6 ms·

Hey author here. Happy to answer your questions!

Laminary 6y ago
I believe my app (launching soon) is close to solving your "what do I want" but currently wrapping up the API. Are there some other communities, links to other blogs or people that are doing what you are doing? (Tracking this much data, etc.)
- karlicoss 6y ago
  For data tracking/analysis, you're looking for "quantified self" https://github.com/woop/awesome-quantified-self#awesome-quantified-self- https://github.com/woop/awesome-quantified-self#awesome-quan... For exporting and owning the data the keyword is "data liberation" Otherwise, the keywords are perhaps "personal knowledge management" and "memex". Have some links here, although they all have different components in scope https://beepb00p.xyz/exobrain/memex.html#cmmnts https://beepb00p.xyz/exobrain/memex.html#cmmnts I usually maintain related links at the end of articles, so perhaps you can find something there, for example https://beepb00p.xyz/sad-infra.html#links https://beepb00p.xyz/sad-infra.html#links
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - donblanco 6y ago
    I just noticed that the awesome-quantified-self on github has been abandoned with no updates for 3-5 years now. Looking for alternatives!
    - karlicoss 6y ago
      Was it? Seems that it had some updates (maybe not as active as it used to https://github.com/woop/awesome-quantified-self/commits/master/README.MD https://github.com/woop/awesome-quantified-self/commits/mast... ) Either way don't think I've seen anything better, so the best way would be to suggest them updates or help maintaining :)
brutusborn 6y ago
Thankyou so much for sharing your work. Finding this post was like finding something I didn't know I was looking for. Have you considered monetizing this in some way? As a person of limited technical skills, I would definitely pay for a set of tools that would help me aggregate my data.
- karlicoss 6y ago
  Monetizing.. not really. Many reasons: - I don't really see a good way (not that I'm entrepreneurial in this aspect though), maybe except for providing some infrastructure etc - dealing with others' data is a completely different kind of headache with legal and security responsibilities - I don't really have a product or anything -- more of a vision which I want to communicate, a bunch of patterns, techniques and repositories. Maybe know some esoteric gotchas. - It's a very niche thing to think about and 'want' in the first place (although I am trying to change it through my communication :) ). Most 'regular' people don't do backups, let alone this! But it would be very cool if someone comes up with a business model to provide such service.
for_i_in_range 6y ago
Big fan of yours. I think this is the second time I’ve come across your site on HN. I’ve been getting deep into developing my own Second Brain lately. I glanced briefly at your Exobrain Repo and it seems you’re using a custom system. Have you tried out using https://obsidian.md https://obsidian.md or the whole Wikilink/Zeitelkasten Personal Knowledge Management methodology? Curious to hear your experiences.
- karlicoss 6y ago
  Yep, exobrain is using org-mode export + some tweaks. I've settled on emacs + org-mode a few years ago (perhaps on the fifth attempt it finally clicked). Before it was gitit/Zim/sublime text/random scripts, whatnot. All the shiny apps like Obsidian/Roam/etc have appeared over the last couple of years (and it's awesome!). But I'm too hooked onto emacs now, maybe the only thing I should use more is org-roam [0]. For me the most useful org-mode features perhaps are tags, agenda, org-capture and org-refile. Search is very important, I have a whole post about it [1]. I started a draft describing my 'process' [2], but it's pretty incomplete.. there are some bits scattered across exobrain too. Also lately I started playing with Logseq [3] to get a more interactive representation of exobrain [4] (warning, it's pretty heavy, needs some optimization and I might have messed up the physics). Logseq could be a great gateway for people who want to get into org-mode but not ready to go 100% Emacs, highly recommend to try it it! [0] https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam [1] https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm_processing.html https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm_processing.html [2] https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-search.html https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-search.html [3] https://github.com/logseq/logseq#logseq https://github.com/logseq/logseq#logseq [4] https://beepb00p.xyz/logseq/#/graph https://beepb00p.xyz/logseq/#/graph
  - for_i_in_range 6y ago
    Looking forward to diving into more detail on this. Thank you for sharing your work and appreciate your engagement in here!
throw345hn 6y ago
Can I ask - how did you find working with graphviz. Was this your first time working with it, how long did it take you to figure out how to place things and draw? I am working with drawing graphs at the moment and evaluating what library to use, its coincidentally nice to see what you built but it also seems like it was thoughtfully laid out (less edge crossings etc). I am trying to do something more dynamic so it may not be as applicable for me. I am looking at your code as well, thanks for providing that
- karlicoss 6y ago
  Not the first time, but possibly the biggest thing I've drawn in it... There definitely are some weird things when you try to plot complicated things, fighting with weird placement, clusters etc. But not sure if it's me or Graphviz to blame for this. But I don't really know a better tool. If I knew how the diagram would look in hindsight I might have drawn in manually in inkscape or something, but when I started I didn't know what I would end up with, so needed to be an automatic tool :) To minimize the manual work, I ended up with a mix of DSL in python and raw graphviz commands: https://github.com/karlicoss/myinfra/blob/fc6345c31c4e49b53421f77d1008257d8509370b/generate.py#L1325-L1361 https://github.com/karlicoss/myinfra/blob/fc6345c31c4e49b534... Depending on the things you want to represent a better fit might be force layout, for example something like https://observablehq.com/@morvasaaty/d3-force-notes https://observablehq.com/@morvasaaty/d3-force-notes
  - throw345hn 6y ago
    Working with graphs, I realized its hard to generate dynamic ones and you inevitably end up with domain specific layouts. I guess thats the nature of graph drawing algorithms, its usually specific to the problem. Thanks for the code, taking at look at that.
    - karlicoss 6y ago
      Probably too messy to understand what's exactly happening -- but my main takeaway is that if you implement your own DSL (for Graphviz at least), implement in such a way that you can freely mix DSL and raw bits. That way it's very easy to experiment or tweak minor bits without rewriting half of the code.
jpmattia 6y ago
Kudos! I find this work fascinating. There are moments that I'm tempted to go down a similar organizational road because I'm curious about the possible lessons from the data aggregation, but I usually pass because the payoff didn't seem large enough. So that makes me want to ask: Have you learned much from the data? or is it more about organization/keeping control of life?
- karlicoss 6y ago
  Perhaps mostly about organization, yeah. The "quantified self" bit is what you could call learning, but ironically so far I've mostly failed to find any significant correlations in my personal data (which is also an interesting finding, in a way :) ). However I did learn a lot about nutrition/exercise/sleep while tinkering with data, so it was totally worth it so far. I write about it a bit more here: https://beepb00p.xyz/tags.html#quantifiedself https://beepb00p.xyz/tags.html#quantifiedself
rektide 6y ago
Which of these data-streams do you most often find yourself looking at & using? Are there any that you have been surprised to find yourself using more than you expected?
- karlicoss 6y ago
  The most useful are perhaps the one's I'm using for search [0] -- chat logs, web annotations, book highlights, reddit/hackernews saves, tweets, etc. It's literally my external memory, I'm not exaggerating. Everything in Promnesia [1] is super useful, makes my internet lurking much ... efficient? This word has somewhat bad rap, but it is what it is -- doesn't mean I don't have fun, just makes it easier to keep track and discover new things. Not sure about surprising data sources -- I'm trying to integrate them all as far as possible and make sure they work for me passively, so I don't have to think about specifics :) [0] https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-search.html https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-search.html [1] https://beepb00p.xyz/promnesia.html https://beepb00p.xyz/promnesia.html

