

Get more out of your startup reading - darky83
http://swombat.com/2011/1/11/get-more-out-of-your-startup-reading

======
revorad
I've been taking notes too. I can't publish most of them because I use note-
taking as a way of heavily criticising articles, which contain mostly fluff or
wrong conclusions. It helps me think thoughts which, if I shared with others,
would almost definitely offend them.

It's hard to criticise people's work seriously without hurting their egos.

So, I hope to turn it into a comic one day.

------
davidw
I had hoped that people would do things like that (summaries, discussions) on
SqueezedBooks.com but now I've sold it (although I retain some interest in it)
and am not sure where it's going to go right now.

~~~
revorad
That looks like a great site with lots of good content. Does it bring in much
revenue?

~~~
davidw
Nope.

~~~
revorad
How did you manage to sell it then? Much traffic?

~~~
davidw
Yeah, it gets a reasonable amount of traffic, and ranks fairly well on Google
for summaries of some of the books. I was never able to do a good job of
translating that into active participants, advertising dollars, or Amazon
referral fees either. Part of the reason I sold it and retained some interest
in it is to see if someone else could do a better job.

~~~
revorad
I've noticed a few interesting book sites recently -

<http://7bks.com>

<http://www.hn-books.com/>

<http://anynewbooks.com/>

<http://bookflavor.com>

Maybe you could partner up with one of them?

~~~
acangiano
I'm open to suggestions and partnerships (for AnyNewBooks.com).

------
inovica
I take notes, but mainly from the books I read. I did see a site that gave a
condensed version of business books, but I can't seem to find it off-hand.
What I think would be useful would be a site like Read Later, but where you
could annotate and others could find your notes prior to reading the full
article. Personally I never read a HN article before I read the notes to see
whether its worth reading!

~~~
revorad
Is this the site you can't find? <http://sivers.org/book>

~~~
inovica
Wow, it's not but that's a great find. Thank you!

------
nbashaw
Taking notes definitely helps. The problem is I always forget to revisit them.
That's exactly why me and some friends built thoughtback.com. It's a micro-
journaling tool with mac and web apps that automatically re-exposes you to
your thoughts.

PS - I'm really not sure if it's appropriate to post a link to a service
that's relevant to the article in the comments if I made it. Should I not do
this again?

