The Birth of a PIM

Hello world!!! This is the birth of my personal information management system. As a incorrigible consumer of information, I’m finally undertaking a personal objective of mine which has been floating and sometimes rattling around in my head for years: the implementation of a state-of-the-art system for managing my thoughts. I say thoughts, because I envision this project as being larger than just data management. Since the time I had a VIC-20 with a tape drive (can anyone say sequential access?), I’ve had problems keeping track of stuff. I’ve flourished with using the CLI and was quite amazed (a little bit conflicted at the time) when Windows came along to sit on top of my MS-DOS, but I think I’d like to undertake the very task that many before have set out to accomplish: the development of a tool that is as transparent as possible in use for storage, retrieval, and collaboration of all sorts of ideas. I’m also going to make this open-source as possible. At this point, I can’t help feeling somewhat like an oddity talking to an audience who consists essentially of myself, however, hopefully someday I’ll attract some collaborators. I’ve always envied groups like L0pht and the cDc, but operated more as a prof sort of character. Now that I’ve reached 40, I think it’s time to start communicating with some voices other than those in my head.

At this time, my goals are somewhat inchoate. I have degrees in software engineering and mathematics, and I’m rather proficient in all areas under the general umbrella of computation, but I’d like to seriously start consolidating my knowledge into a sort of organic opus that can be used as a reference, portfolio, and platform. That means going “full-stack”, which some of us older folk might just call being a hacker. In his book Dreaming in code, Scott Rosenberg chronicles Mitch Kapor’s attempt at developing transcendent software. Well, this is my small-scale personal attempt to do that. As they say, “Aim at the moon! You may not hit it, but at least you will fall among the stars.”

Originally published at th30ry0fm1nd.com.