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Paper is the real 'killer app'

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Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'

#291

Post by ThomPete »

Certhas wrote: post #275
ThomPete wrote: post #131

I call this the tangibility factor. When I worked at MetaDesign back in the late nineties and early zeros we had something called RedBooks. RedBooks were most of the work we had done for a specific client printed out in tabloid size bound into a spiral back book and put on a large shelf system. We also had a matriculate digital folder system with projects, searchable and the same pages as PDF plus much more accessibl…

> the amount of information become so waste That is a wonderful typo.

Hah sorry vaste of course :)

Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'

#292

Post by singingboyo »

futureisbright wrote: post #287
nomel wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the benefit comes from two limitations: - The slow and physical aspect allows you to think about and consider the idea, as you're writing it. - The negative reinforcement, for that slow consideration, caused by from the permanence of your mistakes or a tired hand. But, I don't think paper has to be involved. I see it as an indication of a lack of good stylus input in most devices. I now use a large iPad Pro,…

I, too, possess an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, but I opted for the smaller 9.7" one. It was a mistake, the bigger one would have been better, but I love it anyway. for note-taking. It's a godsend to be able to shuffle text around, resize it, undo my errors etc. I wrote something on paper lately and automatically searched for the undo button when I made a mistake and was frustrated when I realized I have to use my era…

I'm on a surface book, but have a similar issue. OneNote is the best I've found, but my issues are a few things:

- Something about how changing color works doesn't quite feel right.

- I can't shuffle pages around, overlap them, etc.

- I want either infinite page size, or fixed, not the weird 'expand when you write near the edge' thing I have now.

I think I almost want a 'virtual desk' kind of thing that I can shuffle paper around on, make things overlap, etc. All the stuff you can do with paper, with the added benefit of being able to save stuff. Organization could be a serious issue though.

Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'

#293

Post by PetitPrince »

stan_rogers wrote: post #236
Cyph0n wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you need to use special pens? Or can you just use standard dry erase markers?

Erasable pens for overhead transparencies. They're not expensive at all, and most decent stationers would have them.

While those works, they can leave some traces. The guy behind Wipebook made a video about it [1]. See also the Tips and Tricks videos from the same company [2] [3]

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-hE6VDAG_I

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQtGd0YkMos

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_PWw7G1jfg

Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'

#294

Post by brennen »

tshadley wrote: post #265
doikor wrote: post #257

Is there something wrong with me when I'm the opposite? I can't even read my own handwriting all that well :( I just write everything in notepad (or vim/emacs) and store the plain text files on my server (and take some backups)

Me too! The speed and efficiency of typing, editing, saving, searching, how can paper compete with that? Vim just needs a graphics plugin and we're set.

There's DrawIt:

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=40

...but really I'd like to figure out a good workflow for dropping screenshots and MyPaint sketches into vimwiki diary entries.

Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'

#295

Post by mark_l_watson »

djhworld wrote: post #272
mark_l_watson wrote: post #88

Great article. One of the brightest tech colleagues I ever worked with used a moleskin notebook, always kept it with him. I bought a moleskin notebook for myself, but then my granddaughter started drawing in it, and I wanted to leave it as she left it. After reading this article I am going to buy another. I have always used yellow pads to brainstorm for new projects, but I later toss my notes and drawings. Using perm…

Personally I'd recommend not buying a moleskine, the quality of the paper seems to have dramatically gone down the hill over the years to the point where you're getting ink bleeding through the paper. I'm a big fan of the Rhodia notebooks with Clairefontaine paper :)

Thanks, I will check out Rhodia notebooks.

Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'

#296

Post by megablast »

agumonkey wrote: post #231
jessedhillon wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to explain this to someone ~10 years younger than me the other day. I was telling them about how, when I was in high school (late 90s) I had a portable minidisc player/recorder. In so many ways, listening to music on that device was better than listening to it on Spotfiy + smartphone, even despite the obvious advantages. Something about holding music in your hands, feeling a drive seek the next track, pr…

MD were such a beautiful thing. I still wonder what would have been if Sony decided to drop it as an open storage medium. Considering it was released in 1992 ... could you imagine. There's something I recently felt deep and weird about. The society is a double rotating system. We live, we want to solve problems, the solutions become a new ground replacing the past, not solving it. When I look at old tech (big hifi tu…

> MD were such a beautiful thing. I still wonder what would have been if Sony decided to drop it as an open storage medium. Considering it was released in 1992 ... could you imagine.

Sony messed it up when they bought a movie and music studio, and started to hobble their own devices. The MD was awesome, worked for 40 hours on one battery, could to digital recording and replaying.

Damn you sony.

Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'

#297

Post by realo »

futureisbright wrote: post #287
nomel wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the benefit comes from two limitations: - The slow and physical aspect allows you to think about and consider the idea, as you're writing it. - The negative reinforcement, for that slow consideration, caused by from the permanence of your mistakes or a tired hand. But, I don't think paper has to be involved. I see it as an indication of a lack of good stylus input in most devices. I now use a large iPad Pro,…

I, too, possess an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, but I opted for the smaller 9.7" one. It was a mistake, the bigger one would have been better, but I love it anyway. for note-taking. It's a godsend to be able to shuffle text around, resize it, undo my errors etc. I wrote something on paper lately and automatically searched for the undo button when I made a mistake and was frustrated when I realized I have to use my era…

Notability works well for me.

Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'

#298

Post by PetitPrince »

zapu wrote: post #283
victorhooi wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you find the Whynote versus Wipebooks? Is there a reason you went for Whynote over the others? (I have a Wipebook - but sometimes I forget to erase it immediately, and it gets hard to erase if you leave it too long. Also, the pages aren't the most durable, especially to any liquid. The Whynote doesn't appear available in larger sizes though - e.g. A4, Letter).

Are there any other unexpected caveats there? Like, I don't know, do your fingers get dirty because of small particles of the ink that didn't stick, which add up over time (think whiteboard markers but on smaller scale)? Because this really looks too good to be true, at least for me. Maybe I should order and see myself...

* The correctable pens (fine point) can dry up pretty if uncapped. I had some case where my pen where partly dried and would randomly not write. In some case I had the feeling that a particular area of the notebook wouldn't let me write where in fact it was only a dry pen. You can "undry" the pen - see [1] - but the process is not as smooth and elegant as the video would suggest. I think it's less a problem with medium point pens; but I don't like writing stuff with those medium pens - too large to my taste.

[1] : https://youtu.be/y_PWw7G1jfg?t=51s

* While we're at it, the pens tends to die much quicker than a conventional ballpoint pen (2-3 month of solid use ? I don't really know). But then, I think I write more with this notebook than I ever wrote with a conventional pen, so my estimation is probably flawed.

* I think I had dirty fingers only once because of the pens, but then that tend to also happens with gel pens. Maybe there's something wrong with the way I'm transporting or holding them ?

* When you erase a whole page (probably with some water - the ink is water soluble - and a microfiber tower) and it is not properly and thoroughly dried, it can stick to the opposite page. But that sort of thing tends to happens to a lot of plastic sheets, and the leave are thick enough to not be a problem. It's only a minor papercut (... sorry, this pun was terrible).

* The spine is not supper-dupper rugged and I recently lost one spiral (one year after I bought it). But the perks of having reorganisable and easily scannable pages are worth it.

* I would really like dotted pages instead of lined pages but this is not available at the moment.

* OneNote OCR doesn't transcribe the scanned page as magically as what it can do with a tablet PC stylus (it's probably looking at the stroke themselve, something that is lost when you scan a page)

Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'

#299

Post by Ezhik »

For note taking, I generally stick to first writing things down on paper, then copying them to OneNote later. I figure this gives me the best of both worlds, I get the better retention from handwriting, get to review my notes as I copy them, and get the notes in a format I can always access.

Organization, though... Man, no matter how hard I try, I just can't stick to any organization system, paper or digital. I wanted to bullet journal, I really did, but I have notebooks worth of failed organizing attempts. It's sad.

Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'

#300

Post by PetitPrince »

victorhooi wrote: post #244
PetitPrince wrote: post #113

I use an erasable notebook [1] for my scribbling. I find it quite good for sketching a quick diagram /prototyping, short-term todos, mindmapping and brainstorming. I don't think it's good for long term journaling (a proper notebook would be better). Having an erasable pen solves my problem of making tons of stupid spelling mistakes, being guilty of wasting paper and losing them in a giant pile of worthless annotation…

How do you find the Whynote versus Wipebooks? Is there a reason you went for Whynote over the others? (I have a Wipebook - but sometimes I forget to erase it immediately, and it gets hard to erase if you leave it too long. Also, the pages aren't the most durable, especially to any liquid. The Whynote doesn't appear available in larger sizes though - e.g. A4, Letter).

> Is there a reason you went for Whynote over the others?

It's super simple: it's the first one I heard of. I already had a Nu board day-planner/organizer/thingamajig I bought during a trip to Japan. I though it was only a novelty thing but I found myself using it more and more; not as a erasable calendar thigy but as a notebook.

Then a friend showed her own Whynote, and I ordered mine shortly thereafter. Plus, this comes from a swiss startup so it felt good to do something chauvinistic for once. Finally, it's available in brick and mortar stores in my area, so it's easy to impulse-buy.

But comparing the two products page I found out that the last version of the Wipebook ommits their detachable spine. That would be a dealbreaker for my, since I really like how I can reorganize the page as I want. It's also much easier to scan if you have can fan a scanner that can batch-scan a pile of document (typically in a library).

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