3 ms·

if you're not using an actual 3x5" filing system, or constructing stacks of cards - cutting heavy cardstock into longer thinner strips makes it smaller to carry

if you're not using an actual 3x5" filing system, or constructing stacks of cards - cutting heavy cardstock into longer thinner strips makes it smaller to carry and gives you four logical pages. as I get older and more absent minded its nice to have a reliable cache. reasons I like paper better even though I have to carry my phone at all times always faster when the page i'm carrying is full I have to review it and chuck it. phone note apps for me tend to be write only diagrams and sketches carry alot more meaning for me no screwing around with menus for shading/font/line weight just looking at the shape of the marks on the page brings an immediate recall, whereas with text I kind of have to read it and figure it out again when I pull out my little card to write down to remember to buy socket head screws, I don't get derailed by my unread messages the classic style has you keep your 3x5 notes as a permanent lab record, I can transcribe it into a notebook for that, this is just 'my day in scribbles'

skrebbel 9y ago
> cutting heavy cardstock into longer thinner strips makes it smaller to carry and gives you four logical pages. I don't completely understand what you mean here and I'm very curious. Can you explain your system in more detail?
- convolvatron 9y ago
  oh. just buy blank sheets of card and cut it down with a knife. fold it over on the long side (~5cm by 12cm for carrying around). that way you can make whatever size you feel like. and having lots of card on hand means you can make little maquettes, little drawer labels, or print out tags on a laser printer. i buy reams of 8 1/2 x 11 130lb.
andai 9y ago
> just looking at the shape of the marks on the page brings an immediate recall, whereas with text I kind of have to read it and figure it out again I realized this about myself one day while moving, when I found an ancient hand-written essay from high school. At first I could not decipher it at all, but suddenly it clicked and I could read everything. I realized then that my teachers had been right, my handwriting is really awful, and the only reason even _I_ can read it is that the unique shapes become associated with my thoughts through the act of writing.
Infernal 9y ago
> phone note apps for me tend to be write only In that vein, I've recently realized that the CRUD model also defines how I interact with task management apps - I Create lots of stuff, Read maybe 10% of that, Update maybe 50% of what I read, and then maybe Delete (or mark done/hide) 10% of what I update - in short tons of stuff goes in and almost nothing ever comes out. I realized that with data on a computer, for the most part the default state is that it lives forever, and you have to take positive action to remove data. With paper or physical media, the default state is for things to be lost/culled over time and positive action must be taken to retain things with some sort of organization. "Lost" can mean that what you wrote down 3 months ago is now 30 pages back in your daily notebook, etc. The "presence" of the data fades a bit over time. So, for me, positive action is fatiguing. It is more valuable to have an organization system that is self-limiting where I must take positive action to capture more, rather than one where I must take positive action to distill far too much data down to what is important. I'm always looking for a better system, but so far a daily notebook where I keep the important stuff "bubbled up" to the most recent 1-3 pages has been more sustainable than any of the Wunderlist/Notes/Reminders/Omnifocus/Trello/etc. ever were.
- convolvatron 9y ago
  i think this applies to programming issues as well. the IETF used to strongly emphasize 'soft state' protocols. Not that there was no state, but it was always associated with a timeout and went away on its own. A best effort cache - although alot of these protocols (i.e pim) depend on having some non-zero lifetime to work at all. think about the additional bookkeeping and correctness issues associated with the destruction/cleanup path. alot of the time we maintain references and search structures so that we can 'properly clean up', when in reality we just want to tear down the whole world. construction and destruction do have a certain pleasant symmetry, but since the destruction path is often less tested and error prone, and may double the work at hand, isn't it worth considering implicit destruction?

skrebbel 9y ago

> cutting heavy cardstock into longer thinner strips makes it smaller to carry and gives you four logical pages. I don't completely understand what you mean here and I'm very curious. Can you explain your system in more detail?

convolvatron 9y ago
oh. just buy blank sheets of card and cut it down with a knife. fold it over on the long side (~5cm by 12cm for carrying around). that way you can make whatever size you feel like. and having lots of card on hand means you can make little maquettes, little drawer labels, or print out tags on a laser printer. i buy reams of 8 1/2 x 11 130lb.

andai 9y ago

> just looking at the shape of the marks on the page brings an immediate recall, whereas with text I kind of have to read it and figure it out again I realized this about myself one day while moving, when I found an ancient hand-written essay from high school. At first I could not decipher it at all, but suddenly it clicked and I could read everything. I realized then that my teachers had been right, my handwriting is really awful, and the only reason even _I_ can read it is that the unique shapes become associated with my thoughts through the act of writing.

Infernal 9y ago

> phone note apps for me tend to be write only In that vein, I've recently realized that the CRUD model also defines how I interact with task management apps - I Create lots of stuff, Read maybe 10% of that, Update maybe 50% of what I read, and then maybe Delete (or mark done/hide) 10% of what I update - in short tons of stuff goes in and almost nothing ever comes out. I realized that with data on a computer, for the most part the default state is that it lives forever, and you have to take positive action to remove data. With paper or physical media, the default state is for things to be lost/culled over time and positive action must be taken to retain things with some sort of organization. "Lost" can mean that what you wrote down 3 months ago is now 30 pages back in your daily notebook, etc. The "presence" of the data fades a bit over time. So, for me, positive action is fatiguing. It is more valuable to have an organization system that is self-limiting where I must take positive action to capture more, rather than one where I must take positive action to distill far too much data down to what is important. I'm always looking for a better system, but so far a daily notebook where I keep the important stuff "bubbled up" to the most recent 1-3 pages has been more sustainable than any of the Wunderlist/Notes/Reminders/Omnifocus/Trello/etc. ever were.

convolvatron 9y ago
i think this applies to programming issues as well. the IETF used to strongly emphasize 'soft state' protocols. Not that there was no state, but it was always associated with a timeout and went away on its own. A best effort cache - although alot of these protocols (i.e pim) depend on having some non-zero lifetime to work at all. think about the additional bookkeeping and correctness issues associated with the destruction/cleanup path. alot of the time we maintain references and search structures so that we can 'properly clean up', when in reality we just want to tear down the whole world. construction and destruction do have a certain pleasant symmetry, but since the destruction path is often less tested and error prone, and may double the work at hand, isn't it worth considering implicit destruction?