Lab Notebooks (2020)
sambleckley.com
Lab Notebooks (2020)
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Re: Lab Notebooks (2020)
#2Lab notebooks have saved me many times. The days run together in experimental work and having a record of what I tried or saw and on what day has paid off weeks or months later when a collection of observations snapped into focus. Never been able to keep a table of contents, though.
Re: Lab Notebooks (2020)
#3We call them “Engineering Notebooks” and after 5 years at a company they tell an interesting story of the projects worked on. I’m often reviewing notes from the past couple of months and occasionally have to go back a year or two to dig up some information that I know is there somewhere.
Re: Lab Notebooks (2020)
#4I'll probably just use an app, rather than real paper, but I'll definitely keep this in mind next time I'm doing something experimental and not just "Stuff copilot could probably do".
Preserving a record in detail seems like a natural fit, we're used to doing the same for our source code, I'm surprised it's not more common to do the same for the source of the source code.
Re: Lab Notebooks (2020)
#5The article mentions, but doesn't elaborate, on the purpose of the notebook as a legal document. This was much more important when notebooks could be used to show priority in patent disputes, but only if well kept. My parents were both research scientists. Where my dad worked, the company patent lawyer read and critiqued your notebooks, and maintained the discipline.
Many of those rules became unnecessary when the US patent system joined the rest of the world by adopting "first to file" priority. Rules such as: Always writing in pen, and crossing things with a single strike-through.
Notebooks are still a great way to preserve the little details of "what the hell was I thinking?" A colleague told me a good notebook prevents you from having to repeat a study because you can't figure out what you did the first time.
There are still industries that require legally defensible record management -- you'll know if you're in that boat. If not, you can DIY whatever method works for you. The success metric is if you actually use it. On paper, I write in pencil because I'm more concerned about readability than a precise narrative. On the computer, Jupyter, just because nothing else really lets me document "thinking in code."
Re: Lab Notebooks (2020)
#6I have started using Obsidian for daily notes (which you can categorize better than the default so it's more findable) and you can tag / create back links. I am thinking that these tips plus the tools Obsidian provides would make an excellent combo. Then the files can also be placed in git and backed up for protection!
Re: Lab Notebooks (2020)
#7Habit of lab notebook has stuck with me since college. Shoutout to reMarkable tablets and Neo Smartpens, for helping combine the analog process of handwriting with digital search. Likely a personal thing, just like to take hands off keyboard from time to time. Seen hints of research re benefits of handwriting, but never really dug into it.
Re: Lab Notebooks (2020)
#8I wonder if we soon will get wearable lab cameras/microphones that can log what you do while keeping your hands free. More than once, I have been working with both hands and suddenly been distracted for a brief moment just to discover that I no longer remember if I really added stuff to that well. Also, having more exact timestamps at each stage of an experiment might be useful for later
Re: Lab Notebooks (2020)
#9One advantage of lab notebooks that the article does not mention is that by design, the pages are firmly bound to the book, so you cannot lose them. I started to use lab notebooks because I would otherwise just write thoughts on loose-leaf paper and have a difficult time keeping track of the pages and their order. The lab notebook (or any notebook with firmly bound pages) solves that problem.
That said, I don't use lab notebooks for coding/software development. I tend to use Markdown files in a Git repository for that. That setup serves the same purpose, since I write down what I intend to do and whether I was able to achieve it or not, but it is much easier to use when coding in my experience.
Re: Lab Notebooks (2020)
#10Habit of lab notebook has stuck with me since college. Shoutout to reMarkable tablets and Neo Smartpens, for helping combine the analog process of handwriting with digital search. Likely a personal thing, just like to take hands off keyboard from time to time. Seen hints of research re benefits of handwriting, but never really dug into it.
Haven’t heard of Neo before but it looks amazing.
Could you explain your process and likes/dislikes with the Neo/reMarkable?