WEBVTT captioned by abhinav
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Hello. My name is Abhinav, and I'm going
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to talk about unlocking linked data in Org
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Mode. So, like, a lot of you, I
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use Emacs and Org Mode for keeping a
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lot of my data, personal information. For example,
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if I'm trying to, you know, write journal
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entries, it's most likely going to be an
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Org Mode file. If I'm trying to save
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bookmarks or save links, again, they go into
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an Org Mode file. Now, I was doing
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that earlier, but, last year, I think I
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around last year, I started to use these
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specialized applications. So, you know, for example, if
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I'm trying to save bookmarks, I'm going to
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use a bookmark manager. I specifically was using
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Raindrop for it. What happened with that is
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that it allowed me to save bookmarks. Let's
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say, you know, when I'm on go, I'm
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on a mobile phone, I can just,
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you know, open my Android app and then
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save links there. I can also annotate and,
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you know, do other things that you can
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do on bookmarks. Similarly, you know, for reading,
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let's say, papers and PDFs, I would use
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Zotero. For, keeping notes about people, I'll use
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a tool called Monica CRM. Now all these
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tools, their aim is to kind of
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do one thing really well, but they kind
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of work in their own silos, and it's
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very hard to link data from one to
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another. For example, if you have a journal
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application, you can say things like, you know,
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"Hey today, I met this person, and then,
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you know, this person gave me this recipe,"
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whatever. But you know that the person information
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is still kept in a different application, and
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the recipe information is still kept in a
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different application. You have to, like, you know,
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like, do a lot of work to kind
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of make them come together. So, one thing
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that happened also last year was that I
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started using Org Roam a lot. So Org
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Roam is a Zettelkasten system, you know,
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which allows you to have linked notes. I'll
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not go too much into that detail, but
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basically, with Org Roam, you can, you know,
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have a lot of these text based files
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that you make anyway and then keep them
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connected and then, you know, like, have this
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knowledge base that you can build, around your
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information, your data. While it's a good system,
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I still feel like it's not very pro
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on providing, you know, very good amount of
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tools for, working with links. I'll show two
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kind of things. First is that, I'll show
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how my current knowledge base looks like, what
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kind of, you know, workflow I kind of
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use to save, let's say, any information or
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how do I, like, you know, connect new
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notes. The other is that because while this
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information base is working out well for
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me, I still want all of my external
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usages to be, you know, to be reflected
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back into this database of text files. So
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if I'm browsing something, I still want that
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thing to be, you know, saved in my
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Org Mode files, whether I'm browsing on Android
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or I'm browsing on, let's say, Firefox
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somewhere on a laptop. So, I'll show you
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those two things here. It's going to be
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a short talk, and then, yeah, hope you
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like it. Okay. So we'll start with this
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thing. So this is a simple Org Roam
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node. It's, you know, it's a dummy node.
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I've made, like, a lot of dummy nodes
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here just to kind of show, so, you
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know, maybe some of those information will be
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sparse, but I hope I convey the
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meaning clearly. Okay. So here, if you usually,
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you know, if you're just using plain Org
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Mode, you just have this file. Right? There's
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nothing else. Now if you are using Org
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Roam, you can do something called org-roam-
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buffer-toggle, which will show you, you know,
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a few of those connected nodes. Now, usually,
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the connections are shown here, they only show
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you backlinks. So, basically, any other node that
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has linked to this node is going to
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be shown there. But in my extension, you
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can see more things. For example, here, in
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this case, you can see, first of all,
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we show both links. So any link from
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this node to something else, will also be
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shown there. Any link from that node to
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something else will also be shown there. So
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you can see, that is one thing. The
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other thing is that all these links are
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categorized in, you know, type of notes. For
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example, when this note specifically right now is
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of kind book. Tag is one identifier for
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it, but there are, like, other ways to
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identify, you know, a kind of note. But
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this is connected to another node, which is
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of a kind person. So as you
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can see, the, Person A asked me to
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read this book. So, you know, that link
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is shown there in a very, rich format.
