Re-discovering three-cornered notes – The Collation

As far as I can tell, they were never sent through the post (if you know of any examples, please comment). They were just hand-delivered notes containing informal invitations, short apologies, brief questions, little flirtations, and so on. In the 20th century, their function was taken over by the phone call, and in the 21st century, by text messaging.

I had no idea of the long history behind notes like these. Via Alan Jacobs most recent always excellent newsletter.

The Work/Life Task System

The Work/Life Task System (WLTS) allows you to keep your professional and personal tasks separate in the same notebook, while accounting for how most tasks come into our lives in the first place: email.

New analog task system from Harry Marks (who used to be a contributor here). Worth checking out and seeing if some of these ideas might work for you.

An Archive of a Different Type – Internet Archive Blogs

Imagine being so well-known for your craft that letters addressed to “Mr. Typewriter, New York” would get delivered by the Post Office to your door. Imagine you mount a letter wrong while crafting a typewriter, and it causes a country (Burma) to change that letter to accommodate your mistake. Or that, through decades, your expert testimony about the accuracy of a brand of typewriter and the characters it types means the difference between guilt, incarceration, freedom or the swapping of fortunes. Such was the life of Pearl and Martin Tytell, of Tytell Typewriter

Facinating story.

The Notebook – theatre of christi

Here’s how I set up my notebooks. I like cheap notebooks with that thin, shattery glass paper texture — nothing fancy. I don’t do any complicated bullet journalling stuff, although I’m totally happy if it works for you! I just haven’t gotten into it. This is the method I’ve found that’s the best intersection of simplicity and reference points.

One particularly interesting idea I like is item #5:

5. Finally, when I start a new notebook, I go back through the last one and pick out the most important ideas and mindset changes I want to carry through to the next one. (This is the best part.) I write all of these highlights at the beginning of the new notebook.

Artist creates gorgeous sketches using an analog typewriter / Boing Boing

Very, very, cool.

PostCARDs for Democracy

Artistic visionaries Mark Mothersbaugh & Beatie Wolfe share a love of tangible artforms, in and amongst their futuristic explorations. In light of the threat to our 225yr old postal service, at a time that could jeopardize the democracy of the country, Mothersbaugh and Wolfe join forces for this collective postcard art demonstration.

Very cool. Those who know me know I’m a big fan of the music and visual art of Mark Mothersbaugh. He’s been doing a postcard sized piece of art every day for decades so this is right in his wheelhouse in so many ways.Very excited to participate in this.

Uses This / Jane Manchun Wong

My note-taking device is pen and paper. It supports high precision handwriting and has zero input latency. It takes on a skeuomorphic design. The writing surface is also realistic, almost paper-like. It comes with encryption, based on my handwriting. While it does not support cloud storage, the data is guaranteed to be inaccessible to hackers without physical access. It is a blessing in disguise.

What we believe in.

(h/t John)

The Tools of Excellence for a Brave New World, 8: The 3 x 5 card. – Nicholas Bate

A nice little productivity system that can be explained in a paragraph and fits on a single 3×5 card. What we believe in.

How to See, in Four Minutes – The New York Times

(h/t my buddy Dave Caolo)