Note to Self, Cal Newport’s Minimal Notes System

My old-style slow notetaking process. Replaced now with Elipsa Annotations, which then move along with my thoughts into Org Roam Notes. Click to see bigger Cal Newport recently did a deep dive on his podcast, on a minimalist note taking system for various areas of your life. Video’s on Youtube, if you want to watch. It’s called A Productivity System To Remember Everything You Learn. It matches, what I’ve organically been doing all these years....

March 2, 2024 · Mario Jason Braganza

On Invisible Inequity and Entrenched Privilege (In Open Source and the World)

Quotes from Kuang and Gibson about inequity and privilege

February 23, 2024 · Mario Jason Braganza

When a Book Kicks You Up Your Backside

Go, work!

February 22, 2024 · Mario Jason Braganza

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, Carlo Cipolla

Short Booklet. Very Taleb–esque writing. Very entertaining. Tells us there are lots of stupid people, with a really precise definition of stupid; those folks that would cut their nose to spite their face, or like the book would say, stupid folks are they who would cause losses to other folks, even when they stand to gain nothing or possibly, ever incur losses! It reads like an erudite rant. But unlike Taleb, ends with no advice or suggestion....

January 22, 2024 · Mario Jason Braganza

Zettelkasten

Just a little note to mark the beginning of my Zettelkasten journey. While I’ve always had a commonplace book of sorts, all my life, and I’ve always taken tons of notes on books I pay attention to, I’ve never really been able to come up with a way of writing what I think syntopically. Or I can, but its like pulling teeth. Writing what I learnt in Antifragile, took months, and a lot of cursing through gritted teeth....

June 28, 2022 · Mario Jason Braganza

List of Books to Read Before You Die

Read and Be Merry, over on Tumblr, has this perfect list of books to read, before you die. It’s pretty short, so I’m cribbing it here in its entirety. Any book you want Don’t read books you don’t want to read That’s it Congratulations you did it! This shall be my advice to all folk interested in there next book, henceforth! P.S. Subscribe to my mailing list! Forward these posts and letters to your friends and get them to subscribe!...

October 2, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

This is Water

My idols have feet of clay, as usual. The book is one of those, do as I say, not as I do books. I learnt about his abusive behaviour about a month after reading the book. While I absolutely loved reading it, I cannot in good conscience suggest you buy it anymore. Hopefully the clip I linked to, should be enough, because what he did share in the talk, is worth emulating, even if he himself, didn’t....

August 31, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

The Science of Interstellar

This was so much fun! If I had teachers or mentors like Kip Thorne in my youth, I’d have never had such a crippling fear of mathematics or the hard sciences. I’d have never plagued by doubt and fear, that I was not smart enough or good enough. I have just one note to share. This is Kip as he closes the book … Every time I watch Interstellar and browse back through this book, I’m amazed at the enormous variety of science they contain....

August 30, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

Draft No. 4

Just finished John McPhee’s, Draft No. 4. I could pithily summarise it as … Practice a lot of things. Work at finding your thing. Practice you thing (lots! deeply! a fuckton.) Work within established rules. Bend the rules to fit your thing. Break the rules once you know your thing deeply! McPhee writes about the craft of writing. But the advice could apply broadly to any creative endeavour. This series of essays and lessons and backstory was also hugely confirming to me....

August 16, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

On the Difference Between Coding, Programming, Engineering, and Computer Science

My homepage lists my new career shift as “This is me, attempting to reinvent myself as a journeyman programmer. (aiming at craftsmanship)” I’ve never warmed to the term coder. For some reason, it never meshed with the way I thought about my new career and the work I wanted to do. And I couldn’t quite articulate just how I thought they were different. Today as I began reading The Secret Life of Programs though, I found author Jonathan E....

August 3, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza