IPython is the lab scientists modern day mission log.
#TRANSFER EVERNOTE TO MACJOURNAL FULL#
Being browser-based gives it the flexibility of running on any platform, and you can even run the notebook on a server remotely, allowing you full access to your notebooks anywhere you can find an internet connection.
#TRANSFER EVERNOTE TO MACJOURNAL CODE#
Small snippets of code can be dropped into Mathematica-like “cells,” which can be run with a simple Shift+Enter. IPython turns your web browser into an interactive Python terminal. Perhaps we’re in the lab, running a quick experiment, or maybe we just need to double check our bit-math. Sometimes, we need to run a test-snippet of code to crunch some numbers. IPython Notebooks Image Credit: IPython Developers List I thought I’d shed some light on two modern-day tools that are tuned for the rough draft. These days, online build logs and digital photo albums have been helping us present ideas, but they can also help us generate them. Surely, we can do better! Fortunately, thanks to modern technology, we don’t need to keep scribbling like a caveman to keep our thoughts straight. It’s been a good 3000 years since the Mesopotamians started doodling cuneiform on clay tablets. Beyond Pulp-and-Paper: 21st Century Notebooks The notebook becomes a conversation with a “yester-you.” We give ourselves the ability to entertain many perspectives, each split across a different time period when they were written down. Reading over what we’ve written, we’re giving ourselves a second angle from which to look at the same idea–almost like getting another person’s opinion. When we look back on what we’ve written, perhaps, a day or two later, we can entertain it from an outside perspective. Now that it’s on paper or in text format, it can stand by itself. If we can push ourselves to put this idea into our notebook, we can reap an interesting benefit. Either way, to remember it later, we’ll need to give a sufficiently detailed description to recall it again when the time is ripe. Maybe it’s a rough schematic for a switching power supply. Perhaps it’s another mechanism for robot locomotion. When we write down or type up our idea, we put deliberate efforts into entertaining it. Why not use it to communicate with our future self? The Multi-Body Solution Fortunately, from block-diagrams, to circuit diagram symbols, to logic gates, previous engineers have created an entire vocabulary of symbols for communicating with each other. Once we’re actually building that 3D printer or breadboarding the circuit, we’ve got the dimensions or schematic we logged earlier to jump back into the same context. When we compel ourselves to write down every bit counts some designs start on paperĪn idea, we’re challenged to give an overarching depiction of what we’re trying to build with sufficient detail to construct it later. When that happens it’s far more difficult to restart from a crow’s nest of wires than it is from a master reference. After all, why slow down drawing the circuit when you can just make it? Unfortunately, while we can get pretty far in one night, we can’t always finish. A few resistors and op-amps on a breadboard later, and maybe we’re already halfway there. It’s hard to resist the urge to leap in and start tackling the project head-on. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that a little well-written forethought can be keep your eyes open to ideas that might otherwise be hidden when we’re focused on the details.
Keeping a notebook takes time–time that cuts away from making the actual project. Have an idea for a new project? Why not log it somewhere for future reference? With diligence, the notebook can become our own personal hub for spurring on new project ideas.
In fact, each time we recall a memory, we change it! Here lies the beauty of the notebook. Fortunately, these days, there’s plenty of evidence from our Psych texts that say we humans are pretty shabby at keeping the facts straight. To some, the notebook was a dangerous device, a thief that would rob us of our memories . “If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. From the times of Ancient Greece, Plato tells a story of a worried Egyptian King, who, upon witnessing the invention of writing, remarks, While “writing it down” might seem like common sense, it wasn’t always the case.
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