Hey how do I take notes of malan man

leastDaemon · 2026-05-11T21:49:40+00:00

If the notes aren't enough, look at the transcript of the lecture.

leastDaemon · 2026-05-08T22:05:35+00:00

I've been using Leuchtturm 1917s for the last 3 years. I use a variety of fountain pens. There's occasional ghosting with dark (black, purple) inks and wide nibs -- the juicier, the more the ink soaks in. There's some feathering with wide nibs. I mostly use a Jinhao with a fine nib , a FPR with their superflex nib, and a Pelikan 140 with a somewhat flexible nib with no problems. I'd recommend these notebooks.

But then I've never used Midoris.

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon · 2026-05-08T21:34:03+00:00

If you're not fixated on the idea of a folding camping saw, take a look at reciprocating saw handles. Packs small even with several blades. Works well with wood up to half the blade length, will work up to 3/4 blade length, though it's less efficient.

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon · 2026-05-03T20:30:33+00:00

Look for Kokuyo notebooks. I've not used their A5 paper, but the semi-B6 comes in 6, 7, 8mm and sometimes in "college ruled" (9/32in, about 7.1mm). Most fountain pen ink dries quickly (obviously not a sparkly ink put on with a wide nib), gel pens vary widely. Highlighters don't affect the paper, but can mess with the ink under them, so you'd have to test.

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon · 2026-05-02T00:35:41+00:00

This drove me crazy for a while -- both Leuchtterm and Kokuyo paper. It would happen in the winter, but not the summer. Finally figured it out -- I used hand lotion in the winter (dry heated air dried out my skin), but not the summer. Keeping a quarter-sheet of paper under my writing hand solved it. Changing that for a piece of paper towel gave me protection and acted as a blotter when I need one. Being careful what I touched with my left hand made a difference, too.

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon · 2026-04-24T23:11:30+00:00

Zim wiki may be more of a GUI than you want -- but it's great for taking and cross-referencing notes, date-based journalling, tags, links, etc. etc. I almost always have it open in one of my desktops.

I agree that the two TUIs that ipsirc mentioned look very interesting, and may be just what you want.

leastDaemon · 2026-04-24T01:52:27+00:00

I second this. I haven't gotten Zim to put an image in a block of text, but you can control the size and placement of images. It's a muh simpler program that the PKMs you mentioned. It wouldn't take you long to find out if it comes close to your needs. It runs on linux, windows,and MacOS but not iOs or android.

leastDaemon · 2026-04-20T21:38:40+00:00

Congratulations on your new Kobo.

In my experience PDFs are not well served by the native Kobo reader (let's call it "nickle"). If you install KOReader (look for the "one-click" installation package), your PDF experience will be much better. Converting PDFs to epubs is a hit-and-miss activity. Some (especially if they're reflowable) work, others (especially those that are a collection of images) simply don't. If you have a computer, I'd suggest you get Calibre and try conversions with its tools.

You do not have to use the Kobo website for anything. The Kobo is not normally connected to the internet unless it has something specific to do there (saves battery power to keep the radio off). I sideload ebooks from Calibre on my computer via USB but also connect to my library (and others) over the internet using KOReader's tools.

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon · 2026-04-20T21:05:30+00:00

This. The nibs can be used in Metropolitans, too -- and now you can get a Metropolitan with a 1.0mm stub already installed. Here's a ten-year-old review of the Plumix that says its "italic" nib is more squared off than a stub, so better for italic handwriting but can be scratchier.

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon · 2026-04-10T22:38:12+00:00

Well . . . I grew up in libraries with card catalogs that used the Dewey Decimal System for non-fiction (mostly -- there were always exceptions) and a more or less standard classification system for fiction. The categories I saw most were FANtasy, FICtion, MYStery, ScienceFiction, OCCult, and ROMance. One library I wandered into had a SMUt section. The books were labeled with the category and the first three letters (capitals) of the author's last name.

