41 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2024
  2. Dec 2023
    1. What’s this about?

      Cursory overview of Roland Allen's book: The Notebook (reply to u/eggbunni at https://www.reddit.com/r/ilovestationery/comments/17lpbzb/comment/kcmicw5/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)

      Broadly, it's exactly about what the title indicates. I had to purchase a copy shipped from the UK, so mine has only just arrived in Los Angeles. As a result, I've not read it fully yet beyond a cursory glance.

      You can find a reasonable overview at Amazon, and there are a few reviews of it, primarily in UK-based papers (Telegraph, Guardian) where the book has been released. Personal communication with some friends who have journaling, note taking, and commonplace book practices say they've been enjoying it a lot, particularly on the history of the notebook and related forms of stationery and writing practices. It needn't be read linearly.

      It's got a reasonable section on the history of paper and papermaking. Sections on friendship books, waste books, travelers and their notebooks, diaries and journals, bullet journaling, artists and scientists and even police uses, and many others. It does have a full chapter on commonplace books, particularly since 1512 though it's not nearly as comprehensive as Earle Haven's book, for example. There are also examples of a variety of specific people's uses as well as photos of their notebooks/papers interspersed.

      For the stationery nerd, it may be one of the more interesting potential gifts one might give, especially if you don't know their particular desires for papers, notebooks, pens, pencils, etc. in advance. I can say the heft and paper quality of the book is particularly nice for a mass produced volume and it's got some reasonable margins for writing one's notes in the book. I've already ordered a handful of copies for friends who have the gentle madness for stationery.

      Having some academic background in the area of intellectual history and many of the areas that Allen is writing in, I will say that this looks like a very accessible, popular press overview of writing and notebooks that touches on almost all of the highpoints that I would expect it to have and even a few I wouldn't have expected.

  3. Aug 2023
  4. May 2023
    1. My magic trick (having faced a similar dilemma with many lovely notebooks over the years) is to turn to the first double page and write in large lettersDON'T BE AFRAID TO MAKE YOUR MARK UPON LIFE'S PAGE.And just like that the new notebook spell is broken and the pen is free to write again.
  5. Apr 2023
    1. Looking for a notebook case that also be used as a wallet. .t3_12tp1il._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }

      reply to u/Insomnia_Incarnate at tk

      A zippered Lochby Pocket Journal could work reasonably well for this and the notebook could be slipped into the pocket or simply sit inside the wallet zippered.

      Perhaps a bit larger, but still functional, you could consider the Flatty Works #5460 which fits up to A6 notebooks. As an A7 notebook is smaller/thinner, this would potentially be more comfortable as a wallet than for A6 notebooks.

      A quick search on Etsy will find some interesting variety as well as potential custom options.

  6. Mar 2023
    1. While I love a great notebook as much as (more than?) the next person, a lot of the notes I take are specifically for filing into either my zettelkasten or index card-based commonplace book for later re-use. Sadly there's not a lot out there in the 4 x 6" format, so I've been able to use some book binder's glue to fashion my own "index card notebooks" which are dissemble-able for filing into my card files for cross indexing. The best part is that I can choose the paper and what's printed on it (blank, lined, grid, etc.) for use with my favorite writing media including fountain pens. I've been doing this for a while and it's working out pretty well. More details: https://boffosocko.com/2022/12/01/index-card-accessories-for-note-taking-on-the-go/

      Custom made notebook comprised of 4 x 6" index cards glued at the top with book adhesive surrounded by the binder clips and Lineco glue and paint brush used to make/bind the notebook. Arrayed around the "notebook" are a Lochby pen wallet and carrying case.

      I've recently begun adding a chipboard backing to have a firmer writing surface while on the go as well as for inserting into a custom made journal cover/case/wallet in the future, though I've yet to find something off-the-shelf for this. Maybe an A6 cover with some extra margin for error in the size difference?

      Has anyone else done this? Suggestions for improvement?

  7. Dec 2022
  8. Nov 2022
    1. One big feature that the Hypothes.is Notebook affords is indexing on replies (which currently aren't displayed on the Activity Page). I confirmed this on 2022-11-07 with one of Hypothes.is's support admins in their Slack channel.

