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This is an awesome setup. I like it, good job. That said, I do think there's a bit of irony to solving your "paying attention to writing" problem by setting up
by CobrastanJorji 5mo ago
This is an awesome setup. I like it, good job.
That said, I do think there's a bit of irony to solving your "paying attention to writing" problem by setting up your OS from scratch, choosing to swap out the default networking stack, installing a novel flavor of your preferred text editor because you're "trying to get to know it a bit more," customizing your battery readouts, tweaking the login sequence, and then, after all that effort to make sure you'd have the perfect environment for uninterrupted writing sessions, installing tmux so that you'll be able to do multiple things at a time.
- cgriswald 5mo agoI went with paper and pen precisely because there was always more I wanted to do with my computer work flow.
- obsidianbases1 5mo agoPen and paper for writing. Computer for editing.
- sixtyj 5mo agoPaper notebook. I wouldn’t recommend loose sheets of paper. :) After 15 years of writing notes on loose sheets I would start differently :) Go Tim Ferris way - notebook where the first page is left for the table of contents, and number all even-numbered pages as first step.
- obsidianbases1 5mo agoMy thoughts are so all over the place that I've settled on 3x5 note cards. It also makes the transition to the computer much easier, because I can re-arrange them in a way that is somewhat organized before taking a picture that gets transcribed
- SanjayMehta 5mo agoYou might want to check out Scrivener (Mac and Windows). I use that in lieu of note cards. The cork board function lets you re-arrange text and media to your hearts content and then compile the final output to Word, PDF whatever. It's designed for non-linear writing. https://literatureandlatte.com https://literatureandlatte.com
- sixtyj 5mo agoThe point here is imho that you intentionally remove the computer from the path (in some part of your work) if you want to achieve some focused deep work (in case that you aren’t coding ofc :)
- SanjayMehta 5mo agoI started out using the back of punched cards, when those ran out, made my own out of scrap paper. Scrivener just matched my workflow - usually for technical reports. Lot of cut/paste from a variety of sources.
- obsidianbases1 5mo agoI agree with this. It's not that the digital tools don't exist, it's that my best think gets done when I go for a walk with nothing but a pen and a stack of blank 3x5s.
- sixtyj 5mo agoPossibility to re-arrange is ofc good when working on something in progress. But how do you archive these cards? That always drove me mad so I use them only for something “encyclopaedical” otherwise it is too much messy.
- obsidianbases1 5mo agoAt one point I had a physical filing system, but now they get converted to digital pretty quickly since I don't have to pay 10/hr to get it done. I also usually keep a daily card, and sometimes a few weekly/current lists on the note cards and just carry them around until I'm done with them. It's mainly the capturing of the ideas that I prefer writing physically. After that, being able to move them around my digital system makes them most useful because I can have dynamic views that surface priorities and related notes without having to physically sift through the stacks.
- cortesoft 5mo agoI hate handwriting with a passion. I have my whole life. I have horrible handwriting and my hand gets sore 5 seconds after I start writing. I am sure it is because I don't hold my pen/pencil correctly, but I think after 43 years I am not going to suddenly fix that.
- NathanielK 5mo agoI am similar. If I physically write a couple times a week, my hand adapts though. It's a skill like any other. Fountain pens are nice too since you don't need any pressure. My writing looks a lot better if I just force myself to slow down and be deliberate, but honestly it's a constant battle. I'd definitely benefit from practicing penmanship on it's own.
- dv35z 5mo agoWorth mentioning - for a long time, I found my handwriting messy AND my hand would tire out. When I was about a teen-ager, I decided to write in call-caps, very clearly. I've been doing that for a long time now, and worth giving a try.
- gnabgib 5mo agoteen-ager? call-caps? Cursive (several hundred years old) fixes this.. all-capitals(caps) or block-caps makes writing more laborious, possibly easier to read (which is why it used to be requested on hand-written forms?)
- lproven 5mo ago> (several hundred years old) Several thousand more like.
- syntheticnature 5mo agoYou sound likely to have dysgraphia, based on the fact I have all the same aspects and a dysgraphia diagnosis.
- nine_k 5mo agoWhen I need to write something, and I have a computer, and something is inconvenient, I can quickly (well, within minutes, maybe 30 of them) alter it to my liking, and return to writing. When I only have a pen and paper (which I used extensively for writing at school), many things may be inconvenient, but there's no way to fix it. This may turn into a source of a low-key stress, and interfere with my writing much more than tweaking a computer would. I use Emacs, an ultimate tweaker's tool, for writing every day. Last time I had to tweak something in it was a few weeks ago, and it took maybe 2-3 minutes. It's a small price to pay for a tool that just does what you need, when you need it, with zero mental load, and zero frustration.
- cgriswald 5mo agoFor my two main uses pen and paper has two opposite effects. For creative writing it is freeing because it isn’t the last stop but I don’t have to worry about format or placement or anything. I can just go. Typing has a sort of “technical” feel for me, probably due to code, email, and to some degree comments. For notes during study pen and paper are constraining and force me to organize the thoughts in my mind first and then commit them. Mistakes needing to be corrected here is good: It reminds me what I misunderstood. But, like the sibling poster, the writing goes onto the computer for later editing.
