How come lab notebooks are ridiculously expensive? Also, I guess most notebooks are slightly bigger than composition notebooks
I'm tempted to make a spreadsheet template or PDF. It's pretty silly to spend a lot of money on a lab notebook when you can print a few grid pages and bind the book yourself
Hmmm...
My DIY lab notebook sheet came out OK, I think. But I don’t think I can align the grids exactly so the front matches the back (noticeable on cheap office paper). Then again, I guess there’s only so much you can do with a spreadsheet and an old printer
https://mastodon.social/media/lPzJ-WL9Uju-_MN6x7Q
https://mastodon.social/media/mUflm80rmdygErMkPSY
I was hoping LibreOffice's PDF export would preserve the grid boldness and other formatting. Alas, at least on Windows, all the grid lines seem to be very faint after export :(
I'm making a downloadable LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet for anyone who wants to print their own lab notebook. The paper size is US-Letter, but it should fit fine into A4 size. The grids are set at 5mm, which is pretty standard
@cypnk on Linux at least, cells where I explicitly put bold borders retain them in the PDF just fine. By default cells get no borders in PDF, like printing.
@hisham_hm I did select to preserve the grid in the print settings, but I guess this is a Windows version specific issue. On Linux, the export showed nice clear border styles
@cypnk time to file a bug, then!
DIY Printable Lab Notebook
https://github.com/cypnk/Lab-Notebook
I'm releasing the spreadsheet into the public domain. I had a minor issue exporting to PDF, but if you have LibreOffice, it should work fine
Gather enough sheets and you can do a perfect bind yourself
@cypnk I could use that as a base for my music arrangement sheets. I know I could have made one in spreadsheet, but when you've done most of the work and I just have to edit some headings ...
Thanks for sharing it 😄
@cypnk My ancient version of Open Office chokes on it. Time for an update to Libre, I think
@Stringbender I did this in LibreOffice so that may have something to do with it
It should both work since the format is standard, but I guess newer versions are a bit different for both
@cypnk All sorted now - got Libre in and running.
@cypnk That looks pretty neato! I think I'm going to give it a try, Thank you 😃
@cypnk LaTeX would be a better choice for something like that.
@loke If I'm having it professionally printed, sure (come to think of it Rustic Cyberpunk brand lab notebooks is a brilliant idea 🤔)
But the target demographic for this is stressed out college kids/high school kids, parents not wanting to buy overpriced stationary, craft people etc... So "better" is relative
Most are already familiar with spreadsheets and they can get it customized and printed very quickly. Getting any of them to learn LaTeX is a bit like getting a Word user to learn Vim 😅
@cypnk @loke When I wanted to/needed to do something similar, I wrote a Python program (using ReportLab) to generate the lines I wanted on a PDF directly. This is not necessarily the recommended procedure, but it did produce a nice notebook page template with lines for italic calligraphy, in a variety of sizes.
@cypnk I like very small grids so I printed out in landscape and made some signatures for an initial trial binding to see how it feels.
https://octodon.social/media/woxb1iqEUfHuRhlVMdM
@somethingeloquent This looks superb! I'm very happy you were already able to get something together with these so quickly
@somethingeloquent @cypnk How did you do the binding?
@lilith @cypnk I did a kind of kettle stitch, no cover yet. And I’ll probably want to do this again with better paper and some more precision.
https://octodon.social/media/a2iL0spDANZo_a8d7mI
@somethingeloquent @lilith @cypnk We used to do this!
I got a long arm stapler (~$20) and used that for the spines of each section. Then I wrapped an uncorrogated cardboard cover around it and glued that in place with hotglue.
We used the hotglue to hold the seconds together too.
Worked pretty well. For smaller notebooks, you can skip the glue and staple the cover straight on.
@cypnk @lilith @somethingeloquent
Works well for Zines, too.
@ajroach42 @somethingeloquent @lilith I have a sideways tilting stapler (I think I got it on Amazon) and it works well for zines too
Binding like this is great for books, but you can't go wrong with staples for zines
I think we should all be printing zines whenever we can. There are fewer and fewer hard copies of our lives and those are the most likely to survive
@cypnk @somethingeloquent @lilith Such a good point.
I need to print and mail some soon.
@ajroach42 @cypnk @somethingeloquent @lilith I’m loving this conversation, thank-you all :)
@lilith @somethingeloquent @cypnk @ajroach42 durable knowledge storage is essential.
I adore the advantages of electronic information but it’s fragile compared to the printed word.
I need to find a way to distribute knowledge in print more that fits into my workflow.
I’ve been looking for an electronic document template that would print “zine-style”; re-ordering the pages, etc so I could just print & staple :)
@jjg @lilith @somethingeloquent @cypnk
Depending on your printer, it's possible you don't need to do anything special.
If you have a full duplex printer (I favor the entry level brother laser printer which is about $50, I'll explain why later) you just gotta select booklet mode.
If you're using word or whatever, just set your page size to 5.5 x 8.5, and then save it as a PDF.
Adobe has a booklet printing option in Acrobat.
@cypnk @somethingeloquent @lilith @jjg
The brother also has a built in booklet option, if you're using a different stack. And it's full duplex, so it prints both sides automatically.
