[joezydeco]

Your grandfather probably came from a shop where engineers were encouraged or required to write everything down as they discovered problems and worked on solutions. Those notes became critically important when the patent applications were started. Some larger companies even provided nice leather-bound blank books for the engineers to use and keep on their shelves for later reference.

Capturing ideas and visualizing your problems is something they don't teach you in IT school. Over my career I've leaned that an on-hand notebook is way more useful than carrying a laptop around. I can sketch out ideas, graph out signals, and do dozens of other things quickly and silently. It's a lot less intrusive in meetings. Plus, you can doodle.

I've used everything from pocket steno books to college spiral notebooks. Moleskines are nice, but way too expensive.

My current go-to notebook is a college notebook I picked up in Germany for a couple of Euro. It's the right size (not a toy steno book and not a massive 8x10 binder). Side-spiral bound is critical, you can fold it open on a desk without taking up twice the space. Grid paper is killer for mapping out things out. A nice touch is the microperfed edges.

Looks like they're on Amazon but in packs of 5. Still, not a bad deal:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Landre-100050630-Wood-Free-Perforat...

[tmaly]

that looks really nice, I have a this one https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Computation-Letter-Sheets... but I wish it were spiral bound.

Do you know if there are any US suppliers for yours?

[joezydeco]

Unfortunately, I've never seen anything like this at this price point in the US. There's Moleskine, obviously, but they're crazy expensive and the journals don't lay flat on a desktop which drives me nuts. There are grid books at art stores like Blick, but those are even more expensive.

This might a be a good compromise. I should go to my local Blick and check this one out:

http://www.dickblick.com/items/77825-1310/

The only thing I've ever had from the US that came close was a 5x7" JournalBooks 91340 that Freescale gave me as a promotional giveaway. It's a little larger, but had a durable plastic cover and a pen holder which was pretty sweet. It seems you can only order these in bulk as a custom-branded item. Perhaps someone enterprising could kickstart up 100 orders and do a foil-embossed HN-branded cover for people to purchase. I guess HN needs a logo, too. =)

https://www.journalbooks.com/products/24-hour/24-hour-journa...

[tmaly]

I use to get these fantastic blank journals that were hard cover bound back in the day from Borders Books before they went out of business. I still have a few from the late 90s. I would love to see something like that with a grid.