after trying all types of smart phone based software for todo lists / syncing, I've decided I really just want a small notebook + pencil

anyone have a good recommendation ?

Muji for the best quality/price ratio

There are waterproof notebooks “Rite in the Rain” iirc (haven’t used)

And if you want to use a fountain pen with the mythical Tomoe River, Hobonichi do small (pocket-sized) notebooks but I wouldn’t order them by themselves because shipping is atrocious, find someone to share an order with (and the planners/covers are the main appeal anyway)

as another case of the XY problem, the pencil I like to use is: https://www.amazon.com/Alvin-Draft-Matic-Mechanical-Pencil-DM05/dp/B007VTP62U and what I really need is a small "junior padfolio" to protect the mechanical pencil while providing room for a 5x7 legal pad, the 8.5x11 legal pads . padfolios are too bulky

Muji do erasable pens btw, I found them better than pencils because (a) erasable (b) come in colours (c) no breakable lead

5x7 is around A5, right? You might be happy with a normal A5 notebook in a Hobonichi Cousin cover

according to google:

A2	420 x 594 mm	16.5 x 23.4 in
A3	297 x 420 mm	11.7 x 16.5 in
A4	210 x 297 mm	8.3 x 11.7 in
A5	148 x 210 mm	5.8 x 8.3 in

They have “butterfly” type closings, where you thread a pen through two loops, one per cover

https://www.1101.com/store/techo/en/2018/pc/detail_cover/cc17_colorsblue.html <- example

Again you don’t have to order yourself, there are collectors who will happily sell you a used cover cheaply, or shops that do bulk orders (I only know the ones in UK though)

6480 Japanese Yen equals
57.8664 US Dollar

Oh, and if you want to do something like a bullet journal, it’s worth looking at leuchtturm 1917 notebooks - they come with pages pre-numbered and an empty table of contents

(Very good quality paper, on the expensive side though)

> wtf, is this made out of calf skin ? TLDR: a fashion item.

like: http://officesupplygeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Leuchtturm1917-Ruled-Notebook-Table-of-Contents.jpg ?

Yup

I’m currently using those https://choosingkeeping.com/products/grid-diary-notebook-1 as a cheaper version of Tomoe River (note: British shop). Oh, I forgot! If you’re in US, you can get TR from http://www.nanamipaper.com/categories/seven-seas-tomoe-river-paper.html

(sometimes nanami run out of stock, it’s worth waiting until they have what you’re after)

Also you can get clip-on pen holders like this https://www.muji.eu/pages/online.asp?Sec=13&amp;Sub=17&amp;PID=5755 but not sure how well this actually works

is there a linux command where I give it a filename, and it tells me if there is some application which has the file open ?

lsof is awesome

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-lsof.html

Also, an useful collection

yeah, but with lsof, I need to do lots of grepping

True. Same goes with ps -aef | grep {process-name} :thinking_face:

maybe this shows my naiveite about linux, but I thought in the filesystem, where a4re"ref counts" somewhere

where you can look at a file, and ask "how many apps have this file open"

How about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuser_(Unix)

http://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/linux_computers/toc_id/1-1-4/s/19

tempted to rewrite a dynamic content website (Rails) as a sophisticated static .html generator (Clojure) do your engineering guts feel the following is possible? - load 300MB DB into memory, as objects (I reckon Clojure object representation is heavier) - process them concurrently, apply business logic + render with hiccup - emit 10K .html files accordingly, under 20 seconds - have the .html files deployed at second 30 (or 40 at most). deployed = transfered somewhere else (e.g. an nginx), ready to serve - everything should be done in a single machine. can afford a beefy AWS instance

I'd say yes, but also I'm kinda scared of spending too much time in a solution that may not be as fast as desired

I'd implement this as a core.async streaming ETL? as in the Stuart Halloway talk

@vemv Or your could add modified timestamp to each object in DB and only retrieve the updated objects each run and then only emit the changed files

that's another bullet point, no caching

Could be further optimized by integrating to DB event stream, no need to poll for changes

I have a smart cache expiration system written in Rails, but it got unwieldy

so my thinking is "let's just do it in a dumb way, but extremely fast"

with every DB change I'd rerun the whole thing

modulo some 'debouncing'

@vemv what kind of db do you have? Are your queries for pulling the data complex or simple?

