My dear Watson, and: How to “upgrade” your notebooks for free! (DOUBLE FEATURE)

Hello world!

Last Wednesday, Dr. James Watson of DNA fame decided to visit our school. While he was around, he gave a lecture in a biology class or something. I am a physics student and don’t find myself in biology classes very often, but I heard of his impending appearance so I dragged Duncan and Danny down to go see him talk for an hour. It was pretty cool and I drew a picture of him while he was talking:

I drew it with a pen and made a couple of mistakes that I scribbled out

About science, he said “It’s better to have an idea that’s wrong than no idea”, and about which topics are best to do research on, he said “Go to the frontier. Try to get into a field where there are only a couple of people working.” It’s pretty sweet to go see old famous scientists talk, especially when they’re not completely senile (Dr. Watson is the same age as my grandpa and seems to be ageing well, mentally.)

Andddddd:

The other day I was thinking about my school notebooks (the kind with spiral rings and paper). My school bookstore sells two variations of spiral notebooks: one kind with the school’s insignia, and one without. The notebooks with the insignia cost over $4, while the plain ones are only $2.19.

$4 vs $2. A careful examination notes that the leftmost one has 20 more pages, but that is far from a $2 value.

The rational response here is: “Big deal, just get the cheaper one and save lots of money.” But observe: The expensive notebooks have one additional feature, an inside folder pocket:

Folder pocket vs no pocket. Pockets are soooo useful for collecting handouts, syllabi, graded assignments, etc.

I love this sort of folder pocket because it means I don’t have to lose class-related papers everywhere in my bag! But I don’t intend to spend $20+ instead of $10 every semester if I can avoid it. So I decided to make my own inside-pockets.

This isn’t all that epic, nor is it particularly worthy of a blog post, but I think I have a really cost-effective and simple solution that requires only one sheet of standard copy/printer paper and about three staples per notebook. Here’s my walkthrough:

1. Get a stapler, a sheet of copy paper, and an 11″ by 9″ spiral notebook. (The extra half inch above standard 8.5″ width is crucial if you’d like to easily fit anything besides whatever you tear out of your notebook.)

Notebook

2. Open the notebook, lay the paper out long-wise (perpendicular to the notebook), line it up so the paper’s top edge is touching the middle “hole” of the notebook, make a crease, fold it over:

Paper perpendicular to notebook; crease the paper at the notebook's bottom edge.

THe blue dotted line denotes the part where it is creased and folded back.

3.  Close the notebook cover, take the flap that’s hanging out to the side, and fold it over so it looks like this:

Turn the notebook over...

... and fold it like this.

4. Open up the notebook to check out the “pocket” that you’ve made, to see if it fits well. If not, fix your folds now.

Your folder is gonna look like this, with an open flap. Check to make sure it fits.

5. Now it’s time to make staples. The second image below shows exactly where to make the staples. Be sure that the staple passes through both the cardboard-ey cover as well as the paper. This will ensure that it’s a strong fix.

Time to get stapling!

Three staples. Make sure that they pass through the paper twice and the cover once.

6. You’ve done it! It looks a little messy, so feel free to trim off any parts that you think are unnecessary or ugly, but this design should be very functional. You can also apply it to the back cover, taking care to mirror all folds.

Perfect for storing syllabi!

In other news, I joined the Kendo team! I’ll blog about it soon. Japanese swordfighting is pretty intense.

I think this youtube clip is worthwhile: