Old notebooks from decades past; small, medium and large
The other night Cam wanted somewhere to write down details of his carefully selected “Magic the Gathering” card decks. I rummaged around through miscellaneous piles of stationery and found an “A6 and a bit” notebook that I’d bought as a refill for my journal, but then found to be too big to fit inside the journal cover. Off he went with that and on I kept exploring….
So many old notebooks and journals of so many sizes. A tiny pocket-sized book, a few exercise books and an A5-sized diary, a couple of A4 ring-bound notebooks and hardcover sketchbook.
Browsing through an old notebook from 1982 – when I was in year 12 high school – trying to decipher my scrawls and see what’s in there. Mostly computer notes and pencilled catalogues of what files were on which cassette tapes for my Tandy CoCo – I suspect I still have the tapes … “somewhere in a box” I wonder if I’d ever be able to re-read them and decipher them?
There was some surprise extra data, on the calendar printed inside the back cover I’d circled eight dates; birthdays of me and various school friends. Checking my current BBDB entries I found some contradictory entries – I wonder which one is correct? I suspect its the ones in this old notebook.
A travel journal from a three or four day bike ride in December 1986, it starts optimistically with a single entry:
Wednesday, 3/12/86
Depart Radcliffe
… and that’s it. There is no more. I wonder if I wrote it up anywhere else, or what I can remember of that trip?
I guess I intended to keep a journal of the ride, but obviously failed dismally!
Then an hour or so later, flicking further through I found that I had kept a log, it started half a dozen pages further on, but it was marked with the little red marks that I use in my journals to indicate that I’ve transcribed them online “somewhere” … but where?
Turns out that it was in my old planner-mode notes, the file dated
, the git log stating it was imported on . Is it time to move those entries forward to the current Org format in org-journal? Just like the media treadmill shifting data onto whatever is current, there’s the application & format treadmill. How do I import the old files, and what do I do with them once imported? Do I seal them off untouched, or do I add a footnote with a pointer to where they were imported to?