You’re1 probably wondering why I am writing this stuff, given nobody is reading it? If you’re not, I am ;-).

But there is an answer: I learn in a very ’experimental’ way, far better than by reading books; I like to play with things, or break them, and then fix them, and in so doing try to learn how they work.

The problem with this approach to learning is it’s rather unstructured, and it’s not always easy to know if you really understand what you think you do…

When I was studying for my exams at university, I discovered a trick that’s served me well ever since: writing things down as if you were writing for somebody else to read and understand is a great way to discover if you know what you think you do - and it really helps to consolidate the things you learned in your memory.

I’ve done this ever since, which is why I have a collection of piles of A5 notebooks that are basically WORN2 media. Now that I have finally stumbled upon a CMS that I can enjoy writing in, though, I figure why not try doing it electronically… If nobody reads it, nothing changed (and I have a more easily searchable record of my own notes in Git,) and if one person does read something useful to them here - all the better.

  1. The voice in my head. ↩︎

  2. Write Once, Read Never. ↩︎