book review: How to Take Smart Notes

Sönke Ahrens.

How to Take Smart Notes: revised edn.

self published. 2022

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This book is aimed at students, academics, and any others who need to read a lot of material written by other authors, and build on it, or argue against it, or otherwise incorporate it into their own work. It is based on the approach used by Niklaus Luhmann, the renowned and extremely productive social scientist. He used his Zettelkasten (slip-box) technique, comprising an enormous set of linked notes, eventually numbering 90 thousand, to systematise his sources, thoughts and ideas. (He was also a bit of a workaholic, by all accounts: his success was down to working smarter and harder). He did this with real physical slips of paper (in lots of slip-boxes); nowadays there are many tools such as Obsidian available to do the linking (if not the related thinking).

Ahrens states that “writing is the only thing that matters”, that is, all the rest of the work (reading, note taking, thinking) is for the purpose of writing. This is aimed more at non-experimental subjects, as it does not cover experimenting, but is nevertheless a key aspect of all academic disciplines (publish or perish) and student work (essays and dissertations). It is essentially about the generation and publication of new knowledge. The publication side is important: Ahrens says that there is “no such thing as private knowledge in academia”, that is, secret knowledge isn’t (academic) knowledge. As such, all the rest of the work needs to support the work of writing, and in particular, the prior reading needs to be structured so that its contents can be organised, assimilated, and repurposed for the subsequent writing. Hence taking good notes, and organising them well for later use.

Ahrens spends most of the book discussing the psychology of reading, learning, thinking, and writing. This includes discussion of why the common student practice of highlighting text while reading is almost useless: the reader gets a quick feeling of satisfaction as the line of text become yellow, but nothing much changes in their brain. Note-taking must be an active process: instead of merely highlighting text, make a “fleeting” note comprising the text rewritten in your own words (to force you to think), plus any thoughts it sparks (to make links). Then, soon after writing these fleeting notes, review them, and for ones that still seem worthwhile, make a “permanent” note for the Zettelkasten, and – here’s the crucial bit – link that note to other related notes. (Luhmann had a numerical system to do this by hand; this is where computer support really comes into its own.) The rich network of linked notes provides added value: the “sum of the slip-box contents is worth much more than the sum of the notes”.

Ahrens points out that it is difficult to know what to write about until you have done a lot of reading, and built up a mental database of the subject area. The topic of the to-be-published essay, thesis, or book, emerges from the linked structure of notes in your Zettelkasten. So it is important to review its contents continually, to notice emergent clusters, and hence potential topics. This may be one place where physical notes are better: they can be removed from the box, placed on a table, and moved around to form a structure for the writing. Returning them to the box in the correct place (imagine misfiling one of your 90,000 notes: it would be gone forever!) is presumably a bit of a chore.

There is a lot of good material here, from the theory of learning to practical advice for choosing and working on projects. One thing missing is specific examples of notes and their links: there are some example notes from Luhmann’s own Zettelkasten, but these are so compact and densely written, that it is hard to extract the principles from them. Never mind, the web comes to the rescue: the Zettelkasten site has great examples and advice.

I have started using this approach, and have already made one link between parts of my reading that I probably wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. I doubt whether I’ll ever get up to 90,000 notes, but I intend to keep reading, and thinking, in this new way.

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For all my book reviews, see my main website.

first harvest

We've had a few home-grown strawberries so far, but this is the first potato harvest of the season.  (A second crop is due later.)

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLIII

The latest batch, comprising his'n'hers birthday presents.

goodbye MARCH

I've been up in York for the last couple of days, visiting colleagues, discussing projects, and, sadly, saying goodbye to MARCH, an EPSRC funded-project involving York and Sheffield, which has been running since February 2021.  It started during lockdown!  The amazing team has done some wonderful work, with some more publications still in the pipeline, and we'll be sad to see it finish.  But there are many follow-on irons in the fire, so it's not really the end.

On my way home this evening, my train passed through March station.  So this felt like an appropriate photo: March in the distance, with a ghostly me in the foreground!

Ickworth National Trust

We went with some friends to the National Trust centre at Ickworth today.  Another magnificent house in magnificent grounds.

We walked around the gardens.  There is a hidden stumpery: well-hidden, as it took us a while to find it, but it was definitely worthwhile.  Lots of very jagged, alien-looking tree stumps arranged around a winding path.

There are more formal gardens, with occasional great views of the house.

This is just the central rotunda.  There are a couple of lovely wings, too.

And there are big trees, and strange statues.

Nobody expects the large wooden giraffe.

Several of the trees have amazing amounts of mistletoe adorning them.

There is a nice restaurant in the hotel that occupies one wing of the house.  We had only a light lunch, as it was very hot out.  On exiting, we got to see the front of the house, up close.