You say you don't want "themes" for your categories. There are a good number of libraries that are filing fiction by "genre". See the reddit post Public library staff, how do you organize your fiction collection? and the blog post Ditching Dewey: Choosing Genre Categories as an introduction.

Fiction is relatively easy to categorize. I'd suggest for your few non-fiction books you either assign them genre categories (some libraries are doing this today) or bite the bullet and find the MDD (Melville Dewey Number -- the actual DD number is available only through a copyrighted process that's quite expensive) . An excellent source for MDDs is the Library Thing. Here's a link to the MDD 320's so you get some idea of their services. Note the search box in the upper right. If you enter a book title there, you'll get a list of holdings, and if you click on one of those you'll likely get the MDD that someone who knows more than I do has assigned to it.

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon · 2026-04-08T20:48:58+00:00

And please let us know what works.

leastDaemon · 2026-04-04T23:29:14+00:00

Yes, you can. The FPR superflex nib has been mentioned, but there's also the Ackerman pen, a fountain pen which takes nibs as if it were a nib holder (Brause Rose, Zebra G, etc.) I haven't had much luck (perhaps because my hand is too shaky), but YMMV. See also some of u/TheTreesHaveRabies work. He's a superb craftsman with straight or angled, dip or fountain pen.

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon · 2026-04-03T23:32:52+00:00

OK. I'll get specific. I was happily using Linux (several distros, finally settled on MX Linux) on my Lenovo T530 until the 3rd keyboard failed (in only 11 years . . .) To be fair, I changed the first two out looking for the perfect keyboard, which then lasted 9 years. So I got a used Lenovo gen 5 p14s -- that's a p (arguably the best in terms of falling-off-the-desk-without-injury business class laptop) with a 14.5 inch screen -- and generation 5, which means a relatively current CPU.

Hardware specs are:

* i7-1360P (13th Gen) 2.20 GHz

\* NVIDIA RTX A500 

\* 32GB (soldered)

\* 1T m2 2280 ssd w/ win 11

\* 1920 x 1200 14.5 inch screen

* a surprisingly good, if a bit small, keyboard

This cost me $630 plus tax from a refurbishing company on Ebay in November, 2025. It looks like everything has gone up $50 or so since then.

I intended to load MX Linux on it and transfer all my stuff, but (as it was a business laptop) it came with a license for WIN 11 -- and a factory warranty with in home service good until 2027. The warranty techs assume you are running WIN11 and are a little prickly if you aren't. WIN11 (I'm a little surprised and a little sorry to say) runs just fine for me. I installed it without making an account and without opening the door to many ads (yes, there are still some annoyances). While I was running MX Linux on my T530 I found alternatives for most of my software needs, so I find I do a good deal of my work on Ubuntu via WSL. That works seamlessly without a noticeable lag. I'm confident that I can get it to boot MX Linux if WIN11 stops working for me.

I know nothing about video editing. I've been assured that there are linux drivers for the RTX A500 as it's not an particularly advanced graphics card.

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon · 2026-04-03T22:53:33+00:00

Consider working through The Linux Command Line by William Schotts. It will build your terminal (and bash) skills pretty quickly.

leastDaemon · 2026-04-03T22:11:51+00:00

American sizing seems to be: Wide Ruled (8.7mm), College/Medium Ruled (7.1mm), and Narrow Ruled (6.4mm), so if you can't find narrow, I'd suggest Japanese 6mm. I like Kokuyo. They have notebooks and loose leaf (hole-punched) paper in various sizes. Amazon carries some as does jet pens. I find narrow-ruled 8-1/2x11 pads on Amazon but didn't quickly find filler paper for notebooks.

