Moleskine is a brand of notebook, bound, as wikipedia tells us, not in moleskin but in oilcloth covered cardboard. This is a review of several of the different versions I have owned.

Pocket Ruled Reporter Notebook
(Buy)

The Pocket Reporter Moleskine notebooks are a little difficult to use on the go, paradoxically. By the time you are a few pages in, the loose part of the notebook is heavy enough to make it difficult to hold steady, and the whole thing is a little unwieldy. Unless you happen to have hands the size of small infants. They are best used (I found) on a desk, open like a book, with the spine at 90° to your torso. I would recommend the plain or squared variant for this reason, as the ruled lines go the wrong way to be any good, unless you are illustrating a book about prison windows. The last 24 pages are detachable, which means that this notebook is handy for writing notes to people (which you can give with a certain flourish.) It could be used lined if you held it like a reporter or policeman, but the question of whether to write all the way down two pages as if they were one long page, or to rotate the book 180° for each new page, or possible even to just use the bottom pages... it was too much for me.

Pocket Squared Notebook
(buy)

This is my favourite variant. It is ideal for most Moleskine GTD systems, although some people prefer the greater amount of space afforded by the full-size Moleskines. The Moleskine website, in a fairly typical example of hyperbole and arty-farty verbiage, states that "the large sized notebook provides greater
space for freedom and imagination." Maybe. I prefer the pocket versions for their portability, and because they look cooler. The grid means that you can write either horizontally or otherwise, and it also helps when drawing diagrams or mock-ups. It also makes it easier to work with figures, and especially when using time-ladders or other GTD components.

Pocket Ruled Notebook
(buy)

This variant is best suited to longer prose or notes. It is essentially the same notebook as the squared version, but the paper seems to be a slightly different weight. Or maybe I am losing my mind. There is something nice and classic about the lines, although they do bring to mind the atrociously notional marketing campain Moleskine Srl have foisted on the consumer, that "Hemingway" nonsense. Hemingway used a notebook. Moleskines are notebooks. That's as far as it goes. Chatwin is the only person they can actually tie to Moleskine-using, and let's be honest... Bruce Chatwin? Over-rated. That said, I don't buy the notebooks because Hemingway used them, (or didn't) I buy them because they are bloody good quality.

Sketchbook
(buy)

The paper in the sketchbook is thicker than I expected it would be. It is almost card. The only problem with the sketchbook is that it is such good quality that I'm hesitant to doodle in it. However, I have this problem with all new Moleskines. If I was any good at sketching I would probably appreciate the sketchbook even more.

Memo Pockets
(buy)

I was ordering some other Moleskines on Amazon (which is the best place to buy them in Europe, but still a bit of a bummer: it costs more to ship to the Republic of Ireland than to the UK) and I decided to get one of these just for the craic. As you might expect, it looks and feels like quality. It isn't useless, but it certainly isn't the Moleskine I pull out of my backpack most frequently. At the moment I use it as a sort of extended wallet/survival kit. It will definitely prove its worth if I ever need to re-sew a button whilst getting books out of the Strathclyde University library.

Features

• Accordion back pockets - One of the big selling points, this isn't a handy way to store your pocket accordions, but rather a little pocket inside the back cover. It is very handy if you carry your Moleskines everywhere (sad, but I do.) I keep my debit card and bus tickets and receipts in the pocket of my main Moleskine. As I take it everwhere, it has eliminated the need for a wallet, negating that awful unsightly bulge in the back of my jeans... The problem with the pocket is that if you put too much in it, it can damage the notebook, straining the binding and causing the spine to crack. I realised this too late when it happened to my current main Moleskine (I was over-enthusiastic about discarding my wallet.) I managed to effect an ugly, extremely durable fix with some clear plastic and superglue. This has added some more character to the notebook, like an old man with a wooden leg, or an old man with clear plastic superglued to his head.
• Elasticated strip - Snaps around the notebook to keep it closed.
• Bookmark ribbon - Only on some notebooks. It frays, but who cares?

Implements

I have used a number of different pens and doodads to make marks on and in my Moleskines. I started out using a pen I can't remember the name of. It was OK, but everyone online seems to favour the Pilot G-2, so I started using that, and it really is pretty darn good. I use a Tippex pen to write on the spine of the notebooks to quickly identify them with a one-letter code (I need to do this because I have so many on the go at once.) I use a Pentel 120 mechanical pencil (0.7mm) when sketching, and a Staedtler rasoplast to erase the rubbish drawings I do. I bought a set of coloured Stabilo point 88 mini pens, but they are, frankly, awful. Don't buy them. They bleed like a stuck pig, and they are anything but even when colouring something in. I also use a bit of string with the Reporter notebook because it doesn't have a bookmark ribbon. Finally, Postit plastic index tabs are excellent for marking sections.

The Familiar Strangers have a great compilation of lots of different ways you can customise your Moleskine notebooks, from lazer-etching to GTD systems. I use my own version of the Moleskine GTD system and hopefully I'll get a chance to blog it soon!

How to build a designer's Moleskine | The Familiar Strangers
EDIT: The Ultimate Guide To Moleskine Notebooks: a great guide for the uninitiated from putthingsoff.com.

I was struck by this post from digital Photography School about the digital storage and organisation of images. I love organising files. There's definitely something therapeutic about knowing that everything is exactly in its right place on your hard drive.

The problem when you're a productivity nerd, of course, is that things are never just right. There's always some little tweak to be made, or a new system to try. You can very easily end up wasting time organising things, as opposed to actually doing them.

For the past month or so I've been using PortableApps for all of my data/email/browsing/image-manipulation/design. It's been working well, because I'm sort of between computers just now whilst I save for a Macbook (which I'm getting very excited about... I'm sure I've nearly crashed the Apple store a few times because of all the reloads of the product images I've done¹.) The portable applications run maybe a little slower than they would if they were running off the hard drive, but ever since I bought my Cruzer Titanium it's done a very good job. The only thing I'm worried about is that if I lose the flash drive, I lose everything. I'm looking into some way to automatically back it up (not using the proprietary bundled U3 software, which is rubbish... pre-installed software on a pen-drive?)

Of course my main source of productivity comfort is my multiple Moleskines, of which much more later.

¹Yes, I know, the images are cached...