annodoom asks... - twitterosity

well, I sort of hate to admit it, but I've joined the twitterverse. Actually, technically I joined a year ago, and had two accounts. One account I set up to try using in conjunction with launchy and sites like rememberthemilk.com and gcal.com. I wasn't actually too keen on that after giving them a whirl, because it seemed easier to just write myself a note on one of the random pieces of paper lying on my desk.

My other account was set up to collect weird vocabulary words, especially those I could use for my etymology class. That was a better function for launchy for me at the time.

Now though I want to keep track of the mp3 albums I listen to -- because I'm deleting most of them after one listen, to try to get my collection under control. I've decided I have to really LOVE something to keep it (and really, most of those albums I already have in hard copy, so why are they duplicated, except that it's easier to call up a folder than to go find the CD in the rack in the other room). But I want a record of what I've already heard, for reference and nerditude. twiter seems a good solution for this. I do scrobble my songs with last.fm, but I think browsing back through a list of songs will be more difficult than a list of album titles. Sometimes I try to say a few words about what I've heard, but usually it all just turns into soundtrack for my online gaming, and the music sort of slips past me without making much impression. I'm sure that some of the music is just that forgettable too -- another reason to have a list -- what not to bother with again.

I've chosen one account as my main, and I actually do have it set up to post from my cell phone. I've enabled rtm and gcal again, and that's come in handy for putting some student appointments in my calendar and suchlike. If you are curious at all, or want to share your twitterness with me, you can find me @aemo

Thanks to a twitterer (@gtdguy I think), I found a cool mind mapping program called TheBrain. Apparently there are different templates you can download and install to it, and I swear I spent two hours last night being autobiographical with the autobiography template. You can do it in their online area too, but for something so personal, I'd rather have it on my own machine (generally a big fan of the cloud, though that's another post).

Tags: autobiography, music, thebrain, twitter

How was I feeling?: productive

Comments

smallerdemon

2009-09-04 10:11 pm (UTC)

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I tried The Brain in the past and found it... well, lacking. Part of it just boils down to an old issue of me using many computers of many types.

Of course, what you are doing with that Autobiography Template is simply creating a personal knowledge base. :)

I use Tiddlywiki for that for myself and restrict myself to 10 Life Categories which to tag entries. I have a difficult to explain but easy to understand once you see it cross-tagging system that lets me quickly see all entries with a particular tag. It isn't as fancy as The Brain,I admit, and you're talking about a guy here who LOVES that fancy schmancy floating bubbles and 3D worlds shit when it works the way he wants it to work, but when it came down to it, I didn't want a proprietary system holding my knowledge base so I choose Tiddlywiki and Dropbox instead.

annodoom

2009-09-05 05:04 am (UTC)

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I know for a fact that one of the things I like about the template is that it gives me something to work with, whereas the wiki is just one big blank slate, offering me no guidance, just sitting there being blank and mocking me. Plus, I found wiki-speak v difficult to understand.

I have a user-friendly, super-simplified (and thus not so customizable) prog called ZuluPad, which I've found good for keeping big piles of lists (books to read, ideas for lectures, etc).

More recently, I've started using LumiNotes for a series of lecture notes for one class, and it's a bit more true-wiki-like, without forcing me to learn when and how to use the darn brackets and who knows what else.

I know that the autobiographical business could be accomplished with a journaling book from the bookstore, or any number of other sources, but it happened to hit a chord with me last night.

smallerdemon

2009-09-05 05:09 am (UTC)

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By wikispeak do you mean the markup language used? It's pretty straightforward.

I know of Zulupad. I think that's a multi-platform app, but I'm not sure.

I had to try Tiddlywiki three time before it clicked (which is why I will given anything a try two times after failed for me the first time), but when it clicked it really clicked.

My work knowledge base in Tiddlywiki is scads larger than my personal one as it turns out, just out of daily use necessity. I think I am probably the ONLY person at work doing anything remotely as in depth as taking electronic notes in an indexed, tagged and searchable database.

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