Category: Learning

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Yesterday Martijn Aslander demonstrated the personal information tools he recently created. I came away inspired. Perhaps not by the tools as such, and more because of the pathways of thinking it opened. And because everything was so blazingly fast. All vibe-coded, as he has no coding skills himself.
I can see how the way his brain works is aided by the structure and availability of information his personal toolbox provides him. However, I myself would be more interested in shaping a personal tool like this towards being able to facilitate me in my processes and habits, as well as let me work towards actual outputs.

The Digitale Fitheid (Dutch language platform) community (Digital Fitness, the English language platform) has a monthly face-to-face meet-up in Utrecht, and yesterday was this year’s last. In the morning E had attended a session by Frank Meeuwsen on how to use Claude Code to quickly build something from scratch. In the evening I joined Martijn’s session on what he is calling his ‘Theta OS‘.

Some observations.

  • Martijn’s Theta is mostly a dashboard on local information. It shows him lots of different pieces of information at a glance. Each of these things, hotel bookings, books, payments, tasks, quantified self measurements and more, can live and be accessed in their own little apps and silos, but he uses the dashboard to combine them in context. At the outset he said that having his own established ontology (in the information sense, not the philosophical) was a prerequisite. That sounds very true, as the purpose here is having an extremely personal tool. The value is in combining various information sources on purely personal criteria on the fly.
  • His tool stack is sqlite (a lightweight database, installed by default on my Mac), with node.js (to run javascript), and regular html and css for the front-end using the local webserver on his laptop. I didn’t have node.js on my Mac, installed it now to be able to try some things.
  • He is not a coder, so everything is vibe coded with Claude Code. And while maintaining that makes him able to quickly create things, he spent some 500 hours in Claude Code in the past months. Makes me wonder what he could have done in those 500 hours if he hadn’t used it. I do recognise that given his nature, a organised path of exploration and learning would not have been feasible, though might well have resulted in a similar proof of concept after 500 hours.
  • Because of this he wasn’t really able to conceptually discuss the results other than what it does on the front-end and what it means to him. When asked about the architecture of the tool he therefore asked Claude Code to whip up a description.
  • In working with Claude Code he did not feed it his personal information, but abstracted structures. E.g. to incorporate a CSV with personal information he would provide the structure and a bit of dummy data to get a parser or importer and change the database structures. Then use the importer for the actual data outside of Claude.
  • To Martijn Theta is for surfacing and combining little pieces of data and information. He also uses markdown notes a lot (with Obsidian as viewer), but Theta keeps all the small pieces out of his notes. Only when he combines things into something more informational he brings it into his markdown notes. I find this distinction makes sense, as I am usually adverse to ‘make Obsidian do everything for me’ type of efforts. I use several tools that work on my Obsidian notes but do not attempt to be part of Obsidian. Largely absent yesterday was the other way around in the demo / discussion: getting small bits out of Obsidian into his dashboard.
  • The entire thing as it is now is a tool that clearly and visibly had an evolutionary path, as opposed to a planned-for structure and design. This appeals to me a lot. It is the same with my own personal tools and system of notes. Others sometimes remark on how it would impossible for them to create something like it for themselves. Thing is, neither could I. The current state evolved over time, and does not lend itself to reconstruction. That this sense of evolution stands out to me after a few months of Martijn spending that 500 hours in total on his Theta OS too, to me is a strong argument in favor of his approach.
  • This is reinforced by how he clearly builds intensively on his own structures and habits. As I often remark too, I am predictable to myself, and it means any software tool you build for yourself can make choices based on that predictability. If I want to save something I know which attributes I care about, and in which form I want to have them available. If I make a shopping list I know the order of the supermarket shelves of the store I’ll visit. If I’m near a Dutch railway station in the evening, it is most likely I intend to take a train home, that type of thing. The same is true for my information strategies. I know where I store my book notes and how, as I’ve been doing it for ages etc.
  • Building on that predictability he makes functionalities in Theta highly contextual. If he bookmarks a LinkedIn profile, it means he wants a person note with a few distinct fields from the profile (e.g. current role and location), and bookmarking then means the creation of such a person note in the same way as all his existing person notes already are. If it’s a recipe it pulls out the recipe, converts cooking terms and measures to Dutch terms and measures, and makes the ingredients available to dump into a shopping list.
  • Similarly everywhere he has a ‘copy to clipboard’-button in his Theta, it has a contextually determined template, so he can paste it into something else in the way he needs it at the destination. I use those templates in different places already, the way I send a bookmark to my blog, my annotation tool, and how an annotation is imported into my Obsidian notes, how I save a webpage in markdown to my notes, are all determined by a template that takes the same basic information but styles and orders it differently based on purpose and destination.
  • That contextualisation sometimes needs persistent data from outside. He incorporates such data into his local database. E.g. all the place names for the Netherlands, so he can recognise a place name in his own material, or search with any of them across his material. Or the list of translated cooking terms mentioned above.
  • He created his own e-mail client interface (using IMAP to access his mail accounts). This allows him to create processing geared to his own routines. E.g. a button to process an e-mail as a hotel reservation, or as parcel delivery announcement, or to pull location or event data from etc. That information then surfaces in his dashboard where it is made useful. It resulted in a rather long row of specific processing contexts but I can definitely see the power of it. Like I tinker with my ‘ideal feedreader’, doing the same for an ‘ideal e-mail interface’ where the point is to not let things reside in e-mail but make it findable and useful outside of it makes a lot of sense. And again, because you are predictable to yourself it is obvious what ‘outside’ means in each instance.
  • He created ‘companion apps’ (using Mac’s Xcode to make them for iOS, I wonder if something similar for Android exists) for his phone, allowing him to access and work with information on the go.

