#24730 - Lord Graga - Tue Aug 10, 2004 5:10 pm
Heya.
Having recently started at a new school with higher requirments to the students. One of them is to take a lot more notes that I usually do, and if I do them in hand, I am very very sure that I will somehow manage to lose most of my notes at the end of the year. Besides, it sucks to sit with a few hundred silly little pieces of paper and sort them out, or search through them to find some special information.
So I came up with the idea that I needed a notetaking program for my laptop. It would need to have a good search function, and maybe loggin function for each file (i.e: created on [] and last modified[]), so that I wouldn't need to type it in myself.
Have any of you ever heard of/used such a program? It doesn't matter at all if it's for Linux or Windows, as long as it's good.
LG
#24732 - col - Tue Aug 10, 2004 5:32 pm
Folks generally use pen and paper for note taking because they are silent! and will not annoy the speaker.
I think the only reasonable alternative is to use an audio recording (if you can get permission)
col
#24745 - sgeos - Tue Aug 10, 2004 9:36 pm
I think any OS will be able to do all that... *nix or windows at least. I suspect mac could as well.
-Brendan
#24747 - poslundc - Tue Aug 10, 2004 10:12 pm
I also don't have any actual products to suggest... except to say just type everything into a text editor as best you can. It doesn't have to be clean. The OS should sort the files for you, as Brendan points out.
And... attend a school that is more progressive. Note taking isn't a reliable indicator of comprehension or retention. About the only thing it indicates is how well you take notes.
Dan.
#24750 - keldon - Tue Aug 10, 2004 10:32 pm
you are best off using Open/Microsoft Office on your laptop; but yes, it is about how well you take notes. And generally speaking if you type slower than you write, as some people still do, then you are better off with your hand.
You can write notes on the day; and when you get home put them into your folder in order, and basically have a contents page and add to that; that way you know what's in your notes at a quick glance, and everything is in order to look back to revise from.
#24754 - dagamer34 - Wed Aug 11, 2004 12:13 am
And they are easy to copy and sell... :)
_________________
Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(
#24768 - mymateo - Wed Aug 11, 2004 2:57 am
Hmm... off topic indeed... Is your laptop GBA compatible, 'cause if not you're in the wrong forum. But look at all these helpful folks! I applaud the kindness of strangers.
Er, uh... I would have to agree with the masses here. Open Office (formerly known as Star Office) is a free download from Sun (the Java people), and you can find it at http://download.openoffice.org/1.1.2/index.html.
As for sorting, I would highly recommend just keeping organised.
- Name your folders by subject and/or date by month
(ie. C:\Physics\Aug-2004\)
- Then name your individual files by date then topic
(ie. C:\Physics\Aug-2004\23-Notes for upcoming test on inertia)
This will make things very easy. Just use [WIN]-F to open Windows' Find feature (or use the start menu-> search, or if you're using linux/mac, I'm sure there's a file search function somewhere), and type in INERTIA. You will be greeted with any notes you have on inertia, and the folder it's in will tell you when you took the notes.
Hope I've been helpful!
P.S. Do you dev for GBA?
#24771 - keldon - Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:12 am
| mymateo wrote: |
| P.S. Do you dev for GBA? |
Lord Graga; Lorg Graga, don't think I've ever heard of him ;D
#24773 - mymateo - Wed Aug 11, 2004 10:00 am
Huh?
#24779 - poslundc - Wed Aug 11, 2004 1:40 pm
Most of his 346 other posts weren't in the off-topic section. Please... get a clue.
Dan.
#24811 - dagamer34 - Wed Aug 11, 2004 9:50 pm
| poslundc wrote: |
Most of his 346 other posts weren't in the off-topic section. Please... get a clue.
Dan. |
That was a bit harsh, Dan. I think he was making a joke, hopefully...
_________________
Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(
#24819 - crossraleigh - Wed Aug 11, 2004 10:32 pm
| mymateo wrote: |
| P.S. Do you dev for GBA? |
Yes, he develops for the GBA. He is the same Lord Graga that won the second PDRoms competition. He also placed second in the recent G&W compo PDRoms held.
His website is here; you can find out a bit more about him there and also in the chat Kojote had with him.
#24822 - keldon - Wed Aug 11, 2004 11:33 pm
| poslundc wrote: |
Most of his 346 other posts weren't in the off-topic section. Please... get a clue.
Dan. |
Of course 'tis a joke; methinks someone else should get a clue - bearing in mind I was a PDRoms G&W entrant aswell =)
#24830 - poslundc - Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:10 am
I was responding to the "Huh?", not the joke.
Dan.
