I'm doing well. Thank you so much. I was supposed to chat and
write down stuff in the etherpad, but you guys accommodated
me very nicely, swiftly, efficiently, in spite of my quirky
last minute requests. Yeah, but that's okay because, well,
it's funny that you talk about accommodating you and doing
all the things we need to do because, frankly, your talk is
about getting things done and you've mentioned the book,
obviously, but the philosophy of getting things done is
ultimately what we've been applying with Emacs Conf so that
when we have curveballs thrown at us, like you've done right
now, we can accommodate them because we made sure that
everything else was done. So we'll move to questions and I
invite viewers to go to the pad, to the etherpad that is on IRC
and also on the talk page and put your questions over there.
But first I wanted to make sure, Bala, that if you had
anything that you could not include in your presentation,
just to give you some time to mention them now if you want. I
think I mentioned most of what I wanted to convey. I wanted to
keep it general with whichever format people are
comfortable with, whether it's Org Mode, whether it's
plain text, whether it is docx. In fact, I was speaking to one
of my friends and he said, Hey, I use Google Sheets to note
down everything, all the tasks that are coming. I said, suit
yourself, whatever it is. So, in that way, this methodology
or whatever, the way which we follow is quite flexible. The
system is quite flexible in whichever way you want to use it.
go ahead and use it. But start emptying your teacup. That
will be my first and foremost. I have nothing else to add per
se. Okay, cool. So we'll start with the first question and
I'll be reading the questions to you. And just so we know, we
have about eight minutes of Q&A until we need to move to the
next talk. All right, so first question.
What is TRIZ? Okay,
this is a Russian methodology. It's pardon my, I mean poor
Russian, but it translates to theory of inventive problem
solving. So, that's what it translates to. What it is, is it
is said that all the inventions problem solved so far in
humanity. If you can categorize them, they fall into
exactly 40 principles. That's one of the core tenets in
theory of inventive problem solving. Also, that creative
people have a process they follow. and in defining a problem
and solving a problem. So, this is what I was trained in a
company that I work for and I started using it and started
applying it. So, creative process starts with defining a
problem and solving a problem in a very systematic manner
and you can be as creative as the creatives that we know about
as the methodology talks about. So, that is what TRIZ is,
Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. There is lot of open
source literature like we have in Emacs. It is the same way
with TRIZ, people share very generous and you can learn
about it. what it can be useful for what in the core of our talk
also is that many times we face conflicts, that is, I don't
want to spend a lot of time, you know, figuring out a system
like this. However, I want everything in one place, you
know, how can that happen? So start little by little is one
suggestion I have. Don't And this is also a contradiction we
have, right? So, we need to spend a lot of time to set up things
before we can start organizing our life. But there's not a
lot of time because we haven't organized our life. So, we
don't have that's a conundrum or a contradiction. That's
what TRIZ methodology is about to identify that this is a
contradiction and we have to resolve it not compromise. So,
resolve it in a manner that gives you enough time to set up a
system and enough time, free time to enjoy your life or focus
on a project and be present when you're working with
something. So, that's what the crux of the methodology is.
Okay, splendid answer. Thank you. Moving on to the next one.
Thank you for this talk. Very interesting. One of the things
that frustrates me about modern web development is the rate
of churn when it comes to useful knowledge. I think Emacs can
help to counteract against this by building lasting tools
where mastery can be built. Do you agree that learning
similar but different things again and again is ultimately
wasted bandwidth? What can we do as technologists to push
back against this? Yeah, this is an interesting one
because, I mean, I'm like everyone else where a new package
shows up. I mentioned that in my talk also, the first
introduction. Sajajo's newsletter is amazing. It has all
these new things coming up and new developments coming up.
Same thing with web dev, I guess, you have new things coming
up. So you want to learn that new thing. However, you need to
also be aware that there are so many other projects and
hobbies or life that's also waiting for you. And it's not a
balancing act, but if you if you pay attention and be present
and give whatever is in front of you, it's full attention.
Then look back and connect. That's an interesting way,
because hindsight is 20 20. Use it to your advantage. So my I
don't know, I don't want to push back against this because
some of it is just amazing because it thinks that you think is
a waste of time and it's a distraction right now. could
potentially be. I'm not saying it will be because there are
things that are truly a waste of time that could truly
potentially tie back to something and be really helpful.
I can give you an example from our Emacs part of my life. I was
experimenting with CSS and Cascade style sheets and how I
can customize it to use it in org mode export. For me at the
time, it seemed like a waste of time. I was spending so much
time. Then I parked it. I didn't do much about it later. But
then one of my students said, "Your slides are too bulky for me
to scroll through to get to exactly what I am looking for."
