TIL: 4,500 4 x 6″ index cards weigh 18.7 pounds. 🗃️🏋🏼 | Continue reading
I’ve just run across what must be one of the largest and most impressive currently manufactured card index filing cabinets on the planet: FireKing Card, Check & Note File Cabinet, 6 Drawers (6-2552-C) FireKing International manufactures a 1-hour fire protection filing cabinet wit … | Continue reading
🗃️ 🍸🥃 I have a section in my card index for that functionality: | Continue reading
Card Index Expenses 2023 Index card storage (boxes): $404.59 Index cards (3,650 cards) $87.56 Tabbed dividers/accessories $73.05 Total: $565.20 | Continue reading
In the documentary Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only (Netflix, 2023) while preparing for a portion of their tour, Kevin Hart admires a portion of Chris Rock’s stand up comedy method and calls it “a science”. Chris Rock writes headlines for his jokes on slips of paper and t … | Continue reading
Transcription: I’m slowly coming to realize that handwriting or typecasting to my website means that I am left with a permanent, physical copy of my post which I can archive into a physical card file. I can file them by date to create a version of a diary, and/or I can file them … | Continue reading
This looks like a great weekend coming up. Can’t wait to see everyone in person. | Continue reading
Amidst my seemingly ever-growing collection of index card boxes and trays, I’ve been contemplating getting something that would store cards in a vertical orientation rather than the traditional horizontal. As I’ve been watching the market over the past couple of years, nothing ha … | Continue reading
I’m tending to lean more toward telling students to rely more directly on something like Cornell notes while they’re in classes learning the basics of an area. Too many students considering starting a Luhmann-artig zettelkasten think that they ought to write down everything, atom … | Continue reading
I’ve had an oddly large number of emails over the past few months asking me for advice about what sorts of index card cases and carrying options I use on a daily basis. Rather than tip out my zettelkasten in fits and spurts on the topic, I thought I’d pour out all those ideas ou … | Continue reading
There’s something incredibly important to learn in studying two very similar photographs of Mortimer J. Adler from the middle of the last century. I’ll present them here for reference: Adler was a proponent of educational reforms in the form of building on John Erskine’s Great Bo … | Continue reading
Slipped in between paragraphs about being worried that her family’s hiding place will be discovered by a new building owner and worrying about the fairness of rationing butter, Anne Frank mentions being gifted a zettelkasten to track her reading: Father emptied a card file for Ma … | Continue reading
For those who have a significant paper-based zettelkasten practice, have you considered commissioning custom made cards? There are a variety of stationers who do custom work and one could also purchase directly from Chinese manufacturers to get costs down by buying in bulk. Ryan … | Continue reading
Robert Hutchins, former dean of Yale Law School (1927–1929), president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago, closes his preface to his grand project with Mortimer J. Adler by giving pride of place to Adler’s Syntopicon. It touches on the unreasonabl … | Continue reading
Merchants and traders have a waste book (Sudelbuch, Klitterbuch in German I believe) in which they enter daily everything they purchase and sell, messily, without order. From this, it is transferred to their journal, where everything appears more systematic, and finally to a ledg … | Continue reading
In a quest to expand on my analog office practices, last Saturday, I drove out to Rancho Cucamonga to purchase a spectacular midcentury Gaylord Bros., Inc. modular library card catalog. I spent parts of the week making some minor tweaks (gluing some broken wood rails) and cleanin … | Continue reading
As card catalogs lost their functionality in libraries and were de-acquisitioned there was a wave of nostalgia which caused people to purchase them, often in auctions, at higher than expected prices. Once they had them, most of these purchasers realized that they didn’t have func … | Continue reading
Many may recall that I’ve been refinishing vintage mid-century furniture for over a decade now. I’ve also been more cognizant of converting my commonplace book practice into a more Luhmann-artig zettelkasten one. While doing this, I’ve had a hard target search for available card … | Continue reading
I’m just wrapping up a year of maintaining my bullet journal practice using index cards instead of the more popular notebook form factor. It’s heavily inspired by the century+ old Memindex method. AMA | Continue reading
A Sixth Grade Vocabulary Notebook The sixth grade language arts class at the school in Altadena, CA, which my daughter attends, has a weekly set of vocabulary exercises which they keep in a simple composition notebook. Each week the teacher picks two vocabulary words (eg: passage … | Continue reading
I’ve heard many people mention their issues with writing in new notebooks or coming up with ideas for what to put in their ever-growing collections of multiple brand new notebooks. Some feel like they’re just notebook collectors who appreciate the look and feel of a new notebook, … | Continue reading
I’ve been watching a growing number of teachers, professors, and researchers who have been transferring their personal note taking, zettelkasten, or personal knowledge management practices into the classroom for students from 6th or 7th grade up into college/university level. As … | Continue reading
