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List of newbie questions regarding software
Paul Keith:
Yeah, tomos. I just recently tried the program myself. Ironically after having finally reached that portion of the text that you quoted in the notetaking thread.
I don't know if it's just me not knowing how to use Excel but I really tried to like the program but found it too confusing to use.
The addition of the excel three pane pretty much meant that I had to scroll down each row in order to find an item or sacrifice my notepad size by dragging it down. Even then, I feel like I'm back to why I hated three pane rss readers.
P.S. Yeah, I know it can be made into a one screen click preview but when I do that, now I have all my headlines in views but no way to quickly move through the notes without closing one after another just to get back the excel view.
Paul Keith:
#1
The thing that makes this arrangement work for me is a very nice little library program from Norway called BookCAT. It's published by FNProgramvare. ( www.fnprg.com ) Complete documentation and a fully functional evaluation copy are available for download.
#2
About a year ago I bit the bullet and got my entire collection entered into BookCAT.
I was motivated to do so by two separate 'incidents'. The first was the discovery that several irreplaceable books I owned were missing. I vaguely remembered loaning some of them out, but I couldn't even begin to recall to whom or when. (I'm suffering from the early stages of an affliction called AGE.) The other 'incident' was my discovering that I had duplicate copies of a dozen or so fairly expensive books (SAMS and O'Reilly titles!). Apparently, I bought, forgot I owned, and then re-bought some books! Not the most cost effective way to do things.
Getting the books entered took about two weeks of parttime effort with me crawing from place to place with my laptop and a cup of coffee when I had nothing better to do. It wasn't as big a chore as it could have been because the program supports online information lookups using the ISBN number. Pop in the ISBN and you can download all the publisher details into your database.
Using a database for a book collection is liberating. Retrieval is the critical issue - not storage. Once you have a reliable reference and location tool, the whole issue of physical storage and organization becomes almost moot.
Now it no longer matters where I put a book - or who I loaned it to. I can even keep my lesser used titles in numbered boxes up in the attic. And they don't even need to be organized or categorized before they get put away. Titles can be shelved, stored, and stashed at will. I can find any title quite quickly as long as I keep its current location updated in the database.
One interesting feature: BookCAT uses MS Access as its database. The documentation that comes with the program gives full details on the database table structure. This allows for extensive customization of the application should you have sufficient expertise using Access.
A fine program. Not free, but at $40 US it's very reasonable. Highly recommended.
--- End quote ---
This post highlights how far we’ve all strayed from the ocean and the difficulty of separating a topic like this because of the risk of never encountering these kinds of tales and experiences and yet at the same time, the necessity, of doing so because of the risk of lesser people willing to comment and share these kinds of experiences.
It’s very interesting because I’ve never linked my search for these programs to a single inspiration or source before until I read what you said here and now that I think about it, if I ever even had a library the size of a medieval monastery as opposed to these small plastic storage boxes, I too would probably be using a catalog program and maybe not even pay much attention to these database/outliner/highlighter programs that I’m so adamant on discovering. Not that I didn’t know this after your reply on Zotero but I had an “aahhh....” moment when half-way through reading your post, I was about to write something along the lines of “I could never get into these kind of programs” only to stop myself after reading through your explanation and I finally gained this epiphany, this realization that the reason I couldn’t get into cataloging but instead am so attached to a database sort of program is because I was never attached to my books...but I was attracted by the information it contained inside.
It doesn’t sound shocking when I write it but inside my head, I really had to spend some time contemplating this...”truth” because I’ve always love stories, I like reading lots of texts and I’m like a kid in a candy store around anything that has lots of books, be it a bookstore or a library...and yet...deep down, I was never really that guy who reads enough to be a bookworm, never been that one who you can hand me a large text of book and had no trouble repicking and rereading it all again. I was never all that.
In fact, I dream of one day being able to read all my books and be able to participate in Book Crossing and just forget about all of them and I think having a small storage had that effect on me. What really attracted me to this search wasn’t really just outlining information, what really attracted me to these programs was because I wanted to redefine the library because I never got one and I never ever wanted one even though before this, I was jealous and believed that I wanted to have one.
What I wanted wasn’t just a library, I wanted a journal...but I don’t want that either because it feels like I’m cataloging my life. No, what I wanted was something that is a cross but...not really either because my main interest in wanting to extract something from highlights and it being my main motivation for reading through on something, almost being an obsession that have crippled me from reading a real book after I’ve gotten used to doing this with webpages using Diigo screams like I wanted something more along the lines of a Casual Researcher Tools but also not that, because it’s oxymoronic to think that there’s such a thing as a Casual Researcher and that it is not just a play on the words, Poor Researcher so the truth is, I still don’t know but now it feels like I know more than before I read your post so...thank you.