I was using the reveal HTML and I used to pass on the link
before. And the student sort of hinted at a handout. And now
that's not easy with the RevealJS framework. It's rather
tricky. At least I couldn't figure it out. but then it
occurred to me that, hey, wait a second i've already looked at
this CSS thing and maybe that'll help. It did help. I can
drop in the name of the tool that I use now.
It's called WeasyPrint uh let me use the uh
i don't know if some...
If you can look it up, W-E-A-S-Y print.
That's what it's called. And that's
mighty useful. That's really, really useful. You can
customize it. You can change everything. I think I can even,
I'll probably even share the code later on. It's really
useful and I've been able to, so what seemed like a waste of
time is actually something that became useful later on. But
there are several other things I have truly wasted and it's
not been useful because I couldn't connect the dots. So,
perhaps the, let's say, wasteful of time so that you look at
something and see how to connect back like the Zettelkasten
that everybody talks about. I do not use it, but I like the
idea that you look at it keeping in mind that you could
probably connect to something later on. Perhaps, just try
it out. OK, great, Bala. Sadly, we are a little short on time
to answer all the questions that we have. I see three
questions currently that can still be answered, and I don't
think any of them would be answerable within just one
minute. So what I suggest we do, Bala, feel free. Do you have
access to the pad on your end? Yes, I do. I do. I have it here.
Okay, cool. I'm putting the link on BBB just in case you need
to review it.
We're going to leave the room open. By the way,
if anyone in the crowd wants to join so that they can ask the
question directly with their voice to Bala, feel free to do
so. The links are on the website. But Bala, if no one shows up,
if you could just answer the three questions that we haven't
covered yet, actually. Well, three questions because
Sacha just put the link right there. That'd be lovely. And
we'll make sure that the entire Q&A
finds its place into the
website afterwards. How does that sound for you? Yeah,
sounds great. Thank you so much. I'll do make sure that I will
have the answers there, but I'm going to wait here for some
time so that somebody can join. Okay, sure. Any last word in
10 seconds for the public? Well, empty your teacup and enjoy
your life.
Splendid. Thank you so much, Bala, for coming
again to EmacsConf this year, and hopefully we'll be seeing
you next year with further talks to discuss. Yeah, thank you
so much. All right, and right now we'll be moving to the next
talk of the day in about five seconds. Thank you again, Bala,
and see you later. Bye.
All right, we are a fair. So, Bala, I'll need to move to make
sure that everything is working for the next talk. So, do as
we said, and everything will be fine. Okay.
Okay, bye-bye, Bala. Bye. Bye, Leo.
Okay.
Hello everyone, do you want me to answer a question? I'll be
happy to answer that. You want to discuss something? You
want to share something? I'm here for that. Please let me
know.
I'll hang around for another 5 to 10 minutes. Please let me
know if you have any questions or if you're the ones who ask
those questions also, please let me know.
Are you there?
Hi, yes. Some tips I've found for getting
things done with an image for this stuff is like for
separations you have like your Zettelkasten, you're
getting things done, and then beyond that you have like
dailies and global.
Daily Zettelkasten would be journaling. Okay, okay. And
then, like, global or daily getting things done, I
generally like doing it in a week.
And then splitting the,
like, core tasks, secondary tasks,
unplanned tasks,
because those are good categories.
I like what you're doing.
Sorry? Do you do things like that at all?
Or are there separations like with Zettelkasten
versus the Getting Things Done?
That's very interesting, yes. Daily log and weekly log,
that's really helpful. I've also been trying to do that but
not being able to successfully do a daily log plus a weekly
log. So I gave up on the daily log because it seemed to be like a
lot of overhead for me, so I just switch to a weekly review
where I would log what's going on and how it is. But it's also
interesting to see how it connects back to something that
we've already worked on, or we've already learned
somewhere, which is essentially using the ZIP and custom
method. I probably want to try that a bit later on also.
That's a great suggestion, nice idea. Oh, so some of the
reason for the separation would be with the daily log, like,
for instance, the title for the journal would be, Audinet
would be the day, and it starts blank. And then, so if you have
a straight thought, if you know it can go straight to your
Zettelkasten, it goes into your Zettelkasten. If you don't
know where it goes, it goes into your journal. And then same
thing for like the week, is like your weeks always start
emptying, so like if you have your core tasks, like if it
spells beyond three, it's probably not a core task. So it
gives you the idea of like, did I actually do what I wanted to
yesterday, rather than getting 20 things done that I don't
really care about that much. Yes. True, true, true. Very
true. Yeah.
Nice, nice talk. Thank you so much for sharing that. I've
been a, let's say a start and many times I've started on
Zettelkasten, you know, with little notes. They have these
fleeting notes and permanent notes. I've tried many of
those, but somehow it's not sticky for me. I've not been
able to get rid of that.