The really neat part, IMO, is that you can refill the toner by hand.
So one toner cartridge + a handfull of sub $5 refills means you can print thousands of pages in a go. It's crazy cheap.
Like, we had our cost per issue down to something like 6 cents? And most of that was paper costs.
@ajroach42 @cypnk @somethingeloquent @lilith interesting!
I have a Brother laser but it doesn’t duplex (that I know of). I’d be using Linux for this job so LibreOffice or preferably some Markdown-oriented workflow.
@jjg do you know which model printer you have?
Most of their laser printers have built in duplexing, although I'm not sure about driver support on Linux.
@ajroach42 HL-2170W
If it’s a driver thing I can probably figure that out, but I had assumed it just didn’t have the hardware :)
@jjg That's gonna be a no.
All the models that support duplex printing have a D in the name.
@jjg Also, if the printer doesn't support auto-duplexing, most drivers have a manual duplex mode.
(You take the paper out, flip it upside down, and stick it back in.)
I don't like that as much, but it does work.
@ajroach42 that would be good enough as long as I could do it in some kind of batch (as opposed to one sheet at a time).
I’ll have to poke-around in the printer settings and see about booklet mode...thanks for the tip!
@jjg You can for sure do it in a batch. I think the setting is for printing Odd Pages vs Even Pages?
I'm not positive, it's been a while since I fiddled with printing on linux. (Printers are one of the few reasons I keep a windows box around.)
@ajroach42 yeah, I have less trouble with my (home made) 3D printer than I do with the 2D ones 🤣
@jjg @ajroach42 The technical term for this is called "interleaving" btw. I know my Brother printer has the brochure option, but I am using a Windows driver.
@lilith @ajroach42 out of curiosity, what Brother would you recommend for duplexing, refillable toner, etc.?
you want wireless?
I have a EHLL2360DW ($80 on amazon rn.)
you want not wireless?
I have a brother 2240D which appears to have been discontinued and replaced with the 2270?
either way, you want with the a D in the name for duplex, and a W if you want wireless.
I order my toner cartridges and drums from monoprice, and then re-fill them myself 6 or 10 times with toner from various sources.
Eventually, they gotta be replaced, still. But they last a good long while.
Granted, when I was doing this regularly enough that I actually followed toner prices, I was printing ~1000 magazines a month, at 30-40 pages (15-20 sheets) per magazine.
We had both printers going, with someone pulling the prints, separating the stacks, and stapling, someone else on hand to refill the toner cartridges and swap them out as needed.
It was fun. I miss that.
@ajroach42 @lilith this is super cool, that you could do that volume at home.
Last time I did a regular ‘zine we would sneak into my friend’s father’s law office at night and run off as many copies as we could before morning...
@jjg @ajroach42 Heh. My old faithful Okidata died earlier this year, so I replaced it with the Brother HL-L8360CDW. Love it.
@lilith @ajroach42 awesome, thanks for the recommendations!
Don’t really need wireless, I hang the one I have off a Raspberry Pi print server (easier than dealing with configuring the built-in WiFi 😂).
@ajroach42 @somethingeloquent @lilith @jjg Toner is a huge boon for those of us sick of paying for overpriced ink
I'm using a Xerox Phaser I got from eBay and it does the booklet thing too. I think most printer software has this built in, but LibreOffice has a "brochure" option too
@cypnk @ajroach42 @somethingeloquent @lilith yeah I’ve had a laser since the 90’s when I bought a used IBM off the computer lab at school. Never cared for inkjet but then again I never needed color :)
@somethingeloquent @cypnk @lilith
Oohhh, home made DIY bookbinding, woo-hoo!
@luka @somethingeloquent @cypnk I was considering making something like this https://www.pinterest.com/pin/AeZeyUfWKyLWvsPJeCnUFCqgyTSlw-IC9SMrBexmF8dS_Nai8QPIfDs/ to help with binding too. (I've also tried binding signatures with a sewing machine, which worked pretty well.)
@lilith @luka @cypnk That's pretty neat, I might build a contraption like this gentleman has: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXLG9mMfc5k
Finally made my own lab notebook! I went with 6 pages for the table I’d contents and 60 lab pages. I didn’t have the proper book binding equipment so I just made mine with a glued spine
Total time from getting the idea to actual book was about 3 hours (excluding coffee breaks, naps etc...). It cost me about $2 in paper and glue
https://mastodon.social/media/2K2OLbw2wvGg4yrds4g
https://mastodon.social/media/4KyxaJ2IO8XWOq6MuSE
https://mastodon.social/media/NbhI7tmff2Nr52-XJYY
@cypnk How much does it cost, considering being paid with the minimal salary of your country for tree hours ?
(that's the rule of thumb I use when doing stuff myself for economical reason :p)
@webshinra This includes the time it took to design and make adjustments to the template (since it’s the first time) so if I were to do it again, I could print and make about 30 lab notebooks in an hour
Minimum hourly wage here is $15 so at a cost of $6 for an equivalent student lab notebook from Amazon (even with free shipping), I still saved $165!
Current status