Tag: card index as database

Replied to a post by PratikPratik (microblog.pratikmhatre.com)
One more use for ChatGPT - enter all ingredients, including the type of alcohol you currently have, and ask it to suggest cocktails. Reply by email Also on Micro.blog Reply on Mastodon
🗃️ 🍸🥃 I have a section in my card index for that functionality: 

Column of index cards displaying tabs for cocktails and cocktail ingredients and sample cards showing for various ingredients (aperol, bourbon, brandy, vermouth) and related drinks one could make with them (dry martini, old fashioned).

@GMJuditPolgar, I’m doing some research for a book on note taking traditions, commonplace books, and zettelkasten/card indexes. In watching an interview of you with Christiane Amanpour from 2020 I noticed a photo of you next to a card index while playing chess. Do you have 15-20 minute for a short interview to talk about it and how you compiled and used it?

 

Quoted a post by Letterform Archive (@letterformarchive@typo.social)Letterform Archive (@letterformarchive@typo.social) (typo.social)
This box of 600+ specimen cards holds a complete snapshot of the last metal type foundries in Germany. Produced 1958–1971, the Schriftenkartei (Typeface Index) represents the final effort to catalog all the country’s typefaces in production at the time. The cards are useful for researchers and designers as they share a common format and show complete glyph sets. Thanks to Michael Wörgötter, a set of these cards is now in our collection, and his high-res scans are online. https://letterformarchive.org/news/schriftenkartei-german-font-index/

This Schriftenkartei represents a fascinating example of a card index (#zettelkasten) as a database. This one obviously had a very narrow range of topics.

+ = winning!

Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic by Simon Winchester

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 readings including by our friends Markus Krajewski, Ann Blair, Iaian McGilchrist, Alex Wright, Anthony Grafton, Dennis Duncan, and Mortimer J. Adler to name but a few.

Many are certain to know his award winning 1998 book The Professor and the Madman which was also transformed into the eponymous 2019 film starring Sean Penn. Though he didn’t use the German word zettelkasten in the book, he tells the story of philologist James Murray’s late 1800s collaborative 6 million+ slip box collection of words and sentences which when edited into a text is better known today as the Oxford English Dictionary.

If you need some additional motivation to check out his book, I’ll use the fact that Winchester, as a writer, is one of the most talented non-linear storytellers I’ve ever come across, something which many who focus on zettelkasten output may have a keen interest in studying.

Book club anyone? (I’m sort of hoping that Dan Allosso’s group will pick it up as one of their next books after Donut Economics, but I’m game to read it with others before then.)

Book released on 4/25/2023; Book acquired on 4/26/2023