023. After 14 bids, sold for $158.50 on 2023-12-11. Seems rare for these to actually sell by auction.
Cost per drawer: $39.63.
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Wish You Were Here - The “Great Lakes” Edition from Field Notes Brand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFemm4LjJbY
The Newberry Library in Chicago, IL, maintains a collection of the Curt Teich & Co.'s Art-Colortone postcards from 1898 onward. It's stored in tab divided boxes using an alpha-numeric system generally comprising a series of three letters followed by three numbers. The company sold over a billion of these postcards.
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archive.org archive.org
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I accomplished a couple of other things on that first day back into reality. First, with an evil Grinch-like smile | uprooted every household management system | had ever tried, and tore up every single 3x5 card in them. Then one by one, | roasted and toasted them in the fireplace until they were gone, gone, gone. Next, with equally fiendish delight, | speared my $35 namebrand notebook organizer with a marshmallow fork, and | roasted it too. It melted into oblivion, all but it’s ugly metal spine. Next, | prayed for my attitude and for help. And finally, | marched myself into Wal-mart and bought my first clear plastic bin, a two pound sack of M&M's, and a loaf of white bread. For better or worse, we have been pretty happy campers at my house ever since. (p6)
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[73] The Regis Philbin Show 12Mar1982 Guests actress Karen Valentine Pam Young and Peggy Jones talk about Spring cleaning.
https://ctva.biz/US/TalkShow/RegisPhilbin_1981-82.htm
According to @Young1982, they had previously appeared with Regis Philbin on AM Los Angeles (TV show).
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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Example of a small Weis steel card index which was used by a coin collector who had custom index cards made for tracking a collection.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/235342975576/
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/204539906243
According to the card on a Shaw-Walker desktop card index, the follower block was patented on October 10, 1902.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Getting over the fear of perfection .t3_188j2xt._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I have so many half-filled notebooks or ones that I abandoned because I disliked my penmanship or because I “ruined” pages. I am the type of person who will tear out a page if I make a mistake or if it looks bad.I really want to start a commonplace book but I feel like I must get over this fear of “messing up” in a notebook. Anyone else struggle with this?
reply to u/FusRoDaahh at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/188j2xt/getting_over_the_fear_of_perfection/
I had this problem too, but eventually switched to keeping my commonplace entirely on index cards, which also allows me to move them around and re-arrange them as necessary or when useful. (It also fixed some of my indexing problems.)
The side benefit is that if I botch a single card, no sweat, just pull out a new one and start over! If you like the higher end stationery scene afforded in notebooks, then take a look at Clairfontaine's bristol cards from Exacompta which are lush and come in a variety of sizes, colors, and rulings. (They're roughly equivalent to the cost per square meter of paper you'll find in finer notebooks like Leuchtturm, Hobonichi, Moleskine, etc., though some of the less expensive index cards still do well with many writing instruments.) Most of their card sizes are just about perfect for capturing the sorts of entries that one might wish to commonplace.
Once you've been at it a while, if you want to keep up with the luxe route that some notebook practices allow, then find yourself a classy looking box to store them all in to make your neighbors jealous. My card indexes bring me more joy than any notebook ever did.
When penmanship becomes a problem, then you can fix it by printing your cards, or (even better in my opinion), typing them on your vintage Smith-Corona Clipper.
And of course the first thing one could type out on their first card and file it at the front where you can see it every day:
"Le mieux est le mortel ennemi du bien" (The better is the mortal enemy of the good).<br /> — Montesquieu, in Pensées, 1726
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www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
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https://www.amazon.com/Antiracist-Deck-Meaningful-Conversations-Justice/dp/0593234847
Kendi, Ibram X. The Antiracist Deck: 100 Meaningful Conversations on Power, Equity, and Justice. One World, 2022.
A zettelkasten for creating conversations (randomly) around power, equity, and justice.
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emacsconf.org emacsconf.org
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You need structure. Index cards gave Nabokov a really powerful way to impose this structure because they created small, independent chunks of prose that he could bundle together into groups, like we saw in the box. This let him navigate his novel in progress quickly. He could just flip through those bundles, bundle by bundle, instead of card by card. He could also impose on and modify the structure of his novel just by shuffling those bundles around. So that's why Nabokov loved index cards for writing novels.
While this supposition may be true, I don't believe that there's direct evidence from Nabokov to support the statement that this is why he "loved index cards for writing novels". It's possible that he may have hated it, but just couldn't come up with anything better.
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chem.libretexts.org chem.libretexts.org
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What is the Cu2+ concentration at 25°C in the cell Zn(s) | Zn2+ (1.0 M) || Cu2+(aq) | Cu(s)? The cell emf is 1.03 V. The standard cell emf is 1.10 V.
Exercise 19.23 Similar to our last Quiz Question
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E0cell=E0cathode+E0anode
Equation put on index card
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The Nernst Equation
Write equation on index card, will be on exam
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Which one can occur at the cathode of an electrochemical cell?
19.3.4 Cathode is reducing and an anode is oxidating
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Electrochemical Cell Notation
Quiz Question, will be on exam
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- Nov 2023
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Local file Local file
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Muchrecent scholarship on card indexes and factuality falls into one of two modes: first,scholars have excavated early modern indexes, catalogues, and the pursuit of ‘facts’to demonstrate information overload prior to the contemporary ‘information age’ as wellas the premodern attempts to counteract the firehose of books and other information(Blair, 2010; Krajewski, 2011; Mu ̈ ller-Wille and Scharf, 2009; Poovey, 1998;
Zedelmaier, 1992). All the same, a range of figures have tracked and critiqued the trajectory of the ‘noble dream’ of historical and scientific ‘objectivity’ (Appleby, Hunt and Jacob, 1994: 241-70; Daston and Galison, 2007; Novick, 1988).
Lustig categorizes scholarship on card indexes into two modes: understanding of information overload tools and the "trajectory of the 'noble dream' of historical and scientific 'objectivity'".
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Moreover, card indexes give further form to Bruno Latour’s meditations on writing: ifLatour described writing as a kind of ‘flattening’ of knowledge, then card indexes, likevertical files, represent information in three dimensions, making ideas simultaneouslyimmutable and highly mobile, and the smallness of ideas and ‘facts’ forced to fit onpaper slips allowed for reordering (Latour, 1986: 19-20).