I believe my app (launching soon) is close to solving your "what do I want" but currently wrapping up the API. Are there some other communities, links to other blogs or people that are doing what you are doing? (Tracking this much data, etc.)

karlicoss 6y ago
For data tracking/analysis, you're looking for "quantified self" https://github.com/woop/awesome-quantified-self#awesome-quantified-self- https://github.com/woop/awesome-quantified-self#awesome-quan... For exporting and owning the data the keyword is "data liberation" Otherwise, the keywords are perhaps "personal knowledge management" and "memex". Have some links here, although they all have different components in scope https://beepb00p.xyz/exobrain/memex.html#cmmnts https://beepb00p.xyz/exobrain/memex.html#cmmnts I usually maintain related links at the end of articles, so perhaps you can find something there, for example https://beepb00p.xyz/sad-infra.html#links https://beepb00p.xyz/sad-infra.html#links
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- donblanco 6y ago
  I just noticed that the awesome-quantified-self on github has been abandoned with no updates for 3-5 years now. Looking for alternatives!
  - karlicoss 6y ago
    Was it? Seems that it had some updates (maybe not as active as it used to https://github.com/woop/awesome-quantified-self/commits/master/README.MD https://github.com/woop/awesome-quantified-self/commits/mast... ) Either way don't think I've seen anything better, so the best way would be to suggest them updates or help maintaining :)

brutusborn 6y ago

Thankyou so much for sharing your work. Finding this post was like finding something I didn't know I was looking for. Have you considered monetizing this in some way? As a person of limited technical skills, I would definitely pay for a set of tools that would help me aggregate my data.

karlicoss 6y ago
Monetizing.. not really. Many reasons: - I don't really see a good way (not that I'm entrepreneurial in this aspect though), maybe except for providing some infrastructure etc - dealing with others' data is a completely different kind of headache with legal and security responsibilities - I don't really have a product or anything -- more of a vision which I want to communicate, a bunch of patterns, techniques and repositories. Maybe know some esoteric gotchas. - It's a very niche thing to think about and 'want' in the first place (although I am trying to change it through my communication :) ). Most 'regular' people don't do backups, let alone this! But it would be very cool if someone comes up with a business model to provide such service.

for_i_in_range 6y ago

Big fan of yours. I think this is the second time I’ve come across your site on HN. I’ve been getting deep into developing my own Second Brain lately. I glanced briefly at your Exobrain Repo and it seems you’re using a custom system. Have you tried out using https://obsidian.md https://obsidian.md or the whole Wikilink/Zeitelkasten Personal Knowledge Management methodology? Curious to hear your experiences.