@valtteri postgresql, low-to-medium complexity, fairly regular shape (one could say it's a CRUD)

I guess you’re running it on RDS?

yes

@vemv which Halloway talk are you referring to?

My gut feeling is that pulling all the data from db will be the bottleneck. I wouldn’t be so worried about the rest. Thinking out of the box, if your data was dumped to S3 you could use this to query it swiftly https://aws.amazon.com/athena/

or maybe, have a postgresql slave in the same machine as clojure?

MMm that could speed it up a bit. However afaik you can’t use RDS for that?

You would have to setup and maintain your own “follower” read-only replica outside RDS goodies

good observation, I'd have to see if rds lets me plug an arbitrary follower

I’d probably begin with quick benchmarks for your queries to see how long does it take to read the whole data set

thanks for identifying this possible bottleneck, hadn't thought of it much (def all-data (atom (db/load "my.local.db"))) might take a couple minutes, which could ruin my approach

OTOH. if it's a true streaming approach, I can load the DB in chunks

and have the whole pipeline running since the first moment (load + transform + persist + upload)

Sure, if your data goes nicely into chunks that’s definitely smarter way of doing it. I got the impression that you’d need to have all the data in memory in order to do your logic.

hmmm indeed probably I can't unfortunately. cannot emit correct/complete documents out of a partial DB

Is it possible to change your queries or create views which would let you process the data in chunks?

would have to think about it 🙂 but I reckon that it would be very similar to creating business-specific cache-invalidation rules, which is what I was trying to avoid

My mentor / manager told me before this project started that he knew the system we were diving into was extremely complex, but that 'the three of us were smart and he was certain we could make it happen.' The more I'm working, the more I realize that's like saying, "This plane has no instruments you can read, and the left engine's a bit wonky, but you're a good pilot, I'm certain you can make this transatlantic flight."

That sounds like a sign that says "enjoy your swim" in front of a tar pit.

Can't believe I missed the paper-notetaking discussion 🙂

...frankly, 32# HP Laserjet paper is a pretty good choice for notetaking for fountain pen use, given a paper cutter and a hole punch to make it compatible with Levenger Circa / Staples Arc / equivalents... though it does soak up oils off your hands like nobody's business; I'm an overwriter, though, so that's largely moot.

I like rhodia notebooks (they use clairefontaine paper) and pilot extra fine nibs

though if I am feeling extravagant I’ll use my visconti homo sapien dark ages which is more of an artifact than a writing utensil but is very expressive

and agreed that making system diagrams / design notes / brainstorms with pen and paper works a lot better than a computer note taking system for actually being creative

oh this is a tangent, but I guess that's the theme of the channel. Any recommendations for printers that don't suck? I bought an EPSON XP-410 at some point because I saw good reviews on Amazon. It's awful. I print things rarely, and every time I do I need to do a head nozzle check. I generally only print with black ink, but after like 5 documents I run out of some kind of ink (this week it was Cyan). And when you run out of a color, you aren't allowed to print even in grayscale. It's madness.

laser jets are a lot more reliable fwiw

can’t recommend a brand though

I'll probably switch over to a laser jet next time I buy a printer. Or maybe just get with the century and use a tablet to read sheet music instead of actual paper

I got sheet music white boards, and am very happy with that purchase

they are big enough that I can share them with my ensemble when we are working out ideas

(which is different than what you want if you just have a sheet music pdf, just mentioning because tangentially related)

I have a laser jet from Brother, don't use it for months sometimes, but so far always worked.

sounds ideal!

i’ll second the brother (i have a HL-5370DW). it is reliable and doesn’t need to warm up

also +1 on Brother.