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thatsthenorm.com thatsthenorm.com
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Live-Roaming: Using Roam to teach students in college
I'd listened to this whole episode sometime since 2022-04-05, but didn't put it in my notes.
Mark Robertson delineates how he actively models the use of his note taking practice (using Roam Research) while teaching/lecturing in the classroom. This sort of modeling can be useful for showing students how academics read, gather, and actively use their knowledge. It does miss the portion about using the knowledge to create papers, articles, books, etc., but the use of this mode of reading and notes within a discussion setting isn't terribly different.
Use of the system for conversation/discussion with the authors of various texts as you read, with your (past) self as you consult your own notes, or your students in classroom lectures/discussion sections is close to creating your own discussion for new audiences (by way of the work your write yourself.)
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1194506/4875515-mark-robertson-history-socratic-dialogue-live-roaming.mp3
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robertbreen.com robertbreen.com
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When Jimmy Buffett has an idea for a song — sometimes just a phrase — he writes it down on any available scrap of paper and stuffs it into an old sea chest. When he’s ready to write some new music, he sits down and pulls out all those scribbles, which I imagine must be torn off bar napkins and beer coasters, and sorts through them, one by one. He says many of his most popular songs marinated in his sea chest before emerging as lyrics.
Source for this?
Sounds very similar to Eminem's "stacking ammo".
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Local file Local file
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The same information could have been recordedin a notebook or on slips of paper and then heaped togetherhaphazardly, but this would not have accomplished the samething.
I take issue with this statement from the translators. Do they come about it themselves or does it stem from Eco?
The general affordances of many modalities are very similar, though the ease of use and speed in arrival at a destination may be slightly different. (That is, cards can be ordered more quickly perhaps, but a similar function can be done using notebooks or slips.)
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www.flickr.com www.flickr.com
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Wörgötter, Michael. “Schriftenkartei [Typeface Index], 1958–1971.” Photo sharing social website. Flickr, 2023. https://www.flickr.com/photos/letterformarchive/albums/72177720310834741. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
Found via: Coles, Stephen. “This Just In: Schriftenkartei, a Typeface Index.” Letterform Archive, November 3, 2023. https://letterformarchive.org/news/schriftenkartei-german-font-index/.
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letterformarchive.org letterformarchive.org
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When Michael Wörgötter, a Munich-based designer and educator, came across his own Schriftenkartei set earlier this year, he understood their value for designers and researchers and wanted to make them as widely accessible as possible. He scanned each card at 1200 DPI, and reprinted them in two bound volumes, along with a handy supplementary guide, written in German and English, that offers historical background. The books are available for purchase directly from Wörgötter.
Munich-based designer and educator Michael Wörgötter digitally scanned and then printed bound copies of the 638 cards of the Schriftenkartei into two volumes with a supplementary guide for additional historical background. He subsequently donated the Schriftenkartei to the Letterform Archive.
Digital copies of the cards are available on Flicker (https://www.flickr.com/photos/letterformarchive/albums/72177720310834741) and the Letterform Archive intends to provide digital copies in their online archive.
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Coles, Stephen. “This Just In: Schriftenkartei, a Typeface Index.” Letterform Archive, November 3, 2023. https://letterformarchive.org/news/schriftenkartei-german-font-index/.
Example of a zettelkasten covering the available typefaces produced from 1958 and 1971 in West Germany.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Pam and Peggy young (sisters) published their book Sidetracked Home Executives ... (also known as the S.H.E. system) in 1979, which Marla of FlyLady used as the basis for her system, which in turn is the base for A Slob Comes Clean and several other more modern mentors. Lastly I doubt the Young sisters were the first either.
via u/Mmdrgntobldrgn at https://www.reddit.com/r/planners/comments/yzv5ov/index_card_planner_systems/
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www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
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St. James, Elaine. “Replacing Day Planner With Index Cards.” Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1998, sec. Business. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jun-08-he-57703-story.html.
Apparently even with growing ubiquity of computers in 1998 and in a pre-internet era, syndicated (Universal Press Syndicate) productivity expert Elaine St. James suggested the use of index cards as a means of simplifying one's life, especially as compared with big and bulky planners and notebooks which predominated the timeperiod.
Notice that she specifically doesn't suggest "going back" to using index cards in the piece. Apparently the idea of that within the zeitgeist had been lost by this time.
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www.calendarsquick.com www.calendarsquick.com
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PDF Index Card Calendars 4 little templates for printing directly to 3 x 5 and 4 x 6 index cards (with the dates already filled in). Perfect for the Hipster PDA and other compact GTD organizational systems.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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What do you do for a calendar? I'm considering moving from a moleskine GTD system to index cards for reasons you mention (waste paper, can't re-order), but love my 2-year calendar at the front
reply to verita-servus at https://www.reddit.com/r/gtd/comments/15pfz8o/comment/k7iqjwa/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Last year I had a Field Notes card with the year's calendar on it that I kept with my daily cards when necessary. (I think it came included with their "Ignition" edition.) Many companies give these sorts of calendars away as PR.
This year I used a Mizushima Perpetual Calendar Stamp to create my own custom card with the coming years' dates. (I also often use this stamp for individual months on other types of cards.) I'm sure you could also find something online to print out or draw your own if you wish. These index card specific templates might give one ideas: https://www.calendarsquick.com/printables/free.html.
Pretty much any spread one might make in a bullet journal can be recreated in index cards. Some of the biggest full page spreads or double page spreads are still doable, they may just need to be shrunk a bit or broken up. I've also printed things onto larger 8x12" card stock and then folded them down to 4x6" before to use as either larger notes or mini-folders as necessary. Usually I do this for holding the month's receipts.
This set of calendar cards from Present & Correct which are done in letterpress looked nice if you wanted to go more to the luxe side as well as to the larger side.
Given the sticker market for Hobonichi and other similar planners, you could also buy some custom decorative stickers which you could attach to cards as well. And there's nothing keeping you from just writing it all out by hand if you wish.
Options abound.
