This is going to be very short, I’m writing in the afternoon, and on a possible deadline which I don’t know exactly when is going to happen. I’ll have to explain later. Rather than actually give you a theme tonight, I’m just going to touch base on four irons I’ve had in the fire that I mentioned here in previous weeks.
The stack of books on my desk
https://dekidder.substack.com/p/week-245-winter-approaches
The stack of books on my desk actually has gone down. I’ve managed to put all the original stack into the giveaway pile except for an organic chemistry text that’s two volumes. Like my copy of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, I don’t really want to give a multi-volume work as a prize, because I can’t trust it not to be split out. Saturday will be the Pitt tournament, and I’ll be exporting ten books from the to go pile, making it 20 total.
The set of index cards in my bag
https://dekidder.substack.com/p/week-255-building-the-tool-i-want
The container of index cards has filled to just over 100. The quick acceleration was due to the yellow cards, which just need to reference a particularly rich source of question material. We’re almost to the point where the first run of experiments can begin, answering the questions like: “Could we use this to write an entire practice packet? Could we do it for multiple packets, and perhaps even an entire small tournament set?” “How much sitzfleisch would be required to do that?”
The Crystal Radio
https://dekidder.substack.com/p/week-249-crystal-radio
The “crystal radio” project has fallen by the wayside, unsurprisingly, along with my rigorous charting of television episodes. I will eventually get back to it, but the book pile took priority, and with the local tournaments wrapping up soon, I could devote time to it. It’s either a winter or summer project, not one for the spring.
The note taking app on my laptop
https://dekidder.substack.com/p/week-199-taking-the-off-ramp
The setup of Obsidian as a central repository of my notes has stalled the last month. Not planning for a TV appearance means I don’t need to dump ideas for TV questions into simulated games, and I’ve just used archive packets in practice when we’ve had it. I’ve generally been satisfied with Obsidian’s storage and linking, but I’m looking into a couple of additional plugins that might improve my note-taking/question writing procedures.