It took me a while to get over the fear of destroying/using up nice things. Like enjoying a nice bottle of liquor, or using up a very nice notebook. 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.
I read once a stellar idea to help get over the fear of starting to draw in a notebook (or an art project, or a new software project) is to just start scribbling and drawing. Intentionally starting with a mess makes it much easier to break the cycle of "This thing I'm doing isn't good enough yet for this".
One notebook brand my wife found, that I love very much, is minimalism art. I like the small, softcovers. They aren't too soft, and hold their shape really well. The paper quality is high.
I also just tried out the new "sidekick notepad" from Cortex. Very expensive (overpriced), but I was happy to support their work.
I’ve recently gotten over this sentiment with my electronics. When I was a kid, each device was an irreplaceable gift from a parent or represented the investment of a long time saving. So each device was treated with the absolute care. As a result I spent a lot of time babying hardware. Now I’m a few generations of hardware into being an adult and am retiring perfect condition objects that are just too slow. For what? I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m allowed to use devices exactly how I feel like it. They exist as tools for me to use! Looking back at my chunky MacBook cover in college is funny, now. What’s the point of a fancy surface finish on the hardware if you never get to see it?
I changed to this with electronics when I decided that the midrange and below was more than enough for anything I'm doing and that every movable device should be treated as if it could be dropped on a tile floor or grow legs and walk away at any time.
Automated backups, cloud storage and services, encrypted local storage, remote wipe if feasible, devices that are midrange but still getting security and feature updates. Not quite seamless to move to a new device, but it's not that hard either.
Exactly the same here! My MBP in college had a safety case and everything... and in hindsight its awful and bulky and hides the fancy finish.
One important thing to remember, at least for me, is I just had significantly less disposable income back then. Replacing the MBP would have been financially impossible for me, so I took more care of it. I'm in a much more privileged place now... so replacing something like this would only be a significant inconvenience.
My 2012 macbook pro looks like its been throw out of a moving vehicle at this point. Dinged corners, scratched up bottoms and missing screws and feet. Thats why they make them out of a metal unibody chassis after all, to keep up with being dropped all the time and scratched up.
This is why my phone looks like I’ve been to war with it. I didn’t pay the price to grip five dollar plastic cases and after my phone has been unbearably slow, no one wants to use it anyway.
> 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 holiday season, and we were actually using and enjoying it for the last few years of her life.
I'm strongly in the camp that there's no point in having nice things if you never actually use those things.
When helping clear out a deceased relation's house, we found pretty much every piece of cut glass (wine glasses, whisky glasses, decanters, bowls etc) was chipped. That was a good sign that it had all been used and enjoyed.
Where the fine china situation gets awkward is when parents want to give it to their kids, but it means absolutely nothing to the kids because they never used it.
I was watching a video on how to split logs using high quality steel wedges and a point they made really struck me:
"Most people think the high quality wedges should be made out of hard, durable steel. That's actually the opposite of what you want. Hard steel wedges 'throw' chips when hit by a hammer.
You want soft steel that deforms since that's safer. If you are wondering 'But doesn't that mean the wedge wears down over time?', yes it does. That's fine b/c wedges are considered consumables."
The idea of an item being high quality AND consumable for safety/design reasons gave me a new appreciation for things like high quality pencils, paper etc:
yes they are high quality and get used up but that's the point
> I also just tried out the new "sidekick notepad" from Cortex. Very expensive (overpriced), but I was happy to support their work.
The sidekick notepad is a pretty nice idea, but $32 + $12 shipping is a lot for a 60 page pad.
I've been using a Notsu dot-grid landscape notepad (great paper!) but it's 8.5" x 5.5". I just wish it was larger. The Sidekick looks like a pretty nice size...
How hard is it to get custom pads made? I'm guessing non-standard dimensions are a bit of a blocker when you only want to order a dozen or two.
I've had reasonable luck at local print shops. They can do custom sizes in a plastic spiral binding for a reasonable price. I haven't found someone who can do a sewn binding, but I wonder about asking a leatherworker in town if his machine could do 30 pages if I bought a few spare needles.
I live in the rust belt, where cars only look new for the first 3 years or so. After that, they are 100% guaranteed to have chips in the paint from 18-wheelers throwing rocks, rust on the frame/fenders from the salt, and dings from other people parking 6 inches from your door.
And if you own a prius in the midwest, it's not a matter of IF someone will key it in the parking lot of home depot, it's a matter of WHEN.
Reminds me of an old freestyle motorcycling video I saw.
This guy had a new dirt bike and said ”Yeah you’re always a little hesitant with a shiny new bike, afraid you’ll scratch it up. That’s dangerous when doing these big tricks so I like to throw the bike and scratch it up intentionally to get over that fear. Then the tricks go flying”
So he throws the bike and breaks the clutch lever. But they were in the sand dunes in the middle of nowhere to shoot this stunting video and the ride back to civilization wouldn’t come until evening. He did not get to ride that day.