      Sadly, this won't help my personal use case since I'm using the obsidian-hypothesis-plugin which seems to only pull highlights, annotations, and page notes from the Activity Page

      Consequently, I'll probably have to build something myself which will be somewhat painful but a good learning experience

  9. Oct 2022
  10. Apr 2022
  11. Feb 2022
    1. Companies like Palantir and i2 Analyst’s Notebook have made a killing over the last 15 years selling link chart technologies to the intelligence community (even if, in the case of the former, the relationship has cooled).
  12. Dec 2021
  13. Aug 2021
  14. Jan 2021
    1. Long before there was the Internet, there was the commonplace book — a creative and intellectual ledger of fragmentary inspirations, which a writer would collect from other books and copy into a notebook, often alongside his or her reflections and riffs. These borrowed ideas are in dialogue with the writer’s own imagination and foment it into original thinking. Over long enough a period of time — years, decades, often a lifetime — the commonplace book, while composed primarily of copied passages, comes to radiate the singular sensibility of its keeper: beliefs are refined, ideas incubated, intellectual fixations fleshed out, and the outlines of a personhood revealed. (Brain Pickings is, in an unshakable sense, a commonplace book.)
  15. Oct 2020
    1. The plan is to use the site to share surveys, interviews, and researcher notes.

      Note to self: I need to keep documenting examples of these open labs, open notebooks, etc. in the open science area.


      [also on boffosocko.com]

    2. academia is built on the premise (IMHO) of getting a good idea, parlaying that into a job and tenure, and waiting for death. I’ve had a lot of colleagues and acquaintances ask why I would bother blogging. Ask why I share all of this content online. Ask why I’m not afraid that someone is going to steal my ideas.

      Though all too true, this is just a painful statement for me. The entirety of our modern world is contingent upon the creation of ideas, their improvement and evolution, and their spreading. In an academic world where attribution of ideas is paramount, why wouldn't one publish quickly and immediately on one's own site (or anywhere else they might for that matter keeping in mind that it's almost trivially easy to self-publish it on one's own website nearly instantaneously)?

      Early areas of science were held back by the need to communicate by handwriting letters as the primary means of communication. Books eventually came, but the research involved and even the printing process could take decades. Now the primary means of science communication is via large (often corporate owned) journals, but even this process may take a year or more of research and then a year or more to publish and get the idea out. Why not write the ideas up and put them out on your own website and collect more immediate collaborators? Funding is already in such a sorry state that generally, even an idea alone, will not get the ball rolling.

      I'm reminded of the gospel song "This little light of mine" whose popular lyrics include: "Hide it under a bushel? No! / I'm gonna let it shine" and "Don't let Satan blow it out, / I'm gonna let it shine"

      I'm starting to worry that academia in conjunction with large corporate publishing interests are acting the role of Satan in the song which could easily be applied to ideas as well as to my little light.


      [also on boffosocko.com]

  16. Jan 2020
  17. Jul 2018
    1. We want to even go even further and add reproducible elements to JATS documents. We are working together with Stencila on extending Texture to allow both textual narrative and executable code to coexist in one document.
  18. Apr 2018
  19. Sep 2017
  20. Apr 2017
  21. Mar 2017
    1. Again, with memoirs and letters to help us, we are beginning to understand how abnor-mal is the effort needed to produce a work of art, and what shelter and what support the mind of the artist requires.
    2. The answer lies at present locked in old diaries, stuffed away in old draw-ers, half-obliterated in the memories of the aged. It is to be found in the lives of the obscure-in those almost unlit corridors of history where the figures of generations of women are so dimly, so fitfully perceived.
  22. Feb 2017
    1. A composition should be "a body, not a mere collection of members,"9 but it should be a living body.

      This reminds me of Lessing's The Golden Notebook. The issue of writing and ownership is something that is playing out as the protagonist (a writer) discusses her published work as something which doesn't even feel like it belongs to her; she thinks of it more as the property of her readers, and is ashamed of her work and confused as to why critics like it. Hill seems to almost think of composition as a separate body with a life of its own, and the author is something of a parent who brings the composition into being. Where does this position the audience, and what makes a written work a "living body"? Of rhetoric doesn't make a work "alive," what does?

  23. Jan 2017
  24. Nov 2014
    1. several filesystems show performance improvements including XFS and Btrfs

      Now using btrfs on my notebook. Works fine!

      One of the reasons for using it (from btrfs.wiki.kernel.org):

      "SSD (Flash storage) awareness (TRIM/Discard for reporting free blocks for reuse) and optimizations (e.g. avoiding unnecessary seek optimizations, sending writes in clusters, even if they are from unrelated files. This results in larger write operations and faster write throughput)"

      Since btrfs once ate my data (pre 1.0) I did several crash simulations to boost my confidence beforehand.