karlicoss 6y ago
Yep, exobrain is using org-mode export + some tweaks. I've settled on emacs + org-mode a few years ago (perhaps on the fifth attempt it finally clicked). Before it was gitit/Zim/sublime text/random scripts, whatnot. All the shiny apps like Obsidian/Roam/etc have appeared over the last couple of years (and it's awesome!). But I'm too hooked onto emacs now, maybe the only thing I should use more is org-roam [0]. For me the most useful org-mode features perhaps are tags, agenda, org-capture and org-refile. Search is very important, I have a whole post about it [1]. I started a draft describing my 'process' [2], but it's pretty incomplete.. there are some bits scattered across exobrain too. Also lately I started playing with Logseq [3] to get a more interactive representation of exobrain [4] (warning, it's pretty heavy, needs some optimization and I might have messed up the physics). Logseq could be a great gateway for people who want to get into org-mode but not ready to go 100% Emacs, highly recommend to try it it! [0] https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam [1] https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm_processing.html https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm_processing.html [2] https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-search.html https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-search.html [3] https://github.com/logseq/logseq#logseq https://github.com/logseq/logseq#logseq [4] https://beepb00p.xyz/logseq/#/graph https://beepb00p.xyz/logseq/#/graph
- for_i_in_range 6y ago
  Looking forward to diving into more detail on this. Thank you for sharing your work and appreciate your engagement in here!

throw345hn 6y ago

Can I ask - how did you find working with graphviz. Was this your first time working with it, how long did it take you to figure out how to place things and draw? I am working with drawing graphs at the moment and evaluating what library to use, its coincidentally nice to see what you built but it also seems like it was thoughtfully laid out (less edge crossings etc). I am trying to do something more dynamic so it may not be as applicable for me. I am looking at your code as well, thanks for providing that

karlicoss 6y ago
Not the first time, but possibly the biggest thing I've drawn in it... There definitely are some weird things when you try to plot complicated things, fighting with weird placement, clusters etc. But not sure if it's me or Graphviz to blame for this. But I don't really know a better tool. If I knew how the diagram would look in hindsight I might have drawn in manually in inkscape or something, but when I started I didn't know what I would end up with, so needed to be an automatic tool :) To minimize the manual work, I ended up with a mix of DSL in python and raw graphviz commands: https://github.com/karlicoss/myinfra/blob/fc6345c31c4e49b53421f77d1008257d8509370b/generate.py#L1325-L1361 https://github.com/karlicoss/myinfra/blob/fc6345c31c4e49b534... Depending on the things you want to represent a better fit might be force layout, for example something like https://observablehq.com/@morvasaaty/d3-force-notes https://observablehq.com/@morvasaaty/d3-force-notes
- throw345hn 6y ago
  Working with graphs, I realized its hard to generate dynamic ones and you inevitably end up with domain specific layouts. I guess thats the nature of graph drawing algorithms, its usually specific to the problem. Thanks for the code, taking at look at that.
  - karlicoss 6y ago
    Probably too messy to understand what's exactly happening -- but my main takeaway is that if you implement your own DSL (for Graphviz at least), implement in such a way that you can freely mix DSL and raw bits. That way it's very easy to experiment or tweak minor bits without rewriting half of the code.

jpmattia 6y ago

Kudos! I find this work fascinating. There are moments that I'm tempted to go down a similar organizational road because I'm curious about the possible lessons from the data aggregation, but I usually pass because the payoff didn't seem large enough. So that makes me want to ask: Have you learned much from the data? or is it more about organization/keeping control of life?

karlicoss 6y ago
Perhaps mostly about organization, yeah. The "quantified self" bit is what you could call learning, but ironically so far I've mostly failed to find any significant correlations in my personal data (which is also an interesting finding, in a way :) ). However I did learn a lot about nutrition/exercise/sleep while tinkering with data, so it was totally worth it so far. I write about it a bit more here: https://beepb00p.xyz/tags.html#quantifiedself https://beepb00p.xyz/tags.html#quantifiedself

rektide 6y ago

Which of these data-streams do you most often find yourself looking at & using? Are there any that you have been surprised to find yourself using more than you expected?

karlicoss 6y ago
The most useful are perhaps the one's I'm using for search [0] -- chat logs, web annotations, book highlights, reddit/hackernews saves, tweets, etc. It's literally my external memory, I'm not exaggerating. Everything in Promnesia [1] is super useful, makes my internet lurking much ... efficient? This word has somewhat bad rap, but it is what it is -- doesn't mean I don't have fun, just makes it easier to keep track and discover new things. Not sure about surprising data sources -- I'm trying to integrate them all as far as possible and make sure they work for me passively, so I don't have to think about specifics :) [0] https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-search.html https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-search.html [1] https://beepb00p.xyz/promnesia.html https://beepb00p.xyz/promnesia.html