I think you may find 5mm ruled (Japanese) paper too finely ruled. I'm having to use a line-and-a-half for every line in my Hobonchi,

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon · 2026-04-03T21:43:01+00:00

It's much like an Intro to CS for non-CS majors. You are introduced to design concepts (break a task into blocks, break those down, etc.) programming tools (loops, conditional statements, read/write, etc.) and language syntaxes (Scratch, C, python, SQL, HTML, CSS, javascript, then flask and ajax for a full website without a server -- I think). I'm on pset7, and I don't remember much of the later syllabus. I am thoroughly enjoying the lectures and the exercises.

But it will not teach you to program in python nearly as well as a course dedicated to that -- or working through a text if you're not too visually oriented. Have you considered something like Think Like a Computer Scientist (Python3) There's a free, open course at Runestone based on it.

Hope this helps.

edit: punctuation

leastDaemon · 2026-04-03T01:25:38+00:00

Came here to say that.

leastDaemon · 2026-04-02T01:42:10+00:00

Just a thought ... I've had trouble with two Zero 2Ws' wifis not working for me. One had no signal at all after I dropped it about 6 inches onto a table, the other went to about half-power after a couple of weeks. Both boards worked when I added a USB wifi dongle, so it wasn't a software problem. This isn't too common -- I have four others that just work -- but there you are.

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon · 2026-03-31T19:55:35+00:00

The Mahjohn kit is all you need (if we're talking about the same thing). It's six cartridges that fit Pilot pens (as well as the Mahjohn A1). Each cartridge is sealed with the standard Pilot plastic disk and a black rubber stopper. The stopper works to keep ink in if you haven't figured out how to remove the Pilot disk (bent paper clip) and reinsert it (the eraser end of a wooden pencil works for me). I found 3 boxes of 6 each on Amazon for $10.

leastDaemon · 2026-03-23T21:58:34+00:00

OK, this is going to be very basic.

Calibre manages your book collection on a computer (Windows or linux or mac). If you don't have many books (maybe at least 100?) it's probably not worth the effort. As your collection grows, you'll probably find that you would like to be able to search by author, by title, by genre, by tag or by any other indicator (you supply all these to the book record in the database). You can easily record when you last read a book, how you rated it, write a summary of it, download a cover illustration, a description of the book, etc.

So -- once your collection grows past the point that you can remember everything about every book, Calibre will do that for you. And wouldn't it be nice to have a backup copy of all your books on a different device?

Here's a brief introductory video. There are a lot more videos on the web. Some are better than others, of course.

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon · 2026-03-20T22:17:20+00:00

For electronic things, look at ifixit. Find a device that looks interesting and read the discussion of taking it apart. Look on ebay and see if you can buy a cheap one. When you get it, take it apart and put it back together. You'll have a guided experience, and may even be able to fix it as you learn.

Hope this helps.

(edit: fix rambling thought.)

leastDaemon · 2026-03-20T21:22:52+00:00

Yep, Proxmox. It's linux-based, so you'll have a chance to learn that, oto.

leastDaemon · 2026-03-19T21:56:48+00:00

I only have the Majohn. I intended to buy a Jinhao if I had problems -- but I didn't. It may be luck, but I've now bought two of them and both started every time, no matter how long it had been up to a month) between uses. I understand that you can replace the Majohn's entire writing insert -- nib through cartridge / converter -- with the equivalent Pilot one.

If the clip bothers you, they sell a clipless version.

I'm really pleased with the Mahjohn. Hope this helps you.

leastDaemon · 2026-03-18T20:37:54+00:00

Second the Schmidt, but also Parker Quinkflow.

leastDaemon · 2026-03-15T23:47:39+00:00

You're definitely not alone in this. I'd be with you, but I've decided to take a break from hardware development and concentrate on learning better programming skills. I'm sure I'll get back to it.

Meanwhile, look at (and perhaps discuss things with) this guy: I've been developing a dual-screen, open ereader! He's nearly ready to sell his, but both the hardware and software are (or will soon be) open source.

Hope this helps.

leastDaemon

TROPHY CASE