Little slips of paper.....
Feb. 18th, 2012 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr1Last night, this morning, and this afternoon, I was bored. Didn't feel like doing much of anything. While looking for things to do -- and believe me, I have plenty at home to do -- I came across a plastic basket filled with little slips of paper. Lots of little slips of paper. Post-it notes that were folded over, notes that came with a note cube. All of them had writings on them. Some were old to-do lists, some had contact information (names, phone numbers, email addresses, and websites) on them, and some had dates and bank balances.
So, I have a huge pile of unsorted data. How do I turn this into meaningful information?
I unfolded the notes and brought out a few pads of half-sheet (5 1/2" x 8 1/2") paper. I placed the Post-It notes on the papers, and used tape or glue to place the other notes on the paper. Soon I will sort them by category, and put them in small 3-ring notebooks. Eventually I'll type them into a computer.
One of my long-term projects havs been to build an address database. That would be a lot easier to maintain than a paper address and phone book. Of course, I can use the one that's available to me in Google. But is Google going to go through my contacts list and harvest this data?
Someday, when I have "disposable income" again, I hope to get one of those TryNeat scanners, run these notes through, and capture the information on these slips of paper -- either via saving the image or OCR'ing them into text.
[Updated 23:55]: In the future, I need to have pads of half-sheet paper by every phone in my house, so that I can eliminate the floating pieces of paper and put the information in the binders more quickly and efficiently.
So, I have a huge pile of unsorted data. How do I turn this into meaningful information?
I unfolded the notes and brought out a few pads of half-sheet (5 1/2" x 8 1/2") paper. I placed the Post-It notes on the papers, and used tape or glue to place the other notes on the paper. Soon I will sort them by category, and put them in small 3-ring notebooks. Eventually I'll type them into a computer.
One of my long-term projects havs been to build an address database. That would be a lot easier to maintain than a paper address and phone book. Of course, I can use the one that's available to me in Google. But is Google going to go through my contacts list and harvest this data?
Someday, when I have "disposable income" again, I hope to get one of those TryNeat scanners, run these notes through, and capture the information on these slips of paper -- either via saving the image or OCR'ing them into text.
[Updated 23:55]: In the future, I need to have pads of half-sheet paper by every phone in my house, so that I can eliminate the floating pieces of paper and put the information in the binders more quickly and efficiently.