Best thing that happened for my wife and my marriage was the flooring people doing a shitty job before we moved into my house. She shrugs off every scuff I put in the floor with "it's crappy anyways"
I got a new car last August, noticed like two months in that someone lightly scratched/bumped the rear left bumper. Oddly enough it's almost a good thing because now I'm not as scared anymore
An acquaintance claimed to know someone who would use a bat to make the first dent in any new car he purchased. But that could be one of those stories that just travel around.
Spent a lot of my childhood getting stickers from the book ordering program, putting the sheets of them in a box, and never doing anything with them again.
Most of them were ruined during my adulthood when my basement flooded.
Now when I get a sticker, I throw it on something even if it's not the perfect destination for that sticker.
I have a drawer containing stickers that arrived with beloved products that I can't bear to commit to putting on anything. Some are decades old.
I have a pair of Technics stickers that I got with my Technics SL-1200 mkIIs in 2002. I think there may still be a rainbow Apple sticker in there. I have stickers for bands whose members have long ago stopped making music and now have boring day jobs and families.
True. Also an A5 size artist's sketchbook - with hard covers, 120g/m^2 off white paper (will take any pen from Sharpie downwards as well as watercolours) and sewn bindings - can be bought almost anywhere in the UK and costs less than two coffees in a nice cafe (£5).
Just keep one with you.
PS: I did think that the linked article was going to be about low specification laptops, and was preparing to extol the virtues of recycled Thinkpads.
I think some products are better designed to wear gracefully than others. The old iPods with the reflective back are a good example. Those things looked nice for about 5 minutes unless you immediately put them in a case.
Conversely, newer Apple products seem to wear out very gracefully. A 4 or 5 year old iPhone may look used, but it doesn't look horrifyingly ugly unless the owner seriously abused it.
For me personally, I like having the caps on pens. Clicky ones tend to stay clicked and dry out the point. I really like the 0.38 uni-ball signo dx :)
I never thought I was the type of person to have strong feelings on a pen... then I decided to see what I was missing out on and there's just so much out there!
I learned this lesson the hard way. I bought a new car after college graduation. Ordered it from the factory, got exactly what I wanted, picked it up with 5 miles on the odometer. I waged that car 4 times in three days.
On the 4th day, my mother backed out of the garage and damaged three panels on the front and side of the car.
This reminds me of getting new sneakers as a kid and trying to keep it clean, only to have a friend deliberately step on it. Was it annoying? Sure. But I gotta admit -- I didn't have to worry about keeping them pristine afterwards.
> I read once a stellar idea to help get over the fear of starting to draw in a notebook (or an art project, or a new software project) is to just start scribbling and drawing. Intentionally starting with a mess makes it much easier to break the cycle of "This thing I'm doing isn't good enough yet for this".
Along these lines, something I have shamelessly stolen from Merlin Mann is to write "The first page is profound" on the first page of every notebook I get.
> One notebook brand my wife found, that I love very much, is minimalism art
Do you know how their paper is with pencil? I've found that a lot of the nicer notebook brands work really well with pen, but the paper doesn't have enough tooth for pencil to write very well.
I have to buy shitty notepads otherwise with the nice Dingbats ones, I cannot start writing naturally because I get paralysed. With a basic notepad, I just go with the flow and don't overthink.
I'm really bad at spotting decent used cars. It has always bitten me. I overpay once for a new car and then drive it into the ground. Never had a new car last me less than 10yrs.
I used to have a similar hangup, I liked getting expensive notebooks and very rarely used them because I was worried I was “wasting” the page by writing banal stuff on it. I ended up fixing it by complete accident. I ran across yet another nice notebook* and to save on shipping I bought three of them. Later on I happened to be in an office supplies shop with a friend and she saw some pens on the shelf that she remembered as being the best pens she’d ever used*. They didn’t have single pens but the box of 12 wasn’t that expensive so I thought sure, why not, and bought a box. When I got home my notebooks had been delivered. So I was standing there with a whole box of nice pens in one hand and a whole stack of nice notebooks in the other hand, both of which I had bought excess of on a whim, and something just clicked in my brain like “these aren’t scarce resources, these are plentiful”, and I’ve never had an issue since.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to buy cheap notebooks (or cheap pens), do what works for you. But if you want to use nice notebooks and find yourself struggling to do it, you could try buying a bunch to teach yourself they’re not so precious and rare.
*: The notebooks are Code and Quill, the pens are Uniball Vision Elite, I still use both to this day. I have a stack of 10 finished notebooks and I’ve lost or given away God knows how many pens, but I’ve never run out of either.
I am one of the people who can't use nice notebooks (or nice lumber) and always saves the best for last.
It has nothing to do with what I paid, everything to do with how I perceive the quality of the consumable material.
I can, and do, use my best quality tools without any qualms. It's using up "precious" (quality) materials. (It's silly, does not serve me well, and I'm working on it)
This doesn't work like that in fountain pen users' universe. The good notebooks change the behavior of the pen and the ink a lot, and you want to write things you want to save on these notebooks.
