312 lines
13 KiB
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312 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
[1]Mastodon [2]github.com/rknightuk [3]proven.lol/aaecd5 Robb Knight's avatar
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Robb Knight's logo [4]Robb Knight Maker of web things, blogger, podcaster, and
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pizzaiolo. Cat dad and human dad. [5]Permalink
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[6]
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Robb. Knight.
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[7] Mastodon [8] Subscribe
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[9]Blog [10]Notes [11]Links [12]Projects [13]/now [14]Explore
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Five Months of Journalling
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3rd June 2025
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[15]#Analogue
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[16] Robb Knight's avatar
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Style Guide Notice
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Journalling can be spelt with one "L" or two, the latter being the British
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English way so that's what I've gone for.
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I [17]started doing bullet journalling in January and amazingly, I've kept it
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up. I [18]read the book, watched a bunch of the videos, and spoke about it [19]
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on Ruminate. I'll start off with some questions, starting with [20]Marco:
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How do you carry your Journal? Do you use it on the go as well or only at
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home and work?
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I'm using an [21]Ottergami A5 dotted notebook along with an elastic pen holder
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that slots over the cover - the pen loop on this notebook broke off pretty
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quickly^[22][1]. If I'm at home it's either on my desk or on the counter in the
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kitchen. [23]My Lihit case is always with it as well. I throw it in my bag when
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I go to the office. For my next book, which is coming up in the next few weeks,
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I'll be using a [24]Scribbles that Matter notebook - the paper is thicker and
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it has page numbers.
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A notebook and pencil case on a wooden tabletop. The notebook has stickers on
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it and a pen attached in a leather holder.
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Do you use it for private and work related stuff or only for one?
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Both. For the first few weeks I was mixing in work notes with my personal ones
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but I found this a bit too confusing so I switched to using a single page
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layout for work which I do at the start of the week, then I do rapid logging
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for personal things on the subsequent pages.
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Did you stop using digital PKM tools completely?
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No. I'm still using Obsidian and I'm still updating [25]the Intersect. I still
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use Reminders for things that are more time sensitive than just "today at some
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point". My journal is, usually, the starting point for ideas - the [26]sticker
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shop (which are available to order again right now) started life as a todo in
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the journal but expanded to a note in Obsidian.
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[27]Caroline asked:
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What do adults who are not self absorbed adolescents write in a journal???
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Below I go into a bit more detail but to be clear: I'm not writing down my
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hopes and dreams^[28][2]. I do write down funny things my kids do, or when
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something else noteworthy(!) happens but this isn't the kind of thing you'd
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find when someone dies and sit down to find out what their life was like, blown
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away by their way with words. This is much closer to the indecipherable
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ramblings of a lunatic.
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Finally, [29]Neblib asked:
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how do you manage "refile" tasks bringing knowledge out of daily journals
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into easier reference stores / calendars / notebooks?
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Mostly if I write something down and it needs moving to say, a calendar, I'll
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add it when I get a chance then mark it as migrated > or done × in my journal.
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Notes that become a bit more involved like planning a new project will
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eventually get moved to a note in Obsidian.
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Capital B Capital J Bullet Journalling
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The Bullet Journal method suggests a lot of reflection, looking over your
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notes, thinking about your life, your goals, your feelings, reviewing
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everything you've done all the time. I'm not into all that.
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I did try a lot of the ideas when I started but I didn't get any value from a
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lot of it. I don't feel the need to write down my goals or aims for the week. I
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don't need to reflect on what I've achieved the previous week. I have two young
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children and a full-time job, my goal is usually just "get everyone through the
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week without major injury". If that kind of thing works for you that's
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wonderful but it's not for me.
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There's some other things that haven't really clicked with me starting with the
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future log. This is supposed to keep "all of your future events in one place".
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That sounds like a job for a calendar. I won't be doing this spread in any new
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notebooks. The monthly log has similar issues for me although I do enjoy the
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act of writing down what the month is going to look like. I think the
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date-based spreads would work better if I always had my journal to hand but I
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don't.
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Collections, which is bullet journals way of saying "lists", have been handy to
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collect^[30][3] ideas or similar notes about a single topic. I have some
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collections for this website, [31]EchoFeed, and some house projects. What I
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wish I'd done is put these all in one place at the back of my journal. Having
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them wherever I started them in the journal is not helpful and makes it a pain
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to jump quickly to them. And I'm definitely not using [32]the index.