On the train home, I started exploring both sqlite and node.js in more detail, to figure out if and how I may want to add it to my local personal tool set.
Can I use this to reignite my work on my personal toolsuite? That work is more aimed at facilitating myself in my processes and helping me achieve outputs.
Despite going to bed late, I woke unexpectedly early, given the holidays and weekend, and felt the need to explore more. So the session definitely kicked something in gear. It does need my personal approach of course, and I have plenty of relevant notes on this from the past years to use for it. Years ago, back in 2017, I already gave the effort a name too, Aazai.
I set up sqlite and node.js this morning to have a sandbox to try some building blocks out.

Perhaps another way to find untranslated non-fiction books of interest in languages I cannot read is to not search directly for them, but to find authors first.
Scientists, practitioners, and thinkers of various disciplines may be mentioned in localised Wikipedia versions, and from there I might find their bibliography.

In the past few days I’ve been exploring the non-fiction section of online bookstores across the EU a bit, but then books translated from English to the other European language easily make it harder to see other publications.

I was mailed two book suggestions in Swedish. The authors have Wikipedia pages, i.e. Julia Ravanis and Peter Gärdenfors (who also has an English wikipedia page btw), and those pages list their bibliographies.

Going this path makes it possible to use the well known Wikipedia structures to search for authors across languages.
What it lacks is networked recommendation.

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Onze 9 jarige dochter is wel toe aan een laptop. Voor de vele creatieve dingen die ze doet (zowel met de hand, als op een scherm), omdat haar nerdy ouders hopen dat ze ook aan het programmeren zal slaan, maar primair omdat ze komende maand aan een typecursus begint. Blind een toetsenbord kunnen gebruiken is een bijzonder praktische vaardigheid. En scheelt bakken met tijd als ik het vergelijk met mensen die soms naast me in de trein zitten te werken en met 2 vingers wel een heel mailtje schrijven tussen Den Haag en Utrecht Centraal.

Een laptop dus. Maar dat vergt praktische, geopolitieke en ethische keuzes. Ook omdat waar ze nu als eerste gewend aan raakt de norm zal zijn voor haar, en al het andere vreemd en onwennig daarna.
Linux dus, Mint waarschijnlijk. Zodat ze ook kan leren dat een computer haar gereedschap is, en je nooit alleen maar hoeft te accepteren wat een leverancier vindt dat je er mee moet kunnen doen en niet.

Punt is, zelf gebruik ik geen Linux, maar sinds 17 jaar MacOS. Wel eens een blauwe maandag Linux op een PC gedraaid, 15 jaar geleden of zo, maar ik gebruikte toen eigenlijk geen PC meer.
Dus als ik iets voor mijn dochter wil doen, moet ik zelf ook bijleren, en me in Linux verdiepen.