...err, on their laser printers specifically. Had some bad experiences with a multifunction inkjet from them previously, but then, haven't seen a truly reliable device in that category yet (except for the office-scale unit my last coworking place owned).

@noisesmith, you're not the only Visconti fan in this room, incidentally. 🙂

I don’t know if fan is the right word - I’ll use it when in the right mood but it often feels like a bit much, like driving a lambo down to the corner to buy a hot dog

nice

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-10/fastest-way-get-rich-cryptocurrencies

currently carrying a muji aluminum (the finish is identical to a macbook and I like that it matches) and a lamy 2000 (I like the bauhaus aesthetic)

We need to launch ClojureCoin.

problem is this stuff is all unregulated and at some point the SEC is gonna come calling

I hope these ladies have a Shiba Inu mascot to represent dogecoin http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2127625/meet-virtual-currency-girls-japanese-girl-band-dancing-beat

By "we" I mean someone else needs to launch ClojureCoin and let me invest early on. 🙂

i just want the nonsense to end haha

nod; I do also have a Lamy 2000 inked, and a Parker T1 (local pen store had one on consignment; owner gave me a really outstanding deal). Still haven't decided if I have the nerves to keep that one in daily-carry -- a T1 that writes well and has its tipping intact is rare, and that's a lot of value to risk.

on the other hand, can't really justify owning a writing tool if I'm too scared of doing damage to write with it.

the muji aluminum is a really nice classy / cost ratio for people who don’t pay more than $100 for a pen ($5.99 on aliexpress)

plenty of people get rich off of options and crap, i dont see a girl band singing about derivatives 😉

> no, I don’t want no shorts, a short is a call can’t get no love from me; hangin from the passenger side of a futures market, tryin’ to holla at me

I thought I https://www.amazon.com/Pentel-Graph-Gear-0-5mm-PG1015/dp/B0013NHU7O/ was an luxury item, but you guys have a different def for luxury writing instruments.

it’s an addicition get out while you still can

why is rhodium plating on a gold nib better?

I think because it’s pretty

exactly, it's a matter of color preference

haha okay fair enough

...mind you, the Viscontis we were discussing above use palladium nibs -- they're a pain to work with, but have a soft and bouncy feel to them.

if I’m paying a certain price for a black and silver colored pen, a gold nib that doesn’t match the color scheme just seems silly - if all you care about is the functionality though, pilot makes some good gold nib pens (the gold isn’t just for aesthetics, it does bend differently than other metals)

yeah, the visconti just rides a page differently - not sure if that’s a $500 difference though

...yeah -- frankly, for regular writing, I think I like Visconti's steel (upturned Waverly-style, tubular-feed) "SmartTouch" nibs more than the palladium ones.

but they are interchangeable, so it's not a one-or-the-other at purchase time decision.

(granted, most of your resellers don't list that they'll sell SmartTouch nibs standalone, but they're available nonetheless -- if you call and ask, FPH in New York will sell both the nib and the tool to remove them).

that’s cool - I’ve wanted to try a smaller nib on my homo sapiens

$500 for a pen nib? at that price you can get a decent high rest monitor

@qqq but how will I get the monitor to hold ink? the ergonomics seem weird

what you do is that instead of getting the gold tipped pladinum pen nib, you buy 5 apple pencils 🙂

I still feel like the ink would just make a mess

@noisesmith: have you tried using an apple pencil as a fountain pen? if not, how can you possibly know 🙂

apple products are magical

I definitely didn't pay $500 last time I bought a SmartTouch nib standalone; I doubt it was half that. Unfortunately, the order was placed by phone, so I don't have an easy record of exactly what they did charge.

The first pen I tried one of those on had a retail price of $350. Crazy for someone to charge more for the nib alone than the full pen.

pricy but not insane - qqq might have mistaken the price I was citing for my pen for the price of the nib http://www.penbox.co.uk/visconti.pen.nibs.htm

as part the uncultured mass that considers a $20 pen expensive, a $500 pen better be doing voice diction, hand writing recognition, and contain a builtin clojure repl