This document is a general collection of all sorts of notes, created by and deemed relevant to my life, my studies and my pursuits. The intention is that this document will be much like the notebook that I have up until quite recently carried around with me damn near every where. While I realize that this is something of a foolish transition (given that my laptop is sizably larger than it’s analog equivelent.) I think that it will be good to digitize this age old kind of data concomeration, given my habit of taking my laptop with me so much of the time.
In past notebook’s (which I have, in perfect Sam form, dragged behind me every time I’ve moved, despite the fact that once finished I almost never go back and reference old notebooks.) I’ve frequently left the first few pages blank with the hope of keeping some sort of table of contents. This is almost always a useless expenditure of time, as I a) never keep such an index, and b) have a pretty good time remembering where specific notes are. Yet, that’s precisely the purpose of this kind of digital transition: to keep a more organized and relationally linked database of notes.
To be fair this isn’t the first iteration of a digital notebook that I’ve made. I used a program called Notational Velocity, which has worked quite well for me. Basically it’s digital card file with a handful of nifty features, spell check, search-ability, and an always on instant save, which make it totally worth it. Unfortunately, as I began to use the program more there were a couple of features that I really felt like I needed. The first one was the ability to edit more than one note at a time (useful when taking field notes for ethnographic methodologies. The second was a new way of organizing titles/filenames. I’m usually really good about creating descriptive file names that will lump together when listing files by title. It’s helpful for keeping groups of files organized, but slightly less helpful when trying to determine what’s in the file, because the name tends to be really long and less specifically descriptive. So at Chris’ recommendation I got VoodooPad, a program which basically uses the idea of a Wiki, to organize a note taking program. It’s sort of hard to imagine until you get used it. Then it’s wonderful.
In the tradition of leaving the first few pages of a notebook blank, and then having the problem of setting the mood for a notebook and starting a new notebook. I’ve decided to use this “page” (and the entry teal that it will become) to discuss a more basic day to day aspect of my operation and tendency at the time of my writing as of.
At this point I use the computer for almost all of my writing and data creation and collection. Because so much of the content of my classes is digital and I’d just as soon not create hard copies, I have my computer with me all the time. So I suppose that it makes a great deal of sense to avoid using a computer for note taking. At one point I thought that having a truly portable computing solution would give me the chance to write more effectively because I could write electronically (which is really what is most comfortable for me anyway), anywhere. Seems the problem was that writing isn’t the kind of vocation that one can just pick up and put down at any point. For that I needed to learn how to knit. The fact is that the computer doesn’t really let me do anything that I wasn’t already doing with a notebook, it just has the potential to not drive me crazy in the long run.
So there you have it. You may think that all this portability would actually mean that I’d post to TealArt More often. Well that would be nice wouldn’t it? But alas, that’s not how it seems to work most of the time. I guess that you have to take what you get. Cheers.
