170 Highlights | 71 Notes
Location: 60-60 
The importance of making, analyzing, and sharing notes
Note: Read with a pen in hand.Location: 69-69
What were you reading, this time last year?
Note: That's the problem with my booknotes and journals. I rarely go back and review them. It's easier, more desirable to move onwards. There is no motivation for me to review. That's why I'm hopeful about Zettelkasten - adding a note forces you to review old notes to find appropriate links.Location: 75-76
years.Tinderbox can sometimes be handy for short and small projects, but it is at its best with projects that last months or years, projects that are likely to grow or change over time.
Note: Maybe for littlereads and the community librarian project?Location: 94-96
Tinderbox was designed and implemented by a person—not by a committee, a corporation, or a focus group. That person is me: Mark Bernstein. I designed Tinderbox, and wrote just about every line of the tens of thousands of lines that make Tinderbox run.
Note: Wow!Location: 108-111
Tinderbox is an argument for artisanal, hand-crafted software. Artisanal software is opinionated. It may be unpolished. It may have fingerprints or rough edges. But it expresses the views of someone who thought about it and crafted it, not those an investment team has
Location: 108-111
Tinderbox is an argument for artisanal, hand-crafted software. Artisanal software is opinionated. It may be unpolished. It may have fingerprints or rough edges. But it expresses the views of someone who thought about it and crafted it, not those an investment team has convinced itself to find in a focus group2.
Note: New concept - artisanal software.Location: 174-176
the first lessons of software design is that real people use real software in really astonishing ways. “The street finds its use for things,” William Gibson wrote in Neuromancer. This
Note: Wow! #eqLocation: 240-241
In particular, a focus on rich visual media— video, animation, digital photography, and personal music studios —had led to a general neglect of tools for working with ideas and an undue emphasis on tools for polishing presentations.
Note: True. Trying to formulate a question aroubd the best way to take notes, to articulate and to use those notes - that itself is super hard at this time.Location: 274-274
Keeping work organized is a continuing commitment.
Note: The work of maintanence. J.K. Glei podcast, Jenny Odell in 'How to do Nothing'Location: 278-279
Containers hold notes; any note can be made into a container by dragging another note inside it.
Location: 279-281
Aliases let the same note appear in several different containers to reflect a multiple or uncertain classification.
Location: 284-286
Knowledge representation is a branch of artificial intelligence research that focuses on efficient ways to record or represent concepts and ideas.
Location: 316-317
Tinderbox adopted an unusual form of inheritance—prototype inheritance—to help users experiment with and understand inheritance.
Note: Functional programming!!!!!Location: 326-328
Actions and rules form implicit linkage that can connect notes in patterns dictated by underlying ideas.
Note: Explore this more
Location: 386-387
Tinderbox uses containers to focus attention because, without them, you could be lost in a sea
Location: 386-387
one view, since there is less to show; Tinderbox uses containers to focus attention because, without them, you could be lost in a sea
Location: 408-410
An early lesson in management, one learned in the construction of the pyramids (if not before) is that vast projects can be undertaken by coordinating lots of people, each doing a modest amount of work.12
Note: Insight. But why? How? Something that sounds true. What evidence to believe this?Location: 422-423
Some years later, Brooks observed that certain software tools inspired enthusiastic engagement with a community of users, and that these tools almost always arose from very small teams.
Note: Hope for Littlereads, for community librarian....Location: 425-425
Committees can find consensus, but individual passion inspires commitment.
Location: 429-431
Theodor Holm Nelson, the man who coined the term “hypertext” and whose 1974 book Computer Lib/Dream Machines had inspired most of the researchers in the audience13.
Location: 456-456
Tools are always designed for an ideal user, and the ideal user for many of those tools was an expert. That
Location: 453-456
Both believed that the software interfaces of the 1980s, often inconsistent and sometimes baroque, demonstrated that technical personnel could not be trusted to design user interfaces. A generation later, these ideas continue to dominate the field. In truth, those early interfaces weren’t that bad. Tools are always designed for an ideal user, and the ideal user for many of those tools was an expert.
