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Imagine being isolated off-grid for an unknown number of years. Maybe you're stuck somewhere like Davidge or Mark Watney; or perhaps you've chosen a life of isolation like Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi. Maybe you're a survivor of the $Apocalypse. Wouldn't keeping a journal be a great idea? You could pass on your knowledge, keep track of daily activities, maybe even keep yourself from going insane!
Forget all the wastefulness, extravagance, and complexity of most modern devices, you've got survival to think about! Obviously power usage would be a major concern, but ergonomics, searchability, repairability, and data robustness would be important too. Keeping in mind that this is a dedicated device for journaling and barring the old Russian pencil and paper, what would the best solution look like with off-the-shelf modern technology?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:43AM (3 children)
A potential upgrade I've unsuccessfully dabbled with, if you want stuff digitally accessible and backup-able: digitally scan or photograph your journal pages.
Once they're digital you can use handwriting recognition, etc. on the images for searchable access.
I think one of those online-only journal programs (Onenote? Evernote? ) will do all that automatically, if you're up for trusting a corporation (Microsoft?) with your journals. There must be an offline version of something similar (I hope), but I haven't found it.
Of course that requires actually scanning your notebooks regularly, and probably doesn't work so well if you often modify past entries, as you might for more "active draft" notebooks
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday June 12 2018, @09:42AM (2 children)
OneNote is more like an "active" notebook or filofax than a journal, however it definitely does what you say with handwriting recognition, and there is a mobile app (office lens) for taking the photos (auto page-detection, straightening / deskewing, contrast etc.).
BUT, like every current level tech I've tried, it doesn't do the handwriting recognition very well, at all. Allegedly the latest version is much improved, but as it is also cloud-only (along with other steps backwards) I haven't tried it. Part of the problem may be that my handwriting is pretty poor these days, which is why I type mostly in the first place, which is why my handwriting is poor... It does better with printed text, but still not perfect, like any OCR.
MS have been messing around with OneNote versions and what used to be an excellent offline tool (with optional sync to online) in Office 2007/10 is now more or less online-only in the latest versions, and they have added/removed different features in the different versions. Example: you can record video in 2010 but not insert a video, in Win10 version you can insert a video from the web, but you can't record video, WTF?
If you are using OneNote (the proper offline one) as a digital backup / index for a physical notebook then you aren't really trusting MS with your journal - only with your backup. If you use OneNote as primary journal then the file format is documented and various export options are available.
Of course this is all off topic because you wouldn't trust even the offline versions to keep working off-grid for an unknown number of years - not because of MS, the hardware is the weak link.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday June 12 2018, @01:38PM (1 child)
I was thinking less of trusting them with preserving the only copy of your journals, than with trusting them with full access to them. Probably just a privacy consideration for most people, but if you're talking about an R&D journal you might want to keep that information close to your chest.
>Of course this is all off topic because you wouldn't trust even the offline versions to keep working off-grid for an unknown number of years - not because of MS, the hardware is the weak link.
The original question strongly implied they were looking for an electronic solution - in which case for longevity I would STRONGLY recommend a PC based solution over any specialty hardware. Even if the particular PC you started with died, you can always migrate the software to a new PC. Android, iOS, etc - I have far less confidence in the long-term availability of compatible hardware/OS to run the original binary on. I hate to do it, but I'd even go so far as to recommend (pre-win10) Windows software specifically - the backwards compatibility is likely to extend into the future indefinitely, especially with VM's etc). Unlike Linux where binaries must be recompiled for compatibility (an issue for non-Free and abandoned Free software alike - not everyone can roll their own from source, even assuming no modifications are needed)
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday June 12 2018, @02:42PM
Wasn't sure, but sort of figured that - both are potential issues.
Older OneNote desktop versions (now deprecated and no longer being developed by MS - dropped from Office 2019) will do local storage, which is fine for your R&D journal or the sensitive notes I used to have at work. They will also sync to on-premise SharePoint server instead of OneDrive, so you could stick a domain server and sharepoint server in a VM and sync to that, but it looks like they are also in the process of removing support for that from the App versions (which are the only future versions) - iOS and Android users already reporting being unable to sync with on-premise after App updates.
You'd think that MS would have a bunch of enterprise clients (actually I _know_ they have) using this stuff who won't want cloud note storage, but apparently they don't care. To quote from their FAQ at https://support.office.com/en-us/article/frequently-asked-questions-about-onenote-in-office-2019-6582c7ae-2ec6-408d-8b7a-3ed71a3c2103 [office.com] :
So in other words they know, and they don't care, go use something else. OneNote was a market leader, almost a hidden Office feature for years, then someone high up at MS obviously "found" it and thought "that's good lets mobile/cloudify it and f*** it up". Morons.