#24841 - keldon - Thu Aug 12, 2004 8:25 am
:D oh sorry
#24846 - mymateo - Thu Aug 12, 2004 9:14 am
Poslundc, just lay off, will ya?
So excuse me if I don't know Lord Graga. I don't spend every waking moment reading posts and about past competitions that happened before I knew they existed.
As for my "Huh?" comment, that was because the reply of "Lord Graga; Lorg Graga, don't think I've ever heard of him ;D" was a bit of a mystery to me, as it would be to ANYone who has never heard of Lord Graga.
So maybe Poslundc should practice a little bit of tolerance for people not quite as obviously [sarcasm]super-intelligent[/sarcasm] as he is. Get a clue indeed.
#24851 - poslundc - Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:47 pm
It has nothing to do with whether or not you know Lord Graga, or spend every waking moment reading posts. It doesn't require super-intelligence, just a little nudge of logic.
You asked if he did GBA dev. Like I said, do you think his 346 other posts to the GBA dev forum were all in the off-topic section?
Dan.
#24853 - Lord Graga - Thu Aug 12, 2004 3:11 pm
mymateo: Well, this is the "Off Topic" section, so I am basicly free to post whatever I feel would fit here. This is what the Off Topic section is for, and I do think about what I am posting before I am posting it. In this very case I feel that I could get a decent answer because many GBA developers are around the age where you (could) go to university, where notes is an important part of the lessons.
Anyway, back on the topic: Most of the methods that you are describing only includes search for the filename, and not words inside the file itself. This would be greatly appreciated, because if I, example, did a report on the physics of electrons, then I would possible have some information in files which did not have "electron" in their filename, which would mean that I would not get all the information that I had compiled.
LG
#24863 - sgeos - Thu Aug 12, 2004 6:29 pm
| Lord Graga wrote: |
| Anyway, back on the topic: Most of the methods that you are describing only includes search for the filename, and not words inside the file itself. |
Use *nix or a cygwin installation. Become familiar with man pages. man grep. (grep lets one search for string matches.) I also like ls -l for listing dates and such. One could also look into shell scripts. I know nothing about them.
-Brendan
#24878 - mymateo - Thu Aug 12, 2004 9:39 pm
Well, if that's what "off topic" means, then so be it.
Anyways, if you want to search within files for specific words, then the Windows find function allows you to specify files either by name or extention, then to search within those for specific words. But for any other OS, I'm afraid I don't know anything.
Poslundc, you seem so have it in for me.
| Quote: |
| It has nothing to do with whether or not you know Lord Graga, or spend every waking moment reading posts. It doesn't require super-intelligence, just a little nudge of logic. |
The "super intelligence" comment was made in a reference apart from whether or not someone would understand what you said about Lord Graga. Just saying you seem to think you're "all that".
BUT knowing Lord Graga WOULD have to mean that I've read some of his posts, and for me to have done that, I would have had to either search through all the forums (I only go into the ones that interest me), or look at his profile and research his forum activity (I didn't CARE enough about it to bother - it was only a comment in PASSING for crap's sake). Besides, I was being very sarcastic in that particular post. (Who would spend every waking moment reading the forums? Or even a good portion of their free time?)
| Quote: |
| Most of his 346 other posts weren't in the off-topic section. Please... get a clue. |
So... in order to KNOW Lord Graga, know that he devs for the GBA, and know that he has posted roughly 346 times, mostly in other topics, only requires "just a little nudge of logic"?
Tell me... I have a friend named Brian. He want the best wire to hook up his stereo. Now, only using logic, determine that he has eaten 1,318 hamburgers in his lifetime.
What is your idea of logic, anyways? Does anyone else think that he's being a little unfair here? How can so much come from saying "P.S. Do you dev for GBA?" and then "Huh?". It's not like I refused to help until I found out he was one of us, it was a mere question out of curiosity!
I'm willing to drop all of this if you are, poslundc. This isn't the place for petty arguments (yes, I'm being petty too. I'm not just calling names)
#24880 - dagamer34 - Thu Aug 12, 2004 10:04 pm
| Lord Graga wrote: |
mymateo: Well, this is the "Off Topic" section, so I am basicly free to post whatever I feel would fit here. This is what the Off Topic section is for, and I do think about what I am posting before I am posting it. In this very case I feel that I could get a decent answer because many GBA developers are around the age where you (could) go to university, where notes is an important part of the lessons.
Anyway, back on the topic: Most of the methods that you are describing only includes search for the filename, and not words inside the file itself. This would be greatly appreciated, because if I, example, did a report on the physics of electrons, then I would possible have some information in files which did not have "electron" in their filename, which would mean that I would not get all the information that I had compiled.
