On opening the notes
I’ve been meaning to use this blog for my open notebook for my dissertation and beyond. It’s not intended to just be focused on research notes and musings, but that’s part of it. The big challenge for me is to actually move things over from the many places I jot thoughts down to here. I actually don’g usually review my notes; I just let things slosh around in the wetware with the assumption that an idea will appear again if it’s a good one (or otherwise…).
But, I’m trying to do things different now. More methodical. More transparent. Let everyone into the mess, so to speak. Lay out the movement from rough sketches to something else.
Today I went through one of my notebooks (a small pocket one with a cork cover, hence “corkbook”) and transcribed in a series of posts everything that seemed like it has a chance of being relevant. I may actually go back into these pages/posts and use them as launching points for further development. At least, that occurred to me as I was transcribing everything.
For now (and always), though, these posts are collections of idea snippets, stacks of phrases and terms, very few actual sentences. There’s redundancy, unclear connections, and more all through these.
More notes will be posted in the coming days/weeks. Perhaps even some fully-developed (or at least developing) work, too.
I have years worth of notes taken at Sandbox myself, it never occurred to me that I might be able to transfer them elsewhere… tho I am intimidated by the challenge of organizing them, and worried about losing the data in the event of a buyout, etc…
Hi David (I presume :). While organizing them might be a hurdle, I could actually see those notes taking on the quality of a blog or wiki-esque structure in their own right. Basically, using hyperlinking as initially designed to create interwoven collections. We could easily set up os code on a private server (using wordpress, jekyll, some wiki software, or something else). I’m partially paying attention to Carl Boettiger’s system (http://www.carlboettiger.info/lab-notebook.html) as he iterates through different structures. While I’m not concerned about data loss (I don’t need to destroy the originals and staked away on a shelf or boxes makes them all-but-lost, plus I generally think data loss is a positive), given that wordpress is at heart open I don’t think there’s too much of a buyout/closure issue.
Imagine, though, those years of notes cross-linked and extending outward! Static pages that can be copied, merged, woven together to unleash the monsters! It could be delightful!
Quite right, I think maybe my reluctance is more of an overwhelm issue than an actual “this could end up wasted effort” issue. I will look into the lab notebook stuff; please let me know if you run across other resources.
FWIW, we actually created a Wiki for a BOT 950 session (the last one Tim actually held, IIRC) which has some scattered bits and pieces in it; I will dig up the link and let folks know about it. If we want to start making a more comprehensive Systems/Hierarchy Theory/High Gain-Lo Gain wiki, we might want to start fresh, but let’s see what we’ve already got first…