40hz:
I was taking a philosophy course as part of my University Core requirement when the whole topic of knowledge, learning, and gnosis came up. It made for an interesting week's worth of finely honed discussion.
But what was even more valuable came at the end of the week when some of the class took Prof. Blakely up on his offer to "continue this discussion over over some stuffed quahogs and a pint (more like eight actually) of Guinness Stout."
In the course of a long and very pleasant evening, the Good Professor gently engaged us in a dialog about what we aspired to in the course of our lives. I had a bit more of a problem clarifying what I was trying to accomplish than most of the others.
The closest I could get was saying I wanted to "grasp the larger pattern" of things.
"Ahhh," Professor Blakely said, and laughed. "So you aspire to omniscience, do you?"
***
Yeah. That sounds about right. I do.
FWIW: There was a great essay about databases in the (long defunct) Whole Earth Software Catalog that made an interesting observation: Databases will save you or they'll bury you. I don't think truer words were ever spoken. Because deep down inside, many of us know that all these tools (databases, outliners, thinker-toys, etc.) are some of the most addictive drugs ever created.
And much like chemical drugs, they can keep creative people from doing anything other than enjoying the 'fix' they provide. They make you think you're being creative, when many times all you're doing is making superfluous preparations to start creating. Or learning...
I love all these neat tools. I just have to be careful to keep them in perspective.
Grorgy:
I love all these neat tools. I just have to be careful to keep them in perspective.
-40hz (September 17, 2008, 05:55 PM)
--- End quote ---
This is so true 40hz and you can find comments about that sort of thing on almost any of the productivity sites/blogs and no doubt on the writing sites. When it all boils down, if you want to write or be productive or whatever it is, then the tool you use is probably the least important thing (though its also perhaps the most fun to try and find, and to put off what it is you are really trying to accomplish)
Photography is another good example, people have been making excellent images long before photoshop turned up, long before computers turned up, a good photographer will take a good photograph with any old camera, they will maybe make a better one with a fancy modern camera, but its their creativity and knowledge of what makes a photo good not the tools they use to do it.
Paul Keith:
I agree with both of you though I'm not sure if what 40hz posted was a koan or a real life recent incident. :D
I don't think a life record are in the same category as creativity and productivity though. Both of those things can be channeled at a whim with no previous experience but a record...that's something that becomes an inconvenience the farther it strays from a methodology the person absorbing the information reacts well to.
Yes, anyone can grab a journal and read it but at what point does it become just another book that the person could have read? and if it becomes just another book, then at what point does the reader know that they could be spending better time reading something else and not miss a crucial information at the end? and at what point does every book stop being a journal of the person writing it? and if this is the case, then at what point does a journal become something that buries it's reader rather than prepare him for the present?
To what end must every man need to sacrifice himself before he learns from the past and not be held back by the lack of concrete chainlinks between the paradigm shifts that have occurred in his culture, in his society and in his environment?
The obsession of productivity and creativity...I think every person can begin without ever reading a book on it. They may even excel and discover something new because of it.
A link to the past though... A link to the present though...
How far can you go without obsession to unearth the heart of those who've passed when even something as simple an event as the state before "The September that Never Ended" could not be gathered without occupying one's time entirely at a single Google page full of quality links?
I ask you dear sage; would you learn just as good about how forums work and how bloggers differ if you knew less software like the man who created the line by painting downwards on the walls of a cave?
I ask you again, how many of you are here and now because you were forced by circumstances and how many of you are here because you are who you are: a person who learned where your lesser brethren failed?
No, my dear Professor. Omniscience is the stuff of youth and the grail of all who've achieved greatness.
"I shall not wait for the dice roll to turn me into a Demi-God. Born from a creature of greatness by which whom shall leave grains of knowledge for me to gather."
No, my dear Professor. Omniscience is unreachable to those who are suffering through failure but hoping that one day we would get amnesia and be able to pass on our life to our identity without damning the rest of our lives through translation. However, the desire to tell our failures to our future clones who are about to fail...those are within our grasps and yes, Professor, just as we all eventually die, we all would eventually fail. It's just a matter of when we start thinking that and when we are able to capably pass on our future tales to those of us in the future so that they may add their failures to their future selves that counts. May they one day be twice the failure that we have become.
P.S. Sorry for the melodramatic post but the thread went into such a twist that I couldn't resist.
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