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- Oct 2023
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www.thenewatlantis.com www.thenewatlantis.com
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Let’s look at some of the attributes of the memex. Your machine is a library not a publication device. You have copies of documents is there that you control directly, that you can annotate, change, add links to, summarize, and this is because the memex is a tool to think with, not a tool to publish with.
Alan Jacobs argues that the Memex is not a tool to publish with and is thus fundamentally different from the World Wide Web.
Did Vannevar Bush suggest the Memex for writing or potentially publishing? [Open question to check] Would it have been presumed to have been for publishing if he suggests that it was for annotating, changing, linking and summarizing? Aren't these actions tantamount to publishing, even if they're just for oneself?
Wouldn't academics have built the one functionality in as a precursor to the other?
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80UMxoN0Teo
Megan Rhiannon shows how she's using her FiloFax for planning as well as commonplacing.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Posted byu/practicalSloth2 days agoAnyone use a FiloFax or similar for a commonplace book? .t3_17drtzn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I really like the idea of being able to re-sort pages and was wondering if anyone has tried something like this? I've also considered an "Everbook", but was a bit concerned with all the loose pages of paper flying around everywhere
u/practicalSloth interested in implementing a commonplace book using a FiloFax!
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Anyone use a FiloFax or similar for a commonplace book? .t3_17drtzn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/practicalSloth at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/17drtzn/anyone_use_a_filofax_or_similar_for_a_commonplace/
For centuries, many have kept their commonplace books on index cards or slips of paper) rather than on book/notebook pages just like you're suggesting. They then indexed them against topic words and filed the ideas alphabetically rather than writing them in books and indexing them separately.
Some popular versions of the practice which are described/viewable online include:
- Ryan Holiday: https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read/ and https://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2013/08/how-and-why-to-keep-a-commonplace-book/ Ryan has also covered some of his methods on his YouTube channel as well.
- Billy Oppenheimer: https://billyoppenheimer.com/notecard-system/
- Victor Margolin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI
- Mortimer J. Adler et. al.: https://boffosocko.com/2023/09/28/mortimer-j-adlers-syntopicon-a-topically-arranged-collaborative-slipbox/
Others with index card or small slip-based commonplaces include Ronald Reagan, Phyllis Diller (whose commonplaced joke file is now at the Smithsonian), and Joan Rivers.
In German, this general practice was called zettelkasten (which translates as slip box), there are lots of people doing versions of this in r/Zettelkasten following some of Niklas Luhmann's method. Many more are using digital platforms like Obsidian, Logseq, etc. for this.
Certainly putting it into a FiloFax is a flexible and doable option.
I've written a bit about the mistaken identities and differences between Niklas Luhmann's practice which has become popular in English speaking countries over the last decade and index card-based commonplaces: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/.
Perhaps some of the examples will give you some ideas for how to best do your own. Good luck!
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ZK system for Project and Task management? .t3_17dp8nl._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
Reply to u/Hileotech at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17dp8nl/zk_system_for_project_and_task_management/
They don't have the same structure as Luhmann's zettelkasten (they don't really need to and may frankly work better without them), but index cards were heavily used in business and project planning settings for decades prior to the popularization of the computer.
I've documented one productivity method from 1903 called the Memindex which was a precursor to things like the Hipster PDA, the Pile of Index Cards, and 43 folders methods which have been popular since the early 2000s. Details and pointers can be found at The Memindex Method: an early precursor of the Memex, Hipster PDA, 43 Folders, GTD, BaSB, and Bullet Journal systems. Addition details can also be found at A year of Bullet Journaling on Index Cards inspired by the Memindex Methodas well as in the comments.
Index card-based project management techniques with items broken out by task can be used to create physical Kanban boards or even arranged in Gantt chart-like fashion on walls, bulletin boards, or tables.
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/186111284362
I love this old two drawer card index which has a custom label set into the top that reads, "Index to Plans". The label is done in large lettering across the top, almost the way old school stores would do gold lettering with a nice thick black drop shadow.
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Father emptied a card le for Margot and me and lled it withindex cards that are blank on one side. This is to become ourreading le, in which Margot and I are supposed to note down thebooks we’ve read, the author and the date. I’ve learned two newwords: “brothel” and “coquette.” I’ve bought a separate notebookfor new words.
—Anne Frank (1929-1945), diary entry dated Saturday, February 27, 1943 (age 13)
Anne Frank was given an empty card file by her father who filled it with index cards that were blank on one side. They were intended to use it as a "reading file" in which she and Margot were "supposed to note down the books we've read, the author and the date."
In the same entry she mentioned that she'd bought a separate notebook for writing down new words she encountered. Recent words she mentions encountering were "brothel" and "coquette".
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Father emptied a card le for Margot and me and lled it withindex cards that are blank on one side. This is to become ourreading le, in which Margot and I are supposed to note down thebooks we’ve read, the author and the date.
Anne Frank (June 12, 1929-1945)<br /> Niklas Luhmann (December 8, 1927-1998)
Niklas Luhmann was a year and a half older than Anne Frank who received her first card index file in February 1943 (likely between the 27th, the date of her diary entry mentioning it and the prior diary entry on February 5th), from her father at the age of 13. She was intended to use it as a "reading file" to note down the books she'd read along with the author and the date.
One can only wonder at how many entries she would have made over the span of her life had it not come to such an abrupt end.
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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1942Dear Kitty,Bep stayed with us Friday evening. It was fun, but she didn’t sleepvery well because she’d drunk some wine. For the rest, there’snothing special to report. I had an awful headache yesterday andwent to bed early. Margot’s being exasperating again.This morning I began sorting out an index card le from theo ce, because it’d fallen over and gotten all mixed up. Before long Iwas going nuts. I asked Margot and Peter to help, but they were toolazy, so I put it away. I’m not crazy enough to do it all by myself!Anne Frank
In a diary entry dated Monday, November 2, 1942, Anne Frank in an entry in which she includes a post script about the "important news that [she's] probably going to get [her] period soon." she mentions spending some time sorting out an index card file. Presumably it had been used for business purposes as she mentions that she got it from the office. Given that it had "fallen over and gotten all mixed up", it presumably didn't use a card rod to hold the cards in. It must have been a fairly big task as she asked for help from two people and not getting it, she abandoned the task because, as she wrote: "I'm not crazy enough to do it all by myself!"
