One secret here is to have a good UX for adding metadata. For example, in obsidian a search window pops up when you write `#[[`. Or when you type `#` to create a tag, a window with all preexisting tags shows up.

However, lately I've been working on a new side project in order to additionally automatically record/collect what I am doing on digital devices. Basically I am building a "personal" spyware/data collection software suite. Kind of in the same realm as ms recall but more focused on security/privacy with sensible cryptographic defaults where needed.

Although usually a bottom-up approach using automatically updating `Map of Content` notes (Bases) work well for me for finding content.

https://www.stavros.io/posts/i-made-a-voice-note-taker/

I usually forget what steps I've taken, but using the recorder above, I can dictate short clips of the steps. An LLM assistant I've built takes the clips and adds them to my Joplin, which then gets published:

https://notes.stavros.io/

It's been extremely helpful for keeping logs.

For example, Syncthing on Debian notes [1] or using Spleeter AI to remove background sound from a long audio track [2]. This is why I switched back from static site to a Wordpress-like site [3], so that I can quickly publish notes from my phone.

[1]: https://huijzer.xyz/posts/149/setup-a-syncthing-service-on-d...

[2]: https://huijzer.xyz/posts/146/installing-and-running-spleete...

[3]: https://github.com/rikhuijzer/fx

https://shapeokoenthusiasts.gitbook.io/shapeoko-cnc-a-to-z/

which re-worked the essentials from that wiki, discarded the chaff, and has become a reference which a number of projects have re-purposed. I did resurrect the notes aspect on the /r/shapeoko wiki though.

Similarly, when I wanted to set up the ultimate commuter/long-haul mountain bike, I put down all the gear I learned about at:

http://old.reddit.com/r/bicyclegear/wiki

(probably out-of-date now, but I found the notes useful)

Unfortunately, I've lost access to the two e-mail archives from when I worked as a graphic designer/typographer --- really should have forwarded any notable e-mails (which I would have wanted to refer to later) to myself --- at least one of them wound up being printed out by a startup composition house and distributed to new employees.... maybe one of these days I'll finish the type composition book I was asked to write by an editor at a major publishing house.

For now, I've been working on:

https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d and https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview

They have a bookmarklet that sits on my bookmarks toolbar and if I like a page/tweet/video etc I just hit the "Add pin", enter some tags and hit enter.

This works so well that I went through and bookmarked and tagged all of my LinkedIn connections as well (inspired by a post from Derek Sivers [1]).

People are generally amazed at how quickly I can go from talking about a subject to "oh, I have this article you would love" to "here it is!"

0 - https://pinboard.in

1 - https://sive.rs/dbt

Tried Evernote and tagging and so on and it turns out cataloging stuff is hard, and the lazy recourse is to over-tag, and then I end up doing a brute force search.

Rather than just coalescing to markdown files, the memory-zet plugin looks for actionable durable information and files it inside the existing zettelkasten system with embeddings - a quick no-LLM step (well 300m parameter query embed, it’s fast) is run against incoming chats or as a tool - this returns cards (zettels).

Zettels are somewhat unique in that the original methodology included a post-writing categorization and linking step - I have the system doing this as well. Result - cards can give you a (possibly cyclic) directed graph of connectivity. I built it for ‘centaur’ mode, so I can edit, link, unlink, move, etc through a nice little web interface.

The auto links are not the same quality I would make. But they are genuinely useful; upshot is for anything incoming, the LLM can see information directly about the query (if we have it), stuff that relates whether or not it embeds similarly, and can follow up links if they look promising with a fast tool call.

I made this memory system my daily driver yesterday; so far it is a significant improvement over the core memory extension (write to markdown files, don’t worry about compaction bro, it will be fine)!

It’s already building out people and organizational card bases for things that come in via email and whatsapp - this is a dream, basically. I think it will scale over time - but it’s at least scaling nicely over a few days of work right now.

Some 80,000+ files in a directory represents an awesome database of knowledge. "$ ls inux" to find anything Linux-related, etc.

One of these days I'll get around to setting up some ML tool that will tell me all the things I didn't already osmose from the archive .. and maybe long after I'm gone, in some hole in a wall of some grimy back alley somewhere, there'll be a ML version of me embedded in a brick, ready to have the conversation well into the future ..

Whenever I do something and realize I might need it in the future, I just store it on corresponding projects.

Seems to be serving well to me for some time.

Anything else is a bandaid.

Check for yourself: mmap does not occur in the C standard document: https://www.dii.uchile.cl/~daespino/files/Iso_C_1999_definit...

I also try to add any other commands to it as they come up. So much easier to run 'make install' whenever I pull a project than have to remember the commands.

Even if I can't always add the process I will use a bunch of echo's to bring me through the steps.

1. https://niallbunting.com/commake/

I haven't found a way to automate this import of my data, but most of the magic is in the history not in the present. It really is incredible. I'll ask the claw to find what I said about the SFPD cruiser I once saw in the TL and boom! It's there! A mild annoyance with using my Mediawiki-based blog (which I chose because it has good support for allowing users to edit it) is that authoring is still a lot of work and I keep forgetting Draft namespace articles.

Am I the only one who gets physically ill listening to themselves speak? =)