Location: 477-478
I wanted to make those connections visible, not to untangle them but in the hope that seeing the tangles will lead to new understanding. I wanted to listen to the notes.
Note: Again, zettelkasten. Notes are your external memory. They are your conversation partner. They will help visuaize the patterns in your thinking. They wil help bring clarity and move you forward.Location: 482-482
but the primary audience of a note is almost always our future self.
Location: 484-485
Notes are records, reminding us of ideas and observations
Location: 484-485
• Notes are records, reminding us of ideas and observations that we might otherwise forget.
Note: #Todo, bullet #journalLocation: 486-487
Shared notes are a medium, an efficient communication channel between colleagues and collaborators.
Note: Email. Blogs. Booknotes.Location: 486-488
Shared notes are a medium, an efficient communication channel between colleagues and collaborators. Notes
Location: 488-491
Notes are a process for clarifying thinking and for refining inchoate ideas. Understanding often emerges gradually from the accumulation of factual detail and from our growing comprehension of the relationships among isolated details. Only after examining the data, laying it out and handling it, can we feel comfortable
Location: 498-502
For example, consider notes that you make in order to remind yourself to do something. You may be tempted, once you’ve finished the task, to delete the note. Don’t! Instead, keep a container that holds a list of tasks you’ve finished. If the container is someday filled with old tasks, just copy the container and paste it into an archive document. In
Location: 546-548
As we acquire new information, we may gradually learn how it relates to what we already know. Perceiving the structure of our problems and tasks more clearly, we may also come to see what information we are missing.
Location: 549-550
Kumiyo Nakakoji (now at the Kyoto University Design School) calls this representational talkback.17
Location: 553-554
In this way note-taking can be like sketching, a private exercise to improve the acuity of our perception and to focus our understanding.
Location: 654-657
If our notes are compact—if, say, each note is written on an index card—then what comes next is a new card, the next card (at least in this reading, at least for us). The card is a separate note, a thought, a chunk, an atom of argument. We move from one to the next, appreciating each in turn, and the writer constructs a larger argument from these atomic segments.
Location: 661-662
Jeff Raskin called one faction card sharks and their rivals holy scrollers21.
Location: 694-696
Shorter notes are more specific, and so they are easier to grasp when we refer to them later. Links—either explicit or implied— can provide context and detail when needed, but shorter and more focused notes are Tinderbox’s native idiom.
Location: 755-756
In map view, composites group several adjacent notes together, so you can move them as a unit and read their combined text.
Note: Try this for the index.Note: Try this for the index. OR, can the index move to its own document?Location: 777-779
We can supplement or replace the viewport with a summary table that lists pertinent attributes of the container’s children, or with a plot that graphs some particularly interesting attribute of the contents.
Note: Possibly interesting once i have critical massLocation: 791-791
For example, we may have a list of tasks we want to do—either a master list for all our activities,
Note: Projects documentLocation: 815-815
Most significantly, containers can sort their contents.
Location: 827-828
Agents are specialized containers that constantly scan your document, looking for notes that match the agent’s query.
Location: 828-829
When the agent finds a note that satisfies its criteria, it creates
Location: 850-851
Containers act on a note when the note is created in or added to the container, while adornments perform actions when a note is moved onto the adornment.
Note: How about adding an agent to coor the notes ids refereeed to in the index container a different color:Location: 885-886
Repetitive chores are tedious and prone to error. You have important things to do; let your Tinderbox document assist
Location: 887-887
Once
Note: Strt a new ynab fresh. Whht woukd you look forf? Fields?Location: 936-936
true hypertext
Note: What is the definition of hypertext?Location: 1042-1043
Whatever happens, Tinderbox will always find some value for any attribute about which it inquires.
