My perfect notebook

I agree completely with Chris Siebenmann's entry on the utility of keeping a notebook. I've done this almost as long as I've been working in IT, and it's saved my ass repeatedly. Also, the way I keep my journal — random notes at the front working toward the back, daily summary at the back working toward the front — means that it's fairly simple to search for my notes on a particular task, or explain to management just what I do with my time.

I love paper. I tried a PDA for a while; hated it, didn't trust it, and gave it up promptly. Scribbling with a pen is faster, more satisfying, and doesn't make me wait for something to reboot or awaken, or force me to learn a different way to scribble. At the best of times, it forces me to think a bit about what I'm doing or seeing, rather than just typing blindly at the problem. (What, you never do that?)

But while a paper notebook is wonderful, it's not perfect. Here's what would be perfect:

Let me paste screen captures right into my notebook. (I'm talking both screenshots and the log files from GNU screen.)

Let me paste sections of my .history file into my notebook complete with timestamps.

Let me cut-and-paste from my notebook to Emacs (or vi, you heathens), and vice-versa.

Let everything I write or paste be timestamped automagically.

Let everything I write or paste be sync'd automagically to some plain text-like format, suitable for grepping, munging, merging into a database, pushing to syslogd, or what have you.