Tags
- Anne Frank
- reading logs
- zettelkasten
- vocabulary notebooks
- library card catalog
- card index for reading
- card index for business
- Niklas Luhmann
- Anne Frank's zettelkasten
- reading lists
- card index as database
- note collection loss and damage
- note taking applications
- 1943
- write only on one side
Annotators
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Envisioning the next wave of emergent AI
Are we stretching too far by saying that AI are currently emergent? Isn't this like saying that card indexes of the early 20th century are computers. In reality they were data storage and the "computing" took place when humans did the actual data processing/thinking to come up with new results.
Emergence would seem to actually be the point which comes about when the AI takes its own output and continues processing (successfully) on it.
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David Lynch's films are a personally structured output of his zettelkasten of ideas comprised of words, sounds, images, music, sound, people, and moods.
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Annotators
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www.openculture.com www.openculture.com
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https://www.openculture.com/2018/08/how-david-lynch-got-creative-inspiration.html
Lynch has spoken about the use of 3x5" index cards for screenwriting (via Frank Daniel).
Here he mentions writing down ideas for movies on the napkins provided by Bob's Big Boy restaurant. (zettelkasten made of napkins?)
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LYNCH: Well, for me, ideas—even a fragment—convey everything. In a spark you see images, youhear sounds, you feel a mood. And it becomescomplete, even if it is a fragment. The original ideacomes with a lot of power, and you have to keepchecking back all the way through the process tosee if you are being true to it.
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LYNCH: No. The whole thing has to make sense toyou, and it has to feel correct. And—but again, it’sbased on these ideas that have been forming andarranging and finally showing you what it is. Andit’s just focusing on those through the process.And if it makes sense, no matter how abstract asense, again it goes back to intuition rather thanjust pure intellect, and something that can be soeasily translated into words by, you know,everyone. Those are beautiful things to me,abstractions. And life is filled with them, andcinema can do abstractions.
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YNCH: No. What happens is, when you getfragments, the whole is not revealed. It’s just thefragments. And then the fragments seem to want toarrange themselves. And a little bit further down theline you begin to see what is forming. And it’s asmuch a surprise to you as to anybody else.
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LYNCH: I know we were doing that, but lookingback, it’s a magical process because you can’t tellwhere ideas come from, and it seems like it’s justboth of us focusing on something. And it was acouple of ideas that were fragments, and thosefragments focus you. And it seems that theyrelease a little lock on a door and the door opensand more fragments start coming in—drawn by thefirst fragments. It’s strange, because if any of youhave ever written anything, you know that one dayit’s not there and then a month later or two monthslater it’s there. And it’s two people tuning into thesame place, I think.
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LYNCH: Well, I think it’s everyone’s experience thatno matter what, things come to us in fragments.
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SCHWARTZ: You’ve said that Frank Daniel at AFIwas one of your first film teachers—he said that inorder to make a feature film you should takeseventy index cards and have a scene for eachindex card, and then you have a feature film.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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frank danielle at the 1:29 american film institute 1:30 who was dean of the school uh center for 1:33 advanced film studies 1:34 and he taught a way to do it 1:39 um you get yourself a pack of three by 1:42 five cards 1:44 and you write a scene 1:47 on each card and when you have 70 scenes 1:52 you have uh a feature film 1:56 so on each card you write the heading of 1:58 the scene 1:59 and then the next card the second scene 2:00 the third scene four scenes so you have 2:03 70 cards 2:04 each with the name of the scene then you 2:07 flesh out each of the cards 2:09 and walk away you got a script
David Lynch described the method from Frank Daniel (1926-1996) of the American Film Institute and Dean of advanced film studies who taught students to plot out their screenplays using 3 x 5" index cards. One would write out a total of 70 cards each with scene headings. Once fleshed out, one would have a complete screenplay.
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- Sep 2023
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/155778259293
Unbranded four drawer 2x2 desktop card index in oak. See on 2023-09-24 offered for $124.99 plus $92.53 shipping from Hobart, IN. Overall 12" H x 15" W x 15" D, so likely for 4 x 6" cards though the listing says "The inside of the drawers are 3 inches deep, 6 inches wide, and 13 inches long."
Medium condition.
Cost per drawer: $31.25
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notsubrand.com notsubrand.com
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Notsu has a variety of 3 x 5" index card products for productivity and planning.
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www.kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com
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Jeff Sheldon is the founder and designer of Ugmonk, a brand focused on creating high quality, well-designed products. What started as a small side project in 2008 to create and sell simple t-shirts has grown into a full-blown lifestyle brand which Jeff now runs full time.
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thoughtcatalog.com thoughtcatalog.com
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This was the original post which Holiday copied to his own site at: https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read/
Cross reference notes there.
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delong.typepad.com delong.typepad.com
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The skill inspectional reader does more than classify a book in his mental card catalogue, and achieve a superficial knowledge of its contents.
a second use of "mental card catalogue", though somehow he doesn't seem to realize the inherent value for building knowledge... ?
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Anyone thriving with a paper based GTD system?
I've been using a mixture of methods focused around 4 x 6" index cards for a while after having previously done a traditional bullet journal, Day-Timer, etc. and attempting to something similar in a variety of digital contexts including TiddlyWiki, Obsidian, Logseq, etc. (More details/discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/bulletjournal/comments/15av66m/a_year_of_bullet_journaling_on_index_cards/) Somehow paper always seems to win out for the tactile nature and the decreased probability of things going lost (being out of sight and thus out of mind which happens for me in digital), or dealing with a never-ending list of overwhelming pop up reminders.
I've written a bit about the history of some of these methods, which includes links to some of the bigger examples of each if it helps to see some variety about what each system suggests or photos of them at work. One of the oldest methods from which most of the rest seem to stem is the Memindex from circa 1903.
My current go-to is a Memindex/bullet journal method adapted to index cards rather than a notebook. I've got a card every day for events and to do lists as well as cards for "Future", planned purchases/groceries, etc. I keep a top level card with short lists of what I want to read, watch, listen to, and learn. I also keep a sectioned Eisenhower matrix group of cards for the areas: crisis, productivity, distraction, and low priority. I also have a Projects section with descriptions and lists for each and based on priorities, I'll take individual steps from the project cards and place them onto my daily cards as I go.
