I use cheap notebooks

A few years ago I started an experiment to see if inexpensive fountain pens with refillable ink would be both cheaper and have less waste. I got a Pilot Metropolitan and a Lamy Safari for around $20 each. I also bought a Pentel mechanical pencil with a plastic barrel (but everything else metal) for around $15 from an art store.

So far, the experiment has been very successful and I'm still on the original bottle of ink and container of pencil leads. But the downside with the pens is that I need at least a minimum paper quality for the pens (the pencil works with anything, of course) to avoid ink bleeding/blotting. I've tried a few Moleskin notebooks and while the paper is of sufficient quality I don't really like the way they feel when writing (personal preference). The good news is that I can get a pretty good sense just by feeling the paper in person, and the notebooks don't necessarily have to be super expensive. But they're never cheap.

He never has expressed anything about the quality of paper. Actually, he takes his notes on whatever is available, which often means the back of an envelope lying around and otherwise printer paper. I have never seen him use a notebook actually, let alone an expensive one.

by the same token, water-soluble fountain pen ink is not an option for me; the best option i've found is 0.3mm mechanical pencils with 2h lead (though i can only find hb these days) but cheap ballpoints are also an acceptable option

i go through about a notebook a year. here's a scan of a couple pages from my notebook last year, which was a hannemühle because moleskines had become unobtainium here in argentina; there's an english translation below the spanish scan

http://canonical.org/~kragen/fragmentos

i made the mistake of buying brügge once, never again