We then went for a longer walk, around the park lands.  Lovely views, but very hot in the open.  So, back to the entrance, where they sell ice creams... then home.

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLII

The latest batch:

reflections

The early morning sun, bouncing off the car window, passing through the bushes, in through the house front window, and landing on the side wall.  All looking very artistic.  (Pity about the central heating thermostat.)

view from a hotel window : Glasgow

I'm up in Glasgow, for a couple of days project meeting on our Aria-funded Bosonic computing project, and, incidentally, escaping southern heat.

The view from my hotel window is okay...

... but the architecture on the other side is more interesting.

including bonus seagull

escaping the heat

It was a lovely morning to be sitting on a quiet railway platform, listening to the birds singing, waiting for the train that would take me from the developing heat in the south (forecast mid 30s) to the more civilised levels in Glasgow (forecast, low 20s). 

8:46 am BST; already warm

bun breakout

We had 4 bananas going black, so time for some baking.  Here are the banana oat buns that resulted (well, all but one of them: we had to do some acceptance testing):

Out of the oven; next step, the freezer (after testing a couple more...)

It looks like some of the buns are attempting to escape!  And in a coordinated attempt, too.

book review : Some Desperate Glory

Emily Tesh.
Some Desperate Glory.
Orbit. 2023

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Kyr is a dedicated and loyal soldier on Gaea Station, pushing herself and her team hard, so that one day they can help avenge the destroyed Earth. But then she meets a captured alien, leaves Gaea Station, and experiences the strangeness of the larger universe. And then something totally unexpected happens.

This is a great space opera, as Kyr, not a very pleasant protagonist at all, keeps getting her world-view changed. And the plot keeps making right-angled turns just when you think you know where it might be going. It’s a great page-turner.

It’s a fascinating tale of fanaticism, second chances, growing up, what decisions to make, who has the right to make them, and whether choosing some appalling action is justified if you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that making any other choice would result in even worse outcomes.

Recommended.

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For all my book reviews, see my main website.

automating money

Most of my backup process is automated: I have a python script for finding changed files, zipping them up, transferring them to the server, and other bits and pieces.  (Yes, I know there are other ways to do this.  For example, my Google Drive is self-backing-up -- I hope.  But for certain material, I want to be sure what's being backed up, and to where.)

One part of the process that has needed a manual component is backing up my AceMoney data.  Manual until now, that is.

Here's the (part of) the process I have been doing manually.

• Launch the application
• Enter my password into the text box, and click OK. 

• Select File > SaveAs... in the main application

• Enter the new file name in the Save As dialogue, and click Save

• Exit the application

It doesn't take long at all to do this, but it is a (very minor) nuisance to have to do this each time (and to remember what to do).  So, how to do all this from python?

Enter the pywinauto library.  (I note it hasn't been updated in a while -- but it seems to work okay, at least for the level of complexity I need.)  After a bit of reading the documentation, getting baffled, watching a short YouTube video, skimming a longer YouTube video, reading a nice tutorial (reading is my preferred input medium for this sort of information), re-reading the documentation (which now made a lot more sense), then writing and testing some code (with quite a lot of muttering when I wanted to do something a little different from the tutorials), I ended up with:

from pywinauto.application import Application

def backup_ace_money(pwd,file_name):

    # Launch the application
    app = Application().start(r'C:\Program Files (x86)\AceMoney\AceMoney.exe', timeout=10)

    # Enter password, click OK
    pwd_dlg = app.window(title='Enter password')
    pwd_dlg.Edit.type_keys(pwd)
    pwd_dlg.OKButton.click()

    # Select File > SaveAs in main window
    main_dlg = app.top_window()
    main_dlg.menu_select('File -> Save As...')

    # Enter the file name in the Save menu, and click Save
    save_dlg = app.window(title='Save As')
    save_dlg.SaveAsComboBox1.type_keys(file_name)
    save_dlg.SaveButton.click()

    # Exit AceMoney
    main_dlg.close()

The only (hah!) difficult bit was discovering the name of the box to type the file name into.  (I confess that discovering the mere existence of the menu_select() function took me more time, and extreme muttering, than it should have.)  The print_control_identifiers() function was indispensable for finding the name of the relevant control, but the great advantage is you can access by (relatively robust) name, not (incredibly fragile) screen position.  

So, a couple of hours and 10 lines of code later, this task has now been automated.

And now I'm thinking about what to automate next.

Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt?

I came across this recently: 

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?   

— Henry David Thoreau (1849) Civil Disobedience, p367

 

scanners upgrade not in vain

A few months ago, I had an issue with a Windows upgrade bricking my Canon scanner.  At the time, I reverted to an earlier version of Windows to "solve" the problem.  The update reminders were becoming more aggressive, and eventually, it updated itself again, without asking.

