Building Them Nodes
I have been building out my Second Brain more. First screen shot was from August 4th and he second is today.
August 4th’s graph
Today’s Graph. Such dense. Very node. Wow.
Wait What Was This Again?
Second Brains are ways to externalize and traverse our knowledge. I’m using Obsidian, an application that allows for easy linking between text notes. Think like Wikipedia. Note 1 links to note 2 though a note title link. Do that for lots of notes and you get a network of ideas.
What’ve I Been Doing?
The hardest thing has been recognizing when I should be writing something down.
Example:
Someone asks me to interpret a WCAG criterion for a bug fix. I look up the criterion, review the bug report, review the functionality, and read the design. What I HAD been doing was just answering that question over email, or design, or whatever.
NOW I write all that down as I go. I grab source links, references and text within the sources, my understanding of the question, and my final interpretation.
But Write It Down Where?
In Obsidian, I create a daily note that holds all my calendar holds, tasks, and general note section. I start writing things there. If the information gets “big” enough, I cut it out into its own note and leave a reference link to it from my daily note.
When writing those notes, I create notes for other concepts that I want to expand because, say, I have opinions/ideas on related concept that contributes to my understanding of the thing I’m writing notes about.
I’ve also been just… brain dumping into notes occasionally to build things up or grabbing old blog posts and dropping them into notes to then go pick apart into smaller notes.
Over time, these notes expand and the links get bigger and nodes get larger where more things reference them.
Here is an example from today:
http://blog.angrybunnyman.com/Example-Note
Anatomy of the Note
At the top sandwiched between ’— is YAML markup. This is just metadata I add to extend functionality in Obsidian.
MOC - this is a link to my “map on concept” note. MOCs are intended to be a note that aggregates kinda my understanding of A Thing. Here, this note is contributing to my understanding of “accessibility” more broadly.
Then the body of the text. This note was about making “real” buttons in HTML instead of ’s’ and the associated benefits plus some other history.
Everything in ‘[[]]’ is another note related to this one.
And them ending with references, ’natch.
So… What?
The long-term goal is to be able to pull insights from the linkages. So I wonder“how does Interface Design relate to screen reader DOM construction” and start with my note(s) on interface design and trace links from that into my DOM notes. The pathway there may result in some novel ideas.
Orrrr… you get blog posts like this because I find this interesting and I know many of you find this interesting too.
The graph images are really just because they’re neat to see.
Published on September 12, 2021 – Me