When written, and finished, a notebook written with your favorite inks and fountain pens become an art piece for yourself, and you want to write something you want to return to.
If it was about money, I'd be using a nice rollerball with a nice refill and run of the mill or recycled paper. It's akin to liking vinyls, you want it for the experience, and spend time with it.
I have the same experience with the author. I use my fancy notebooks for diaries and software projects (like lab notebooks). Daily notes go to cheap notebooks with decent papers, and written with the best behaving, easily replaceable inks with easily replaceable pens.
When these notebooks end, they're scanned, converted to PDFs, and then shredded for recycling.
Of course… but I consciously knew that fact - that nice notebooks are practically infinite and it’s just the money to obtain them that’s scarce - for many years while still having a hangup. Knowing that fact never helped me, it wasn’t until circumstances conspired to prove it to my subconscious for the specific case of nice notebooks that I actually began to act like I believed it. Up until that point, writing in nice notebooks always required a conscious effort to overcome the subconscious fear that nice notebooks themselves were scarce.
I think our brains just aren’t very careful or rigorous about what they attach that “scarcity” label to, they will happily attach that label to the product itself instead of the money you paid for it. Consciously presenting our subconscious with disconfirming observations can be an effective tool to update our subconscious labeling.
I thought this would be about laptops. The laptops I use for work and personal stuff cost around $100 and are effectively disposable. They are not great for intense use, but the vast majority of tasks go just fine. And when developing any serious slowdown shows up right away so my work ends up being usable on low end hardware with janky connections. When one of these laptops got stolen recently I just got another one, provisioned it using some scripts, restored my personal data, and that was that. Total loss was a little over a hundred dollars and a half day of work.
> A lot of modern software problems stem from developers having a powerfully detached understanding of reality.
The best thing we could do for the internet is have developers at Google, Meta, etc, use a Raspberry Pi 4 or similar "gutless wonder ARM box" for one day a week. So often, I run into things they've written that, for no coherent reason, just run horribly on low end hardware. It was obviously written and toyed with on a Xeon workstation with multiple large 4k monitors, and, who would possibly use less?
The Blogger rewrite rather irritates me, because it went from an old, usable, performant interface that ran totally fine on ancient netbooks to this weird, "mobile first" interface (for a blogging platform) that choked out even on high end hardware when you had a lot of photos in a post. Clearly, nobody who worked on it ever actually loaded it up, or used it on old hardware, and never actually talked to anyone who used it to blog, because it was filled with tons of "modern" UI crap that was objectively worse than the old interface for every conceivable task one might do when writing and editing blog posts.
Kicked me off Blogger and onto my personally hosted Jekyll stuff, though, so I guess working as intended.
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 frustrating. I found the MBP mid-2012 unibodys much, much easier to take apart and clean.
I recently decided to upgrade and bought a M1 MBP Pro off of a college kid wanting to get a gaming laptop. It's a huge upgrade and I actually find myself loving MacOS. Everything feels so nice and looks so nice.
But now I am just terrified for this laptop. It has a hard case. I'm meticulous about a clean keyboard and screen (fingerprint magnet). I keep any and all liquids very, very far away. I never place it anywhere where there may be dust.
I sometimes wonder if the stress is worth it. I'm tempted to buy myself an X220 or something else in the X series since the T530 was heavy to lug around.
>I never place it anywhere where there may be dust.
If it's any consolation, the Apple M laptops' keyboards aren't the infamous butterfly ones.
More generally, I don't worry too much about pristine keyboards. I wipe them down every week or two with 91% isopropyl alcohol and tissue paper and they're good as new. They're going to get grimy because you need to touch them, so it's not worth the worry.
As for the screen, I just take a swiffer duster to them anytime I notice dust buildup. If I notice any liquid stains, like the keyboards I just take 91% isopropyl alcohol and tissue paper to them. Good as new.
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 enough blemishes and scratches for me to not care as much. One new scratch or blemish would be unnoticeable among the others. It still holds itself together just fine, and it still has the 'slippery' in-pocket texture that I like.
Point being, as long as you take decent care of Your Precious, it'll be fine with the exterior wear and tear.
I've also got a $4k-ish ring made with white gold, and it came with a fucking mirror-like polish. Tiny scratches or dings were 'End of the world", until I was able to identify "inside" and "outside" orientation via a small blemish on one side.
i've been using an x230 for _years_ for light work and side projects. you can mod an x220 keyboard in it if that's your thing. pretty sure it uses the same dock as the t530
haven't really found a need or desire to upgrade beyond maxing the ram and shoving an ssd in it.
I've had Thinkpads for the last 20 years of my life. I presently have an M1 Air for music production and a used T480 - great combo. I've found the MacBook to be fairly durable in spite of all the horror stories that I've heard over the years about cracked screens and so forth, so my plan is to buy an M3 Pro when they come out and throw Asahi on my M1. Unfortunately new Thinkpads just aren't what they used to be given the compelling value prop of Apple silicon but I'll happily continue buying used ones for $150 a pop.
