June 2023 - Page 2 of 2 - Sam Harrelson

How To Remember Anything (Forever?)

Sam Harrelson on June 14, 2023

I highly recommend you give this a try…

I’ve long been a fan of reviewing the notecards that I take daily each night. Whether you’re running a company, teaching a subject, learning a subject, learning the guitar, or finding your way through life… you should be scribbling down notecards daily. Then review them at night. Then index and archive them repeatedly.

It’s a beautiful, easy (mostly) free system that will change you and help you change the world.

On Notes and Note-Taking Apps

Sam Harrelson on June 14, 2023

I’ve long been a fan of note-taking apps going back to my beloved Evernote in its early beta days of 2007 or so (I still have the t-shirt). I’ve used most every iOS and a slew of Android note-taking apps as well. All have the same promise that I’m looking to fulfill… a place to store things I come across that I don’t want to lose.

We need to forget. But we need to forget safely. That’s why we use note-taking apps.

I recently rediscovered my love of note cards and Zettelkasten while diving into the wonderful app Obsidian. I’ve long used notecards to process good thoughts, bad thoughts, interesting thoughts, and things I need to remember (or forget). I have a huge storage box of them. Somewhere along the way, I let that practice go in favor of more digital means of keeping notes.

But here we are in 2023 and I’m in love with notecards again.

This comment hit home…

Notes apps are where ideas go to die (2022) | Hacker News:

Writing is part of the creative process.

Writing it down helps to solidify an idea into the heap from the stack, maybe even take it from hot storage to cold storage. It allows you to jot it down while it is still fresh and offload it to focus on it later. This is super helpful in ideas, jokes, thought streams, todos, one pagers on some projects, etc. It does help you remember but also allows you to move to the next thing for now.

Writing down ideas is like a sketchbook, ideas/actions/iteration of thoughts both good and bad. It is important to write thoughts down though because how many times have you had a great idea and you are like “I’ll never forget this” and then a while later you are wondering what that was or you entirely move on because life moves fast.

Creatives, writers, comedians, developers, or just projects, are better when writing is involved in ideas to realization of those ideas.

Writing it down and notes is a form of brainstorming. Brainstorming allows ideas to be spontaneous and allows improvisation to get to better ideas. Even writing down bad ideas because somewhere in it is something good.

I use notes apps but more now just a repo (super easy with github.dev everywhere) and notes have easy history that way and you can freely add/remove without feeling like notes are lost. When I use notes apps or even Google Docs, yes they have history but it isn’t as fluid/quick as github for that. The important thing is find something that works for you that makes the barrier to writing it down almost non-existent. It needs to be very easy to write things down in between busy days and to capture these fleeting moments.

via drawkbox on Hacker News

It’s a Different Sort of Revolution

Sam Harrelson on June 14, 2023

I don’t think we’re prepared to understand how AI (especially more advanced generative AIs) will impact what we currently consider career jobs… especially for those with advanced degrees.

This represents a stark difference in past societal shifts when physical labor-focused employment and careers were impacted…

Biggest Losers of AI Boom Are Knowledge Workers, McKinsey Says – Bloomberg:

In that respect, it may be the opposite of significant technology upgrades of the past, which often came at the expense of occupations where workers had fewer educational qualifications and got paid less. Many were performing physical tasks — like the British textile workers who smashed up new cost-saving weaving machines, a movement that became known as the Luddites.

By contrast, the new shift “will challenge the attainment of multiyear degree credentials,” McKinsey said.

RIP, Cormac McCarthy

Sam Harrelson on June 13, 2023

One of the greats…

Daffodils by Ted Hughes

Sam Harrelson on June 9, 2023

Daffodils in Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters is one of those poems that always cuts me deeply. The rusted cross at the end. Whew.

I once had a beloved Siberian Huskey I found on a hot summer morning while attempting to jog before the sun got too high in Columbia, SC. It is hot on the pavement in Columbia in the summer. This poor pup met me with her bright blue eyes and looked through me asking me to take her somewhere.

How could I resist?

She lived with me for years and became a trusted partner even on her three legs after her cancer forced an amputation. I named her Sylvia after Sylvia Plath. I still think of her often.