- jimbokun 5mo agoWhat in the world do you need to be able to write with pen and paper? It’s pretty much the single function of pen and paper.
- laweijfmvo 5mo agohow did you decide which pens to go with?
- cgriswald 5mo agoSlow down. I’m still deciding on what size of notebook and whether I go dotted or blank.
- michaelbuckbee 5mo agoIt it reminds me of a lot of friends who wanted to "start blogging" and their first step was writing a new static site system from scratch.
- cortesoft 5mo agoI think it is great to combine two personal projects into one! For me, I can't learn anything unless I actually have a purpose for it. So if I wanted to learn how to write a static site system, I would also need to think of a reason I need one!
- em-bee 5mo agoone of my goals is to work on the server platform that i am using for my websites. i want to write a blog, but i am using that desire to push myself to work on the platform, so i need to complete that blog interface first.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5mo agoIt's very convenient to have a first project all ready to blog about, fresh in your mind and everything:D
- phyzix5761 5mo agoThat's how most of us started blogging lol
- bitwize 5mo agoYeah, I cobbled together an SSG in Guile back in the day.
- embedding-shape 5mo agoBut how am I supposed to be productive writing blogposts unless I can copy my favorite Clojure templating library into Nix first, so I can have completely statically and reproducible blog posts building from markdown together with the nicest type of templating?
- katzgrau 5mo ago“Yak shaving” It’s a classic move. Start a new diet, so you join a gym and or buy a bunch of workout stuff. I won’t knock it though. An important minority of my yak-shaving endeavors have led to long term positive outcomes.
- shoopadoop 5mo agoYou want to play some old classic games so you spend five days getting a Raspberry Pi set up just right with Retroarch and then when it's setup just right you do something else.
- Waterluvian 5mo agoThis is a thing I see everywhere. It’s the carpenter who mostly just builds jigs and french cleats for their workshop. Or the programmer who spends far too much time obsessing over what keyboard and font to use.
- krupan 5mo agoFor a while I kept finding out co-workers were building their own CNC machines, and the mostly used them to make CNC machines components
- CobrastanJorji 5mo agoI myself am a 3D printer who mostly prints accessories for 3D printing.
- infinet 5mo agoI guess I will setup something similar or more complex. But there are alternatives: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12114947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12114947 "George R.R. Martin Writes on a DOS-Based Word Processor From the 1980s". No internet, no multi tasking.
- lproven 5mo agoMore less why I built this, TBH. https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos
- maleldil 5mo agoThat's doing wonders for his productivity.
- righthand 5mo agoI mean really… he hasn’t finished writing a book that’s narratively trapped but he certainly has been writing and working on a lot more than that one book. He certainly is productive at the very least. Is he satisfying your direct desires and expectations about what he should be working on? No. Does that mean his writing device is unproductive or bad or silly or a waste of time? No.
- maleldil 5mo agoIt was a joke. I don't care how much he writes. Anything we get from him is a gift.
- dnnddidiej 5mo agoA good test of your focus on writing is if you can use a boring tool like Substack, Wordpress, Blogger or Github pages (vanilla out of the box ssg setup) and just write. That said this one did write something. But I'd say for anyone else writr 10000+ words on whatever before a single word on your setup.
- rendaw 5mo agoI'd agree, but in this case they were able to write a blog post that got (as of now) 300+ points and 200+ comments with the content of their work.
- alexwwang 5mo agoJust open a term, start opencode, and tell my idea to LLM and ask it to write a passage of given length and save it to a file for me. Then the review loop starts. This is the writing job in the new era.
- geek_at 5mo agohonestly this explains so much about many blog posts or journalistic articles I read in the last year
- alexwwang 5mo agoWhat you mentioned depicts the fact that we faced. That’s absolutely not a good thing. But on the other hand, the situation we face ask for a higher critic ability of a person. I think it could be an improvement of this era.
- kowbell 5mo agoI'm really, really curious why though? I'm not gonna try to dig at you, I just don't understand and want to know. Is your "writing job" one where the end goal is like short random articles on some giant aggregate, or something like instructional content for businesses or something? Where a human typing things was just a means to an end, rather than what I'd assume OP's doing where they're writing for their own joy and/or because people love their specific voice? Because that's the only way my brain can rationalize it right now.
- alexwwang 5mo agoActually not. I have my real idea, facts, data and all materials that support my point for a passage. I am just doing an experiment to see if I could find the line by myself. Let me ask you a question, imagine you are living in late 19th and early 20th century as a columnist and you have a secretary. You tell her your idea orally everyday and she typed down your words and revised them to be a column. Not only typing and revising, she even double checked the correctness of all references you mentioned and used in your passage as you indicated. How do you think the ownership of these passages? Created by yourself or both of you? In what degree you would consider the line between you and her efforts?
- m_m_carvalho 5mo ago[flagged]