Note: Everything is defined - even if it is defined as nulLocation: 1046-1048
Attributes aren’t simply names; each attribute is an object that knows how to read and to write its values. Different kinds of attributes have different rules for finding and recording their values.
Note: Software design principleLocation: 1105-1109
Note: Prototypes (chapter 6) offer another way to automatically assign consistent values. Prototypes are ideal where a single note can serve as an exemplar for an entire class of notes; a prototypical Student, for example, might set a host of attributes that would serve as default values for all individual students. Actions (and stamps) are ideal when you want to set some initial values without establishing a permanent connection.
Location: 1142-1143
Tinderbox always sets the Created timestamp when a new note is added to a document computed from the note’s properties.
Location: 1170-1171
Indirection replaces a chunk of information with a pointer to a place where the information may be found.
Location: 1197-1199
A dictionary of attributes catalogs a computational object for each attribute. That object, in turn, knows how to get the value of one particular attribute.
Note: Understand this?Location: 1228-1229
The definition of “Width” is an Attribute object—an object that knows how to find out things about that particular attribute.
Note: An object with getters and setters. The actual storage is different.Note: The object will have type ddefinitions - which mmy have ots ownn setters and getters. Or getters and setters for this.Location: 1283-1283
informative HoverExpression to reveal additional information about the note when the mouse hovers above it.
Note: Explore this. For the index cards , and the cards the index cards point to.Location: 1295-1296
Occasionally,
Note: Great book - a solid example on software architecture - what and why and how. A great window ijnto a real application.Location: 1325-1328
Tip: Many Tinderbox users keep their prototypes in a separate top-level container. This is often convenient, since it gathers all prototypes in one place. If you use any of the built-in prototypes, they are created in a toplevel container named Prototypes; you can use this for your own prototypes, too.
Location: 1352-1354
Prototype inheritance blurs the distinction between class and instance, because any instance can define a new class. Every note can be a prototype, every note can use a prototype, and you can change prototypes whenever you like.
Location: 1462-1464
Prototype inheritance was proposed in reaction to the conceptual complication that classes represent. Instead of building separate class objects, we allow any object to inherit from any other object.
Location: 1465-1466
explore varieties of prototype inheritance; I had (fairly ineptly) reinvented this wheel on my own, and was delighted to stumble upon an actual research literature dedicated to the topic28.
Note: To-readLocation: 1531-1532
In time, groups of clusters (metaclusters) often emerge to represent broad themes.
Location: 1531-1532
In time, groups of clusters (metaclusters) often emerge to represent broad themes.
Note: The point of zettelkasten.Location: 1531-1537
together. In time, groups of clusters (metaclusters) often emerge to represent broad themes. At other times, the linkage is important but extrinsic; the two clusters are not, in fact, closely related beyond this common element. Links are often ideal for representing these connections. Finally, the same item might appear separately in two or more different contexts. This is an ideal opportunity to use aliases. On occasion, conceptual clustering breaks down. The clusters we have formed sometimes come to seem arbitrary or excessively rigid, or we may find ourselves with a single amorphous cluster and numerous isolated outliers. The best approach in such situations is sometimes to shuffle the cards and start over. How
Location: 1548-1549
We want our notes to capture ideas quickly, because the flow of ideas always outruns our ability to write them down.
Note: The idea with ZK is to make thye notes count. But for literature notes, oh yeah....Location: 1550-1552
Yet we are interested in the relationship among ideas, not only the ideas themselves. Discovering connections can be difficult, and overcoming that difficulty often marks the difference between a novice and an expert.
Location: 1566-1570
The spatial hypertext approach discarded that: if two things are connected, it proposed, we will simply place their notes near each other. If two things are similar, we’ll place them near each other and make them visually similar. If two things contrast with each other, we’ll place them together and make them visually distinct. If a few notes should stand out for some exceptional quality, we will give those notes a distinct visual quality—a unique color, or shape.
