#259 - Follow-up to My Previous Post

Motto: I found a homogeneous mixture composed of only one phase

Figured it out.

I wrote a 2385 word Column last week about notetaking software and how it sucks. Everything I said was valid and true, but I figured it out.

I am going back to grad school (hopefully in 12 months) to study Computer Science. My degree was in Electrical Engineering, which is tangentially related to Computer Science, but is not Computer Science. I have some ground to make up before I have hopes to succeed in a masters-level computer science program. So I've been taking classes and doing independent research online. 

During these classes/research I've been taking handwritten notes. After writing my last Column, I decided to experiment with OneNote as my main notetaking platform. Long story short:


Clearly, electronic notes aren't "faster" given my style of notetaking... and, as I mentioned in the last Column, physically writing notes has been shown to translate to better retention of the information. That's two bonuses for physical notes.

But what about the digital, searchable archive? Well, it turns out Melissa and I bought a scanner a while back that's really good at handling just that. I've been digitizing my notebooks from college. Finished Circuits 2 and 3 since I started this Column. So it's going pretty fast. The scanner creates searchable PDFs at a rate of about 12 second per page, which is really not bad. 

So now I have a .PDF that's titled "Circuits 3" that's 84 pages long, searches seem to work alright - but that's way better than I had before. From now on, I will have my notes with me anywhere there's an internet connection... also in this handy dandy notebook:


 (and one other just like it)

Top 5: Benefits of My New Notetaking System
5. It makes notes as portable and as shareable as I want
4. It's both local & cloud-based... and within the Google ecosystem (into which I've already fully bought)
3. It supports encryption on a per-note basis (although encryption reduces the number of places I can see my notes)
2. It justifies the purchase of our fancy scanner, which was admittedly a 'luxury' buy at the time
1. It allows me to apply my forward-looking notetaking system retroactively (I'm half done already)

Quote:
"Seriously?"
- Melissa, after she found out I was worrying about notetaking systems again (she was very supportive after that, though) -

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#258 - Feature: Notetaking Platform Anxiety

Image
Motto: Writing for Me, by Me Melissa is going back to grad school, she's taking her Mac Air & iPad with her & utilizing Microsoft OneNote. While she was setting up her notetaking environment, I started thinking about how I would architect my "idealized system for handling graduate school". Fair warning, this is a bit of an epic. A system for succeeding in higher education is defined in several broad categories: What would I physically bring with me to class? How would I take notes that are relevant immediately and in the future? How do I manage time & tasks? Answering these questions is the purpose of this Column. I'm going to do so both "in general" and given my specific (more interesting to me, but less interesting in general) case. 1. What would I physically bring with me to class? Obviously I would bring with me a bag. I'd probably just keep my current messenger bag for simplicity sake. Anything could work. In all
Read more

#42 - Life, The Universe, and Everything

Image
Motto: Don't Panic. BSOD My current computer is crashing on a multiple-times-per-day basis now. It's a little over 4 years old and has been needing to be put to rest for a while. Given that I know technology and what-not, I've decided I am going to build my next computer myself. Seems obvious now, I don't know why I didn't think of it before. It's going to be built specifically to suit my needs. This essentially means I'm going to build a computer specifically for video editing. There will be more on this at a later date... I have a couple of Nexus devices I want to get before the computer time ever comes. Having a job and money is so much better than college was it's not even funny. Whoever said "college is the best time in your life" must have not went through an engineering program. Don't get me wrong, college as great... but would I rather be doing that than what I'm doing now? No fricken way. Most negative words seem to st
Read more

#22 - It's my party and I'll cry to get attention.

Image
Motto: Two days ago, I was 23. Then I was 24. I aged one year in a day. Yesterday was my birthday. A few friends of mine helped another friend of mine move from Lawrence to Kansas City. The trip up there was hot and windy and stressful. We lost a pillow out of the back of the truck ( not entirely my fault), but otherwise had no casualties. The rest of this story will be told in bullet-point fashion: We relaxed in the air conditioner. We ate Minsky's pizza. We held the first meeting of my secret society that has been held in probably a year. Nobody knows that but me. We threw marshmallows into each other's mouths. We eventually built a slingshot and started using it instead of throwing them. We walked around a really nice apartment building. We were denied access to the pool or the movie theater room on account of them being previously engaged. We got lost (mildly lost) driving around looking for a convenience store.  We saw what is apparently "the bad part o
Read more