Partfinder Friday: Computation Notebook

Today’s partfinder isn’t an electrical part, or even a storage solution, it’s a notebook. National Brand #43648 Computation Notebook, to be precise. The greatest engineering notebook of all time. I have several dozen of these — one for each (non-humanities) course I took in college, plus many more filled with different project notes. I love these books because they’re well made and durable, and the pages are 9.25 x 11.75, so you can easily paste or tape A4 sheets inside. Excellent for engineering or math class notes, or project sketches, measurements, etc.

There are several different kinds of computation books available: spiral bound, three-hole, etc. I like this square-bound type the best because you can ‘crack’ the binding and make it lay flat — very helpful if you’re left-handed.

These are available sometimes from larger office supply stores, but you can always find them on Amazon — check ‘em out in the partfinder!

Filed under: tools — by johngineer, posted July 27, 2012 at 8:21 pm

Comments (4)

4 Comments

Yay for Notebooks!

The engineering manager of a company I worked for many moons ago insisted that every engineer keep a notebook just like this one. It might seem like a very old-fashioned way of managing information, but developing good note-keeping habits can pay huge dividends. It’s kind of like journaling.

I always encourage my colleagues to do the same.

Notebooks (even this one) are cheap compared to your priceless ideas.

Comment by Daniel — July 27, 2012 @ 8:31 pm

Thanks for the heads up. I’ve been a frantic note taker since university (a lot of notebooks ago!). Writing down every little circuit, code snippet or useful formula/value I came across has paid for the effort many times over. Small brain, short memory, but you don’t need to remember everything if you remember where you wrote it.

I’ve never used these ones, though, so I’ll have to grab one to see what I think. Things like Evernote can be useful for pasting images, but it’s definately no replacement for a good quality notebook.

Comment by Kevin — July 27, 2012 @ 11:03 pm

Leftie tips++!

Comment by Richard Sim — July 28, 2012 @ 4:16 am

It looks like I have another set of notebooks to try out! Thanks John, your suggestions have been spot on so far, so I will definitely be grabbing these when I can.

cheers

Comment by davidk — July 28, 2012 @ 7:56 am

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