Some of the bigger projects may have a top level card followed by cards which breakdown or outline parts of larger processes. I can then lay them out on a table (Gantt chart style) to determine dependencies and create a pseudo schedule. When I'm done, I'll clip them all together in the most appropriate order and number them. As necessary, I'll take some of these cards out and "schedule" them for individual days by placing them behind or attaching them to the appropriate daily cards with a paper clip. (If you do this, make sure the project name and a potential order number designator is on them, so that you can refile them with the project as necessary.)
The key is doing weekly and bigger monthly or quarterly reviews of all the major cards and moving/scheduling what you need to do from either old cards or project cards each week. Going through my entire collection of immediate cards is usually incredibly fast. When I'm done with cards, they get archived away in my card index for future consultation if necessary. I'm also usually making further notes on the cards as I go and cross indexing them, so that if I don't have the notes for a particular project in the project section, it's being written on the individual daily cards; at the end of the week I'll update the project cards and write down the dates of those notes into the project file so that if I need them later they're available (but importantly I don't have to copy over all the notes). After doing this it's usually pretty easy to work on planning the next steps for the coming week/month.
For lower priority projects and to do items, if things sit around too long undone they slowly move down the priority list from crisis to low priority or they slowly move to the back of my projects section where they get reviewed less often.
For those who prefer some visualization, here are two photos which may help in terms of the physical arrangement I'm using: - https://boffosocko.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/wp-1693596706707-scaled.jpg (alt text: Display of two columns of index cards with only the titles on each showing. Column one: Planning Daily, Planning Weekly, Weeks 31-35 August 2023, Sept 02 2023, September 03 2023, Crisis: Urgent/Important, Productivity: Not Urgent/Important, Low Priority: Not Urgent/Not Important, Distraction: Urgent/Not Important, Someday. The second column: Project Priorities Spring 2023, Reading Priorities, Writing Priorities, Learning Priorities, Listening Priorities, Watching Priorities, Purchases Planning, Groceries.) - https://boffosocko.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/wp-16935967219588251569559254031730-scaled.jpg (alt text: My card index for productivity featuring sections for an Eisenhower Matrix, Projects, and tabs for the upcoming 12 months and 31 days in the current month.)
On a day-to-day basis, I keep most of it in an Acrimet card file on my desk, though the longer term storage is in a nearby Singer Card File Cabinet. (I'll often have a full drawer removed from the big cabinet on my desk while I'm working on a particular section.) While travelling about, I store the most important daily use cards in a King Jim Flatty Works case which is about the size of a small notebook or which fits easily into my shoulder bag. If you're all-in on index cards and you need ideas for storage, I've been compiling a relatively comprehensive list of index card storage options.
Having done notebooks and other paper-based planners (Hobonichi) before, I appreciate that the cards are easily moveable and re-orderable, I don't waste any paper or space if I miss days, I'm not as precious about screwing up a new notebook, and I don't have to carry either multiple notebooks, or worry about recopying project pages from one notebook to the next when I'm done. I also don't have to worry about losing large parts of my planning if I lose a whole notebook. It's always easy to have today's card on me at all times or to take small sections on the road as needed. Additionally cards are very cheap. If you're of the sort of camp that having pre-laid out stationery with finer stock, perhaps try Notsu who pre-prints a variety of productivity cards, though only in 3 x 5 inch sizes. There are a few other smaller companies who still do this, but they tend toward the more expensive side.
There are many ways to do variations on these, so take a look at some examples of how others use them and then attempt to evolve a practice which works for you. For example, if having an Eisenhower Matrix section doesn't make sense to you, then drop that part and adopt what does work instead.
For those who are deep into this sort of rabbit hole, I'll also mention that I keep a separate zettelkasten "department" within my collection for notes related to reading/research. (I had to fill that massive Singer card index up with something besides extra wine storage.)
Syndication link: https://www.reddit.com/r/gtd/comments/15pfz8o/comment/jypt023/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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GTD on Paper Index Cards. Experimental Encounters, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vww7JLcrJl4.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vww7JLcrJl4
8:05 - 16:20 GTD - Capture - Clarify - What is it? - Is it actionable? What is the action? - Is it a project? - Batching - Reflect - Review over lists/calendars daily/weekly - Engage
17:30 They use the phrase "atomic" paper based index cards, so they've been infected by the idea of "atomic notes" from somewhere, though it seems as if he's pitching that he's "invented" his card system as if from scratch.
19:45 He mentions potentially using both sides of the card, against the usual (long term) advice.
20:00 Analogizes his cards as ballerinas which work together, but each have their own personalities and function within the ballet
He's using a leather cover for Moleskine pocket notebook and Manufactum A7 index cards, as well as a box
Sections of his box: - to erase - inbox - next actions - projects (3 categories of projects) - someday - to delegate - tickler (by month and by day; 12 months and 31 days) - blank cards
Mentions erasing cards as he finishes them rather than archiving them.
Inspiration by How to Take Smart Notes by Ahrens
Recommends one item per card to make things easier and more actionable; also improves focus versus having a longer list. (28:00)
Portability
Sustainable (he erases)
High quality textile experience
The ability to shift between associative modes and sequential modes seems to work well with such a system.
They distinguish between atomic notes and "stellar" notes. Stellar being longer lists or more dense notes/outlines/etc.
Project cards<br /> titles and project numbers (for reference) Project numbers in the top right with a P and/or M below it for<br /> - P for paper<br /> - M for email data<br /> - D for digital files which helps him find reference materials
Weekly review with all cards out on the table
Expansion pack includes: - action - calendar - waiting
Search was quick and easy, but had to carry his box back and forth to work.
Stopping doing it because he was losing the history (by erasing it). Moving to notebook and he likes fountain pens. He likes the calendar portion in his notebook.
He tried it out for the sake of experiment.
In the paper world things are more present and "in your face" versus digital formats where things can disappear.