Location: 1588-1589
Tinderbox maps with thousands of notes are possible, but would likely prove unwieldy on the screen.
Note: This goes directly against ZK. Or does it? Is it a limitation of Tindermap? No.... As I use it, wil find out.Location: 1623-1624
As you develop a Tinderbox project you implicitly define a visual language, assigning meaning to visual symbols and conventions. We
Note: Like the color of links.Location: 1626-1627
The core idea of spatial hypertext is that we often want to capture the possibility that two items are related, even though we may not yet fully understand their relationship.
Note: Core of ZK as well.Location: 1649-1650
Tinderbox’s “tag” and “leaf” shapes are designed to express balance in interesting and pleasing ways. Both symmetry and antisymmetry suggest balance.
Location: 1654-1662
Annotation pairs a note with a subsidiary note that comments on it or responds to it. Entire hypertexts and elaborate Tinderbox documents may be built almost entirely of annotation. Christiane Paul’s pioneering Unreal City, for example, is an extensive commentary on Eliot’s The Waste Land, and George P. Landow’s In Memoriam Web is a commentary on Tennyson’s influential poem. But annotation appears throughout other kinds of hypertexts, whenever we want a to modify, explain, or elaborate upon an existing note without changing the note itself. On paper, annotation frequently connects a note with its source. In Tinderbox, links are a better choice for this because links remain connected as you reorganize your map. The Tinderbox “cloud” and “bubble” shapes are useful for annotation. The
Location: 1654-1655
Annotation pairs a note with a subsidiary
Location: 1654-1655
Annotation pairs a note with a subsidiary note that comments on it or responds to it.
Note: WHat to do wwith this? Think bout what this means in thee ZK contextLocation: 1658-1659
But annotation appears throughout other kinds of hypertexts, whenever we want a to modify, explain, or elaborate upon an existing note without changing the note itself.
Note: In ZK this woukd bee a note itself, with forward, back nd index links.Location: 1661-1663
The Tinderbox “cloud” and “bubble” shapes are useful for annotation. The “cloud” might be reserved for personal reflection and response, while the comic-style “word bubble” can represent commentary, discussion, or counter-argument from other sources.
Location: 1668-1668
Conflicts express the possibility of choice, the existence of multiple options or different interpretations.
Location: 1679-1680
The alias lets one note appear in two or more places.
Location: 1680-1681
The indicator extracts important information from one or more notes and presents it to us in a different place.
Note: Use this for referencee?Location: 1698-1700
An indicator note gathers information from your document and presents it in a convenient place. Indicators do not add information to your Tinderbox map, but instead gather and present information you might otherwise overlook.
Location: 1701-1702
A collection of indicators is a dashboard;
Note: Can this be used for the index?Location: 1723-1724
the threats of premature formalization, arising from the desire to organize information we do not yet entirely understand.
Location: 1740-1741
discovery of emergent structure through incremental refinement
Location: 1824-1826
Neutral, low-contrast color schemes can help ensure that distinction will be visible, while reserving saturated colors and bright values for notes that demand immediate attention.
Note: Why behind the color schemeLocation: 1921-1922
Moving critical information from your memory into Tinderbox text, and from unstructured text into attributes, is often the key to more
Location: 1921-1922
Moving critical information from your memory into Tinderbox text, and from unstructured text into attributes, is often the key to more effective research and more cogent analysis.
Note: The first pprt, ZK. Second part - not so much. But maybe the logical extension?Location: 1923-1925
A more effective process begins by examining the subject matter and getting down to work, gradually extracting detail while clarifying what you already know and identifying gaps in your knowledge.
Note: ZKLocation: 1942-1943
As you learn, plans change—including your plans for learning
Location: 1942-1943
As you learn, plans change—including your plans for learning from, analyzing, and sharing your data.
Note: Word. Learning, doing is super messyLocation: 1948-1950
Usually, the fault lies not the design of the user interface or the weight of the laptop, but in the mismatch between the natural and volatile organization of the information and our artificial and rigid preconceptions.
