Notetaking

December 2012 blog post by programmer Brent Simmons titled Notes and Books

I’m 45 years old and my short-term memory, which used to be very good, is now average, so I take notes frequently as I work. I take notes at the very second I think of them, because if I wait even a few seconds they’re gone.

I’d use Vesper for these notes, but I’m working on Vesper. It may be paused in the debugger or in some other state where I can’t use it to take a note. While I can and do use Vesper for everything else, I can’t use it to work on itself.

Maybe that's the difference between a native app and a Web app. I don't know. But I do know that I use JotHut, created with my Junco code, to record notes and manage development of my Junco code. I don't use paper.

So I do what I’ve done for many years: I take notes — in cursive, because it’s fastest — on 5" × 8" legal pads.

I've been handwriting in print mode since grade school, so it's not even close for me. I'm much faster by handwriting with print than cursive. I may not know how to make some of the letters in cursive anymore.

If I do need to handwrite, and that's suddenly become rare, I print in pocket-sized notebooks. Back in the late 1990s, I began using small notebooks to record observations. Since the fall of 2007, I've used Moleskine hard cover notebooks in the 3.5 inch by 5.5 inch size.

But this fall, I've nearly stopped using notebooks to record daily thoughts and notes. I use JotHut for nearly everything now. When out nature observing, I still use the pocket paper notebooks. That may change if I upgrade one day from a dumbphone to a smartphone.

But when the weather is bitter cold or rainy, then a paper notebook or a Rite-n-the-Rain notebook may be better than a smartphone.

This past spring, we visited Shawnee State Forest, located at the southern tip of Ohio. Our cell phone carrier is Verizon. We had no cell phone access for much of our time in this area of the state. So that's another reason to keep a paper notebook on hand.

And I still like to make some sketches with pen, pencil, and watercolor paints. For now, I still use pocket notebooks for sketching. Maybe for me, this activity will also be replaced by a smartphone app. I know that such apps exist now. But I like dipping a waterbrush into paints and feeling the brush move across paper.

For plain text, I prefer my Junco-powered JotHut.com

#notes - #junco - #blog_jr