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The bullet system itself (todo, done, migrated, event, note) I do find useful.
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Putting every thought I have in there I find useful. Just physically writing a
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thing down is so much better than dumping it into an endless stream of notes in
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a todo app.
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Now I've written it out like this it's pretty clear: I'm not doing the Bullet
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Journal method, I'm just journalling. [33]The purpose of a system is what it
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does and a quick glance at the [34]BuJo website (which has changed
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significantly even in the past 4 months), tells you what the system does: it
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sells courses and notebooks. That's not a necessarily a bad thing but it's a
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big jump from "do journalling".
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One thing I've had to contend with is not having access to my journal while I'm
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with my kids because they like to grab everything with their grubby little
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hands. So I have to use something on my phone to dump notes at those times. I
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started with [35]Godspeed and I'm currently using [36]Tot. When I do sit down
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with my journal, I'll open Tot and transfer anything in there over to the daily
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log.
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For the start of a month I do a small monthly spread along with a section to
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add any general notes I think of for that month. I don't use this spread that
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much so I'm considering dropping it completely.
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An open notebook on a wooden tabletop showing a layout for work on the left and
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dates on the right. There are stickers and doodles in it.
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Typically, I will start the week either Sunday night or Monday morning by
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picking a pair of highlighters to make my headings pretty and any pens I want
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to use that week. I usually pick a new fountain pen then rotate in some random
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standard pens. I'll setup my work spread, usually on a left hand page, and then
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Monday's heading ready for logging on the right hand page.
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I take a quick glance over the previous week to see if there's anything that
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wasn't done and move them over to the new week. If there's some idea there that
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needs expanding, I'll add it to Obsidian to expand on later. If I get any fun
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stickers, packaging with pens, little notes with things I order, or someone
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gives me something, I'll stick it into the journal as well, sometimes with a
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note of what it's related to.
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An open notebook on a wooden tabletop showing dates on the left with notes,
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some stickers at the bottom, and sketches for a website on the right
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Depending on the week, I might make a note with a sample of the pens and inks
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I'm using or add a tracker to note down how many hours I've worked on a
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specific project. The biggest thing I've realised is there's no wrong way to
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use a notebook. Some weeks, I might only use a single page for the whole week.
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Other times a week can span over multiple pages with brainstorms for new ideas,
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flowcharts to understand a concept, notes on a video I've watch, or just a
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sketch of something I thought of.
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I am going to continue with this, tweaking things as needed. As long as I'm
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keeping up with the things I want to get done, whatever that ends up looking
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like in my journal, I'm happy.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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1. They refunded me the whole cost of the notebook to make up for it [37]⤾
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2. I mostly want a nap [38]⤾
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3. Okay fine I get it now [39]⤾
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If you like this post or one of my projects you can [40]buy me a coffee 💖
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[41] Follow me on Mastodon [42] Subscribe with RSS
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Next: [43]Weeknote #1951
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Previously: [44]Don't @ Me Stickers
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[45]Discuss on the 'don 2025-06-03
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Five Months of Journalling [46]https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of
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-journalling/
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I've been doing something akin to bullet journalling for the best part of five
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months and have some thoughts
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[47] 7
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[48] 2
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[49] 29
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[50]Discuss on Stephen Gower's Blog 2025-06-03
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Popular Posts
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• [51]Using the 8BitDo Keyboard on MacOS
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• [52]Convert a Spotify Account From Facebook to Email Login
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• [53]Blocking Bots with Nginx
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• [54]Perplexity AI Is Lying about Their User Agent
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• [55]Now (November 2025)
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Analytics powered by [56]Fathom
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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[57]Colophon · [58]Contact · [59]Subscribe · [60]/save
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[61]Made with Eleventy
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[62]Member of omg.lol
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[63]Powered by EchoFeed
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[64]Buy me a coffee
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[65]Made by a human
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[66]531 in the Internet Phonebook
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[67]Follow me on Mastodon
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[68]The people pledge
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[69]Pizza Powered
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[70]This website kills fascists
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[71]Curator on url.town
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[72]This domain name is helping kids fight cancer
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Up all night
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[73]Inbox me, daddy