I’ve recently been trying a bit of an odd setup. I use an iPad on a stand with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and use blink shell to mosh to vultr openbsd hosts. It’s kind of nice in the sense that you have an iPad for when you need really mainstream support for something, and I’m thinking about switching to one with 5G for mobile work. I like the focus of having a terminal style device for hobby stuff.
I came here expecting the same :) Though I prefer used Thinkpads. There's a plentiful supply of leased machines. Instead of disposable, they are excellent quality & nicely repairable and upgradeable in nearly all aspects. (Screen resolution compared to macs has been annoying me, ....) And I get to be smug about using the more sustainability focused option :)
If I had to guess, various used laptops from a decade or so ago.
For most practical applications, computing performance plateaued around 2011. Just look at how many people can't/won't use Windows 11 just because their ancient relic otherwise still works perfectly fine.
And if you want a source, anecdata is I'm posting this from an i7 2700K (aka Sandy Bridge) machine.
My mother often breaks computers, due to how and where she usually uses them (in the kitchen while cooking etc.)
I bought her a t420, which cost less than $100. All I did was swap in an SSD. But here’s the thing, I bought two t420s, and when one breaks I cannibalize the other for parts, or just swap the SSD into the old machine. I make sure to always have a spare machine, which is not hard because after you cannibalize one machine, and get a replacement, the parts on the cannibalized machine will often suffice for a while until you need to replace the same part again.
For her use cases, and to be honest 90% of people’s use cases, a t420 from 2011 has an excess of power. And the peace of mind knowing that spilling water on the keyboard will be a repair that takes 10 minutes (I could probably repair a t420 blindfolded at this point) and effectively only cost you $10-$20, is wonderful. I’ve been able to walk her through repairs over the phone.
I tend to use old various X220/X230 thinkpad as beaters. Used to be big on the X201, but somehow the X201 has been creeping up in price. Yeah, I use and like my big M1 MacBook for work. It’s nice for what I do at my job. But in my personal life I’m 100% happy with Arch Linux and i3wm on a stack of thinkpads. Having swappable batteries might be my favorite part, other than how well Linux runs.
Chromebooks that are a couple years old seem to run pretty cheap, especially refurbished. Installing Linux is simple enough, although some (all?) have non-standard key layouts which can require some additional setup to get working comfortably.
I've had a few of these over the years that I take to coffee shops/bars to work. It's nice not to feel nervous about a $1000+ investment just because the server is coming around to refresh my water.
I'm using an M2 macbook pro and our typescript project is slow to start, slow to restart after a code change. It routinely leaves orphaned node processes running at 100% CPU. I shudder to think what it would do to a $100 notebook. It would probably explode hahaha
But for Elixir yes, I could definitely use a cheap laptop.
Why is it assumed that software developer can identify and solve problems only by artificially forced to experience it firsthand and be personally frustrated - why modern software stacks keep getting buried into layers of convenience wrappers and no one cares? What would be the steps to solve it?
I don't think Moore's law is solely to the blame. Incentives are lacking, spoken languages and software development methodologies are still too primitive to describe and define temporal behaviors, and, I suspect there are also disincentives to solve it - slower software seems to be preferred for the mass, and so each times significant speedups are achieved, a correctional force could be emerging and applying over it.
Same reason why I would never go for anything beyond the base model Macs. Losing/damaging the base model (~$1k) is something I can live with, less so to the fully-specced out $4k+ one. Not to mention that those aren't super reliable to begin with and given their anti-repair stance there is no cost-effective way to repair any eventual failures the way you can do on a PC.
I start every day/week/quarter laying out what my objectives/goals are, both tactical and strategic in a notebook. I also have the full set of electronic assets (evernote, statushero/etc..) - but something about the physicality of a notebook and my trusty Pilot G2 07 just grounds my day. I usually go through 2-3 notebooks a year, and I've had five or six different brands until about 10 or so years ago I finally standardized on the Miquelrius A5 Wirebound, 6x8 Graph lined.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009E6WIWY/
Pricing is pretty variable (best deal I've ever done is $10.99) - it goes up to as much as $20 shipping in, so whenever I see a price lower than my lowest one, I just buy another 6. I think I've got about 24 of these stocked in my closet currently that should hopefully take me forward another 12 years.
People go on about pens - and my gateway drug to good pens was the Pilot G2 07 - I spent years and far too much money looking for the "Perfect" pen - until I realized that, ironically, my very first decent pen was my favorite and, wonder of wonders, is also one of the cheapest "good" pens out there. Essentially free. I marvel at how often in life you have to "pay for quality" - Not with the Pilot G2 07.
I almost exclusively (On the rare occasion I use paper, mostly as a prop to look professional or not mess up a low tech ambiance, or some other specific use case) use an A5 6 ring binder.
I especially like how you can print 2 pages on a US Letter, cut it in half, punch it(If you don't have a 6 hole punch, use an existing 6 hole sheet as a stencil and punch the marks), and it's close enough to A5 to work.
It's great for working events to have all my setup info in a binder that isn't a 3 ring full size, which I find unpleasantly bulky,just a bit too big for backpacks, and way excessive for the small amounts of paper notes I usually use.
I also like how they have A5 Ziploc sleeve things I can use for index cards and stuff.
It's such a great format I almost wish I enjoyed handwriting enough to do bullet journaling for all my notes, but I prefer Google Keep for most things, extended notes get tiring trying to write something before I forget it, while being distracted by trying to be legible, it's almost like some kind of rhythm game multitasking challenge!
I'd consider A6 instead but real A6 is hard to find, most of them are actually filofax personal in a weird aspect ratio I'm not sure I'd like.
I think your comment would be easier to understand if you stated your geographical location.
In Europe, I would expect A6 paper to be decently easy to find (although I don't think I've ever bought any, so salt away if you feel like it). A few seconds on the local Amazon surfaced [1], which is 2,000 sheets for SEK 218 (€19 or US $20) which I would not call hard to find nor expensive ...
Those are pretty great for that, but small planners have less visibility to other people and they can't see how bad your handwriting is or how long it takes you to write 2 words....
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.
I've suffered from this dilemma. I've kept an A5 (large?) softcover Moleskine as my main notebook for several years, but I always had this subtle fear about 'committing' something to a perfect-bound notebook, because I knew I wouldn't want to start ripping pages out. On the other hand, a cheap glue-bound or even spiral-bound notepad felt almost TOO disposable - I like to keep archives of notes and sketches in some sort of chronological order.
They feel disposable enough (partly the fact they are refillable makes me feel I'm not thinning down the notebook when I rip several pages out at once) but the way you can open the rings and transfer pages means that it's a great system for keeping notes together several years down the line - or even in a more permanent-feeling ring-bound binder. It's an absolute revelation for someone who has obsessed about notebooks!
The best notebooks I have found that meet both constraints of being cheap but good quality so as to not become frustrating are Muji's notebooks. They have several options in size and also styles between blank, lined, and graph lined and looseleaf or notebooks. They even have these tiny passport sized notebooks that I am trying to get into the habit of keeping with me to write down whatever I need in the moment. The paper quality is actually excellent, and their pens are all I use now as well.
Can confirm, MUJI notebooks are of a decent quality and they can handle fountain pens as well.
In addition to that, I gradually switched to their 0.38 pens of different colors. With fountain pen it was more stylish but impractical for multiple semantic(*) colours. With cheap, light, yet nice quality pens of different colours I can not only carry multiple ones, but have the same set at multiple places.
(Dark blue is body text/drawing, light blue is comment/secondary annotation, orange is action/process/message passing, green is data/metadata flow, …)
I’m a fan of the blank wire-bound Mujis for writing — especially the fine stuff I need to do at 0.30. They look classy and they love the rollerball.
Only downside I’ve found is the paper is thin enough that it’s not a great notebook to have at a bar, where you might get condensation dripping on it, nor for the gym where your hands might be sweaty. For the same reason it’s not much of a sketchbook, but for writing it’s my go-to these days.
I like the pens well enough to keep some around, and I appreciate all the color refill options, but I don’t think they’re “better” in the same way the notebooks are.
From https://www.muji.com/us/feature/whatismuji/: MUJI’s goal is to give customers a rational satisfaction, expressed not with, “This is what I really want” but with “This will do.”
I think half the time I go to a Muji store it's really because the entire space gives me a sense of calm. Making a brand that's inexpensive but still projects a quiet feeling of quality and attention to detail is rare, at least in America.
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 if they get shuffled.
- Save a stack of relevant notes by making a list of their links on a separate page before filing the notes away chronologically -- you can link to the list itself if you want to link to the group of notes.
- Have a TODO list for a certain date? Link to it from your calendar.
- You can save time by writing only the significant digits (eg: if the note page you're writing on and the page you're linking to share the same year and month, only write the day and time in the link).
- You can add line numbers or paragraph numbers if the situation demands it, and append, say, "LN23," or "¶5" to the timestamp to get specific.
It's a simple system but enables a lot of complex patterns in your note taking system.
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.
I have to confess I was partly inspired by ZK to start doing this, but by doing it for transitory notes and putting it into my day-to-day habits I feel like I've gained super powers. It's less effort to use a timestamp as a UUID for everything and I don't have to think about how to organize them until natural patterns emerge which I can sort by with lists, or refine into a more focused note. I can also remember roughly when I was thinking of something, even years later, and zero in on the note based off of that if I can't find it through links or lists.
ZK, to me, requires a lot more focus and energy. It's not very well suited for, say, taking notes while you're on the phone or in teleconference. They aren't mutually exclusive, they just have different uses (I also have a ZK).
