DIY Life

Every so often, someone comes up with something new to do with a Moleskine or similar notebook. Often, these are DIY versions of existing products: "I bought a Moleskine knock-off and it doesn't come with a pocket in back, so I added my own." You know the drill.

Mike Rohde's Planner Hack is that kind of site: it uses a regular Moleskine to make a week-at-a-glance calendar. And to be honest, to me, it initially seemed pointless. Moleskine already makes a week-at-a-glance calendar that won't break the bank, and the process of making one by drawing lines all over the pages and labeling them sounds like a tedious one. Why not just buy the one that's out there? Then I thought about it, and further reading confirmed what I realized.

Earth-shattering epiphanies await you after the break!

If you've ever bought a planner, you know that the inexpensive ones often come with badly-designed pages and a bunch of things you don't need, and the ones you can customize tend to be on the pricey side; then it's easy to neglect to use them, because they're inconvenient to lug around. Some people use their PDAs or similar integrated cellphone functions in place of a big brick of paper, but many still prefer to keep track of contacts and appointments with a paper and pen.

In the last few years, there has been a trend in geekland: handmade planners tailored to their owners' needs. The simplest of these is the "Hipster PDA," a stack of index cards secured with a binder clip or elastic band, or kept in a small card carrier, popularized by Merlin Mann on his site 43 Folders. But if you want something more complex, or you would like formal templates for your cards, you should check out the DIY Planner.

The DIY Planner site offers free downloads of printable planner pages, templates for making your own, and a beginner's guide to help you get started. The pages come in various sizes, including 3"x5" and half-letter (the classic size for planners in the US), and you only need to use the ones that work for you. In some formats, there are well over 100 options. Be sure to visit the rest of the site, too: it's full of information about journaling and taking notes, and has an active forum.

Let's say you're on vacation and need to take some info with you-- an address, a map, or several paragraphs of info. Maybe too much to write down, but not enough to hunt down a printer (a futile effort in many hotels). Why not take a pic and let your camera hold the info?

My camera (shown in the gallery), a Casio Exilim Z60, happens to have a Text mode for capturing printed and on-screen text. But most any camera will work provided the following:

• Macro setting is mandatory. Zoom won't do, as usually you can't hold the camera steady enough.
• Flash: macro usually means turn it off, and computer screens will look blank with it reflecting
  
• Make sure autofocus isn't squirrelly.
• The bigger the LCD screen on the back of your camera, and the easier to navigate or zoom into a pic, the better your results.

Be aware that this is a completely improvised method. In theory, you could carry a small (32 MB) memory card around just for grabbing info vs. memory shots. But I find it's just less fuss to grab some info at the hotel and just scan back on the camera until I find it. Usually this info isn't needed all night. It helps that my Casio has a calendar too, which adds to the faux-PDA concept. Amaze your friends by pretending you can access Google Maps on your camera!