4 ms·

Well that’s....surprising Edit: did you compare the bytecode?

by aidos 8y ago

ColinWright 8y ago
I could, but I would have a lot to learn, and the benefit would be minimal. Better to learn simply to be wary of these sorts of things, and always measure. I'm hoping someone with a better background will find this sufficiently surprising and be provoked into doing that analysis, writing it up, and letting us know. I've got it in my boomerang queue.
- Bjartr 8y ago
  What is a boomerang queue?
  - ColinWright 8y ago
    I use a wiki, email, and a bunch of scripts to organise my projects (short and long term), tasks, reference material, and idle thoughts. As part of that system I use the "Do, Delegate, Defer, Delete" technique for things that come to hand. So everything that comes to hand gets a unique reference (auto-generated) and I put tags on them. I don't try to be complete, I don't try to make sure tags are unique, I just put what's on my mind and seems relevant in a meta field. The system then auto-cross-references by content and tags, so when I put tags related to stuff I'm working on it uses a sort of TF-IDF system to find relevant documents and other reference material and puts links between them. But sometimes I don't want to deal with something just yet, so there is a tool that lets me send things into the future - I call that my "Boomerang Queue". Edit: it's been a while since you asked the question, so I tried to find some way to let you know I've replied, but you have no contact information in your profile. I hope you see this.
    - Bjartr 8y ago
      Thanks for caring that I get this. I've long considered and wanted a system like you've described. It seems like it would have incredible long-term value. Is everything for yours self-hosted? What wiki do you use?
      - ColinWright 8y ago
        For years I've used the wiki I wrote. That has the feature that links are auto-created from free text, so if a pagename happens to turn up in the text anywhere, a link is made. This requires a little discipline - you don't want to create a page called "And". But recently I've been experimenting with zim to see if I can use that instead. It saves pages in markdown in a directory structure, so my external scripts can be adapted to run over them and create the augmenting pages. It could possibly insert the free-text links as well in the background. Just an idle thought. It's all running on my home machine, but I can connect to it from (nearly) anywhere. It's effectively unusable on my phone, so I have a staging area in which I make notes, and then transfer things later. The act of transferring implies a review of the material, and that's of value anyway, so it's not wasted effort. For years, decades, I've been thinking of polishing, bundling, and releasing it, but it would be one of a gazillion organisation systems and no one would find it. If they did, I'd then be committed to supporting it, so that's not going to happen. I might, one day, convert these replies into a blog post, but again, limited value.
        Bjartr 8y ago
        Well I appreciate you sharing this with me. It's moved me a little closer towards putting something like this together for myself. The free text linking is an interesting idea. I worry about not having the discipline to regularly curate such a system. That's probably my biggest roadblock towards just going for it.
        ColinWright 8y ago
        What I found is that it was important to (a) not over-engineer what I was trying to do, (b) do something that worked for the document I had in my hand[0], and (c) be able to extend what I was doing. If I then "fell off the perch" I could come back to it later, look at the thing in my hand, and put that into the system, thus climbing back on the perch. Quite quickly the system was useful, and I had fewer decisions to make by using than by not using it, so it saved me effort. That was the key. [0] ... or file/email/document on the screen

Well that’s....surprising Edit: did you compare the bytecode?

by aidos 8y ago

Well that’s....surprising Edit: did you compare the bytecode?

I could, but I would have a lot to learn, and the benefit would be minimal. Better to learn simply to be wary of these sorts of things, and always measure. I'm hoping someone with a better background will find this sufficiently surprising and be provoked into doing that analysis, writing it up, and letting us know. I've got it in my boomerang queue.

Bjartr 8y ago
What is a boomerang queue?
- ColinWright 8y ago
  I use a wiki, email, and a bunch of scripts to organise my projects (short and long term), tasks, reference material, and idle thoughts. As part of that system I use the "Do, Delegate, Defer, Delete" technique for things that come to hand. So everything that comes to hand gets a unique reference (auto-generated) and I put tags on them. I don't try to be complete, I don't try to make sure tags are unique, I just put what's on my mind and seems relevant in a meta field. The system then auto-cross-references by content and tags, so when I put tags related to stuff I'm working on it uses a sort of TF-IDF system to find relevant documents and other reference material and puts links between them. But sometimes I don't want to deal with something just yet, so there is a tool that lets me send things into the future - I call that my "Boomerang Queue". Edit: it's been a while since you asked the question, so I tried to find some way to let you know I've replied, but you have no contact information in your profile. I hope you see this.
  - Bjartr 8y ago
    Thanks for caring that I get this. I've long considered and wanted a system like you've described. It seems like it would have incredible long-term value. Is everything for yours self-hosted? What wiki do you use?
    - ColinWright 8y ago
      For years I've used the wiki I wrote. That has the feature that links are auto-created from free text, so if a pagename happens to turn up in the text anywhere, a link is made. This requires a little discipline - you don't want to create a page called "And". But recently I've been experimenting with zim to see if I can use that instead. It saves pages in markdown in a directory structure, so my external scripts can be adapted to run over them and create the augmenting pages. It could possibly insert the free-text links as well in the background. Just an idle thought. It's all running on my home machine, but I can connect to it from (nearly) anywhere. It's effectively unusable on my phone, so I have a staging area in which I make notes, and then transfer things later. The act of transferring implies a review of the material, and that's of value anyway, so it's not wasted effort. For years, decades, I've been thinking of polishing, bundling, and releasing it, but it would be one of a gazillion organisation systems and no one would find it. If they did, I'd then be committed to supporting it, so that's not going to happen. I might, one day, convert these replies into a blog post, but again, limited value.
      - Bjartr 8y ago
        Well I appreciate you sharing this with me. It's moved me a little closer towards putting something like this together for myself. The free text linking is an interesting idea. I worry about not having the discipline to regularly curate such a system. That's probably my biggest roadblock towards just going for it.
        ColinWright 8y ago
        What I found is that it was important to (a) not over-engineer what I was trying to do, (b) do something that worked for the document I had in my hand[0], and (c) be able to extend what I was doing. If I then "fell off the perch" I could come back to it later, look at the thing in my hand, and put that into the system, thus climbing back on the perch. Quite quickly the system was useful, and I had fewer decisions to make by using than by not using it, so it saved me effort. That was the key. [0] ... or file/email/document on the screen