Bij ‘de linuxspecialist‘ bestelde ik een bootable USB stick met Linux Mint en er staan hier nog wel wat ongebruikte laptops die nog prima functioneren. Een eerste scan voor een eventueel nieuwe laptop brengt me bij Tuxedo computers in Duitsland. Er zijn wel andere leveranciers, maar die hebben vooral heel grote schermen van 15 tot 17 inch diagonaal, dat vind ik geen laptop meer te noemen. Al helemaal niet voor een 9-jarige.

En dan is er nog het regelen van klankbord, een netwerk voor advies en gesprekken.
De Nederlandse Linux Gebruikersgroep, NLLGG lijkt me er voor in het leven geroepen, en ik heb me dus als lid aangemeld.

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I want to find and learn about non-fiction books I cannot read.
Meaning I don’t have the languages for them.

One of the key aspects of Europe is that there are many languages. I since long believe that is a cultural and socio-economic strength and treasure. Article 3.3 of the EU Treaty and Article 22 of the EU Charter of Fundamental rights say the same thing: The Union shall respect […] linguistic diversity.

In practice people for their interaction often retreat to something overlapping, most often English.
Within the EU institutions 24 languages are in official use. Only a few of them are used as common overlap between participants. Online, globally, nothing is truly multilingual, it’s at most serial mono-lingual. Most people don’t even get to write their names properly online. (For fun I spelled my name on my website using the proper digraph ij and not ij, and my search ranking took an immediate tumble when I did.)

I read, speak and write three languages (Dutch, English, German), and can somewhat read and speak French, and can somewhat guess when reading a few more. Whenever I travel I visit bookstores, to look at what titles are available, ignoring if I could read them or not.
Of course non-fiction bestseller titles often overlap, having been translated from English usually. Other books on display are local.

Some works in other languages will be translated into others, and if that is English, German or Dutch, become accessible to me.
However, the side effect of that is that other works that are not translated become even less visible. If I count on the fact that the most relevant Polish, Swedish, or Greek works of this moment will be translated then it will reduce the probability I will go looking for something beyond that. And I won’t know if an absence of translated works means an actual absence of relevant material. Translation acts like a filter, made up of unknown curation terms. Everything else becomes ‘dark matter’ in the words of William Marx in Libraries of the Mind, outside that language.

In order to change that, at least personally, I want to add more non-fiction titles to my ‘library of the mind’, i.e. books and their core messages that I’m aware of.
With non-fiction you can get a lot from a book even if you cannot read the language. Content overview, index, illustrations and section titles already provide a good first approximation of what a book is positing, without the need of much translation or language.

So, when it is about technology, data, philosophy, futurism, communities, change, democracy, do tell me what books I should be aware of in your language. It would be great too if you can point me to online, local to you, retailers that may have it as e-book.


A bookshop in Seville, Spain (since closed). Photo Metro Centric CC BY.


A bookshop in Athens, Greece. Photo Luke McKernan CC BY SA


A bookshop in Caen, France. Photo TeaMeister CC BY

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The video above is a conversation between Nicole van der Hoeven who hosted it, Bob Doto who wrote the excellent A System for Writing, and Tris Oaten of the No Boilerplate YT-channel (that I did not know before).
Having watched this video where PKM systems are discussed and the different approaches the three participants have, a thought emerged. A thought that I have had previously at PKM events, or when I browse through e.g. the Obsidian forum. In a lot of PKM conversations people can talk past each other due to unspoken assumptions about what your system ‘should’ be.
Not necessarily in the video above, it’s just that watching this conversation made me think about it again.

One dimension is those that assume their system is for personal knowledge. Subjective and temporal as Bob at some point clearly says in the video. As opposed to a system to store references, facts and objective knowledge.

Another is using top-down and up-front created structures vs emerging structures that are earned over time and where noticing emergent structures is newly forming personal knowledge.

A third is whether your PKM system or your Zettelkasten is seen as the whole thing, a artefact-as-is (and thus perhaps transferable in its own right), or whether one’s interaction with it, your own thinking plus your PKM system / Zettelkasten is the whole thing and thus a fully personal tool. Do you see yourself as part of your PKM system, or not?

These three differences in attitude and resulting approach determine quite a bit it seems of what you choose to do and not do in practice (such as the Folgezettel part of the conversation in the video shows).

