Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with journal

Breathing new life into an old website, input on new name and content

christopherious — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:10:14 -0800

I created an online, open source academic journal website several years ago and it may be near the end of its first life. I'd love to get feedback on what folks here think might work best. I want to reinvent it and breathe new life into old content. Help me, MetaFilter, rebuild something that doesn't have to die into something new and beautiful! I created this website several years ago

Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality (JMMS) is an online, scholarly, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal. JMMS is published twice a year with provision for other special editions. JMMS seeks to be as inclusive as possible in its area of inquiry. Papers address the full spectrum of masculinities and sexualities, particularly those which are seldom heard. Similarly, JMMS addresses not only monotheistic religions and spiritualities but also Eastern, indigenous, new religious movements and other spiritualities which resist categorization. JMMS papers address historical and contemporary phenomena as well as speculative essays about future spiritualities. The academic interests of the editorial board reflect these diverse positions.

The site has done pretty well, but submission rates have dropped this past year. The executive editor is now thinking considering pulling the plug (we had a good run, we both agreed), but I talked him into letting me do something with the content. I'd love to get feedback on what folks here think might work best, or reasons why this might not be worthwhile.

The changes I'm considering include a fresh, new theme (less minimalist), a new website name and domain name, and some new content areas. Perhaps even a public forum and public blogs.

Help me breathe new life into something that doesn't have to die!

Journals

curious nu — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 12:26:54 -0800

I used to buy these large Noto Journals from Paperchase at Borders when they went on sale. But now Borders has gone! What are my options for large (6" x 8" or so), softcover, ruled journals? I know I can still get Paperchase online but the shipping (to US) would kill me, and I've never really liked Moleskines.

Is there a text version of Thoreau's Jornal? (the entire journal)

gregg — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:26:01 -0800

Walden.org offers his complete journal as PDFs, which I'm reading, but the scans are terrible and it is hard to slog through them. I have googled and amazoned looking for better versions without luck. I can find excellent quality examples of selected items, but I'm looking for the entire thing, all 14 volumes for my ereader.

Looking for software to catalog work notes

filthy light thief — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:06:26 -0800

I write a lot of notes for my work, which I type up to keep for my records. My current way to organize these notes is as separate files per day, labeled with the date and a descriptive title. This is decent, but doesn't allow me to easily reference old notes by topic, especially when there are numerous individual references under a single broader topic. Are there programs to help catalog notes and journals by themes, or cross-reference topics, in a vague database format? I'm working in Windows.

It's the small blue journal in my second desk drawer down

dawkins_7 — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 12:30:13 -0800

If you keep a diary or other secret papers, do you have a plan for what happens to it if something happens to you? For example, if you keep a journal or diary that you would rather your family not see, do you have a trusted friend in charge of getting it and destroying it in the event that something happens to you and you can't get to it?

I've seen some previous AskMe questions about what to do with old diaries but this would be a current diary that you need to keep going and need to keep the pages, for whatever reason. (Keeping it in a digital format is not an option for various reasons.)

I keep mine at work so that's good for keeping it away from prying eyes at home but I'm thinking about asking my boss or my best friend to come and clean out my office if something happened to me and make sure that particular journal gets destroyed.

I'm not interested in ways to encode the diary or change how I keep it since it's really working for me the way it is now.

I was just curious if any of you have any plans like this in place.

Let there be lips!

jph — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 12:53:08 -0800

Help me understand what my doctor is telling me about my bizarre new party trick, where my lips swell up to Kardashian proportions. Also, help me be a good patient and actually follow through on the prescribed course(s) of action. You are not my doctor. I am not seeking your medical opinion. I am seeing my own specialist. Yes. All of that. I just need help making an informed decision about how to move forward with those treatments, and my doctor's explanation was a little too flip to be helpful.

So my lips have started swelling. Majorly. (Warning, I look like someone's science experiment gone wrong.)

This started only after I began allergy shot treatments and has seemed to get worse over time. It stared simply enough. One random lip swelling after breakfast one day. But then it kept happening. It never concurred with my allergy shot, and if it was food, the list of things I'd eaten was too long to really ferret out what it might have been. It got more severe and more frequent - up to and including throat swelling. (I've got an epi pen, but haven't ever had to use it because I've never had respiratory distress related to this reaction.)

Before getting allergy shots: nil. Never had this reaction. Didn't even know what throat swelling felt like.

So I dutifully went back to the doctor's office and showed him the photo(s), and he said some stuff about cross-reactive food allergy, or an "enzyme deficiency." The prescribed next steps left me feeling a little confused, and although I asked questions, I think I got the "you're not paying me enough to give you a science lesson, kid" answer from the doctor. I was instructed to have a blood test (to determine if this is due to this mysterious enzyme deficiency), and also keep a food journal.