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So we have, like, more information about the
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link, in this. The other thing that you
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can see there is that, there are also
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links which are not existing right now, but
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they could be, you know, possibly interesting for
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me. So these are similar nodes. So these
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you can see the scores of similarity and
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then, you know, other nodes like Book on
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Mathematics, which is another dummy node that
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I made for this demo. Now these are
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nodes which, you know, again, I can just
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go in there and I can see if
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maybe they make sense or if, you know,
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I can just, like, make those connections explicitly.
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So let's let's try some other node here.
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So let's say so this is a node
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of a recipe. It's Bombay
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Sandwich. It's the recipe I made. Now if
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you go here on the right, you can
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see, you know, there's, like, some things on,
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some person liking the sandwich. There are some
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related notes also, similar notes which I have
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not linked. Plus, there are some journal entries.
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Now I use Org-Roam daily to kind of,
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you know, write down journal entries. And then,
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you know, what I have to do there
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is basically just write whatever I want and
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then just, you know, make those links to
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this node. So for doing
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that, I can see, that there were two
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days where I made Bombay Sandwich, and I
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had some observations around it, which, you know,
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you can see here. Right. Same so same
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for person. Let's say if you go to
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Person B, you can see that, you know,
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this person has, again, link to Person A
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and there's, like, some information around it. Plus,
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there are some similar notes there. This works
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really well. The similarity function works really well
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if you are basically trying to go to,
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you know, bookmarks that I have saved. So
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for example, here's a bookmark that I saved,
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which is, Google at Interspeech 2023. Now
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this bookmark is a blog post from Google
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AI team. Basically, you know, tells what research
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publications they had in this conference.
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Now if you go to the Similar Nodes
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here, you can see a very similar blog
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post from Google's team for other conferences that
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they attended. Right? Now this is very helpful
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for me, especially when I'm, like, reading something,
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later. So I, like, save a lot of
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links together. And then when I'm deciding
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to read something, I just open this and
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then see, you know, how everything is connected,
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what what else I have saved. Should I
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read something else or not? One interesting feature
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I was realizing I should try out is
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that, you know, if I go to this
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node, which is Person B, you can see
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that while I'm linking this to Person A,
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I also have some context on that. So
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I've written specifically uncle of Person
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A. Now if you have a semantic wiki,
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you will have a typed link where you
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don't have a plain link. You also have
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a type of the link. So in this
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case, the type of the link could be,
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you know, it's like `uncle:` whatever
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that link is. But, you know, I don't
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want to, like, go into that much detail,
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and I don't want to, like, learn how
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to link things, learn what kind of types
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I can make. So I can just write
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things in plain text. So I've written this
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in plain text. What I can do now
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is I can just search for links like
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this. For example, I can just do something
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like family members. Now this will show me
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all the links which have a context which
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makes sense as family members. So basically, this
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is semantic search on links, on the context
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of the links, and then, you know, it
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kind of gives me what I want here.
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For example, here, in this demo, I just
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had, like, one node, one link, which had
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this uncle relationship. So that kind of works
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out. Now let's just try another search. For
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example, let's say if I'm just typing 'check
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before meeting'. So these are now again links
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where I have written something where I kind
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of should do something before meeting someone. So
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for example, the first one you can see,
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there's a person called Meeting Person. It's a
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demo node again. And, I've written one note
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about, one connection here is basically saying that,
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hey, you know, read this link before you
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go to meet them. Right? So it's also
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been very helpful for me. There are, like,
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few patterns where I kind of feel this
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works out well. As I keep making more
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of the links and keep writing more context
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around the link, this kind of works
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out really helpful. This becomes really helpful for
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me. Okay. So the other few things, you
00:08:27.935 --> 00:08:30.575
know, how do I, like, work with, systems
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outside Emacs. Right? So the first thing
00:08:32.735 --> 00:08:35.054
is that, you know, the I haven't found
00:08:35.054 --> 00:08:38.510
anything that works really well for saving bookmarks,
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when I'm on my Android phone. So I
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had to make a new applications, application, and
00:08:44.890 --> 00:08:47.930
it's called pile-android. Now this application basically,
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you know, lets me do whatever I was
00:08:49.290 --> 00:08:52.085
doing with Raindrop, which was a bookmark manager.
