Writing
-
Thoughts, stories and ideas.
-
How I Researched the Time Series With My Second Brain
Writing ~30 daily, deeply technical posts about the history, physics, and software guts of “time” was not something I could sit down and free-type into a CMS every morning. To keep the whole thing cohesive, connecting the 1967 cesium-second redefinition to the Y2038 bug without contradicting myself three weeks apart, I leaned hard on my research workflow.
I don’t have a spicy, controversial take on second brains or personal knowledge management. I have one firm opinion: every engineer should have one. That’s it.
The secret to how I organized the Time series, if there is one, is that I kept it boring. Simple files, a little Markdown discipline, and everything stored locally.
The Master Map
If you opened my Obsidian vault and looked in
Research/Time/, you wouldn’t find a chaotic pile of notes. You’d find a few folders (Physics,Computing,Calendars,Measurement) and one file that mattered more than the rest:30 Days of Time - Blog Plan.md.That document was the central nervous system for the whole month. It didn’t hold the actual post text. It held the roadmap, stitched together with Obsidian’s cross-links. When I was plotting Week 3, the plan read like this:
### Day 13 - Unix time - Source: [[Unix Time]]That
[[Unix Time]]link pointed to a dedicated research note where I’d dumped every raw finding, link, and code snippet I had on the topic, including the rabbit hole on leap seconds getting smeared. The plan stayed clean and skimmable. The mess lived one click away, exactly where I needed it when I sat down to write.Get Good at Markdown, Not Plugins
Don’t go too crazy with plugins. I run a fair number of them myself and that’s fine, find the ones that genuinely help you. But the thing that actually pays off is getting good at the fundamentals of Markdown first, instead of spending a weekend configuring when you could be writing.
Tags and cross-linking are the connective tissue. By tagging research notes with
#timeand#physicsand linking them to each other, you build a web of context that surfaces on its own when you go to write. I didn’t have to remember where I’d put the note on atomic clocks. The links pulled it up next to everything related to it.Tag your concepts, link your ideas, and let the structure do the remembering for you.
Your Agents Can Read It Too
I was experimenting with building Second Brains using LLMs and agents over a year ago, and those early lessons still hold up.
When your entire knowledge base is plain, cleanly tagged, locally-stored Markdown, it becomes easy for the LLM harnesses to help you learn, explain, and synthesize your knowledge. A well-organized vault doesn’t just help your biological brain find things. It lets your AI tools act as an actual research assistant instead of a passive text generator. They can follow your
[[links]], read your tags, and pull the same context you would have pulled by hand.I’ve leaned into this hard on this project. I wrote templates, a handful of custom skills, and a few project-specific sub-agents whose whole job is to figure out how to make my harness work harder for me. That’s the general move I’d push: don’t just store context, build the small pieces of automation that turn that context into real productivity.
The work you do to make a vault readable for you is the same work that makes it readable for the agents.
Just Start Writing It Down
You don’t need a perfect system on day one. I still don’t. The Time vault grew one messy note at a time until it was ready to help shape the series.
As the tooling gets faster and context keeps exploding, having a system to organize your thinking is a superpower. Build something that helps you organize your Markdown, tag your concepts, and cross-link your ideas. Then keep feeding it.
How are you managing your long-term research right now?
I’d appreciate a follow. You can subscribe with your email below. The emails go out once a week, or you can find me on Mastodon at @[email protected].
-
Quarkdown | Markdown with superpowers
Quarkdown is a modern, open-source, Markdown-based typesetting system for creating papers, presentations, knowledge bases and static websites.
-
A nice place to blog | Scribbles
Start your own blog in seconds with Scribbles - a beautiful, minimal blogging platform featuring an intuitive editor, custom domains, and privacy controls. Free plan available with up to 25 posts.
-
Most Dev Blogs Die
#MDBD
Most developers have started a blog at some point. Almost none of them are still writing.
Don’t start a blog. You already know the reasons why you should.
- It’s good for your career,
- it helps you learn,
- it builds an audience,
- whatever.
Maybe the interesting question isn’t “why should I blog” but “why did I stop.”
The Work Nobody Talks About
Writing at 30% the effort. NO wait. I mean Writing is just a small part of it. Yea, right.
You might, have you considered, possibly, that you perhaps, need a topic.
You need to know what you are talking about, you need to research it.
Truth matters, I guess, probably still right?
I mean, certainly add to the conversation, that that matters.
Publishing is the easy part. Maintaining a unique presence on multiple platforms is not.
What started as “I should write about this thing I learned” quickly turns into a quarter-day or half-day ordeal.
And that’s one post. Now there is tomorrow. And after that, another day.
You need a topic. You need a topic. You need a topic. You need a topic.
It Becomes Work
At some point, blogging stops being fun and interesting and becomes something you have to do. It feels like an obligation. You’re forcing yourself to sit down and write.
This matters to me because I’m currently on a daily publishing streak. Every day is a struggle on what to talk about.
You know what’s fun? Side projects. Building things. Tinkering with a new language on a Monday morning because you saw someone post about it. Writing about that? Easy. Staring at a blank editor trying to come up with something insightful about React server components? Sometimes fun.
Write about the fun stuff. The rest will follow. Or it won’t. That’s fine too.
What Actually Keeps One Going
I don’t have all the answers. I barely have some of the answers. But here’s what I’m doing.
I built a system. A whole content pipeline. CLI tools. Posts go through a lifecycle: draft, schedule, push. The system is not responsible for inspiration. It just managed those things. Markdown.
I lowered the bar. Way down. Not everything has to be a certain number of words. I don’t even know what my best-performing posts are. Isn’t that crazy? I have no idea. I don’t check. I’ll care later, maybe.
I write about what I’m already doing. What are you working on right now? That’s your next post. What are you interested in? What are you using that could be better? There. Done. You have a topic.
No wait, nevermind. Ah crap, I need another topic.
I stopped optimizing. You don’t have to figure out all the things you should be doing. Keywords. Thumbnails. Social media strategy. Just get the words out. The words are the hard part. Everything else is a distraction disguised as productivity.
The Commitment Problem
Blogging is a commitment. That’s the whole problem. Nobody is going to fire you for not posting this week. Nobody is likley two notice. :D
Streaks work for some people and not others. I’m on day 102 of one. Don’t ask me why I doing this to myself.
If you’re a developer, I’d appreciate a follow. You can subscribe with your email below. The emails go out once a week. Or you can find me on Mastodon at @[email protected].
-
Welcome to Kev Quirk’s little corner of the internet. Here you can find out lots of information about me, how to contact me and, of course, my blog.
-
Typst: The new foundation for documents
Typst is the new foundation for documents. Sign up now and experience limitless power to write, create, and automate anything that you can fit on a page.
-
The Greatest Archmage To Have Ever Lived [OP MC, LitRPG]
Sael the Great was part of the legendary Heroes’ Party that defeated the Corrupted One and brought about the longest era of peace the world has ever known. He stood at the forefront of humanity’s greatest (…)
-
The personal blog of Dave Rupert, web developer and podcaster from Austin, TX.