------
LeoW
Brilliant post there. Jotting down what you have learnt is not only important
for others, but also for you. Writing stuff down means putting your thoughts
to order, means better view on your product or company.

~~~
LeoW
it least this is the case for what I am working on ;)

------
happywolf
In my opinion, the most difficult part of this kind of endeavor is to
continuously update the site with insightful summaries of the articles/books.

------
HilbertSpace
He does describe an important problem, but, gee, I thought that everyone on
Hacker News long since had a good solution if only as a special case of how
they keep track of information more generally! :)!

But, not for the first time, apparently I was wrong!

So, here's my solution to the problem described in the blog, my 'Personal
Information Management 101 for Dummies'. I describe my solution in four parts
below:

(1) Text

I like text, in English.

There is a fundamental reason: So far there is essentially only one way to
communicate information, and that is text, e.g., English, hopefully in
complete sentences in well organized paragraphs. Sorry, guys, seriously, in
English, that's the only way that works. Math? Actually it is not an exception
(I omit details on just why). Mathematical physics? Engineering? Computer
science? The same.

So, text is necessary.

Nicely enough, simple text is also sufficient (unless are writing math in
which case it's also very nice to have Knuth's TeX).

So, text is necessary and sufficient for communicating all information except
for math where also need, say, TeX.

Graphs? Tables? Pictures? Those are often helpful, nearly always not crucial
to the information, and can never replace text. Computer language code?
Similar. And, yes, computer people, code can never replace text in complete
English sentences.

So, fantastic news: Now one of the things current computing is the very best
at is handling simple text. FANTASTIC. So, I exploit that fantastic news.

So, while I have a long list of three letter file extensions on my computer's
hard disk, I make sure, usually with minimal effort, that nearly all the
'information' is in just simple text.

By analogy, simple text solves the Tower of Bable problem of many different
sources of information; even if keep a copy of the original, just convert it
all to simple text.

(2) Text Editor

Okay, in a kitchen, two of the very best tools are a quite sharp French chef's
knife and a maple cutting board.

Well, in close analogy, in handling text, the best tool is a good text editor.
I use KEdit on Windows XP, and before converting to Windows used KEdit also on
OS/2 and MS/DOS. Before that I used the very similar XEDIT on VM/CMS. KEdit is
a good text editor.

KEdit is by a wide margin my most heavily used tool in computing.

While KEdit is a good (excellent?) text editor, in part its glory is its macro
language, basically M. Cowlishaw's elegant Rexx. So, in a cooking analogy, I
can have a macro for slicing carrots -- given a bunch of carrots, type the
name of the carrot macro, and, presto, washed, peeled, sliced carrots.

For spell checking, I use Aspell that comes with at least one TeX
distribution. Aspell is terrific. Since, really, I want just one personal
'addendum' dictionary, I use Aspell for as much as possible of my spelling
corrections.

Related is that I use ObjectRexx as a text window scripting language, and,
yes, it can drive KEdit.

So, I use KEdit for as much as possible of my typing, for forum posts such as
this one, e-mail I send, software for KEdit macros, scripts, Visual Basic
.NET, C, Fortran, T-SQL, HTML via ASP.MET, input to Knuth's TeX, own notes of
wide variety, etc.

One of the best single ways to get work organized, lacking anything else, is
just time and date. So I have little macros that insert time and date lines
wherever useful. In a programming language, the line is inserted as a comment
in that language.

In a text file, if a line has a tree name or a URL, then one keystroke tells
KEdit to 'do the right thing', usually 'open' that file. So, my programming
source code is awash in such 'links'.

Yes, just a few lines of the KEdit macro language can use old serial port COM1
to send to my FAX modem card an old AT code with a phone number. Since my land
line desk phone goes through that FAX modem card, one keystroke in KEdit dials
the phone number. Darned useful.

Once I wrote some simple POP3 e-mail software and used it for years. Then, if
I was editing a file in KEdit and that file had a line with an e-mail header
line, e.g.,

Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 01:01:38 -0500

then one keystroke in KEdit would display that e-mail message. Darned useful,
and I need to get back to something like that.

Yes, one reason simple text and KEdit work so well is that such text is easy
for both me and the macros I write.

(3) Taxonomic Hierarchy

As we know, going way back through MS/DOS and Unix to Multics, now
hierarchical file systems are a standard feature of computing.

So, I use the hierarchical file system to implement a 'taxonomic' hierarchy of
information in my work. Just with the hierarchy, I can find nearly anything I
have quickly.

In each file system directory (no, I avoid 'folders'), say, with name x, there
is a file x.DOC, yes, in plain text, not from Microsoft's program Word, that
indicates the purpose of the directory and documents the files in it.

For a file I downloaded, typically I have the original URL, its title, some of
its text, and some of my notes on its relevance to the purpose of the
directory.

This DOC file can also record some relevant cross references among files and
directories on my hard disks.

So, the top two nodes in my taxonomic hierarchy are PROJECTS and TOPICS. The
first is for work that is really just mine, and the second is for information
from others. Directory PROJECTS has 59 subdirectories, and TOPICS has 65. Yes,
I have some simple command line 'tree walking' scripts I like much better than
anything from Microsoft.

Yes, I use text windows and command lines heavily -- again, they are easy for
both me and the scripts I write.

(4) Directory Listing.

The scripting language ObjectRexx has a function SysFileTree that will give an
'array' with one array 'component' for each file or directory in a file system
subtree along with time and date last changed, length in bytes (modulo 2 __32,
for files), the usual file system 'attributes' such as system, hidden,
archived, read-only, and directory, and the fully qualified tree name.

I have a simple script that writes this 'array' to a file, typically in the
root directory of the file system subtree it describes, with one line for each
array 'component'.

The file is in 'fixed fields' and, thus, in KEdit is easily sorted on any of
the fields.

And, of course, KEdit has terrific means of 'selecting' lines from the file,
and it is easy to write macros, even for just one use, for much more in
'selecting' desired lines.

This file is often very useful for finding things and manipulating files and
directories, especially when further processed with macros or scripts.

(4) Facts

I also have a file, and, now, really a small 'system', for ready access to
'facts' or little points someone with a phenomenal memory would just keep in
their head.

The 'system' is dirt simple and works GREAT. It's shocking, and even
intriguing, how successful such a simple system can be.

Yes, the whole thing is used and maintained using KEdit and with a grand
total, please sit down for this, of two (2) macros particular to Facts.

The file is SMALL: It currently is just 812,965 bytes, 26,915 lines, 1,395
separate 'fact' entries, since

Friday, September 2nd, 2005.

That is, 1,958 days, for about

1,395 / 1,958 = 0.71

facts per day.

A typical fact entry is:

==========================

:Created at. 21:18:47 on Tuesday, January 11th, 2011.

:Keys. viral CloudSponge

CloudSponge is supposed to help viral growth.

With promo code TWIVC from Mark Suster, might get freebe for 3 months.

==========================

So, for the problem in the blog post, as I read Hacker News, etc., if I find
an article, blog post, fact, etc. that, as in the blog post, I believe might
be useful to me, then I put some relevant data on my disk. For an HTML file,
typically I will pick an appropriate directory in my taxonomic hierarchy, in a
text window use my tree walking scripts to get to the directory, use a KEdit
macro to pick a name for the file and put its tree name on the clipboard, have
my favorite Web browser get the tree name from the clipboard and save the file
as that tree name. Then I have another KEdit macro help me put an entry in the
DOC file for that directory describing the file.

So, to find things, a first approach, which usually works, is just to do some
tree walking in my taxonomic hierarchy.

If that fails, then using Microsoft's program FINDSTR (a weak version of a
good version of the standard Unix program GREP -- there is likely a good
version of GREP for Windows, and likely I should get one) is usually enough.

If I am really looking for 'information' on a topic, then, again, the
taxonomic hierarchy is a good approach, the DOC files in relevant directories
can be better, and my little system Facts can be still better.

Net, the problem in the blog post I believe I have solidly solved: I keep
stuff, my own and from the Internet, and can find the stuff either as specific
files or starting with just a topic.

As in a kitchen, a few, good, simple tools can be the best approach.

------
localhost3000
I forgot what the point was already.

