The @danallosso (Obsidisan) Book Club will be reading Bob Doto's book A System for Writing (2024) as their next selection. Discussion meetings are via Zoom for 2 hours on Saturdays starting on 2024-10-19 to 11-02 from 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific.  New comers and veterans are all welcome to attend.

The book is broken up into 3 parts (approximately 50-75 pages each) and we'll discuss each on succeeding weeks. The group has several inveterate note takers who are well-acquainted with #Zettelkasten methods. 

If you'd like access to the Obsidian vault, please email danallosso at icloud dot com with your preferred email address to connect to the Dropbox repository.

DM either Dan or myself for the Zoom link for the video meetings.

https://boffosocko.com/2024/10/14/book-club-reading-of-a-system-for-writing-by-bob-doto/

@skyfaller @amy
I find that more important than indexing my books is indexing the ideas within them along with my own notes (a la Mortimer J. Adler, Umberto Eco, John Locke, J. Kaiser, Jacques Barzun, et al.)

Details: https://boffosocko.com/2024/01/18/note-taking-and-knowledge-management-resources-for-students/#Useful%20books,%20articles,%20and%20miscellaneous%20manuals

My boxes: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/#Boxes

#Zettelkasten #NoteTaking #CardIndex #PKM

As a reminder for local Los Angeles area hobbyist mathematicians and physicists, Dr. Miller will be teaching Fundamentals of Point-Set Topology at UCLA starting September 24th. I hope some new folks will join our merry band for some math fun this fall. First time taking some math after high school/college? I’ve got some tips here.

<img class="u-photo aligncenter wp-image-55822894 size-full" src="https://boffosocko.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Sears-Catalog-1949-pricing.jpg" alt="Yellowed catalog page with photos of 5 portable typewriters labeled A-E with blocks of corresponding text below to describe them all and provide their list prices. The headline over the description reads: PORTABLE TYPEWRITERS.. NEW post-war models" width="692" height="792 - https://boffosocko.com/2024/05/04/1949-sears-catalog-typewriter-pricing/

@amy And reply if you have and still use one?!?
https://boffosocko.com/2023/09/23/midcentury-gaylord-bros-inc-oak-modular-library-card-catalog-acquisition/

Here’s a version of the timeline of some of the intellectual history I presented today at the #PKMSummit in Utrecht. I’m happy to answer any questions, or if you’re impatient, you can also search my online digital repository of notes for any of the people or topics I mentioned.

#PKM #zettelkasten #CommonplaceBooks #productivity
https://boffosocko.com/2024/03/22/55822161/

Acquisition: 196X Smith-Corona (SCM) Galaxie Deluxe 10 – 6T2V Series Manual #Typewriter

I purchased this SCM typewriter through an online auction on 2024-03-02 and received it this morning on 2024-03-07 at 10:00 AM. The seller stated this was a 1969, but the Typewriter Database doesn't seem to have serial number dating for this range of typewriters which were

https://boffosocko.com/2024/03/07/acquisition-196x-smith-corona-scm-galaxie-deluxe-10-6t2v-series-manual-typewriter/

The Europe PKM Summit 2024 coming up on March 22 - 23 looks like a who's-who of the tools for thought crowd. I'm putting together a few ideas myself... https://pkmsummit.com/

(https://boffosocko.com/2024/03/06/55821857/)

Irked by the overinflated prices on Ebay for typewriters, I've been casting about for other sources of reasonably priced machines to purchase. Today I purchased two I saw at auction:

* Smith-Corona Classic 12 in metallic green for $18.00
* 1969 Smith-Corona Galaxie Deluxe in steel blue for $23.0

Both appear to be in good shape and functional though one is going to need some reasonable cleaning and repair of a few linkages. I can't wait for them to ship to see what I've got. They both look like a lot of fun... 
https://boffosocko.com/2024/03/02/55821786/

On a quick front-of-the-index card calculation, I realize that with the recent Steelcase cabinet acquisition, I now have 8 boxes comprising 61 drawers and 103.25 feet of storage space for approximately 172,296 index cards. Having spent a total of $786.52 on them over the past year this comes out at about $12.89 per drawer, which is fantastically under the $14-25 ubiquitous 11" cardboard boxes for such a massive step up in quality and longevity.  https://boffosocko.com/2024/02/23/55821678/

So, I broke down and got another one...