Yeah, I've got multiple attempts of using these systems,
becoming too big or complex, like I don't know where to put a
new piece of information, so then I throw the whole system
away. So, this is my favorite iteration that I've done so
far. I'm sure it'll change with time. Okay, okay, okay, I
see. Yeah, I...
I like the way the daily log works, that it has an embedded,
you know, you just have a name stamp and then you embed
something from another project. And when you go to the
project page, the same thing shows up there in the log also. I
wanted to take that feature and have that in my optimal
setup. I'm not well versed enough to get that set up because I
like that with that. Anything I enter in the daily log should
show up in my project log also and vice versa. I want to
execute on my project. I need that notes where I'm looking
for. That's a key feature of that is with logseq you just have
a button that says go to today. So you don't think about it and
it always starts empty. It's that blank sheet that's always
confirming you want the things that I used that before.
One of the things I really wanted was, I want this,
but I want it for Getting Things Done on my journal.
I want two separate ones.
Yeah, I like the, also I'm trying to see how to create pages
quickly from within Org Mode. I know we can do the square
bracket thing and enter and it should go into a new page. but
it's not as seamless as in logseq or obsidian i'm trying to
see how which way do i do that quickly so that you don't spend
time on organizing once you have the bigger setup of the
folder structures and the to do then it's easier to
integrate it but if i'm starting from a business point of
view it's rather tough for them to set it all up because the
setup costs are very high in terms of system first and then
start with this. Or like you said, you know we could also
start with a blank sheet and then start filling it up and then
see how to link up things or move it around so that it fits into
your larger system or evolve a system as it goes. Don't start
with the system in mind, but evolve it because it then fits
into how you are rather than the you trying to adapt to the
system.
So, Denote and org-roam, they'll have a feature, like the
note, you have a command called, let's see, create or
existing note, and org-roam has an equivalent to that, and
what that, you need to consult with that, as you are browsing
your notes, you see that, and so if you're making a new note,
power generation or something like that you'll easily see
if you have any notes that are in power generation or like
let's say you have something in power and if you don't you
just go down to where you're just you know you don't have
anything selected or so it's your what's in your uh what your
current so you're not pre-selecting something existing
and voila now you have a file And then you have consult so you
can preview them as you move up and down the list.
And then you also got Emacs
Org Capture to just pop up a template
capture buffer that is blank that you can tell to go into
something like a journal or a GTD inbox.
And yeah, this allows you to just make it like a specific
buffer to do that specific task. I think Protesilaos has a
video about how to make that into just a pop-up window. Like
for instance, you're in your browser, you pop it up, Uh, jot
down your task, press enter, and it's gone. Hmm, okay. Okay,
okay, makes sense, makes sense. Yeah, for me, I wanted to try
denote, but my folder structure, I found it very difficult
to move it to a denote kind of a structure where the folder
hierarchy is not as important because all nodes are treated
the same. But for me, because I'm focusing on a project, I
need only the project files show up. It was tricky for me to,
because sometimes I share the folder with my colleagues and
who are not on Emacs or more. So I can't show them all the
files, all the notes. I just want that folder to be shared and
ignore the todo.org that is there because it's not readable
for them. So, I find it easier to share a folder level or a
project level and that's why I stuck to this format which is a
hierarchy of folders with the to-do inside those folders.
That works very well for me, particularly keeping in mind
that I need to share some folders sometimes with my
colleagues. Whereas Denote with a flat structure or
Roam with a flat structure, I find it very tricky to do that.
With Denote, you can actually have, there's a feature
called silos that will
allow you to do both and I think you can make customized
commands to go that work only in specific silos. I haven't
messed around to it. too much with them. I don't think org run
has anything like that though. Yes, I don't think they have
that. But I remember seeing silos. Maybe I should give it
another spin and see if that works. Because if it can solve my
creating new node quickly from the denote part itself while
I'm writing the nodes itself rather than go through the R
capture. That will really help me in linking back and seeing
how it maps to another project that I've already worked on
from an archive and then bring it there. I think that's a good
idea. I'll look at silos again. Also, with the silos, let's
say you're going to use ripgrep on the directory, you could
intentionally keep your Zettelkasten and your journal
separated. in different folders, like, yeah. So that,
like, if you direct them, or if you wanted to share folder by
folder basis, yeah, you don't have to be the all-in or
nothing approach. Yeah, that works. That works.
Excellent.
OK.
Well, thank you so much for your time and for sharing what is
really helpful for me. I hope the talk was useful for you.
Yep. Thanks for sharing. Have fun with the rest of the Emacs
camp. Okay. All right. Then see you then. Happy Emacs month
to you too. Okay. Bye. Bye.