But it seems to me we hardly ever spell out our own starting assumptions (and thus design parameters) of one’s PKM system and where we see ourselves. We merely project our own ‘givens’ onto the outside world.

What Bob Doto says in the video for instance about his practices resonates well with my own, born from personal knowledge, emergent structures and personal interactive tool.
To me PKM is personal along three dimensions, a personal system, personal knowledge, and personal management, which map well on the three dimensions of assumptions just listed. But I sometimes get the sense that to others that sounds like not as PKM at all, just as making it up as you go along. Which isn’t a false description per se, except for the implied judgement that it won’t yield results and isn’t a deliberate design choice. While I see ratchets and compounding effects.

Maybe we need to more often precede our conversations about PKM system design choices with speaking our usually unspoken assumptions about what type of systems works for us.
Although paradoxically it may be the case that for some that isn’t perceived as a need, if they already assume there is a single cluster of ‘right’ ways of doing things. Then of course it is not needed to speak of assumptions, because what is right is external. Vice versa to me it is not PKM, is not P at all, if it’s assumed there’s a single right way of doing it for all. Then PKM is a method and productivity hack, but not a system for thinking and sensemaking.

For next year’s European PKM Summit I think I need to come up with a short way of describing that and put it on my name badge.

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From ancient Greece 32 tragedies are available to us. These plays, from the 5th century BCE, mostly don’t have a good ending. Hence our use of the word tragedy.

The 32 remaining are from just three authors, Euripides (18), Aeschylus (7) and Sophocles (7).
Hundreds of tragedies have been written, we know of some 300 more through fragments and titles from just those three authors. There were other authors, and we know the number of festivals and stagings etc. that we know took place implies there have been hundreds more than that. Just at the Athens festivals alone an estimated 648 different tragedies have been performed over a 70 year period in the 5th century BCE. Just 1 or 2 percent of tragedies written and staged are left to us. A tragedy in its own right.

Why these 32 works? These three authors mostly because a century onwards, the Greeks themselves held them in high regard. But beyond that, why these out of the 300 or so the 3 authors wrote? Mostly because of the Romans. 24 of 32 remaining works were selected by Roman grammatic scholars 600 years later, becoming canon in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. All 7 from both Aeschylus and Sophocles, and 10 by Euripides. Likely because of their link to the Homeric tales, which was central in Roman educational efforts. The number 24 isn’t a coincidence either, aiding memory techniques and echoing the 24 chapters in the Iliad and the Odyssee. Of these 24 we have multiple manuscripts and comments and marginalia, because they were taught and used.

This filter, 600 years after the tragedies were written, and 1800 years ago to us means that neither the ancient Greeks nor we ourselves have had any influence on the logic of this selection. The 24 handed down to us through the Roman filter, weren’t selected because the Greeks thought them most representative, nor because we think they are the most outstanding work. And possibly not because of esthetic reasons at all, but because of Roman educational preferences in teaching Greek grammar.

The other 8, all by Euripides, have come to us via a different way. Their titles are in alphabetic order, ε to ι, a piece of what once would have been a full overview of Euripides work, being copied together by some scribes. No selection criteria, just coincidence that one part of these ‘collected works’ survived. No annotations or comments either, just the works.

We know tragedies end badly, right? The ancient Greek word, originally meaning something like ‘goat song’, has come to mean that very thing to us. But it’s not that the ancient Greek playwrights were all depressed or nihilists. It seems it’s just that the Romans selected 24 works that mostly ended badly. Contemporary sources from Ancient Greece tell us tragedies did also end happily, and that such plays were very popular. Yet, the Roman selection 600 years later definitely picked mostly ones ending in, well, tragedy.

Comparing the two groups of plays by Euripides gives an enormous contrast though: of the 10 Roman selected works by Euripides only 2 end happily (20%), of the 8 ‘alphabetical’ ones by the same author, 7 end happily (88%). A reverse image!

The Roman selection is what made tragedies tragedies for us. A group of people 600 years removed from the source of these plays and 1800 years removed from us. For their own, unknowable to us, reasons. It’s a survival bias, not an inherent trait of the plays concerned.

And we’re stuck with that choice.

Tragic.

Also highly fascinating, I find.

Sources: Libraries of the Mind by William Marx (2025), page 3 and 112-116, Greek Tragedy on Wikipedia.