Coincidentally, my other half has just got himself a new machine.  Cue several days of his muttering and more, trying to restore his life from his previous machine, which mostly required finding new versions of software, and recompiling a lot of C code.  I reminded him of my scanner woes, as I guessed he was about to encounter them, too.

Clearly, his Google-fu is better than mine, and he directed me to a site I hadn't previously found.  There is a work-around, and a new version of the CaptureOnTouch software.  (Note that the date of the new release is prior to my previous post.  Sigh.)  So, I downloaded it, unzipped it, and double-clicked the exe.  It got partway through the Wizard before bailing.  So I uninstalled the previous version, and tried installing again.  It worked!

So, I now have both Windows 42H2 and Canon scanning ability.  Success!

But it really shouldn't be this difficult.

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLI

The latest batch:

Some of these are recommendations, or acquisitions, from the recent Eastercon.

blooming spring

The elder is looking simply superb this year.

looking down from an upstairs window gives the best view

brains, bees, and sea

Several more days of neuromorphic fun.  There are lots of things we don't understand about the brain: very little of the brain is active at one time, neurons send other neurons encapsulated mRNA messages, split brain patients become functions extremely quickly, dendrite processing is an important process. I led a session on embodied physical reservoir computing.  A session on how LLMs work was illuminating.  There is work on building biotransistors which can be made on flexible substrates, and work in water.  The brain includes a "neuromorphic twin" model of the world, which it uses to predict sensory data; if there is a mismatch, there can be peculiar sensations.  The brain has as many glial cells, including astrocytes, as neurons; a model of these at one extreme of a spectrum of structure looks a bit like a dense associative memory, what capabilities might other places on the spectrum provide? AI basically hasn't incorporated any discoveries from neuroscience in the last 50 years.  Deep learning, with its billions of parameters, works because a particular Riemannian metric is more likely to exist in these high dimensions giving a unique global minimum.  Insects diverged from other animals before there were brains, so have rather different structures. Bee navigation establishes an absolute reference frame by using the sun and time of day.  

Whew!  That's been a lot.  I'm flying home tomorrow, so today I spent time walking, decompressing by watching the sea up close (it's profoundly weird to stand close to the shore for quite a while, and the tide neither comes in nor goes out), and a bit of paddling.

There's a lovely sandy beach in front of the hotel, which ends at these rocks.  Standing listening to the water gently lapping against them is incredibly relaxing.

more brains, and coastal views

We've had multiple days of great talks and conversations, and lots of walks.  We've heard about evolving computer programs to become replicators and machine learning programs, evolving self-organising developmental pathways, song learning in zebra finches, navigation and learning "place" maps (when you move to a different room, you switch to a different mental map; might that be why you forget why you moved to the new room?), computing with spikes, future neuromorphic hardware, making brain-like circuits with very simple components (resistors, capacitors, batteries and memristors), a mnemonic for understanding the effect of different operations and memories (if one bit is a 1 ft box, then an adder is a room, a multiplier is the whole hotel, the closest memory cache is down on the sea shore, DRAM is Corsica, a hard drive is in Rome, and the cloud is on Jupiter!). Today the focus was on robots with neuromorphic brains, and the key role played by the environment.

May brain is full to overflowing, and we've still got a couple of days to go!  To decompress a bit, I went for a walk along a costal path.  Low rocky cliffs, with a few beaches scattered along the length.

some of the coves are sandy; this one is splendidly rocky

brains and trees

Today at CapoCaccia 2025 we had some discussion sessions on "Life with and without a cortex".  We learned that you can take the cortex out of a mouse and it makes hardly any difference: although the mouse cannot learn new behaviours, the majority of behaviours it uses are in fact innate.  One speaker said that looking at mice doesn't help to understand our brains: we need to look at more nearby species, eg monkeys, and even so, that only gets you so far.  And there was the fun idea that each of the seven deadly sins is associated with a particular hormone.

More conversations, then I went exploring a bit further afield that yesterday.  Unfortunately my phone's 4G isn't working, and there's no wifi outside.  So I downloaded a map of the vicinity, and took great care to remember where I had come from.  I found some good trails through the local pine forest.  Again, stunning.

view from a hotel window : CapoCaccia 2025

I arrived in northern Sardinia last night, for the two week Capo Caccia workshop on Neuromorphic Intelligence.  This morning I saw the view from my window: this is on the "non seaview" side of the hotel, which means the room is a little cheaper.  It's still a lovely view.

The restaurant looks over the sea, and the view is indeed stunning.

In the morning were some great "discussions" (more informal than lectures) on evolution of neural circuits, and emotions in fish.  I then had some excellent conversations with participants in the afternoon.  Then off for a stroll to photograph the sea view.

