I’ve tripped on a fun use of contextual backlinks in my cooking practice. After I get back from the farmer’s market each week, I plan out that week’s meals, linking to empty notes for key ingredients. Over time, each ingredient grows a useful index of preparations via backlinks.
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It’s funny—I could get the same result by just searching my cooking notes for “peas,” but this feels meaningfully different in a way I don’t understand. One factor is object permanence: because peas have a concrete “place,” I add general notes on technique to that note over time.
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Another interesting advantage of object permanence is that it enables browsing. Searching depends on me having a specific query in mind, but with this approach, I can browse all notes tagged “#ingredient” (or whatever) and see what inspires me.
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Do you keep these notes in the same "box" of your green-notes? In other words, do you have a distinct place for your green-notes, journal and wiki-notes (I am thinking on notes that I do when learning a technique like Genetics Algorithms)?
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Are tags also notes as in your examples of Peas? Or do you keep them in a different level? This idea of representing terms and tags as notes seems so powerful. Even though I don’t know how to explain why, I feel that the answer is related with code as data.
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No, tags aren't notes in my system: they're just bags of notes.
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