Plug
It’s been a while since I’ve said anything about VoodooPad here, but it deserves another round of kudos - I continue to absolutely live in it, and it gets much more useful the longer I use it.
How I use VoodooPad
I keep a running set of time-stamped pages under “ResearchLog” and “MeetingNotes”, and all kinds of linked notes from there that I constantly search, occasionally refactor and refine. “MeetingNotes2006-03-21″ leads to “ResearchLog2006-03-22″ and so on. With a simple python script to automate making new “Notes” pages, I don’t have to work too hard to keep the organization and index pages going, and it’s proved to be really useful to recall what I did when, and what problems I ran into.
As I work, I keep a running log of what I’m doing in each ResearchLog page. What I’ve found most valuable is that I copy in verbatim command lines for configuring and building software I’m using for research (including my own) so I can recreate the same environment elsewhere. This kind of thing has saved my sanity over and over again, enough that I can’t imagine working ‘bare’ (without a VoodooPad window open next to my terminal) any more than I can imagine working without Emacs.
A tip on style
A little attention to text style makes my notes pages more useful and easier to find in the Exposé soup. I started using a larger font for the top header and description of each page, so I could distinguish pages easier, and it’s made everything a little more pleasant.
Here’s a typical set of VoodooPad windows for me - a jumble!
This zoom shows what it looks like at 100% - the large-print title helps me find the window I want without the Exposé “scrubbing”:
Still, I don’t want to have to keep doing this all the time, so I made use of the “NewPageTemplate” page (documentation) and set the styles there - now all my new pages have the style I want, and I don’t have to keep using Cmd-Opt-c and Cmd-Opt-v (copy and paste style) over and over.
Update: One comment asked for larger images, but since you probably don’t want to see my research notes anyway, here’s an RTF file with the contents of my “NewPageTemplate” page.
4:18 pm March 22, 2006
under mac
What is the script you use to create your new pages? I’m using a similar setup, and I’d like to reuse your script.
Thanks for the informative post.
True dat. I love how fast and Macalicious it is. I am a VoodooPad addict and I love it. I use the iPod export feature so I have all the information I want on my iPod with me at all times. It is almost as good as a real PDA.
[...] Mike McCracken shares some tips on how he uses VoodooPad to manage his life. I love VoodooPad, and have a huge document that I use to track a multitude of projects, applications, resources, and notes; it’s especially useful for work. [...]
Can you please post a larger images…It’s just impossible to see anything!
P.S. Btw, useful article!
What is the price for VoodooPad? and where to buy it?
telvid: follow the link to flyingmeat.com/voodoopad
[...] Michael talks about his VoodooPad life and I can understand what he means. I’ve been using it for a few days now to create content, adding Applescripts to try to use VP as an editor for an online wiki (almost there) and I’m loving it. [...]
voodoo pad ? ha ha are you insane ? there are far better mac apps that do way more making voodoo so obsolete
isla: nope, not insane. Like I said, it gets better the longer I use it, and it adapts to my way of organizing my thoughts, instead of forcing me to think in a particular way. If you want to say more about the other apps you like better, feel free to respond here and let me know what I’m missing - but please try to keep it polite. Thanks.
I am at the point of trying to decide how best to use VP. should I use a single document or a number of documents. from the picture it looks like you have a number of documents how do you remember where you put a particular piece of information. thanks for your help
Roger: I have just one document, but I keep more than one window of that document open at a time. I command-click on links to get a new window, but I don’t have the ‘Open pages in new windows’ option set, so I can have more control over what gets a new window and what doesn’t.
What do you think of using a blog or html ( like iWeb ) application to do notes, files and multimedia management instead of Vp or NoteTaker? Is it a completelly dumb idea or are they start to move closer to one another since we’re so used to the web metaphor?
[...] O McCracken’s (is that his real name?) blogpost on styling [...]
[...] year I wrote about my new page template for VoodooPad. I still use something like it - I like the uniform look and the built-in navigation starters I get [...]