Lamy restores my faith in ballpoint ink

I love fountain pens for writing reflectively.  But when I'm working, I often wince at the thought of "wasting" a fountain pen on just scratching out some notes or tasks or phone messages or whatever. On the other hand, I've never found a pen - not even the ubiquitous Pilot G2 - that satisfied my note-taking needs.  All that has changed, though, thanks to Rotring and, especially, Lamy.

One of the things that had always annoyed me about my work journal - in which I keep meeting notes, various tasks, my phone log, etc. - was that it was all in one colour.  I would often trawl the web looking for interesting hacks for my notebook, and I would regularly see sample pages written on with inks of multiple colours.  It annoyed me.  I could really use different colours, but there's no way I was going to start carrying a collection of differently inked pens.

Also, I didn't like how faint the colour from most ballpoints was compared to the sharp darkness of roller-balls or fountain pens.  But using one of my beloved fountain pens seemed wasteful, as I mentioned.  And rollerballs only ever seem to work well for a dozen pages or so before they start to skip.  (I think it's that I have oily skin and the oil gets on the paper and the ink doesn't take to it.)

But then, one day, while poking around on eBay, I found this: a discontinued Rotring Visumatic.  The interesting part was that the seller wrote that he'd put in four new Lamy cartridges because, he insisted in the product's description, Lamy cartridges were the best.

I've got plenty of Lamy pens - none of them ballpoints; so I didn't really know if he was right.

But here was a sturdy, multicolour pen that might just let me have my cake and eat it too.  So I bought it.

That was one of the best purchases I've ever made.  The pen is well-weighted and balanced, quite solid, and surprisingly thin.  It has this amazing mechanism for selecting a colour.  You hold the pen horizontally, and click it.  Whatever one of the four colour tabs near the top of the pen is facing up, that's the colour of the cartridge that comes out.  Want a different colour?  Click the pen closed.  Rotate it till the right colour is facing up, and click it again.  I tell you it's hours of fun for the whole family!

The best part, though, is the ink itself.  I've never used a ballpoint ink that was as good as the Lamy ink.  Not too slippery, but not requiring much force to push either.  No scratching on the paper.  The line of ink is constant and blob-free.  Nice high contrast for all four colours.

I swear, I'll never use another ballpoint ink again.

Now, these Rotring pens are rather rare.  I've never seen one before - or since - on eBay.  But there are many four-colour Rotrings on eBay, and Lamy still makes four-colour pens, so it's quite possible to find one that will work well for you.

But whatever you do, and no matter how many colours you use, use the Lamy ballpoint ink!

(In a future post, I'll write about how I use those colours in my work journal.)

Hipster "notebook" - PocketMod

PocketMod is a very cool little trick, whereby you can turn a single sheet of paper into a small, multipage notebook with a few careful folds and one cut of your scissors.  And the PocketMod, the website, makes it even easier to design your own little notebook.

The site offers a wide variety of page templates which you can drag to any one of the 8 pages of an assembled PocketMod notebook, including calendars, writing guides, organizers, and many others.  Design your PocketMod in your browser, choose the paper size (8.5x11 by default) and send it to your printer.

If you're not familiar with how to fold a PocketMod, there's even video instructions available.  People have even used PocketMod to create little booklets for specific purposes, like this retro self-help notebook.

Whether you find it useful or not, you have to admit that PocketMod is a very clever design.

Google helps researchers with new tools

Google has lately added new research functionality to both Google Docs and Google Scholar.  YAY Google!

In Google Docs, you there's a new Research Tool.  It will appear as a right sidebar, in which you can search - without leaving Google Docs - for web resources, publications (via Scholar), images, videos, etc.

What's really, really cool is that you can then select a search result and, at a click of your mouse, embed the citation into the Google Doc either within the text or as a footnote.  And you can choose whether the citation will be in APA, MLA, or Chicago format!

It's not powerful enough (yet) for professional researchers, but it's a godsend for high-school students writing essays, for journalists, and for some university work.  It would be nice if it could produce a conventional "References" section at the end of the document - like most scientists and engineers like it - and it would be even better if it talked to zotero, mendeley, and other citation management tools.

But even in its relatively simple form, it's still a fantastic step forward for Google Docs.

In Google Scholar, you can now build a "My Citations" profile page, that will hunt down all your publications, show you how often they've been cited, and calculate various factors that are supposed to indicate how your publications rank compared to the rest of your research community.  (Mine is publicly viewable here.)  And you can get citations to export from Google Scholar directly to bibtex and a bunch of other citation management systems (but not to zotero or mendelay - sniff, sniff).

It's wonderful to see Google provide better support for researchers.

Putting on your pants two legs at a time

Sometimes, you don't even notice you had a problem till you see the solution.  Thereafter, you can't understand how you could have ever been so blind.

If you wear boxer shorts, you may have had some difficulty in keeping them from bunching up when you pull up your trousers.  It wasn't a problem back in the 1940's because trousers were far roomier than they are these days.

And, if you're like me and getting on in years, your flexibility will start to suffer, and getting one's shorts to un-bunch when one is of a certain age can be a bit of a challenge.

Well, here's the solution.  It's a brilliant designerly way to look at the problem: stuff the boxers into your trousers first.  Without your legs in the way, it's easy to line everything up.  Then you just pull them both on at once.  Presto!  No bunching of the shorts!

Retro self-improvement app may just help form good habits

A few days ago, DESIGNTAXI published an interesting little post, about a "hipster app" - aka a sheet of paper with writing on it - that purports to help improve yourself in just 30 days.

Now before your Woo-meter goes into the red, please consider this thing just for a few minutes.



It's a small booklet that you can print onto a single page and fold yourself using the pocket mod folding technique.  And it's free, here.

What this thing lets you do is try to develop a positive habit.  Too many people think that all habits are bad.  Well, if you're Charles Manson, or Jason Bourne, they probably are (but for different reasons).  For the rest of us, habits can be very useful things.  You want to make a habit of brushing your teeth.  You want to make a habit of checking your blind spot when you're driving.  Why?  Because they are (a) good things that (b) you don't really need to think a lot about to do.  By forming good habits, you will naturally tend to take care of yourself better, work better, play better - all without the cognitive load of having to consciously manage those tasks.

We tend to form bad habits without really knowing we're doing it.  That means we don't really know how to form a habit - it just happens.  So, when you want to form a good habit... What do you do?

That's where the "Hipster Habit App" comes in.  It's easy to use - ridiculously easy to carry around with you - and it provides a template for you to form pretty much any habit you want.

I haven't tried it myself, but I must admit it looks good.  It's not too saccharine, not too geeky, and not too hard.  Of course you can't change yourself - you are who you are - but you can adapt.  You can tweak yourself - hack yourself, if you prefer - without worrying about changing your base code.  You can't change it anyways, so get over it.  The Hipster Habit App is an interesting, low-overhead way to do that.  It seems based on sound psychology (as far as I can tell), so except for the usual Your Mileage Will Vary disclaimer, I think this could actually work.

Moleskine "hacks" highlight a shortcoming of bound notebooks

While I may be a techno-geek, and proud of it, there's still something both seductive and beneficial about writing the old-fashioned way, with pen on paper.  And as far as that goes, the gold standard in notebooks is the venerable Moleskine.  Even more impressive, I think, than the notebooks themselves is the gargantuan community of Moleskine hackers; people who tweak, twist, cut, add to, remove from, and reinvent their notebooks for their own purposes.  But I think many Moleskine hacks actually underscore an intrinsic shortcoming of the bound notebook.

(Full disclosure: while I have used my fair share of Moleskine notebooks, and have several new ones waiting in the wings, I find myself these days being more drawn to Leuchtturm1917 notebooks.  This notwithstanding, this post applies equally well to all notebooks.)

A whole gaggle of Moleskine hacks can be found on Flickr and via Google.  If you take the time to look through them and sort through the duplicates and variations-on-a-theme, you'll start to see some trends.

• Paginating these notebooks appears quite de rigeur.  (I note one reason I currently prefer Leuchtturm1917 is that they're pre-paginated and even have an index page at the front that you can use to create a table of contents.)
• Forward and backward referencing is very common.  Since you can't rearrange pages in a bound book, many people need a way to relate pages that may be, in the book, quite far from one another topologically, maybe even in different books.  This is often done by numbering both the book and the page and then using double-number scheme like 3.45 to indicate page 45 in book 3.
• Sectioning. Many Moleskine hacks involve adding tabs, post-its, or some other, usually coloured, marker to indicate the start of a section of a notebook.  This is particularly popular among those who use their notebooks to implement GTD or a related method.  This can cause people some grief as the notebooks, not having been designed for tabs, end up looking a bit messy; the tabs stick out past the cover and can become worn and frayed.  Some clever people have found ways of actually cutting the pages themselves - laborious as that is to do well - to create sections without having bits and pieces sticking out beyond the notebook's cover.  I note that Moleskine does produce one book that has cut-in tabs, the Info Book, but it only comes with lined pages.  And for those of us who prefer quad or blank pages, the lines are a royal pain.
• Post-its for temporary notes.  I love post-its; they're infinitely flexible.  And there's something so significant and weighty about Moleskine notebooks that one is often loathe to just use them as scratch pads.  So many users add post-its to their Moleskine, for the sake of being able to quickly scribble things down, knowing that the post-its can be removed and recycled once that info has outlived its usefulness.  This leaves the notebook's pages clean for more "important" things.
• The Moleskine as wallet.  While Moleskines and other high-end notebooks invariably come with a pocket inside the back cover for storing receipts, cards, etc., many users augment their notebooks with a variety of extra pockets - some literally turn their pocket-sized notebooks into full-blown wallets.
• Pen loops.  Many notebook users want to be sure that they always have a good pen near their notebook.  The easiest way to do this is to have a loop on the notebook for holding one.  However, Moleskines don't have pen loops.  I personally buy adhesive pen loops from Leuchtturm1917; they'll work on anything.  Others use duct tape, elastic cloth, rubber bands, and fabrics to create pen loops.

There's plenty of other popular hacks for bound notebooks, but these are the ones I've noticed most often.

Here's my observation: most if not all of these hacks are already handled by another type of notebook - a ringed binder - and it can be done quicker and with less effort than any of these hacks.

Pagination can be done in a binder just as easily as in a bound notebook, but it's not really necessary.  The principal reason for paginating things is to be able to refer to information items that's cognitively close but topologically far.  With a binder, you can rearrange the pages so that topological distance is not an issue - thus, no need for pagination.

A similar argument can be made for forward and backward referencing.

Sectioning is rarely an issue with a binder because the binders are usually large enough to accommodate tabbed dividers.  And since you can add paper to any section in a binder, you no longer have the problem of filling one section of a bound book but leaving other sections only partly filled - and therefore partly wasted.

Post-its work just as well in a binder as in a bound notebook, but aren't as necessary.  Again, since a binder can be refilled at whim, it's not such a problem to use it for scratch notes.  Indeed, I have two kinds of paper in my binder: some good paper for important notes, and some cheap paper for scratch notes.  When I'm done with the scratch paper, I just tear it out of the binder and toss it into the blue bin.

Binders often come with an assortment of pockets in them.  My "senior" size Succes binder is a little larger and thicker than a pocket Moleskine, but has six pockets for business and credit cards, and two larger pockets for money or receipts.  And you can by extra card pockets too.  So binders are much closer to being usable wallets than are bound notebooks.

Finally, most ring binders come with pen loops.

So, to sum up: the most popular Moleskine hacks appear to address shortcomings that they do not share with ringed binders.  It would seem that users of bound notebooks are just trying to reinvent the binder, just without the rings.

The only serious and quantifiable measure in which bound notebooks like Moleskines beat binders is in robustness.  A Moleskine can stand far more abuse than a binder.

The other way in which bound notebooks beat binders is only qualitative, but still matters: prestige.  There's something special about a good bound notebook, like a Moleskine or a Leuchtturm1917, that many people just don't "feel" about binders.  In many ways, that's just as important - if you really want to use something, you'll use it better and more often than if you have to force yourself.

In the end, of course, all these books are just tools.  They're means to an end.  Whichever one gets you there best is the one you should use.

But still, if you're a big Moleskine hacker, you might want to ask yourself: are you a closet binder-user?

"Clear" is great, as far as it goes

A new "todo app" called Clear, by RealMacSoftware, has hit the App Store, to much more fanfare than usual.  Given it's novelty, and it's price - $0.99 CAD for a limited time - I couldn't help but try it out.  While it's UI is bloody brilliant, it's no where near enough for a "power user."  Great UI, but while it's long on style, it's short on functionality.

You can see all kinds of images and videos of Clear in action at its website.  This one doesn't really do it justice, but still it's better than nothing.

Clear's magic is in its UI, which is a brilliant mix of subtle animation and the simplest gestures you can possibly imagine.  Swipe right to complete a task; swipe left to delete it.

Right there, I see a problem.  What are the odds that someone will accidentally swipe left instead of right?  The odds increase dramatically because there is no confirmation for deletion (and Murphy's Law now kick in).

Pinching the list collapses it - and brings you "up" a level to the dashboard (of sorts): your list of todo lists.  Pinch again and Clear pops you up to the main menu.

Pulling down a list creates a new item.  Same with spreading (opposite of pinching) two items in a list. Touch-hold an item and you can move it around in the list.  The colours auto-adjust, on the premise that items further up the list are of a higher priority.

There's a few other features of the UI, but you get the picture.  It's very clever, and I found it insanely easy to use.  Fonts are large enough to read easily, and no tappable item is too small for one's fingers.

But.

All this app does is manage simple lists.  It does not handle due dates, repeating tasks, priorities, contexts, locations, tags, or any other advanced feature.  And it doesn't sync with anything.

Granted these are early days - Clear is only at version 1.0.1 - but there's just so much functionality that's missing, that Clear is clearly not a power user's choice.

I have also added Clear to my giant chart of iPhone task managers.

De-cluttering is de-lightful

I read this post at lifehacker, and it seemed to fit so closely with my way of doing it, I thought it was worth sharing.  The question is keeping one's home free of clutter.  It can be hard to do, but that's mostly because we keep putting it off.

The lifehacker post suggests a list of typical things one might want to get rid of in order to de-clutter, but the list is rather generic (and thus applies to only few people).  Also, the article doesn't talk much about how to go about it.  These are two things I'd like to cover here.



First: the list of things to toss.

I find that my own personal list doesn't line up well with the list in the lifehacker article.  But that's cuz I'm weird.  Things I toss include: old paperwork; old textbooks; old tests, exams, and other student work; old CDs with old software on them; stuff in my "someday" pile that I know is now "never."

You may find the list of things you tend to de-clutter is also different from both mine and the one in the article.  So how exactly do you make your list?  Here's a simple meta-list that you can use to review and identify things - and because it's meta, it should work for nearly everyone.  You should get rid of:

• anything you haven't used in a year;
• anything that's broken;
• any document older than 10 years; and
• extras anything that you have more than one of.

Of course, you may find there's some things really want to keep in spite of these rules - memorabilia, for instance; even if you don't use it, and if it's broken, and you have another one that works, I doubt you'd want to throw out your grandfather's gold pocket-watch.

These things, that violate the rules, need to be dealt with somehow.  If you leave them scattered about, you'll likely never deal with them.  Gather them all up and put them in boxes.  Label the boxes with something obvious, and don't put them in storage.  Leave them somewhere not really underfoot, but also not somewhere you'll forget about.  Keep them under your nose; make them an annoyance.  As more and more boxes accumulate, you'll get so frustrated that you'll set aside a Sunday afternoon and sort it all out.

Second: how to do it.

Here's what I do: once a week, I spend 15 minutes wandering around the house looking for stuff to toss. It might just be a magazine. Or it might be a chest of drawers. If I can't deal with it then and there (like the chest of drawers), I add it to a list of stuff to do the next free weekend I have.  I actually book it into my agenda because, for me, that lends a certain pressure to completing the task.  It also prevents me from overbooking my Sunday afternoons.

Sometimes, I do my 15 minute check just before bed; other times, while I'm having my morning coffee.  Sometimes, but rarely, I'll do it during a few successive commercial breaks during some TV program I'm watching.  The important thing is to book the 15 minutes to do this, and treat it like the important task it is.  Get it done the day you that you've booked it for.  This will help you form the good habit of not putting things off.

You might not notice a big change at first, but if you keep this up - a wee bit at a time - you'll start to notice a real difference in the amount of flotsam and jetsam you've got lying around.  And what's more, you'll be teaching yourself a habit that will prevent the junk from ever accumulating again.

Weave is threadbare

Weave, by Intuit.com, is an interesting task manager app.  It's visual design is nearly perfect, which is a great hook to make you want to try it.  It's free, so it won't hurt.  But there's some things about it that just don't work for me.

The app will not function without you registering at the Weave web service.  While I have no reason to think anything nefarious is going on there, Weave is the only task app I know of that requires you to register.  What are it's developers doing with that information?  I don't know.

Once you've registered, you're confronted with some tutorials on Weave's use.  You can't skip the tutorials.  This is, to me, the developers saying "You're an idiot and you can't be trusted to use this app without proper training."

Finally, once you've set everything up, the app seems to sync every time you start it.  It syncs in the foreground, thereby locking the app for a good five seconds or more.  Every time you start it.  This can really slow a user down if all they want is to fire off a quick little reminder.

As I mentioned, there's some great aspects to Weave - you can see them all by going to my comparison of iPhone task managers.  But there's enough hangups with Weave that I really cannot recommend it.