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Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?

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111–120 of 142 posts

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?

#111
This sounds absurd, but hear me out: I start with paper, and then type them in.

I've tried almost everything to automate paper->computer (typing rather than writing, Livescribe pen, iPad pro + apple pencil, many many devices that are now dead) and none have been as good as just a decent (not super special) pen and a notepad. I prefer an engineering pad or quadrille or in a pinch dot-grid, but really anything works as long as you don't lose it.

The trick I learned was every day or so to move them into the computer, which I do by typing them in (and simply taking a photo of drawings). I usually type in Emacs or right into Evernote. I try to do it every evening as one of my last tasks, as part of reviewing my day & looking at the next day. If it's a multi-day sketch-it-out effort I wait until the few days are over. Dictation has become good enough that I can actually read aloud the relevant parts of a bunch of sheets of paper (in the order I care about) and then quickly fix them up. This is actually the only use case for dictation I've found on my computer.

The benefits: First of all, typing them over forces you to review them, organize them slightly, and skip over the irrelevant stuff. This is really important after a design effort since you throw away what you think are truly dead paths, and all your cross-out go away. If I need one, this typing is often the base of my design document. Second: I've seen meeting notes I've taken that don't justify being typed in. In which case, why did I even go to that meeting?

Interestingly, when I was a kid my mum told me she used this technique both in school and in work, which I dismissed as a ludicrous waste of time. Only decades later when I evolved the same approach did I remember her advice.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?

#112
In addition to a simple binder with blank papers and a good pen for when I'm in "thinking mode", I have actually been happy with the following solution, for text note-taking on the computer (which I use almost daily as a journal, for meetings etc etc):

Simple markdown files, with a script to create a new date-stamped document for each day [1], opens it in vim, and then commits the change and pushes to a bitbucket private repo for backup, after I close vim [2].

It also includes a script for converting all documents to a nice epub ebook, for offline reading, browsing, searching etc in calibre e-reader.

Some benefits that made me go this direction, instead of, say evernote or the like:

- Offline storage

- Syncable via git (I'm keeping a backup in a private bitbucket repo)

- Easily convert to any format via pandoc

- Can edit effortlessly in my terminal-based environment (bash, tmux, vim)

- Really automateable

- ...

[1] https://github.com/samuell/mdnote

[2] https://github.com/samuell/mdnote/blob/master/edit.sh

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?

#113
post #106
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reverted to just taking pictures of my notes. I then put them into Google Docs for storage and put on tags if I need them for storage. (I use to use Evernote for storing my pictures of my notes but ...)

I have a scanner with a feeder, so I use that sometimes, but or anything that's meant to last, like documentation for a project, I tend to type it in. More ephemeral things like todo lists, I only scan if I have a reason to want to keept it.

That is the nice thing about taking a picture and just sharing it to Google Drive takes 5 seconds

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?

#114
I'd like to mention Ideaflip, btw: http://ideaflip.com

It's intended for collaboration rather than specifically for note-taking, but it looks like it addresses some of my issues with respect to flexibility for note-taking. I'm not convinced they've got the pricing and market fit perfect yet, but it looks quite interesting.

(Disclaimer: I'm having some conversations with the founder, but we've not done business)

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?

#115
Good old pen and paper!

I keep a paper based day planner and a notebook with my ideas, thoughts, etc in it. Recently I have been also trying to keep track using an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil using an app called Nebo. I'm not ready to switch yet. (And for that matter I have never been able to switch in 40 years).

Paper to me is long lasting. I can start something in a notebook, shelve it and then pick it up again. No need to update the OS or the app I used to create it (if it still exists).

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?

#116
post #36
post #18

Paper in big binder. I've tried for very long to find a good electronic solution. Up to and including writing my own wiki with various extensions customised to my diting style, and hunting around for every note taking app under the sun. The problem, I find, is that nothing beats the flexibility of being able to take out multiple sheets of paper and move them around, annotate them, put them back in. It creates a flexi…

I use a three ring binder with thick grid paper and awesome Japanese notepad with grids ( http://www.jetpens.com/Midori-MD-Notebook-A5-Grid/pd/13607 ). Pens are an addicting technology. Top 5 list of various pens. https://www.penaddict.com/top-5-pens/ I also buy a cool pencil case ( http://www.jetpens.com/Kokuyo-Pencil-Cases/ct/2929 ) My only difference is when I was in graduate student I used OneNote with 2003 Table…

+1 for mentioning Jet Pens. I had never heard of them and I found a great horizontal weekly planner to try out! (I have been looking for something like this for a few years after seeing one someone was carrying from Vietnam.

http://www.jetpens.com/Maruman-Mnemosyne-N163-Memo-Notepad-W...

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?

#117
post #32

Evernote. My Evernote is the only valuable digital asset I have. Everything else is exchangeable.

You may want to read this https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/14/evernotes-new-privacy-ru...

They backed out of doing this: https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2016/12/15/evernote-revisits-...

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?

#118

I've been a fan of the concept of Quiver ( http://happenapps.com/#quiver ) for a long time, but unable to use it daily as it is Mac only. I love the idea of having different notebooks, being able to easily merge text, code, mathematics and images into one note, and make 'cookbooks' out of them. Someone make it for Windows please.

I would love to see encryption in Quiver

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?

#119
post #65

I've started using Laverna( http://Laverna.cc ) recently. Its a note management app built completely in Javascript and is serverless(except for storage, which is via your own dropbox), so I can host it on github pages/ AWS S3. It has a convenient Markdown editor with live previews, sorting notes by notebooks, and has web and mobile versions. The notes are stored in dropbox and your browser's local storage, also they…

I tried laverna some years ago (early development stage) but it was very unstable. What about now ? It is reliable ?

Unfortunately, no. Tried it few days ago, after Evernote privacy policy change. Still very unstable. I switched to SimpleNote instead.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?

#120
We're building Nuclino (https://www.nuclino.com/), which is inspired by Notational Velocity / nvALT. You can upload images via drag and drop and embed code blocks. Syntax highlighting for the code blocks is on the roadmap. You can either share individual pages with a client (via a public URL) or invite someone to share several pages and collaborate on them in real-time.
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