Readit News
I read once a stellar idea to help get over the fear of starting to draw in a notebook (or an art project, or a new software project) is to just start scribbling and drawing. Intentionally starting with a mess makes it much easier to break the cycle of "This thing I'm doing isn't good enough yet for this".
One notebook brand my wife found, that I love very much, is minimalism art. I like the small, softcovers. They aren't too soft, and hold their shape really well. The paper quality is high.
I also just tried out the new "sidekick notepad" from Cortex. Very expensive (overpriced), but I was happy to support their work.
https://www.minimalismart.com/cn-soft-cover
Automated backups, cloud storage and services, encrypted local storage, remote wipe if feasible, devices that are midrange but still getting security and feature updates. Not quite seamless to move to a new device, but it's not that hard either.
One important thing to remember, at least for me, is I just had significantly less disposable income back then. Replacing the MBP would have been financially impossible for me, so I took more care of it. I'm in a much more privileged place now... so replacing something like this would only be a significant inconvenience.
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 holiday season, and we were actually using and enjoying it for the last few years of her life.
I'm strongly in the camp that there's no point in having nice things if you never actually use those things.
"Most people think the high quality wedges should be made out of hard, durable steel. That's actually the opposite of what you want. Hard steel wedges 'throw' chips when hit by a hammer.
You want soft steel that deforms since that's safer. If you are wondering 'But doesn't that mean the wedge wears down over time?', yes it does. That's fine b/c wedges are considered consumables."
The idea of an item being high quality AND consumable for safety/design reasons gave me a new appreciation for things like high quality pencils, paper etc:
yes they are high quality and get used up but that's the point
The sidekick notepad is a pretty nice idea, but $32 + $12 shipping is a lot for a 60 page pad.
I've been using a Notsu dot-grid landscape notepad (great paper!) but it's 8.5" x 5.5". I just wish it was larger. The Sidekick looks like a pretty nice size...
How hard is it to get custom pads made? I'm guessing non-standard dimensions are a bit of a blocker when you only want to order a dozen or two.
“A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”
Then you won't be as concerned about the inevitable dings and scratches it will accumulate.
And if you own a prius in the midwest, it's not a matter of IF someone will key it in the parking lot of home depot, it's a matter of WHEN.
This guy had a new dirt bike and said ”Yeah you’re always a little hesitant with a shiny new bike, afraid you’ll scratch it up. That’s dangerous when doing these big tricks so I like to throw the bike and scratch it up intentionally to get over that fear. Then the tricks go flying”
So he throws the bike and breaks the clutch lever. But they were in the sand dunes in the middle of nowhere to shoot this stunting video and the ride back to civilization wouldn’t come until evening. He did not get to ride that day.
Most of them were ruined during my adulthood when my basement flooded.
Now when I get a sticker, I throw it on something even if it's not the perfect destination for that sticker.
I have a drawer containing stickers that arrived with beloved products that I can't bear to commit to putting on anything. Some are decades old.
I have a pair of Technics stickers that I got with my Technics SL-1200 mkIIs in 2002. I think there may still be a rainbow Apple sticker in there. I have stickers for bands whose members have long ago stopped making music and now have boring day jobs and families.
Just keep one with you.
PS: I did think that the linked article was going to be about low specification laptops, and was preparing to extol the virtues of recycled Thinkpads.
Conversely, newer Apple products seem to wear out very gracefully. A 4 or 5 year old iPhone may look used, but it doesn't look horrifyingly ugly unless the owner seriously abused it.
I never thought I was the type of person to have strong feelings on a pen... then I decided to see what I was missing out on and there's just so much out there!
On the 4th day, my mother backed out of the garage and damaged three panels on the front and side of the car.
After that I realized it was just a car.
"waged"? Do you mean "waxed"?
Along these lines, something I have shamelessly stolen from Merlin Mann is to write "The first page is profound" on the first page of every notebook I get.
Do you know how their paper is with pencil? I've found that a lot of the nicer notebook brands work really well with pen, but the paper doesn't have enough tooth for pencil to write very well.
is the best advice one can get in life.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to buy cheap notebooks (or cheap pens), do what works for you. But if you want to use nice notebooks and find yourself struggling to do it, you could try buying a bunch to teach yourself they’re not so precious and rare.
*: The notebooks are Code and Quill, the pens are Uniball Vision Elite, I still use both to this day. I have a stack of 10 finished notebooks and I’ve lost or given away God knows how many pens, but I’ve never run out of either.
I don't think people are afraid of wasting good paper, they're afraid of wasting paper that they paid a lot for.
It has nothing to do with what I paid, everything to do with how I perceive the quality of the consumable material.
I can, and do, use my best quality tools without any qualms. It's using up "precious" (quality) materials. (It's silly, does not serve me well, and I'm working on it)
When written, and finished, a notebook written with your favorite inks and fountain pens become an art piece for yourself, and you want to write something you want to return to.
