Donald Knuth: Surreal Numbers [video]
Several times in the video he mentions loosing a piece of inspiration because it's flowing too fast for writing it down.<p>I wonder how many ideas and insights have been lost throughout history to this phenomenon.<p>Sometimes you crack a problem from an unexpected angle and an entire forest of insights fall down onto you. You take a minute to type the first one but already some of the others are lost forever. Plus you broke out from the free flowing zone.<p>Will we ever come up with a tool to fix this tragedy?