Location: 1971-1973
The first problem is just to get everything written down. Any systematic approach to note taking is better than simply trying to remember. The simplest thing that could possibly work is, for this, just fine.
Note: RememberLocation: 2074-2075
Reserve a place in your repository for meta notes—notes about your notes, your process for making and analyzing them, and your reflections on them.
Note: Great idea.Location: 2100-2101
Over time, actions became more flexible and more varied. At first, notes could only refer to their own attributes; later, they gained the power to refer to attributes of other notes.
Note: Way to link from zettel to referecesLocation: 2246-2248
The first automatic pattern recognition system in a hypertext environment was Marshall and Shipman’s VIKI, the system that most directly inspired Tinderbox.36 VIKI called this a spatial parser,
Note: Look it up.Location: 2661-2663
OnRemove actions are uncommon. Tinderbox agents are updated in the order in which they appear in the document outline.
Note: Can use this to aautomate remmovalnof index aliasesLocation: 2726-2727
The agent creates aliases for each note that matches its query, and arranges each alias in the outline in an order determined by the agent’s sort attributes. In map views, the agent cleans up the notes into a convenient grid.
Location: 2731-2732
Automatic cleanup in agents is controlled by the attribute $CleanupAction.
Location: 2932-2932
Changing a property of an alias typically changes the property of the original note.
Location: 2945-2946
aliases are now exported as well as original notes. (For agents that should not export their aliases, simply turn off $HTMLExportChildren.)
Location: 3274-3276
The Tinderbox action runCommand(command,input) gives Tinderbox access to the wide range of scripts and programs accessible from your computer’s command line.
Location: 3284-3290
In addition to built-in tools like curl and pbpaste, runCommand works well with AppleScripts, Automator actions, and with programs written in ruby, perl, python, and other popular languages. If your Tinderbox actions are becoming very complicated, you may be better off writing a small program in another language and calling it through runCommand. When Things Go Wrong Occasionally, actions and agents do not behave exactly as you expect. A natural temptation is to try to fix the entire problem at once. Sometimes this works, but sometimes the problem seems complex—or Tinderbox seems to be doing the wrong thing entirely. Getting to the bottom of the matter is seldom difficult if you work carefully and incrementally, taking small
Location: 3284-3286
In addition to built-in tools like curl and pbpaste, runCommand works well with AppleScripts, Automator actions, and with programs written in ruby, perl, python, and other popular languages. If
Location: 3595-3597
Additional tests drive additional development until the system becomes capable of real work; a tenet of test-driven development holds that, in practice, no large program is ever likely to be finished, that there is always more work to do.
Note: The real deal behind TDDLocation: 3688-3689
Links are the distinctive feature of hypertext, but there exists today no clear consensus of opinion, no body of scientific observation, to show how links ought to be used.
Location: 3734-3736
Add links between notes that must stay connected.
Location: 3739-3741
Text links are anchored to specific passages of the text. Basic links do not depend on the text, connecting one note in its entirety to another.
Location: 3749-3749
Use verbs (and adjectives) as link anchors;
Note: Update ZK prooject. But whhy? Why use verbs?Location: 3790-3792
Trigg went to Xerox PARC where he worked with Frank Halasz on NoteCards47, a sophisticated early hypertext tool that, along with its successor Aquanet (“A hypertext tool to hold your knowledge in place”, is one of the inspirations of Tinderbox.48
Note: Toread, ook it upLocation: 3885-3886
Links, in this view, say nothing about what their endpoints are or what their relationship may be; they offer an opportunity to go from one place to another.
Note: Whqt do vthe links in zk do? Wht re they?Location: 3922-3926
When we follow a navigation link from here to there, we naturally inquire why the link was made as it was. What did the link’s label suggest we would find at its destination? How does this explanation refract our encounter with the destination text? The link situates the meaning of its source and destination while carrying its own interstitial meaning in the
Location: 3961-3962
The process of linking notes together forces us to reflect on their relationship and can lead us to discover ideas and connections that were not initially evident.