It promises to be a fantastic time: great talks, great conversations, great food, great venue, great weather!

ying yang eggs

I've seen broken yolks before, but never like this.

 

the hills have vanished

There were definitely hills on Friday

for the title alone

Near the registration desk was a table piled with a load of free second hand books.  We looked through them, but had most of the ones we might want (and, anyway, flying back puts a crimp on book acquisition).  However, there was one I couldn't resist, for the title alone.

Okay, so it turns out this is two separate stories, but even so...

view from a hotel window

It was dark by the time we arrived at the convention hotel last night, so no view from the window.  It was a bit gloomy and grey this morning, but enough to see the view, including the dome of the convention centre, and hills in the distance.

Off now to breakfast, and then to registration, and then to the start of the con proper.

417 Expectation Failed

We flew in to Belfast this evening, ready for the Eastercon starting tomorrow.

We laughed in nerd as we walked along the hotel corridor to our room.

First of all, a room Not Found.

Then our room, URI Too Long.

And the last room on the corridor, Expectation Failed.

Unfortunately, no more rooms, so no teapots.  

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CL

The latest batch:

 

The company who I have been with for over 40 years for insuring house contents is no longer insuring house contents.  So we are looking for a new insurer.  

We have a lot of books (no!)  This causes issues: everyone who is quoting wants to insure them as "antiques", in danger of being stolen.  No, there are a lot of individually not very valuable books (some are indeed old, but not that old, and not rare).  No-one is going to steal these: it would take forever, and they have very little resale value.  We can't be the only ones in this situation, surely?

breaking the trend

We had a lovely start to March: nine sunny days before the weather turned.  

April has been even more amazing.  Fourteen sunny days:

before the weather turned today:

Well, we needed the rain!

moonlighting

While I was up in Scotland enjoying the spring sunshine, my other half was enjoying the clear night, using the 8" telescope and a Raspberry-Pi camera to photograph the nearly-full moon.

Definitely better pictures than using my phone camera.

views from two hotel windows

I travelled up to Glasgow yesterday, via Edinburgh, for a project team meeting the day before a workshop we ran today, in Edinburgh.  So yesterday evening I travelled back from Glasgow to Edinburgh, to overnight here before the workshop.

A nice sunny morning in Edinburgh. 
Some reflection of the double glazing, which was a foot deep and not openable.

We held the workshop -- about 20 people discussing quantum optics and photonic computing -- and then the team travelled back to Glasgow, ready for a project debrief tomorrow (to be followed by me travelling home in the afternoon, via Edinburgh).

A nice sunny evening in Glasgow.

I could care more

I was reading an article the other day that branched off into a discussion about the expressions I couldn't care less (obviously correct) and I could care less (obviously bizarre).  A comment pointed me to the Merriam-Webster discussion.  This is all quite fair-minded, but I definitely rofl'd at the last sentence:

if you can’t get past some people continuing to use could care less, and the fact that there’s nothing you can do about it, you may console yourself with the notion that at least they are not saying “I could care fewer.”

 

asymmetry

I bought some new walking boots today, having worn my previous ones down, had them resoled, and then worn them down again.

The guy in the shop measured my feet on a nifty computerised device.  He wasn't surprised that my left foot is 1mm longer than my right foot.  But he seemed completely gobsmacked that my right foot is 4.5mm wider than my left foot.

not to scale

Eight ways to observe the eclipse

We watched the partial solar eclipse quite closely this morning, with eight different instruments.

Going counterclockwise, we have:

1. A pair of solar viewing glasses from the 1999 total eclipse.
2. The SeeStar telescope with a solar filter.
3. The new solar binoculars.
4. The digital SLR with zoom lens, and, of course, solar filter.
5. The cardboard solar projector telescope, bought for the 1999 eclipse
6. The 5" Meade telescope with, you guessed it, a solar filter.

We used all the instruments, but the 5" gave the best view, and the SeeStar got the best pictures, overall.

Just starting: see the big sunspot near the limb. 
There are some smaller, fainter spots towards the top-middle of the disc.

Near maximum, and the smaller sunspots are close to the edge of the moon.

Nearly over

I snapped the sky with my phone to show that it was getting somewhat cloudy. 

The sun is completely overexposed, of course.  But wait. What's that spot on the dome?  (In case you are wondering, we couldn't use the 8" telescope in the dome for this event, as we don't have a solar filter for it.)

Look at that reflection!

So that's the seventh way we could see the eclipse (although we didn't notice it at the time, only when looking at this photo).  

What about the eighth?  Well, that's the same as the way we "observed" a partial eclipse 10 years ago, with our solar PV:

The big dip: that's no cloud, that's the (partial) eclipse)

The device to attach a phone camera to the 5" telescope arrived in the post later in the afternoon.  Oh well.  In any case, a well observed eclipse.