If it was about money, I'd be using a nice rollerball with a nice refill and run of the mill or recycled paper. It's akin to liking vinyls, you want it for the experience, and spend time with it.
I have the same experience with the author. I use my fancy notebooks for diaries and software projects (like lab notebooks). Daily notes go to cheap notebooks with decent papers, and written with the best behaving, easily replaceable inks with easily replaceable pens.
When these notebooks end, they're scanned, converted to PDFs, and then shredded for recycling.
I think our brains just aren’t very careful or rigorous about what they attach that “scarcity” label to, they will happily attach that label to the product itself instead of the money you paid for it. Consciously presenting our subconscious with disconfirming observations can be an effective tool to update our subconscious labeling.
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A lot of modern software problems stem from developers having a powerfully detached understanding of reality.
The best thing we could do for the internet is have developers at Google, Meta, etc, use a Raspberry Pi 4 or similar "gutless wonder ARM box" for one day a week. So often, I run into things they've written that, for no coherent reason, just run horribly on low end hardware. It was obviously written and toyed with on a Xeon workstation with multiple large 4k monitors, and, who would possibly use less?
The Blogger rewrite rather irritates me, because it went from an old, usable, performant interface that ran totally fine on ancient netbooks to this weird, "mobile first" interface (for a blogging platform) that choked out even on high end hardware when you had a lot of photos in a post. Clearly, nobody who worked on it ever actually loaded it up, or used it on old hardware, and never actually talked to anyone who used it to blog, because it was filled with tons of "modern" UI crap that was objectively worse than the old interface for every conceivable task one might do when writing and editing blog posts.
Kicked me off Blogger and onto my personally hosted Jekyll stuff, though, so I guess working as intended.
If I can make this work (fast) on a Raspberry Pi 3 or on older hardware, will work nicely on production systems.
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 frustrating. I found the MBP mid-2012 unibodys much, much easier to take apart and clean.
I recently decided to upgrade and bought a M1 MBP Pro off of a college kid wanting to get a gaming laptop. It's a huge upgrade and I actually find myself loving MacOS. Everything feels so nice and looks so nice.
But now I am just terrified for this laptop. It has a hard case. I'm meticulous about a clean keyboard and screen (fingerprint magnet). I keep any and all liquids very, very far away. I never place it anywhere where there may be dust.
I sometimes wonder if the stress is worth it. I'm tempted to buy myself an X220 or something else in the X series since the T530 was heavy to lug around.
If it's any consolation, the Apple M laptops' keyboards aren't the infamous butterfly ones.
More generally, I don't worry too much about pristine keyboards. I wipe them down every week or two with 91% isopropyl alcohol and tissue paper and they're good as new. They're going to get grimy because you need to touch them, so it's not worth the worry.
As for the screen, I just take a swiffer duster to them anytime I notice dust buildup. If I notice any liquid stains, like the keyboards I just take 91% isopropyl alcohol and tissue paper to them. Good as new.
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 enough blemishes and scratches for me to not care as much. One new scratch or blemish would be unnoticeable among the others. It still holds itself together just fine, and it still has the 'slippery' in-pocket texture that I like.
Point being, as long as you take decent care of Your Precious, it'll be fine with the exterior wear and tear.
I've also got a $4k-ish ring made with white gold, and it came with a fucking mirror-like polish. Tiny scratches or dings were 'End of the world", until I was able to identify "inside" and "outside" orientation via a small blemish on one side.
haven't really found a need or desire to upgrade beyond maxing the ram and shoving an ssd in it.
For most practical applications, computing performance plateaued around 2011. Just look at how many people can't/won't use Windows 11 just because their ancient relic otherwise still works perfectly fine.
And if you want a source, anecdata is I'm posting this from an i7 2700K (aka Sandy Bridge) machine.
I bought her a t420, which cost less than $100. All I did was swap in an SSD. But here’s the thing, I bought two t420s, and when one breaks I cannibalize the other for parts, or just swap the SSD into the old machine. I make sure to always have a spare machine, which is not hard because after you cannibalize one machine, and get a replacement, the parts on the cannibalized machine will often suffice for a while until you need to replace the same part again.
For her use cases, and to be honest 90% of people’s use cases, a t420 from 2011 has an excess of power. And the peace of mind knowing that spilling water on the keyboard will be a repair that takes 10 minutes (I could probably repair a t420 blindfolded at this point) and effectively only cost you $10-$20, is wonderful. I’ve been able to walk her through repairs over the phone.
I tend to use old various X220/X230 thinkpad as beaters. Used to be big on the X201, but somehow the X201 has been creeping up in price. Yeah, I use and like my big M1 MacBook for work. It’s nice for what I do at my job. But in my personal life I’m 100% happy with Arch Linux and i3wm on a stack of thinkpads. Having swappable batteries might be my favorite part, other than how well Linux runs.