Note: Why linkLocation: 3981-3986
Lindsay’s experiences working in her computer web appeared to provide her a comfortable space to begin thinking and challenging the artwork that she studied and her ideas about herself.… It is impossible to overlook the fact that Lindsay viewed her study and life differently after her hypertextual experience. She no longer simply absorbed whatever information was delivered by her teachers, textbooks, or friends. Through the self-directed exploration made possible by her work in her computer web, Lindsay began to assert her voice as a student, an artist, and a young woman. She carried this newfound voice from the computer, into the art class and her life.
Note: Whoa! I want that insight.Location: 3992-3996
The Web, for example, indicates a link anchor by adding some special text inside the page: Eastgate This is an internal link, and it has one cardinal advantage: if we need to edit the text inside the link, we can insert or delete characters as we wish without invalidating the link.59
Location: 4003-4006
This table is separate from the text; it might be stored elsewhere in the same file, or it might be stored in a separate file entirely. This is an external link, and it, too, has a cardinal advantage: if links are stored separately, we can easily add additional links—or even replace one network of links with a completely new network— whenever
Location: 4248-4249
maintaining a consistent terminology can help to make your notes clear, helps you find things, and helps you organize and reorganize more easily.
Note: Create your own languaage. Ike tage #todo, to-read, look-up, your owwn keywords etc....Location: 4298-4298
so its OnAdd action can set the new note’s prototype.
Note: Can i automte updting the zkid of new notes?Location: 4606-4607
Among the most significant Tinderbox tasks is the job of keeping track of research projects, investigations where we consult sources and seek the opinion of experts.
Location: 4611-4612
Research notes are a record of outside sources you have consulted in order to improve your understanding of a problem.
Location: 4623-4624
Before departure, sketch out a fresh Tinderbox framework for your notes, either in a new Tinderbox document or in a dedicated container.
Location: 4625-4627
When adding notes to a mature research project in an area you understand well, it may be tempting to place your new notes directly into the established conceptual framework. Give thought instead to putting new notes in a separate place dedicated to the specific conference, library visit.
Note: Literature notes, before ZkLocation: 4640-4642
Conceptual overview of a conference map. Reserve space in advance for thinking about the big picture (top-right) and for noting questions you want to discuss and tasks you want to undertake during the conference
Note: Try thia dor researchLocation: 4668-4669
It is useful to take a moment at the outset to make this project look different, if only to avoid making notes in the wrong place.
Note: Different ook and feel for different rojectsLocation: 4714-4715
Composites, introduced in Tinderbox 7, are bundles of related notes adjacent to each other and that you can move as a unit.
Location: 4736-4737
If an adornment is sticky, moving the adornment also moves all the notes that lie on it.
Location: 4795-4797
When drafting a trip report, try to avoid a narrowly chronological account. After the conference is over, nobody cares what happened on Thursday morning. Instead, focus on important results and notable ideas, using these to introduce specific details.
Location: 4799-4800
After the meeting, you may also find it useful to reorganize your notes. Looking back at the entire conference, you will likely perceive new relationships and fresh associations. Record these now, because these relations may be less clear to you later.
Note: Write just cafter the thought or cexperience. Later you wil forgrtLocation: 5488-5490
Until recent years, thoughtful people usually kept a small and handy book with them when they read, a place to record interesting ideas and memorable passages. These commonplace books grew less important as access to books grew easier.
Note: Types of notes - commonplace booksLocation: 5502-5503
Take notes to learn. Many people find that note-taking gives them an opportunity to reflect and to fix new ideas in their mind. Making notes helps you focus and concentrate.
Location: 5505-5506
Take notes to remember. Time flies: someday, you’ll want to remember this. Your notes become a record of ideas and moods, of goals and accomplishments.
