Recording Thoughts

Way back in early February I was visiting my father. I was ranting and raving about blogs — Lornitropia was still pretty young back then, and this blog wasn’t even started yet — and was trying like crazy to talk him in to writing one. I didn’t know what he’d do with it, but a guy educated in journalism and marketing, with a lifetime of experience in the same areas, was bound to find something useful to do with it.

My father’s always been a bit of an odd one - he was in to computers as soon as VisiCalc was available. After a career of developing products like Edge shaving cream and Mr. Coffee’s Iced Tea Maker he’s taking retirement with exceptional grace, and at 75 is desktop publishing, printing and binding books of poetry.

So, after a few glasses of wine and a bit of persuasian, he thought a blog of political poetry was a good idea and www.Politry.com was born. With fewer exceptions than you can count on one hand, my father has written a post a day commenting on the news during the past year. He’s somewhere between Hillary and Mr. Gore. Being pretty much a moderate myself, married to a very catholic woman, I was a bit chagrined, but that’s life

Here we are at the end of his first year, and for kicks he’s decided to offer the entire year’s poetry in a volume titled 2005 - A bad year made verse.

It’ll warm the cockles of any liberal heart, or will make a great gag gift for the staunch republican in your life. You can order a copy simply by sending an email to book (at) politry.com, and including your shipping address. The cost is $9.50, postage included.

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Janet Tokerud over at Tech Ronin has a nice Moleskine update where she talks about her experiences and techniques. In particular, I enjoyed her comments on having a book for each location versus a book for each subject. It’s a question I’ve pondered more than once.

Have a look.

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Moleskine notebooks are wonderful, as are their cousins from Miquelrius and others. They’re small, durable, and easy to carry which begs the owner to fill them up and get some more. Eventually you end up with a shelf full of notebooks and they need to be labeled.

I hope folks will comment on methods I haven’t tried, but here are a few that have worked for me:

Label makers. I’ve got a Casio Label-it!, and it works pretty well as long as I do not try to put it on along the spine. The surface of regular Moleskine notebooks defies most adhesives, and it’s hard to get them to stick. On the spine it’s impossible because the surface is always wrinkling. So instead, I just write out the label, and then apply it to the cover as shown:

For the Reporter’s style, I got a better idea: Write on the pages. It’s permanent, and allows me to put them on the shelf normally:

For Cahier’s it’s really easy - write on the cover.

Anyone else got some ideas?

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