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I use cheap notebooks

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Re: I use cheap notebooks

#141
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not print on A4?

In the US A4 is hard to find. Not impossible, but it is special order while letter is available anywhere. A4 and US letter are very close to the same size, if you don't have a ruler you can't tell by looking.

Do you not notice the ratio is off?

I spot US letter-sized paper because it looks fatter/shorter than I'm used to.

Possibly it's easier to spot this outside North America, since the 1:√2 ratio is so widespread.

Re: I use cheap notebooks

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main laptop used to be a Thinkpad T530 from 2012 that I bought used off of eBay. I ran Linux. I never worried about it at all. There's holes in the keyboard and through the laptop to deal with liquid spills. The case was a nice hard plastic with enough flex to prevent breaking. Honestly, if I dropped it on the floor - I'd check the floor first for any damage. Taking it apart was straightforward, albeit a bit frust…

I have similar feelings whenever I get something that's 'nice, new, shiny'. I feel an urge to protect/preserve it as best as possible, and worry more than I should. One time, I bought a fancy wallet made of stainless steel (threads, woven into thin sheets, backed by plastic). For MONTHS, I was paranoid about leaving any scratches or blemishes on such a pristine, shiny thing. Years later, it's still my wallet, and has…

> One time, I bought a fancy wallet

I've been using the same briefcase for probably 30 years (bought to hold a laptop yet still fit under an airline seat). It's pretty beat up — but for lawyers a beat-up briefcase is something of a status symbol, kind of like Willie Nelson's guitar "Trigger."

https://guitar.com/features/interviews/story-of-willie-nelso...

Re: I use cheap notebooks

#143
I'm almost the opposite. Cheap notebooks feel crappy. the covers feel crappy, the paper isn't smooth when you write on it. They actively make me want to NOT interact with them.

For me, the Rhodia Webnotebook is a nice "not cheap" notebook with great paper. It handles my heavy flow pens, and pens and pencils both slide across it with a wonderful smooth feel.

Re: I use cheap notebooks

#144
I used to purchase notebooks for journaling but had a similar hangup to some other posts on this thread. I just though that it was a hard sell to continually have to shell out a bunch of cash for the sexy notebooks when all the materials for a passable alternative are essentially free if you can tap into the waste of a typical pre-pandemic office space with a comercial printer. (For a while there was a thing that would happen with the network printer where it would suddenly begin to print gibberish, usually only one or two lines per page, uncontrollably for reams and reams of paper. This was the source of my first roll your own notebook pages.)

At some point I heard about the Midori system and then realized that if you had a reusable Traveler's notebook you could print the style of paper that you wanted to use, fold it, and have an A5 sized folio (?) insert that you could staple with a specialized stapler to make the paper inserts.

This is what i have been doing for ~3 years now.

https://papersizes.io/

A5 Travelers Notebook: https://a.co/d/iy32n37

https://print-graph-paper.com

Swing-Arm Swivel Stapler: https://a.co/d/0afXOaW

Re: I use cheap notebooks

#145

I love legal pads instead of bound notebooks because you can tear off and rearrange pages so they can be with other relevant notes, also the top spiral makes it easy to put in my backpack. Do yourself a favor though, and time stamp each page down to the minute when you start writing (eg: 20230310T1029). You can: - Link between notes. Also enables you to specify the previous or next page in your notes which is useful…

This is reminiscent of the zettelkasten system with the links between notes and topics, though ZK takes it a bit further and does away with the chronological sorting files by topic. Indexes have links to individual topics and topics can link among themselves. It tickles that part of my brain that is unsatisfied with top-down/chronological notebooks and the like and replaces it with www-like hyperlinks.

Re: I use cheap notebooks

#147
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eventually I came across the idea that things are meant to be used, and now I'm much more relaxed about damaging/using up the things I own. Its like the people with cabinets full of fine china that nobody eats off of for 50 years. My mother was one of those people. Growing up we had a large cabinet of fine place sets that we were always "saving" for some other time. I finally convinced her to start using it one hol…

"Not putting miles on your Ferrari is like not having sex with your girlfriend so she'll be more desirable to her next boyfriend." -Jim Glickenhaus

The flaw in this delightful analogy is that boyfriends don't typically sell their girlfriends to each other.

Re: I use cheap notebooks

#148
This is precisely why I recently settled on using midori md notebooks. They have nice size options, and they are a little bit of a step up from composition notebooks without being so fancy you're afraid to blemish them with ink.

Re: I use cheap notebooks

#149

I like my Leuchtturms, and I've tried the Muji ones. Muji just has so few pages my Leuchtturms dotted medium size (A5) lasts me about 3-4 months (2.7~ pages a day) it's about 28CAD. Not bad burn rate when you consider even a Netflix subscription. Additionally, it's actually cost effective when you consider that most of my time is spent on thinking and writing down what I thought, therefore "splurging" a bit on myself…

If you're already shopping at Muji, may I recommend their Passport memo book? It's the same size and dimensions as a passport (and by default comes in Japanese passport red), which makes it the perfect size for a (male) jean pocket. I always carry one and an astronaut pen.

https://www.muji.us/products/passport-memo-9s62?variant=4001...

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