00:08:52.305 --> 00:08:53.825
So I can open links. I can read
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stuff in Firefox on my browser on my,
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Android phone, and then I can save all
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of that in my Org Roam database. Org
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roam database here means the Org Roam files
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that I have. Because, again, these are plain
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text file, I can sync them through mobile
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phone to my, you know, desktop and laptop
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and everything else. So that's one place where
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I kind of, you know, stop, going to
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a, new application. I just basically ingest everything
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in my Org Roam setup. The other thing
00:09:19.625 --> 00:09:22.444
is that, when I'm browsing on my laptop,
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I still want to, you know, collect all
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the data inside my Org Roam system. So
00:09:28.504 --> 00:09:30.504
so here's something which I call Org Roam
00:09:30.504 --> 00:09:33.380
Sidekick. Now what you can do here is
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that, let's say, if you want to search
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for something, so you can basically do a
00:09:37.380 --> 00:09:39.139
search normally, which is going to do a
00:09:39.139 --> 00:09:41.860
web search. But if you call Org Roam
00:09:41.860 --> 00:09:44.740
SK, which is Sidekick, it will do a
00:09:44.740 --> 00:09:48.025
search on all of your Org Roam notes. So
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now this search is basically using recoll. So
00:09:50.905 --> 00:09:53.145
recoll kind of indexes all the plain text
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and does a full text search for you.
00:09:55.385 --> 00:09:57.145
But this this is really helpful because when
00:09:57.145 --> 00:09:59.190
I'm searching for something and I still want
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to know that, hey, you know, hey, I
00:10:00.550 --> 00:10:03.510
have saved some of those links earlier. So,
00:10:03.830 --> 00:10:05.350
can I, like, you know, see them back
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and then, you know, it's a very
00:10:07.590 --> 00:10:09.990
good way to kind of not lose track
00:10:09.990 --> 00:10:12.665
of what you've already saved. The other
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thing I can do is, like, I can
00:10:13.625 --> 00:10:16.605
also, you know again, since I have saved
00:10:16.745 --> 00:10:20.185
a project, in my Org Roam, I can
00:10:20.185 --> 00:10:22.905
basically call, again, Sidekick again, and I can
00:10:22.905 --> 00:10:26.200
see a note for that. That note here
00:10:26.200 --> 00:10:28.780
specifically is tracking my tasks for this project.
00:10:29.240 --> 00:10:30.840
And other than tasks, you know, again, I
00:10:30.840 --> 00:10:32.920
can see other things like similar notes. I
00:10:32.920 --> 00:10:36.040
can see, you know, other links that are
00:10:36.040 --> 00:10:39.665
there. So yeah, so this, there's still some
00:10:39.665 --> 00:10:41.585
optimizations to be done. I think this, you
00:10:41.585 --> 00:10:44.385
know, the bookmark here is not very intuitive.
00:10:44.385 --> 00:10:46.385
I still want, I want this to be
00:10:46.385 --> 00:10:49.685
following the browser, as I switch tabs.
00:10:50.160 --> 00:10:51.839
But, again, those things are something I'll work
00:10:51.839 --> 00:10:55.519
on. Other optimizations include, you know, the way
00:10:55.519 --> 00:10:59.540
I'm doing the search using ML that needs
00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:02.735
a little bit of fine tuning because, every
00:11:02.735 --> 00:11:04.175
time I make a new link, I have
00:11:04.175 --> 00:11:07.375
to, like, rerun the, you know, re kind of
00:11:07.375 --> 00:11:09.855
build the features and everything else, which I,
00:11:10.335 --> 00:11:13.855
need it to be real time. Yeah. So
00:11:13.855 --> 00:11:16.334
that concludes my talk. Hope you enjoyed it.
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Let me know if there are any questions.
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Thank you.
