An app called “GoodNotes”

I don’t know how many iPad Pro fans I have reading my blog, but I found an app worth checking out.  I know this may not seem related to climbing at all, but it is in a very big way.  It’s versatility is rather nice and it utilizes the iPencil (thus the need for an iPad Pro), which is a nice tool to use.  I can recommend other good apps for the iPencil and iPad Pro as well.  Let me know if you want to explore those.  Anyway, this app is great for taking notes in your own hand and organizing them!  It’s so simple to add another page, and your notebook can be as long or short as you want it to be!  I have one going right now for my personal thoughts on various things that I can’t write about in any of my logs and that aren’t necessarily blog material.  It has a highlighter feature, can make some exact shapes of your scribbles if you wish, and  is generally very user-friendly.  There aren’t a lot of hidden tricks to it and everything is easy to find.  I highlight the date of the entry so I can find it easily, and it goes a long way toward satisfying both my need to actually write by hand and have it stored on a device that is quite a bit more portable and private than a separate journal or log that can also be easily accessed for further rants or whatever I need it for.  I like the straightforward nature of it.  So many other note-taking apps have special features and complicated ways of getting to the basic things one needs to accomplish the task.  GoodNotes is different that way, and is the reason that I rather enjoy using it.  The great utility of it is that I can sit down and not sully my other logs and notebooks with drivel that doesn’t belong in them while still getting my thoughts down in my own hand on “paper”, which GoodNotes has tons of options for!  You can find such a fantastic variety of paper options in this app!!!  Ruled, graph, log – all kinds of papers options!!!  And, as I said before, it’s so easy to add a page.  Hit the plus-sign icon and you get your options for paper, which you simply click on to add the page.  It’s that easy.  You can even add the pages above, as in, in before, the page you are working on or looking at, as well as below, or after!  Very straightforward app.  It cost me $7.99 from the App Store, and has been entirely worth it so far.  It is listed as one of the top apps for note taking, and there are many good reasons why!

That’s not to say that there aren’t other good note taking apps out there, because I have two more in addition to GoodNotes on my iPad Pro, but GoodNotes is working well for me right now.  I’m playing with the other two right now, too, but I have to go back to the tutorials constantly to find out how to do this or that simple thing with them, and that annoys me if I’m trying to get a thought down out of my head!  If I have a thought worth writing down, I need to write it down NOW!!!  I carry a ball-point pen – a Fischer Space Pen, actually – in my pocket with me at all times so that I can write my thoughts on my hands or arms if I need to in a pinch, because I never know when a thought that I’ve been waiting for will come!  Those best of problem-solving thoughts, and the brilliant ideas, not to mention the epiphanies, can come at any moment and I must be ready at all times to write them down!  Otherwise, I may forget!!!  Sadly, I’ve lost so many thoughts that way, especially answers to problems or concepts that occur to me that I’ve desperately needed – even in dreams and visions!!!