Over the weekend I had the good fortune to hear about a little stationery shop 10 minutes from my house. Baum-kuchen is a spectacular little space hiding over on Lincoln in Altadena with a warm, wabi-sabi (わびさび) charm. The business began in 2010, but opened up their physical loca … | Continue reading
I am wholly unsurprised that Harold Innis (1894-1952) maintained a card index (zettelkasten) through his research life, but I am pleased to have found that his literary estate has done some work on it and published it as The Idea File of Harold Adams Innis (University of Toronto … | Continue reading
I saw a sign on April 2nd next to a cash register at local mom and pop restaurant El Matador in Pasadena, CA that read, “$0.75 per (credit) card transaction”. It reminded me of the growing number of stores, vendors, and service providers that are passing credit and debit card tra … | Continue reading
Made some good progress on furniture refinishing projects today. The weather has finally warmed up a bit for improved painting and drying times. Day Four on the Shaw-Walker Filing Cabinet Rust mitigation, sanded, cleaned, and primed all four drawers, primarily the front faces and … | Continue reading
I recently watched the documentary Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory (Wechsler, 2016) via Kanopy (for free using my local library’s gateway) and thought that others here interested in the ideas of memory in culture, history, and art history may appreciate it. While a broad bi … | Continue reading
In case some haven’t been watching, I’ll mention that Simon Winchester’s new book Knowing What We Know on knowledge to transmission was published by Harper on April 25th in North America. For zettelkasten fans, you’ll note that it has some familiar references and suggested readin … | Continue reading
I’ve bought (yet another) card index on April 22nd. This must mean that I’m officially a collector, but if I keep this up I may have to start a museum soon. This model is a Remington Rand Library Bureau Division 10 5/8″ x 5 5/8″ x 2″ dovetailed wooden box with steel follower and … | Continue reading
Back on April 7th on a visit to the Kinokuniya bookstore/Maido stationery shop in the Santa Anita Mall, I picked up an A6 size horizontal Flatty Works case #5460 (forest green, H4.8×W6.8×D1.4in) made by King Jim. It was listed at US$20.50+tax. The case is also available in mustar … | Continue reading
Childhood Typewriters I’ve had a hollow space in my chest where a typewriter wanted to be. I’d had a few inexpensive plastic ones in my childhood before having a really spectacular Smith-Corona, but I thought that through many moves it had been long lost. Until, that is, I visite … | Continue reading
I’ve been watching the secondary market for used card indexes for a while and finally caved and purchased a vintage wooden desk top Shaw-Walker 11 inch card index for 3 x 5″ index cards. It was dusty and dirty and in reasonably good shape, but with some cleaning and some wood pol … | Continue reading
In response to a post last week, Stephen Downes reminded me that Ludwig Wittgenstein had a zettelkasten practice. In particular there is a translated and published book Zettel from 1967 which contains 717 zettels from Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, or works left behind following his de … | Continue reading
The idea of having and maintaining a Zettelkasten has become increasingly popular since the »Zettelkästen. Maschinen der Phantasie« exhibition at Marbach in March 2013 and the appearance of the website zettelkasten.de in late 2013 and has grown significantly with the Cambrian exp … | Continue reading
Wilson Memindex Co., Rochester, NY It was fascinating to run across the Memindex, a productivity tool from the Wilson Memindex Co., advertised in a December 1906 issue of System: The Magazine of Business. Memindex seems to be an obvious portmanteau of the words memory and index. … | Continue reading
I’ve seen several places in the note taking or zettelkasten communities the general advice that one should not include quotes in or amongst their notes. The general source of this “rule” seems to stem from Sonke Ahrens’ book Smart Notes. However, suggesting that Ahrens has a “rul … | Continue reading
Yesterday I spent several more hours on the Shaw-Walker. I finished removing as much of the rust as I could and did the final rounds of sanding with the 60 grit and 100 grit sandpaper. I vacuumed away a ton of dust and then gave it a good washing down and did a final sponging … C … | Continue reading
On February 7th, I picked up a Shaw-Walker 4 drawer filing cabinet that someone had decided to leave for scrap. Despite some serious rust and a few physical holes on the bottom, most of the cabinet is in reasonable shape and functional. The locking mechanism is still mostly in pl … | Continue reading
Modern cargo cults can be seen in many technology and productivity spaces where people are pulled in by exaggerated (or sometimes even real claims) of productivity or the general “magic” of a technology or method. An example is Niklas Luhmann’s use of his zettelkasten which has c … | Continue reading
@Drdonnayates@archaeo.social @electricarchaeo@scholar.social Shawn's admonition to keep things simple is valuable. I'm hoping to go through his excellent looking class materials shortly. I rely heavily on Hypothes.is for digital annotation and transport it all into Obsidian using … | Continue reading
@ctietze @romainlarue@piaille.fr Pourquoi ne pas utiliser la méthode des fiches de Roland Barthes? 😁 #FichierBoîte https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%27fichier+bo%C3%AEte%27 | Continue reading
Niklas Luhmann’s Jokerzettel 9/8j Many have asked about the meaning of Niklas Luhmann’s so-called jokerzettel over the past several years. 9/8j Im Zettelkasten ist ein Zettel, der das Argument enthält, das die Behauptungen auf allen anderen Zetteln widerlegt. Aber dieser Zettel v … | Continue reading