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- Aug 2023
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kingjim.us kingjim.us
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FLATTY WORKS A6 SIZE horizontal# 5460 H4.8×W6.8×D1.4inMaterial Cotton
https://kingjim.us/flatty-works<br /> Flatty Works A6 size horizontal case<br /> ~$24.00
Acquired green version 2023-04-07<br /> https://boffosocko.com/2023/04/20/review-of-king-jim-a6-size-horizontal-flatty-works-case-5460/
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www.lochby.com www.lochby.com
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https://www.lochby.com/collections/frontpage/products/venture-pouch<br /> Lochby Venture Pouch<br /> $44.00
Acquired one of these in early 2023 on sale?
several internal sections including for pens. <br /> will easily fit a handful or so of 4 x 6" index cards for quick travel
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www.rickshawbags.com www.rickshawbags.com
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Rickshaw Bags, Traveler's Notebook Case $59.00
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www.jetpens.com www.jetpens.com
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https://www.jetpens.com/Delfonics-Carrying-Bag-M-A5-Dark-Denim/pd/37102
Delfonics Carrying Bag - M (A5) - Dark Denim<br /> $36.00
Perhaps a bit large, but could be used as a mini-portable office to hold a variety of things including 4 x 6" index cards for work on the go.
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www.jetpens.com www.jetpens.com
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https://www.jetpens.com/Lihit-Lab-Altna-Carrying-Sleeve-Small-Gray/pd/24824<br /> Lihit Lab Altna Carrying Sleeve - Small - Gray<br /> $30.50
B6 is 4.9 x 6.9 inches, so just slightly larger than 4 x 6 inches
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www.jetpens.com www.jetpens.com
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https://www.jetpens.com/Lihit-Lab-Smart-Fit-Carrying-Pouch-A6-Olive/pd/12378
Lihit Lab Smart Fit Carrying Pouch - A6 - Olive<br /> $21.50
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www.jetpens.com www.jetpens.com
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https://www.jetpens.com/Delfonics-Carrying-Bag-S-A6-Dark-Blue/pd/38393<br /> Delfonics Carrying Bag - S (A6) - Dark Blue $32.00
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www.jetpens.com www.jetpens.com
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https://www.jetpens.com/Kleid-Mesh-Carry-Pouch-Mini-Charcoal/pd/37439
Meant for A6 notebooks, but would likely fit 4 x 6" index cards. $17.00
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Hipster PDA phone case .t3_jjlkh3._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Advice neededAre there nany phone cases that can store some index cards (and preferably a pen)? I need one because I often forget to bring my Hipster PDA, while I almost never forget to bring my phone.
reply to u/smaczek at https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooks/comments/jjlkh3/hipster_pda_phone_case/
If you or others are still looking, I've been using an A6 Flatty case which easily fits several dozen 4x6" index cards along with my phone and a pen. It's probably a better hand carry (esp. with a pen inside), but will fit into my back pocket. Details:
https://boffosocko.com/2023/04/20/review-of-king-jim-a6-size-horizontal-flatty-works-case-5460/
Alternately, I've looked at Rickshaw Bags' Traveler's Notebook case for this as well: https://www.rickshawbags.com/travelers-notebook-case
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Question: fiction and non-fiction .t3_164ob1y._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
For those that do both fiction and non-fiction work in their zettelkasten, do you consider the portion dedicated to fiction a "department" or a "compartment" within it? or perhaps something altogether different?
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www.advancedfictionwriting.com www.advancedfictionwriting.com
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The Snowflake Method is more specific, but broadly similar to those who build out plot using index cards.
As examples, see Dustin Lance Black and Benjamin Rowland.
Link to - https://hypothes.is/a/043JIlv5Ee2_eMf1TTV7ig - https://hypothes.is/a/ibFMareUEe2bqSdWdE046g
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Ingermanson, Randy. “The Snowflake Method For Designing A Novel.” Advanced Fiction Writing, circa 2013. https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/.
Designing writing in ever more specific and increasing levels. Start with a logline, then a paragraph, then acts, etc.
Roughly the advice I've given many over the years based on screenplay development experience, but with a clever name based on the Koch snowflake.
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The first thing to do is to take that four-page synopsis and make a list of all the scenes that you’ll need to turn the story into a novel. And the easiest way to make that list is . . . with a spreadsheet.
Of course spreadsheets are databases of information and one can easily and profitably put all these details into index cards which are just as easy (maybe even easier) to move around
Tags
- Plottr (software)
- spreadsheets
- Dustin Lance Black
- analogies
- fiction writing
- Benjamin Rowland
- writing advice
- read
- card index as database
- card index for fiction writing
- Snowflake Method
- screenwriting
- design
- problem solving frameworks
- Koch snowflake
- card index for writing
- Randy Ingermanson
Annotators
URL
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austinkleon.com austinkleon.com
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Comedian Phyllis Diller had “gag file,” which is now housed at The Smithsonian: Phyllis Diller’s groundbreaking career as a stand-up comic spanned almost 50 years. Throughout her career she used a gag file to organize her material. Diller’s gag file consists of a steel cabinet with 48 drawers (along with a 3 drawer expansion) containing over 52,000 3-by-5 inch index cards, each holding a typewritten joke or gag.
A Zettelkasten for jokes!
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americanhistory.si.edu americanhistory.si.edu
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other jokes did not land because I did not know the movie star or celebrity referenced.
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The main thing I learned while reading through Phyllis Diller's jokes is that comedy has changed a lot since she started her career in the mid-1950s. Her comedy is focused on short one-liners that get laughs in quick succession, while today's comedy is more story-driven. Although a lot of her jokes are very time-bound due to their content, it was interesting to get a glimpse of what was happening at the time a joke was written. Each joke card has a date on it, and the cards span the 1960s to the 1990s. The topic of the jokes told a lot about what people were worried about or focused on at the time the joke was written, whether it was the inflation or student protests of the 1970s, a celebrity's many marriages, or gossip about the president at the time. While, like any comedian, some of her jokes fall flat, I appreciated Diller's hard work in meticulously recording, testing, and filing each joke in the gag file, along with her ability to make a joke about almost any topic.
evidence of comedy shift from 50s/60s of one liners to more story-based comedy of the 2000s onward. Some of this may come about through idea links or story links as seen in some of Diller's paperclipped cards (see https://hypothes.is/a/W9Wz-EXsEe6nZxew_8BUCg).
