24 hour Rickshaw Bagworks sale: 50% off City Tote!

Get 50% off the @rickshawbags City Tote (click here for product page), from now until 11:59 6/01/12 PST only!

Here's the promo text straight from Rickshaw:

50% off our NEW customizable City Tote.

Laptop ready with 3 carrying options, the City Tote is a perfect alternative to a messenger bag for the urban commuter. The City Tote is sized to fit the Sunday Times, with ample room leftover for your favorite novel, iPad or 13" MacBook Air.

• Holds up to 13” Macbook Air
• Made from scratch in SF
• Three carrying options
• Completely customizable

Act fast, and tell your friends! Offer expires tomorrow (06/01/12) Exclusively available on any style of our new city tote. (Excluding the fabulous Juanita More! edition.)

Promo Code: totetastic

Order online or in store. Offer valid from 05/30/12 to 11:59 6/01/12 PST

*May not be combined with any other offers coupons, special orders, or embellishments.

Scotsman.com article: History Disappears in a Digital Black Hole

This excellent article (History Disappears in a Digital Black Hole) from Scotsman.com shows exactly what I was talking about back in this post on paper vs electronics. Information on the web is far from permanent. In fact, in many ways it's much more likely to disappear completely than information written on paper.

Yes there are ways to back up information, but data storage methods must be kept up to date. Like I said in my post linked above, you can transfer information from tapes to floppies to CDs to the Cloud, but until it's on paper it's still just electrons or magnetic fields. It's not directly readable.

I never like to rely on technology too much, and anything important gets printed as a hard copy. It's also why I like to keep old planners and diaries, as a permanent record and reference.

Thoughts?

Poll result: do you write in your planner in cursive or print?

Many thanks to everyone who voted in this poll! The result is very interesting:

Do you write in your planner in cursive or print?

Out of 144 votes:

Cursive	26 (18%)
Print	53 (36%)
Mix of both	65 (45%)

What I'm using update: Pre-Move

I'm knee-deep in move preparations, packing, organizing, selling and getting rid of stuff. On top of that, it's the last two weeks of school so I'm attending and volunteering at end-of-year class parties, lunches, brunches, and farewell cookouts. It's all good, but man am I busy!!

As a result, I have moved up into my large Moleskine day per page planner as my day planner, logbook and journal. I need the daily space so much I don't even care how heavy it is in my bag or how much I hate the dark Moleskine paper.

I'm using it exactly the way I showed in this post, with a timed column all the way down the left side of the page, space near the top for my daily list and the rest of the page for journaling.

I'm finding this extremely helpful for having lots of space to map out my day chronologically, write the most important event of the day at the top of the page, keep my lists together and journal all these near-departure memories.

I'm still using (the hell out of) my self-drawn monthly + weekly planner for all my forward planning.  In my weekly pages I keep list after list of all the household stuff I need to do before the movers arrive, all the paperwork that needs to be filled out, and all those other details like loading all my digital photos. I'm swimming in details at the moment!  I have to get them all down on paper to get them out of my head so I can think clearly.

I expect I'll continue to use my large daily Mole until I move. Then when I get to Scotland we'll see if I want to carry it around everywhere with me!

Fountain Travel Plan Journal

Here is a new Travel Journal from Fountain in a cool format I've never seen before in a travel journal:

This hardcover book measures 5 7/8 by 8 1/4 inches and it's slim so you can actually take it with you when you travel. It has tons of pages to help you from the planning stage all the way through preparation and to record your trip.

(Click on any of the photos to enlarge.)

There are pages to record your personal details, reference and emergency contacts:

Next there are pages for travel checklists with things to do before you go, documents you need, and things to pack:

Next are several checklist pages for you to fill in your own lists:

There is a very helpful time zones map:

There is a very handy page showing international currencies in their denominations and cents (or their versions of), and a page of dialing codes showing the codes for dialing in AND out of each country:

Next there are several pages of Recommended lists so you can write the must-see places for each destination:

The main part of this journal has an interesting layout that allows you to capture a lot of details very quickly by writing in what you did or where you went hourly day and night. There's a space for the date, country, icons for the weather, and lines for your travel plans.

Next there are several pages for your shopping list, and space to record prices, dates and where purchased. This is extremely helpful if you want to claim taxes back on items purchased abroad:

There are lots of pages called Capture the Moment where you can either stick in photos or draw/ sketch directly onto the page. Below the blank space are lines to describe the pictures.

At the back of the book are several pages to write country info like numbers for the embassy, police, hospital, bank, hotel, airport, car rental etc. for easy reference.

Inside the back cover there is a full-length pocket to hold papers, tickets, cards and mementos.

Many thanks to Fountain for giving me this Travel Journal as a sample to review!

What do you think? Have you seen any other travel journal with this format?

Edited to add: Great news! Even though Fountain's new retail website isn't up and running yet, they do have these available for purchase! They come in this A5 size, and also a smaller A6 size.

If you are interested, please email me at: laurie at plannerisms dot com and I will put you in touch with the person at Fountain who can process your order.

Day per page idea: schedule and journal space

I like to toy with the idea of using my day per page diary as a planner + journal. My daily book is with me all the time so it's a natural place to capture those memories before they escape.

Currently I'm using my Quo Vadis Notor, which I like because the schedule is at the top and out of the way so I can use the lines below for lists and journaling.

My new 2013 Moleskine Magenta large daily planner is so pretty, it got me thinking on how I could use it next year. With the larger page size I could have a column at the left to see my entire day chronologically, have a space to the right for to-dos, and still have a large area of the page for journaling (click on photo for a better view):

I probably wouldn't even actually draw the lines, but just use these areas in this way.

I admit this setup is a lot like the format in the Quo Vadis ABP1, which has a timed column at the left and the rest of the daily page lined for notes and lists.  But really you could use any day per page planner in this way.

Does anyone else like to journal or jot memories directly onto your planner/ diary pages?

2013 Moleskine large daily planner in Magenta!

It's about time Moleskine got colored covers for their large planners!  The large daily and horizontal weekly planners are now available in a few colors, including this Magenta color.

I love this Magenta cover, it's the same color as the Extra Small daily I reviewed a couple of years ago.

There are several color-matched features of the book. The In Case Of Loss print on the first page is in Magenta:

The placemarker and elastic strap are color-matched to the cover:

And the sides of the back pocket are magenta too:

Even the print in the removable address booklet is magenta:

Other Moleskine features still apply like the travel planning pages, stylized time zones map, handy international conversions and dialing codes (although only the codes for dialing into the countries are provided. I wish they would also provide the codes to dial out of the countries.)

Interestingly, a new feature in the 2013 Moleskine planners is a two-page spread with flight times between major cities of the world. I have no idea why anyone would want this in their planner, you can easily look up flight times online when you're booking your tickets. Seems like a waste of two pages to me. I'd rather have two more notes pages. Oh well.

There are reference calendars for all of 2013 and 2014:

The monthly planners with months as columns are back. I preferred the monthly grid calendars, but apparently the majority of their customers wanted these back. There are monthly planning columns for all of 2013 and all of 2014.

The daily format is the same with times printed subtly down the side and the temperature and weather icons at the bottom. It's a very nice open page with no formatting to interfere with your freedom to use the page any way you like. 

I pre-ordered this planner from Amazon.com several months ago and it shipped when it came in stock. I've put the product link in my sidebar and below here in the post for anyone who is interested.