I've had a few of these over the years that I take to coffee shops/bars to work. It's nice not to feel nervous about a $1000+ investment just because the server is coming around to refresh my water.
But for Elixir yes, I could definitely use a cheap laptop.
I don't think Moore's law is solely to the blame. Incentives are lacking, spoken languages and software development methodologies are still too primitive to describe and define temporal behaviors, and, I suspect there are also disincentives to solve it - slower software seems to be preferred for the mass, and so each times significant speedups are achieved, a correctional force could be emerging and applying over it.
Pricing is pretty variable (best deal I've ever done is $10.99) - it goes up to as much as $20 shipping in, so whenever I see a price lower than my lowest one, I just buy another 6. I think I've got about 24 of these stocked in my closet currently that should hopefully take me forward another 12 years.
People go on about pens - and my gateway drug to good pens was the Pilot G2 07 - I spent years and far too much money looking for the "Perfect" pen - until I realized that, ironically, my very first decent pen was my favorite and, wonder of wonders, is also one of the cheapest "good" pens out there. Essentially free. I marvel at how often in life you have to "pay for quality" - Not with the Pilot G2 07.
I especially like how you can print 2 pages on a US Letter, cut it in half, punch it(If you don't have a 6 hole punch, use an existing 6 hole sheet as a stencil and punch the marks), and it's close enough to A5 to work.
It's great for working events to have all my setup info in a binder that isn't a 3 ring full size, which I find unpleasantly bulky,just a bit too big for backpacks, and way excessive for the small amounts of paper notes I usually use.
I also like how they have A5 Ziploc sleeve things I can use for index cards and stuff.
It's such a great format I almost wish I enjoyed handwriting enough to do bullet journaling for all my notes, but I prefer Google Keep for most things, extended notes get tiring trying to write something before I forget it, while being distracted by trying to be legible, it's almost like some kind of rhythm game multitasking challenge!
I'd consider A6 instead but real A6 is hard to find, most of them are actually filofax personal in a weird aspect ratio I'm not sure I'd like.
In Europe, I would expect A6 paper to be decently easy to find (although I don't think I've ever bought any, so salt away if you feel like it). A few seconds on the local Amazon surfaced [1], which is 2,000 sheets for SEK 218 (€19 or US $20) which I would not call hard to find nor expensive ...
Edit: forgot the link! :)
[1]: https://www.amazon.se/Copier-Paper-2000BL-A6-vit/dp/B004G6Q3...
Filofax personal and A5 are in the $10 to $15 range, which is about right for something that's only getting used a few times a month.
Plus I like how A5 is big enough for RPG character sheets, scripts, and the like, so I can kind of standardize and use A5 for almost everything
Yellow legal writing pads were good for that, back in the day.
Recently I found my holy grail which is Muji's system of ring-bound, refillable notebooks and paper refills - https://www.muji.eu/uk/product/cover-for-loose-leaf-paper-a5...
They feel disposable enough (partly the fact they are refillable makes me feel I'm not thinning down the notebook when I rip several pages out at once) but the way you can open the rings and transfer pages means that it's a great system for keeping notes together several years down the line - or even in a more permanent-feeling ring-bound binder. It's an absolute revelation for someone who has obsessed about notebooks!
https://www.muji.us/collections/notebook
In addition to that, I gradually switched to their 0.38 pens of different colors. With fountain pen it was more stylish but impractical for multiple semantic(*) colours. With cheap, light, yet nice quality pens of different colours I can not only carry multiple ones, but have the same set at multiple places.
(Dark blue is body text/drawing, light blue is comment/secondary annotation, orange is action/process/message passing, green is data/metadata flow, …)
Only downside I’ve found is the paper is thin enough that it’s not a great notebook to have at a bar, where you might get condensation dripping on it, nor for the gym where your hands might be sweaty. For the same reason it’s not much of a sketchbook, but for writing it’s my go-to these days.
I like the pens well enough to keep some around, and I appreciate all the color refill options, but I don’t think they’re “better” in the same way the notebooks are.
I think half the time I go to a Muji store it's really because the entire space gives me a sense of calm. Making a brand that's inexpensive but still projects a quiet feeling of quality and attention to detail is rare, at least in America.
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 if they get shuffled.
- Save a stack of relevant notes by making a list of their links on a separate page before filing the notes away chronologically -- you can link to the list itself if you want to link to the group of notes.
- Have a TODO list for a certain date? Link to it from your calendar.
- You can save time by writing only the significant digits (eg: if the note page you're writing on and the page you're linking to share the same year and month, only write the day and time in the link).
- You can add line numbers or paragraph numbers if the situation demands it, and append, say, "LN23," or "¶5" to the timestamp to get specific.
It's a simple system but enables a lot of complex patterns in your note taking system.
ZK, to me, requires a lot more focus and energy. It's not very well suited for, say, taking notes while you're on the phone or in teleconference. They aren't mutually exclusive, they just have different uses (I also have a ZK).