Steelcase 8 Drawer Steel Card Index Filing Cabinet for 4 x 6 inch cards
https://boffosocko.com/2024/02/21/steelcase-8-drawer-steel-card-index-filing-cabinet-for-4-x-6-inch-cards/

@ryanrandall @chrisaldrich@mastodon.social I’ll certainly be trying out anything he comes up with as I think his efforts as well as those of the broader IndieWeb community ultimately moves us all to a better place than where we’ve been. All this being said, in true IndieWeb fashion it’s ultimately your site, and your choice, so you can certainly do what you wish.

Happy internetting! 😊

@ryanrandall @chrisaldrich@mastodon.social If it were Bluesky alone coming at us with talk of “Federation” and “opt-out” by themselves, I would be infinitely more suspicious. Using Snarfed’s work as an intermediary gives me some actual hope for safer interactions and options across the spectrum. I also know that he’s tightly embedded in a diverse group of developers who regularly not only talk about but build tools to confront many of these safety and structural issues going back to the early days of the internet. I’ve seen many who don’t know him or his context piling on recently, but I hope they’ll look more closely at his years of on-the-ground experience building these sorts of tools than those who want to theorize about what hasn’t happened yet.

Perhaps for some of them his recent post may provide at least a modicum of context on what is far from a solved problem: https://snarfed.org/2024-01-21_moderate-people-not-code.

@ryanrandall @chrisaldrich@mastodon.social I'll grant you those points, but having carefully watched (and used the fruits of) Ryan Barrett's work for the better part of the last decade, I can say he is a dyed-in-the-wool Indie-developer who has used the same sorts of tools to bridge with some of the most toxic, corporate surveillance capitalist platforms of our time in some of the most innovative and positive adversarial interoperative ways. He’s been helping to tear down silo walls for years in the same way Cory Doctorow calls for in The Internet Con (Verso, 2023), and thereby making the social media space a much happier and healthier place to interact. Incidentally, Ryan is the definition of non-commercial and "do it ourselves."

Book Club on Cataloging the World and Index, A History of the - https://boffosocko.com/2024/02/11/book-club-on-cataloging-the-world-and-index-a-history-of-the/

https://boffosocko.com/2024/02/11/book-club-on-cataloging-the-world-and-index-a-history-of-the/

Surfing around with respect to library card catalogs, I ran across <a href="https://www.blyberg.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Blyberg</a>'s <a href="https://www.blyberg.net/card-generator/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Library Card Generator</a> this afternoon. Anyone who's playing at the intersection of analog and digital zettelkasten is sure to love the possibilities here. <a href="https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkaste - https://boffosocko.com/2024/02/04/55821315/

A quick survey of academics, teachers, and researchers blogging about note taking practices and zettelkasten-based methods - https://boffosocko.com/2024/01/18/note-taking-and-knowledge-management-resources-for-students/

@ryanrandall One of my favorite words in ASL is the portmanteau for pasteurized (milking motion while moving "past your eyes") that I picked up in Baltimore. 🤣🐄🥛

@kfitz Happy New Year!

Too late for the syllabus, but I keep a bibliography of note taking manuals with a variety of related/historical alternatives to Ahrens if it will help anyone in the class: https://www.zotero.org/groups/4676190/tools_for_thought/collections/V9RPUCXJ/tags/note%20taking%20manuals/collection

Most are broadly w/in the humanities. Some of my favorites include Locke, Sertillanges, Goutor, Weinberg, and Eco.

I've also recently updated my note taking collection of articles of which the Examples section may be interesting as the process is frequently difficult for some to visualize. https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/

Related works I frequently recommend:
- “They Say / I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. 3rd ed. 2006. Reprint, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014.
- Adler, Mortimer J., & Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised & Updated ed. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011.
- Mills, C. Wright. “On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952).” Society 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1980): 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02700062