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www.smithsonianmag.com www.smithsonianmag.com
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"The [joke] file is like a tree," says Diller. "Leaves drop off, and new leaves are added—the new stuff pushes out the old." Along with this cache—Diller refers to it as "my life in one-liners"
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americanhistory.si.edu americanhistory.si.edu
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These index cards are organized alphabetically by subject ranging from accessories to world affairs and covering almost everything in between.
Phyllis Diller's gag file was arranged alphabetically by subject and ranged from "accessories" to "world affairs".
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This beige metal cabinet is Phyllis Diller’s gag file, a categorized archive of the jokes Diller used in her stand-up comedy routines throughout her half-century long career. A small three drawer expansion of the gag file is also in NMAH’s collection (Catalog Number 2003.0289.01.02). The 48 drawers of the gag file, along with the 3 drawer expansion, contain a total of 52,569 3-by-5 inch index cards, each holding a typewritten joke or gag.
52,569 3x5" index cards!
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americanhistory.si.edu americanhistory.si.edu
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Other comedians have maintained their material in joke files, among them Bob Hope, whose file is in the collections at the Library of Congress.
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transcription.si.edu transcription.si.edu
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Phyllis Diller Gag File - Drawer No. 49, Part 1
In this set, you will find cards from the following category: Lockhorns.
https://transcription.si.edu/project/9431
I had some collections of comic strips in my youth, but sadly didn't keep up the practice or them.
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www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
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Liebenson, Donald. “Classic Hollywood: Remembering Phyllis Diller (and 52,569 of Her Jokes) at the Smithsonian.” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2017, sec. Television. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-ca-st-phyllis-diller-smithsonian-20170512-story.html.
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Three weeks and 52,569 jokes later, the job was completed.
While many sources seem to indicate that Phyllis Diller had approximately 52,000 index cards with jokes, the ultimate tally after the completion of transcription for the Smithsonian Institution seems to have been 52,569 cards.
While the Los Angeles times lists this as the number of jokes, it's far more likely to be the number of cards as some cards I've seen have multiple jokes.
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The joke file is a snapshot of American history.”
quote by Hanna BredenbeckCorp, of Smithsonian on Phyllis Diller's gag file
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Hanna BredenbeckCorp, project assistant for the museum, was impressed. “It took me four months to scan all the joke cards,” she said with a laugh.
It took four months for Hanna BredenbeckCorp, a project assistant for the Smithsonian Institution, to scan all of Phyllis Diller's joke cards for subsequent transcription and creation of a searchable digital database.
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www.lesswrong.com www.lesswrong.com
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Writing on small cards forces certain habits which would be good even for larger paper, but which I didn’t consider until the small cards made them necessary. It forces ideas to be broken up into simple pieces, which helps to clarify them. Breaking up ideas forces you to link them together explicitly, rather than relying on the linear structure of a notebook to link together chains of thought.
A statement of the common "one idea per card" (or per note). He doesn't state it, but links to an article whose title is "One Thought Per Note".
Who else has use this or similar phrasing in the historical record? - Beatrice Webb certainly came pretty close. - Others?
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others have reported large productivity boosts from the technique as well.
Which others? where?
To my knowledge there weren't many (any?) examples floating around in 2019.
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jillianhess.substack.com jillianhess.substack.com
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The American Philosopher Eric Hoffer was a great quotation collector. he has boxes and boxes of them all typed up on index cards. I began doing it after reading his biography where before they were scattered everywhere.
Eric Hoffer apparently had a collection of quotes which he kept on index cards in boxes.
Potentially mentioned in one of his biographies. Possibly:<br /> - American Iconoclast: The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer by Tom Shachtman https://www.amazon.com/American-Iconoclast-Life-Times-Hoffer/dp/1933435380<br /> - Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher by Tom Bethell https://www.amazon.com/Eric-Hoffer-Longshoreman-Philosopher-Institution/dp/0817914153
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www.nerosnotes.co.uk www.nerosnotes.co.uk
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https://www.nerosnotes.co.uk/collections/foglietto
Looks sort of similar to Ugmonk's offerings...
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- Jul 2023
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Isn’t it too much time and energy consuming? I’m not provoking, I’m genuine.
reply to IvanCyb at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1587onp/comment/jt8zbu4/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 Asking broadly about indexing methods in zettelkasten
When you begin you'll find yourself creating lots of index entries to start, in part because you have none, but you'll find with time that you need to do less and less because index entries already exist for most of what you would add. More importantly most of the entries you might consider duplicating are likely to be very near cards that already have those index entries.
As an example if you have twenty cards on cultural anthropology, the first one will be indexed with "cultural anthropology" to give you a pointer of where to start. Then when you need to add a new card to that section, you'll look up "cultural anthropology" and skim through what you've got to find the closest related card and place it. You likely won't need to create a new index entry for it at all.
But for argument's sake, let's say you intend to do some work at the intersection of "cultural anthropology" and "writing" and this card is also about "writing". Then you might want to add an index entry for "writing" from which you'll branch off in the future. This will tend to keep your index very sparse. As an example you can look at Niklas Luhmann's digitized collection to notice that he spent his career in the area of "sociology" but there are only just a few pointers from his index into his collection under that keyword. If he had tagged every single card related to "sociology" as "sociology" in his index, the index entry for it would have been wholly unusable in just a few months. Broadly speaking his entire zettelkasten is about sociology, so you need to delve a few layers in and see which subtopics, sub-subtopics, sub-sub-subtopics, etc. exist. As you go deeper into specific topics you'll notice that you branch down and out into more specific subareas as you begin to cover all the bases within that topic. If you like, for fun, you can see this happening in my digital zettelkasten on the topic of "zettelkasten" at https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22zettelkasten%22. The tool only shows the top 50 tags for that subject in the side bar, but you can slowly dig down into subtopics to see what they look like and a bit of how they begin to overlap.
Incidentally, this is one of the problems with those who tag everything with top level topic headings in digital contexts—you do a search for something important and find so much that it becomes a useless task to try to sift through it all. As a result, users need better tools to give them the ability to do more fine-grained searching, filtering, and methods of discovery.
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But I would do less than justice to Mr. Adler's achieve-ment if I left the matter there. The Syntopicon is, in additionto all this, and in addition to being a monument to the indus-try, devotion, and intelligence of Mr. Adler and his staff, astep forward in the thought of the West. It indicates wherewe are: where the agreements and disagreements lie; wherethe problems are; where the work has to be done. It thushelps to keep us from wasting our time through misunder-standing and points to the issues that must be attacked.When the history of the intellectual life of this century iswritten, the Syntopicon will be regarded as one of the land-marks in it.
p xxvi
Hutchins closes his preface to his grand project with Mortimer J. Adler by giving pride of place to Adler's Syntopicon.
Adler's Syntopicon isn't just an index compiled into two books which were volumes 2 and 3 of The Great Books of the Western World, it's physically a topically indexed card index of data (a grand zettelkasten surveying Western culture if you will). It's value to readers and users is immeasurable and it stands as a fascinating example of what a well-constructed card index might allow one to do even when they don't have their own yet.
Adler spoke of practicing syntopical reading, but anyone who compiles their own card index (in either analog or digital form) will realize the ultimate value in creating their own syntopical writing or what Robert Hutchins calls participating in "The Great Conversation" across twenty-five centuries of documented human communication.
See also: https://hypothes.is/a/WF4THtUNEe2dZTdlQCbmXw
The way Hutchins presents the idea of "Adler's achievement" here seems to indicate that Hutchins didn't have a direct hand in compiling or working on it directly.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Converting Commonplace Books? .t3_14v2ohz._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/ihaveascone at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14v2ohz/converting_commonplace_books/
Don't convert unless you absolutely need to, it will be a lot of soul-crushing make work. Since some of your practice already looks like Ross Ashby's system, why not just continue what you've been doing all along and start a physical index card-based index for your commonplaces? (As opposed to a more classical Lockian index.) As you browse your commonplaces create index cards for topics you find and write down the associated book/page numbers. Over time you'll more quickly make your commonplace books more valuable while still continuing on as you always have without skipping much a beat or attempting to convert over your entire system. Alternately you could do a paper notebook with a digital index too. I came across https://www.indxd.ink, a digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional). It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears. This could potentially be used by those who have analog commonplace/zettelkasten practices, but want the digital search and some back up of their system.
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www.flickr.com www.flickr.com
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/194730263
Hawk Sugano used a Correct Indexcard Dock (C-153DF) box for some of his index card practice.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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"I keep a dated diary of sorts on index cards, though they rarely go past one card a day."This is something I haven't heard of before. So, you journal/diary on index cards, one per day?
reply to u/taurusnoises (Bob Doto) at tk
Yep, for almost a full year now on 4x6" index cards. (Receipts for the kids: https://boffosocko.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/wp-1688411021709-scaled.jpg)
Previously I'd used a Hobonichi Cousin (page per day) journal for this. (Perhaps I should have stayed with the A6 size instead of the larger A5 for consistency?) Decades ago (around 1988ish?) I had started using a 2 page per day DayTimer pocket planners (essentially pre-printed/timed index cards spiral bound into monthly booklets which they actually shipped in index card-like plastic boxes for storage/archival purposes). Technically I've been doing a version of this for a really long time in one form or another.
It generally includes a schedule, to do lists (bullet journal style), and various fleeting notes/journaling similar to the older Memindex format, just done on larger cards for extra space. I generally either fold them in half for pocket storage for the day or carry about in groups for the coming week(s) when I'm away from my desk for extended periods (also with custom blank index card notebooks/pads).
I won't go into the fact that in the 90's I had a 5,000+ person rolodex... or an index card (in the entertainment they called them buck slips) with the phone numbers and names of \~100 people I dealt with regularly when early brick cell phones didn't have great (or any) storage/functionality.
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reply to Bob Doto at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14lcb4z/using_diaries_and_journals_as_source_material_for/
Ross Ashby kept his notes in notebooks/journals but he did cross-index them by topic using index cards. Rather than reference them by notebook (name/title/date) and page number, he kept a set of handwritten running page numbers across the entirety of his notebooks, so instead of Notebook 15 page 55, 1952 he'd simply write "3786" for page 3786. This can be seen on his index card for the indexed word "determinate" as an example.
For other examples, see: http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index/index.html
My own notebooks are usually titled by year and date spans along with page numbers, so I'll use those roughly as Bob describes. This has made it much easier to not need to move all my older notes into a card-based system, but still make them useable and referenceable.
For those with more explicit journaling, diary, or other writing habits, Ralph Waldo Emmerson makes an interesting example of practice as he maintained at least two commonplace books (a poetry-specific one and a general one) as well as a large set of writing journals where he experimented with writing before later publishing his work. Since there are extant (digitized and published copies) and large bodies of scholarship around them, they make an interesting case study of how his process worked and how others might imitate it.
On the diary front, of the historical examples I've seen floating around, only Roland Barthes had a significant practice of keeping his "diary" in index card form, a portion of which was published on October 12, 2010. Mourning Diary is a collection published for the first time from Roland Barthes' 330 index cards focusing on his mourning following the death of his mother in 1977.
Not as extensive, Vladimir Nabokov recorded a "diary" of sixty-four dreams on 118 index cards beginning on October 14, 1964 as an experiment. He was following the instructions of John Dunne, a British philosopher, in An Experiment with Time. The results were published by Princeton University Press in Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov which was edited by Gennady Barabtarlo.
Presumably if one keeps a diary or journal in index card form in chronological order, they can simply reference it by date and either time or card X of Y, if there are multiple card entries for a single day. I keep a dated diary of sorts on index cards, though they rarely go past one card a day.
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writing.bobdoto.computer writing.bobdoto.computer
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anachronistic zettelkasten
Does he really mean anachronistic here? It doesn't seem to suit the context. While he seems to be comparing the time-ordered nature of a journal versus the non-time ordered structure of a zettelkasten, I can't help but read it from the alternate, and more common (and also pejorative) perspective. Seems odd to call it out specifically as it's not an issue with respect to any other of the more commonly used sources (books, journal articles, magazines, newspapers.)
Might have been better to use anachronistic to modify zettel rather than zettelkasten which is a collective noun--that's the dissonance here for me.
Compare those, like Roland Barthes, who used a slip box as a diary, which would have been chronological. I've also got a chronological section of my slip box.
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