Location: 5508-5510
Take notes to explore. It’s a big world, a world that’s more open to your exploration than ever before. As you travel about town or across the globe, you’ll want to record your impressions—both to get the most out of every day, and then to look back.
Location: 5511-5512
Take notes to create. Doodle. Sketch. Try out different styles, and new voices.
Location: 5529-5530
You need two places to write. One should be ready-to-hand all the time.
Location: 5537-5538
You also need a permanent repository for your notes—a place where all your notes
Location: 5537-5538
You also need a permanent repository for your notes—a place where all your notes
Location: 5541-5543
Every day or every week, you’ll want to move your quick jottings from your pocket notebook into your repository. A good journal makes a fine repository. A powerful content assistant like Tinderbox works well, too.
Note: Why journalLocation: 5547-5548
And the more durable, enjoyable, and attractive your notes may be, the better the chance that you’ll continue to find them useful—and that your biographer or
Location: 5550-5551
discard your journal. If investing in good paper and a good cover help you enjoy your notes, you’ll be more likely to keep them.
Location: 5552-5553
Sweep all your paper notes into your Tinderbox file periodically— every morning, or once a week.
Location: 5555-5555
The purpose of the weekly sweep
Location: 5557-5558
One purpose of writing things down is to remember, to make the information and ideas available to you later. The weekly sweep lets you reflect on your recent ideas and decide which ideas need to be pursued immediately.
Location: 5563-5564
Get into the habit. Scan the drawings, transcribe the text. Get your material where you can search it, scan it, organize it.
Location: 5569-5571
This worked for a while, and lots of people used Tinderbox in those years as a notebook for their weblogs, and sometimes as a publishing platform as well. Tinderbox excels at this, and its flexible HTML and XML export tools let people craft the web presence they want.
Note: Can i explore this for my new olds HTML blog?Location: 5573-5574
I think the weblog was a good idea and that it remains a useful practice.
Location: 5580-5581
Tinderbox’s flexible export tools are ideal for writing and publishing weblogs and other
Location: 5580-5581
Tinderbox’s flexible export tools are ideal for writing and publishing weblogs and other ambitious personal information spaces.
Location: 5650-5652
1. WRITE FOR A REASON Write for a reason, and know why you write. Whether your daily updates concern your work life, your hobbies, or your innermost feelings, write passionately about things that matter.
Location: 5653-5654
Show us the details, teach us why they matter. People are fascinated by detail and enthralled by passion; explain to us why it matters to you,
Location: 5656-5658
Don’t tell us what happened: tell us why it matters. Don’t tell us your opinion: tell us why the question is important. If you don’t really care, don’t write.
Location: 5664-5666
Write honestly. Don’t hide, and don’t stop short. When writing about things that matter, you may be tempted to flee to safe, familiar havens: the familiar, the sentimental, the fashionable. Try to find the strength to be honest, to avoid starting the journey with passion and
Location: 5664-5667
Write honestly. Don’t hide, and don’t stop short. When writing about things that matter, you may be tempted to flee to safe, familiar havens: the familiar, the sentimental, the fashionable. Try to find the strength to be honest, to avoid starting the journey with passion and ending it with someone else’s tired formula.
Note: Steven pressfield e choes hereLocation: 5675-5678
2. WRITE OFTEN If you are writing a weblog, you must write consistently. You need not write constantly, and you need not write long, but you must write often. One afternoon in grad school, I heard B. F. Skinner remark that fifteen minutes a day, every day, adds up to about one book every year, which he suggested was as
Location: 5675-5678
2. WRITE OFTEN If you are writing a weblog, you must write consistently. You need not write constantly, and you need not write long, but you must write often. One afternoon in grad school, I heard B. F. Skinner remark that fifteen minutes a day, every day, adds up to about one book every year, which he suggested was as much writing as anyone should indulge in.