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[74]32 Bit Cafe
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[75]Little Pixel Library
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CSS
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PHP
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88x31
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Valid HTML
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[76]Valid Atom
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[77]Valid RSS
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[78]Valid JSON
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Robb Knight
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© 2025 Robb Knight
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I have the honour to be, your obedient servant, r dot knight
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References:
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[1] https://social.lol/@robb
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[2] https://github.com/rknightuk
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[3] https://proven.lol/aaecd5
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[4] https://rknight.me/
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[5] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/
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[6] https://rknight.me/
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[7] https://social.lol/@robb
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[8] https://rknight.me/subscribe
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[9] https://rknight.me/blog
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[10] https://rknight.me/notes
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[11] https://rknight.me/links
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[12] https://rknight.me/projects
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[13] https://rknight.me/now
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[14] https://rknight.me/explore
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[15] https://rknight.me/blog/tags/analogue
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[16] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/
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[17] https://rknight.me/blog/biting-the-bullet/
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[18] https://rknight.me/almanac/books/2025-01-20-the-bullet-journal-method/
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[19] https://ruminatepodcast.com/
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[20] https://social.lol/@esamecar/113992147299808545
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[21] https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/page/EF2037D3-B740-4CEC-B6B0-413832C08D2A
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[22] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/#fn1
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[23] https://rknight.me/blog/lihit-labs-compact-pen-case-review/
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[24] https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/page/3479760F-89A6-4BCD-BA51-E0982AA4748A
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[25] https://rknight.me/intersect
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[26] https://rknight.me/shop
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[27] https://www.penaddict.com/?category=Meet+Your+Maker
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[28] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/#fn2
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[29] https://mastodo.neoliber.al/@Neblib/114597997777651516
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[30] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/#fn3
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[31] https://echofeed.app/
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[32] https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/faq/the-index
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[33] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
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[34] https://bulletjournal.com/
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[35] https://rknight.me/save/godspeed
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[36] https://tot.rocks/
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[37] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/#fnref1
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[38] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/#fnref2
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[39] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/#fnref3
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[40] https://rknight.me/coffee
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[41] https://social.lol/@robb
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[42] https://rknight.me/subscribe
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[43] https://rknight.me/blog/weeknote-1951/
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[44] https://rknight.me/blog/dont-at-me-stickers/
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[45] https://social.lol/@robb/114619758889229988
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[46] https://rknight.me/blog/five-months-of-journalling/
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[47] https://social.lol/@robb/114619758889229988
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[48] https://social.lol/@robb/114619758889229988/reblogs
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[49] https://social.lol/@robb/114619758889229988/favourites
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[50] https://lwgrs.bearblog.dev/re-five-months-of-journalling/
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[51] https://rknight.me/blog/using-the-8bitdo-keyboard-on-macos/
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[52] https://rknight.me/blog/convert-spotify-facebook-to-email-login/
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[53] https://rknight.me/blog/blocking-bots-with-nginx/
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[54] https://rknight.me/blog/perplexity-ai-is-lying-about-its-user-agent/
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[55] https://rknight.me/blog/now-november-2025/
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[56] https://usefathom.com/ref/IXCLSF
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[57] https://rknight.me/about/colophon
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[58] https://rknight.me/contact
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[59] https://rknight.me/subscribe
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[60] https://rknight.me/save
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[61] https://11ty.dev/
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[62] https://home.omg.lol/referred-by/robb
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[63] https://echofeed.app/
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[64] https://buymeacoffee.com/rknightuk
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[65] https://ko-fi.com/s/4662b19f61
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[66] https://internetphonebook.net/?call=531&issue=1#dial-a-site
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[67] https://social.lol/@robb
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[68] https://people.pledge.party/
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[69] https://rknight.me/blog/tags/recipes
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[70] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_machine_kills_fascists
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[71] https://url.town/@robb
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[72] https://tiltify.com/@marlies/domain-name-relief-2024
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[73] https://matti.omg.lol/
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[74] https://32bit.cafe/
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[75] https://hillhouse.neocities.org/cliques/library/
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[76] https://rknight.me/subscribe/posts/atom.xml
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[77] https://rknight.me/subscribe/posts/rss.xml
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[78] https://rknight.me/subscribe/posts/feed.json
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