LG |
If you are using Windows XP, you can search for words inside the file just by using the search function in My Computer. Just remember to point it to a somewhat specific path; I can't imagine how long it would take to search an entire hard drive for a couple of words, especially now that you can find 400GB HDDs if you look hard enough.
_________________
Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(
#24882 - poslundc - Thu Aug 12, 2004 10:14 pm
| mymateo wrote: |
| So... in order to KNOW Lord Graga, know that he devs for the GBA, and know that he has posted roughly 346 times, mostly in other topics, only requires "just a little nudge of logic"? |
It says it, like, right under his name.
Dan.
#24886 - grumpycat - Fri Aug 13, 2004 1:30 am
Lord Graga,
If I were you (and I was once... sorta) I woud just grab a decent A4 ring-bound folder and hand-write everything. Keep different lecture courses on different sheets. Tabbed separators help. Write neatly and you'll be able to find stuff.
I carried around a single 2-inch wide folder for each of my 3-years with all my notes in it. No worries.
Folders can be bashed about more than an expensive laptop, and being in Europe, presumably you have bars on campus and may spend a sizeable number of hours there after classes. Student bars and laptops don't go together. Student bars and anything that doesn't like beer spilled on it don't go together.
poslundc and mymateo,
Chill guys. Really.
Grumpy.
#24894 - mymateo - Fri Aug 13, 2004 4:10 am
[smacks forehead]
Uh, yeah...
I confess, that was a stupid mistake on my behalf.
But in my defense, it's really small!
[Crawls under table with tail between legs]
Still, a little compassion in your next reply to idiots like me who miss fairly obvious details will win over more friends in the future. We idiots like to be coddled.
I'll leave now...
#24907 - Lord Graga - Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:01 pm
| dagamer34 wrote: |
| Lord Graga wrote: | mymateo: Well, this is the "Off Topic" section, so I am basicly free to post whatever I feel would fit here. This is what the Off Topic section is for, and I do think about what I am posting before I am posting it. In this very case I feel that I could get a decent answer because many GBA developers are around the age where you (could) go to university, where notes is an important part of the lessons.
Anyway, back on the topic: Most of the methods that you are describing only includes search for the filename, and not words inside the file itself. This would be greatly appreciated, because if I, example, did a report on the physics of electrons, then I would possible have some information in files which did not have "electron" in their filename, which would mean that I would not get all the information that I had compiled.
LG |
If you are using Windows XP, you can search for words inside the file just by using the search function in My Computer. Just remember to point it to a somewhat specific path; I can't imagine how long it would take to search an entire hard drive for a couple of words, especially now that you can find 400GB HDDs if you look hard enough. |
Ahh, yes, now that's a brilliant function that I had yet to discover :)
Seems like it the only way around the problem then, unless there's some equal function in Linux.
@Grumpycat: That's kinda what I was trying to avoid, but, oh well, it might be a last resort then :)
LG
#24912 - ScottLininger - Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:47 pm
Hobble through on pen and paper for a semester, then buy a DS and code a handwriting recognition library. Voila! Class notes portable enough to go safely to the bar. ;)
-Scott
#24913 - poslundc - Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:50 pm
Handwritten notes are precisely the reason I don't use a PDA. That, and I neither need or can afford one.
But if I were to get one, it would have to have some kind of integrated keyboard that didn't totally suck. It's touch-typing or bust for me!
Dan.
#24936 - grumpycat - Fri Aug 13, 2004 6:28 pm
| poslundc wrote: |
| Handwritten notes are precisely the reason I don't use a PDA. |
Exactly. Science courses (maths, electronics, computing, physics, chemistry, biology) make heavy use of formulas, diagrams, symbols, etc. and PDAs and computers really do suck at trying to faithfully jot down anything like that.
Everyone and draw a diagram on a piece of paper. Even if you make mistakes and scribble. Computers really are arse compared to pen and paper.
I have a laptop and I have a PDA. My laptop I use for programming and writing Word Docs (with Visio diagrams when needed) and my PDA I use to keep contacts, appointments, etc (but I find myself using it less and less - I'm an engineer - not a businessman/salesman who has constant meetings).
For note taking, doodling, or sketching out ideas, I always always use pen and paper. Word and Visio are for when I'm done thinking and have to present my ideas to others.
That's enough about Grumpy.
#24940 - dagamer34 - Fri Aug 13, 2004 7:10 pm
| ScottLininger wrote: |
Hobble through on pen and paper for a semester, then buy a DS and code a handwriting recognition library. Voila! Class notes portable enough to go safely to the bar. ;)
-Scott |
Maybe.... We'll see if something like that happens. I wish it does! :)
_________________
Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(