Location: 5699-5700
Read widely and well, on the Web and off, and in your Web writing take special care to acknowledge the good work and good ideas of other writers.
Location: 5729-5730
Have in mind, from the outset, an idea of how long you want to engage the issue and how you expect the exercise to end (or reach a resting point). Plan a conclusion before firing the first salvo.
Location: 5742-5744
Invented characters, long a staple of newspaper columnists, are rarely seen on the living Web; an imaginary friend could be a valuable addition to your site, a counterbalance to your own character.
Note: My alter ego, SuU.Location: 5752-5753
If you know your facts and have done your homework, you have a right to your opinion. State it clearly. Never waffle, whine, or weasel.
Location: 5764-5765
The more of yourself you put into your writing, the more human and engaging your work will be.
Location: 5973-5973
You can synchronize Tinderbox notes with cloud servers.
Note: How? Can it be encrypted?Location: 6108-6110
The declaration explains what the object holds and what messages it can receive. Exactly how an object works is its private business, and changes to internal processes don’t matter to other objects, but when we change the messages an object receives or the way it stores its data, other classes that interact with the
Location: 6108-6110
The declaration explains what the object holds and what messages it can receive. Exactly how an object works is its private business, and changes to internal processes don’t matter to other objects, but when we change the messages an object receives or the way it stores its data, other classes that interact with the object need to know about the change. Changing
Note: InterfaceLocation: 6128-6130
The first generation of software designers learned, to its cost, that while a fresh start can sometimes give you shiny, modern code to replace an aging system, it often proves catastrophic. First, while we know the shortcomings of the current bad design, that bad design works.
Location: 6144-6145
A year before Spolsky’s essay on “Things You Should Never Do,” a computer scientist named Martin Fowler published Refactoring,
Note: To-readLocation: 6455-6456
Information farming (or information gardening) views the cultivation of information as continuous and frequently collaborative.
Location: 6463-6465
The success of farming systems lies at least as much in the extent to which they can convey insight or explain extraordinarily difficult concepts as in their facility for expressing routine matters. Anecdotes
Location: 6583-6585
The key to success in many projects is continuous incremental advantage. Each bit of work spent on the project’s infrastructure needs to make your work better—faster, smoother,
Location: 6714-6717
Complex ideas and thoughtful disagreements lie behind Tinderbox and Vesper, Evernote, Scrivener, wikis, and VoodooPad, but we don’t talk about the ideas: we talk about those tabs. There are new ideas to try. We don’t talk about that stuff; we mostly talk about tabs and icons, bevels and borders and freemium schemes.
Note: What to do about it?Location: 6800-6801
For more discussion of artisanal software and “neo-Victorian” computing, see http:// www.markbernstein.org/NeoVictorian.html.
Note: To-red artisannal softwareLocation: 6892-6893
Prototype inheritance was later adopted in Common Lisp, and then in Javascript and ECMAScript, languages embedded in Web browsers and that became enormously popular in the 21st century.
Location: 7075-7077
See Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled, Hutchinson, 2005 for a delightful argument that everyone should learn to write poetry. You never know when you may want to write the directions to your birthday party in quatrains.
Note: To-readBook References from The Tinderbox Way
- The Mythical Man Month by
Notes: 1975 classic - Possiplex by
Notes: Nelson’s recent autobiography - Things You Should Never Do by
Notes: essay - Refactoring by
- Prototype-Based Programming: Concepts, Languages and Applications. by
Notes: Springer-Verlag Singapore Pte Ltd. 1999 - Notecards in a Nutshell. by
Notes: CHI+GI Proceedings. ACM, 1987. 45-52. - The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web. by
Notes: Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 2001. - Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time by
Notes: web post. - A Book of One’s Own: People and Their Diaries. by
Notes: St. Paul, Minnesota: Hungry Mind Press, 1984. - The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes by
Notes: New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2001. - The Ode Less Travelled by
Notes: a delightful argument that everyone should learn to write poetry
Source: The Tinderbox Way