Hughes’ Birthday Letters is a collection of thoughts on his wife Sylvia who took her life in 1963. It’s a jarring and penetrating and altogether emotional collection. Daffodils here is one of my favorites.

Daffodils by Ted Hughes – The American Scholar

My new favorite podcast

Sam Harrelson on June 8, 2023

How did I not know about this earlier?? Very excited to binge on Thin Edge of the Wedge this summer!

My Music Since 2005 … with Kids

Sam Harrelson on June 6, 2023

I’m very particular about my algorithms. Whether it’s Netflix or Disney Plus or (especially) my Spotify account… I don’t have much grace for those who mess with my beloved stats and recommendations.

Music was one of those things that changed my life as a young person and opened my eyes to a wider world of thought and expression. I would lovingly arrange my CD collection weekly by descending order of how much I liked albums or artists as a 14-year-old. That continued into my binders of CDs we all kept in our cars in the late 90s while I was in college.

Of course, Napster and the trading community around bands such as Phish and the Grateful Dead led me to many late-night sessions working on papers and burning CDs on my trusty desktop in the early ‘00s while a grad student at Yale.

Then came the iPod. I had the second generation (yay Firewire!) and had a revelation about the portability of 1,000 songs in my pocket (A THOUSAND!). That also meant that whatever remaining physical media I had quickly became digital and I began to pour money into iTunes. Pandora came into the picture around this time, and I still have a playlist there going back to 2003.

All along the way, I waited for the day I could keep track of what I listened to and track long-term trends beyond what the iTunes interface offered. Then Last.fm launched, and I was beyond excited to have that service finally (complete with API’s and an open RSS feed that I would even tie into a Twitter bot that tweeted out what I was listening to in my house… sadly that broke in 2015). When Spotify finally arrived in the USA from Europe, I jumped on the bandwagon immediately and hooked it up to my Last.fm profile. And so, I’ve had a music catalog of what I’ve been listening to since August 2005.

Way back in 2012, I made a post about this as well. However, the Google Home and Apple HomePods were still a few years off, and my algorithms were protected. I’ve been good about keeping accounts separate and all of our children have their own Disney Plus, Netflix, and especially Spotify profiles.

However, in a moment of weakness, I connected my Spotify account to the Google Home profile that works for the device in our 4-year-old’s bedroom. BECAUSE SHE WANTED TO LISTEN TO PEPPA PIG STORIES. You can glimpse the carnage wrought on my once pristine and full of indie jangle pop Last.fm page documenting my personal music history. After just a week of torment, I now see this in my once-beloved Daily Mix.

And what is this madness on my Spotify dashboard… Grizzley and the Kids?? THE LEGO MOVIE 2 (ok, the movie was good and the ending made me cry)??

I thought about spending a few hours going through my Spotify and Last.fm profile and deleting all the 2,130 plays of Peppa Pig and associated music befouling my algorithm.

But then I stopped. And I laughed. And then I smiled. The story of my 4-year-old and our relationship is also being told here. I’ll never get back this time with her and her resolute love of Peppa Pig Stories or whatever Grizzley and the Kids is. I’ll always have this record of the seven days we got to share something very important to me and hopefully one day to her.

Being a parent means giving so much of yourself in completely unexpected ways. We know that we will have to give our young ones time, money, attention, lessons, sleep, etc. We don’t ever imagine something like a Spotify algorithm or list of songs that seemingly meant so much over the last 20 years could be impacted by a child or given over to them for a week.

But they are, and that’s amazing.

In the giving and sharing of ourselves as parents, we find the real soundtrack of our life and how our selfish wishes or want of specific songs to be played do not always determine that soundtrack.

So thank you to my 4-year-old for the reality check and the lesson she has given me with her songs. And for sharing those with me on my algorithm. Her playlist is amazing. I can’t wait to see how the soundtrack of her life develops and to know I will carry a little snippet of it here.

But rest assured… I changed her Google Home device’s default music service option to Apple Music since I don’t care about that algorithm. She can totally take Apple Music 🙂

Productive Week?

Sam Harrelson on June 5, 2023

Weird that I’ve gotten so much done the last few days since it’s technically “summer” for us teachers. But I find that keeping busy with consulting work, aquarium building, and taking notes on what I’m reading (to make myself a better person and teacher!) helps me keep the “I miss my students” blues at bay!