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Ask HN: What do you use to take notes?

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

#93
Xournal on my x86 tablet running Ubuntu.

Love having the xournal files go to my personal server that I can browse through with my laptop or desktop later on, anywhere, anytime, without having to bring around binders and notebooks.

I also like that you can erase and move blocks of ink around.

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

#95
0. Leuchtturm (or Moleskine if I can't get a Leuchtturm) notebook, blank pages, the middle size.

1. vimwiki in a tmux session in an XMonad scratch buffer. Pandoc for occasional PDF output.

2. Some screenshot / screencast gif scripts around byzanz and scrot.

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

#96
post #52

Workflowy. It's the lowest-friction tool I have used for notes and ideas. Using tags, it can be used as a great hierarchical project/task management system. I still use Evernote for quick storage and access of images, pdfs and long-form notes as the search is great. However, their tag/notebook organisation system has annoying redundencies and is clunky in places. I would love to bin it but can't find a suitable alter…

Workflowy has organized my life and brought some order to my brain in a way that is invaluable to me. If only the put a bit more effort into the product... literally nothing has changed in the past 3 years. not a single feature! I could excuse them if the mobile apps were good enough, but that is not the case at all.

All they need to make the mobile app perfect, IMHO, is the ability to add bookmarks to your home screen for various sections in the hierarchy.

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

#99

Xournal on my x86 tablet running Ubuntu. Love having the xournal files go to my personal server that I can browse through with my laptop or desktop later on, anywhere, anytime, without having to bring around binders and notebooks. I also like that you can erase and move blocks of ink around.

Which tablet do you use for Ubuntu ?

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

#100
For formal meetings I use pen and paper. For some specific activities I do where I can't take notes during the activity I use a voice recorder to take notes immediately afterwords. If I'm sitting at my computer (like on a phone call) I use org-capture. If I'm out and about and I just need to jot something down I use the google inbox reminder on my phone. I did have a livescribe (a pen that records audio while writing, synchronized to the place in your paper notes), it was really neat, especially if I was both conducting a meeting and taking action items. The downside was it was a little awkward to tell people every time the meeting ran that you were recording it. But it did that job well. I have used One Note for a while, it's pretty neat but the lack of a clean way to archive notes like org mode has was really a show stopper for me. For me at least having a couple of different ways works best. The small hand held voice recorder is surprisingly handy. The pain is transcribing them although recently I simply copy the files to my computer and link to them in org-mode. For group meetings I also liked used to use a white board and the camera on my phone, although I don't have need for this myself anymore. I would really recommend not getting stuck on one technique for all situations, but use different things that work better in different situations. The key is having one system to put it all together, and for me at least that's org mode.
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