Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Month: January 2022

  • Working along on some writing projects

    Yesterday I spent some time finishing up my week 52 post for The Lindahl Letter. This morning I gave it another pass including some light editing and expansion. My weekend routine of writing posts on Saturday morning and editing the post the next day during my Sunday morning writing adventures has been working out well enough. This last time around I waited till the very end of the writing process and moved all of the content over to a word processing document template setup for publishing. I’m not sure if this time around I should figure out a way to just write into the template and begin with the end in mind. The problem with that strategy is that the final product won’t include all the weekly links to videos and Tweets. To get to that point the content would have to be more embedded into the post in the form of ongoing prose instead of broken out a section of links. Unfortunately, sections of links do not translate very well to a manuscript. They are more suited to a weekly newsletter format where clicking digital links is the outcomes of the process instead of an archival purpose. 

    Things to do this weekend:

    1. Finish week 52 of The Lindahl Letter for 1/21 publication
    2. Final review and publish on Upper Bound Chronicles eBook
    3. Review and publish on Dream Chaser Archives eBook
    4. Start edit of United Earth Chronicles
    5. Begin work on Older Essay’s Assembled eBook
  • Writing along the journey

    A few different weblog posts have been abandoned throughout the last week. Earlier this week the eBook edition of, “The Lindahl Letter: On Machine Learning,” went live all over the internet. That was exciting. Two other eBooks are nearing the completion of their editing journey on my desktop. 

    My projects folder has roughly 30 or so previously started or completed works. Some of them have been online for over a decade. Even if some of that content had been posted online years ago it feels like editing it before eBook publication is the right way to go about it. Sure it would be easier to just copy and paste it into a template and start the publishing process.

  • Oh those writing projects

    On Saturday morning, I sat down and started drafting out the 52nd Substack post of my “The Lindahl Letter” series. This post will probably be dedicated to lessons learned and a few thoughts about writing a Substack post for a full year. At that time, I was still working on all three writing projects that were mentioned last week. Saturday was the day that my latest manuscript came back from the editor. That manuscript did end up coming back from the editor. I spent a few minutes tinkering with it and ordered a proof copy of the finished product to see what it looks like on actual pages. Sometime in the next 30 days that proof copy will arrive. Sometimes editing with a pen and paper on a printed copy is the only way for me to catch those last few typos that are hiding somewhere on the pages as future eratta. 

    The printed version of the book is inflight and that is exciting. The next step in the process will be to convert it into an eBook. To that end, right now I have the eBook up and ready for one last edit on the final version of my latest book, “The Lindahl Letter: On Machine Learning.” My effort ended up being 154 pages and is both edited and formatted well for the page. What is remaining is one more start to finish read today to catch any last second typos or formatting problems before committing it to permanent storage within the eBook format. That type of effort requires a ton of focus and probably a few shots of espresso along the way. Hopefully, the general flow of the finished product is solid enough that my editing will move along swiftly for a final read. 

    Yesterday, I did manage to share the week 50 post on both Twitter and Facebook. My strategy of social sharing the content seems to be working out well enough. I’m not going to call it a market strategy as that would imply some type of professional bar for distribution is being met and that is not the case. Put simply I’m just sharing links to the content to see if a few more people each week will start reading on an ongoing basis. I guess that is how readership grows in an organic way. 

    At some point, I’m going to write a post or a book called, “Careless with the page.” That title stuck with me yesterday and I ended up writing it down in Google Keep for later review. After I complete editing the previously mentioned eBook today and get it submitted, the next step in the puzzle will be interesting. I have about 10 other manuscripts that need to be edited into eBook format and launched into publication. Earlier this year I spent some time thinking about the nature of mortality and how true it is that we need to use the time we have toward productive endeavors. Within that framework it seemed to me that all those manuscripts that are essentially parked need to be edited and shared out as eBooks for posterity.

  • Keeping writing a priority

    Right now my focus is on working three different pieces of content to completion. 

    1. On Machine Learning – this book needs some work to update the footnotes after it comes back from the editor
    2. Considering product choices – this future paper needs to go from a talk based slideshow (PowerPoint) to a paper
    3. I need to finish the slides for my “The next 5 years of ML in the healthcare space” talk

    Each one of these needs a different level of care to complete the effort. One of the things that I need to focus on continuing throughout 2022 is keeping at least 3 writing projects open. This obviously does not include my daily writing efforts or the one off projects that get sparked from the flames of imagination. This list of things that I’m working on will continue to be a living list that will undergo change. From here on out I’m just going to write about my projects. Taking that course of action will give me more content to write about and help focus on thoughts on the task at hand. Keeping a list of open writing projects helps me take my time on Saturday and Sunday morning and focus it on something more academic. One of the things that is very important to me is to start turning more of my focus to writing academic papers and manuscripts moving forward.

  • Latest paper research notes

    Over the last few days, I have been looking at sketches of the healthcare landscape in the United States. My research is strictly limited to that universe of care at the moment. Maybe later I could do some comparative analysis, but at the moment a limited universe is necessary to make progress on this initial research effort. I have a very large Moleskine sketchbook that has A3 size pages. Which for those of you who do not know happens to be 11.75 inches by 16.5 inches. That gives me plenty of space to sketch out ideas. At the moment, I have been working on three different sketches that will be converted from sketch to slide at some point. That effort includes mapping the healthcare space, plotting the next 5 years, and a sketch of where ML will be in that 5 year mapping of healthcare. My initial analysis showed a bunch of different ways to look at things. It feels like the overall ecosystem is being pushed from a lot of directions instead of being driven organically into a cohesive mesh.