My questions:

1) First off, what's the deal with this "enzyme deficiency?" It sounds a little woo to me. And also, where the hell would such a deficiency come from? I'm 30. Could someone just become deficient like this? Could allergy shot treatments bring on such a deficiency? What are the treatments for such a deficiency? (When I asked the doctor these questions, I was told "We wont know more until we get the blood test back; the therapy for enzyme deficiency is enzyme replacement therapy." which was tautologically useless.)

2) Cross-reactive food allergy? This also sounds a bit woo to me. I've been wildly disappointed with the lack of specificity where potential food allergies are concerned. I got the whole "sensitive, not specific" nature of food allergy scratch testing. (The whole frigging panel lit up when I had the food scratch done.) I get the concept (that certain environmental allergies could be triggered by non-environmental things), but I'm at the maintenance dose for my environmental allergy treatment. Shouldn't that mean that this is less of a thing?

3) I suppose I should get the blood test done, but I'm concerned that we've created a problem and now we're in search of a solution for a problem that we didn't have to begin with. Is that ridiculous? And not knowing what kind of treatments I'm potentially facing, I'm less than thrilled with the prospects of moving forward with more seemingly-blind diagnostic tests. Do I need to do this? Do I need more/different information? Can I just nix the allergy treatments and go back to life before them where my seasonal allergies were gross but not publicly embarrassing like swollen lips?

4) And finally, a food journal? Really? I'm no man of science, but that strikes me as a wholly unhelpful method of actually figuring out what is going on. Am I not better off going on an elimination diet and slowly introducing foods back in to see if I react? A food journal just strikes me as yet another scattershot approach which may or may not yield useful data. If food journaling is the way to go, is there a way to do this that I'll actually follow through on and which will possibly yield helpful information?

tl;dr Lips/throat suddenly swelling up after a year of allergy treatments. What do I do next?

Journal from "Supernatural"

DisreputableDog — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 19:31:54 -0800

Pretty much looking for the Winchester's 3-ring supple leather journal from the show "Supernatural". Not a large 3-ring binder. Not a bound leather journal that I'm afraid to clumsily write in. A mix of the two: a 3-ring journal with a cover that will age like Grandpa's military jacket.

Should be on the thicker end of the journal spectrum, with a leather snap or binding strap (not a long wrap around strip). Looking for a heavy duty real leather cover and good stitching. Pockets in the inside a bonus!

Journals of traveling landscape painters or photographers?

Cwell — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 12:45:45 -0800

Journals of traveling landscape painters or photographers? I’d like recommendations for journals of traveling landscape painters or photographers from any century and region of the world. Something like the journals of Edward Lear in Albania—quasi-ethnographic, but from the perspective of an artist traveling to a foreign land.

Do you keep a journal?

leotrotsky — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 17:11:52 -0800

Do you keep a journal? Have you ever? What are the benefits? Was it worth the time commitment?

"Nature" for humanities?

dontjumplarry — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:47:01 -0800

Is there an equivalent of "Nature" for the humanities and social sciences? I'm looking for a magazine or blog that curates notable scholarly papers from non-STEM disciplines (philosophy/sociology/psychology/cultural studies/etc) for a wider audience. It would probably include an intro or summary to give some context to the paper for those outside the discipline.

If not, any suggestions for blogs within individual disciplines that do the same?

Perfect or almost-perfect journalling system required, please.

malibustacey9999 — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 05:25:51 -0800

Asking for a friend: I want an electronic journaling system that does EVERYTHING. I want it to:

* automatically date entries, & let me tag parts of entries and then bring up those parts when I click on the tag (eg: "ways of coping with the blues": 'going to the beach' - where 'going to the beach' may be a part of a longer entry that actually says: 'everytime I catch myself going to the beach, I find myself smiling at the thought of the sunshine and other wankery things.' (other tags might include events, motivational, psychology, medical, books, movies, entertainment)

* line up entries from same date different year just for the fun of it

* allows me to set both random and regular journaling prompts like eg what did I do today that was productive? What am I grateful for? (See http://ask.metafilter.com/23753/good-questions-to-ask-ourselves-once-a-year) or maybe writing prompts like Confuscious lunyu

*I’d like a section for projects I want to start – ideas for artworks, research, photographic themes, books, character development, book themes and GANTT Charts to reach my goals

*I want to track what I eat (kilojoules) and how I exercise without having to add things up

*I want to track the books/articles I want to read, and have read (like this http://ask.metafilter.com/18428/What-do-you-write-in-your-reading-journal-if-you-keep-one)

*Grabbing my facebook check-ins and status wouldn’t be bad either

*I want to track my spending without counting money

*It might be cool to use hypomnemata but I’d want to be able to distinguish this with date / colours (see http://lesswrong.com/r/all/lw/2q0/intelligence_amplification_open_thread/2mci)

*Places I want to go and references to them (eg France – Monet’s garden)

*I want to be able to see myself (like this: http://ask.metafilter.com/55899/Qs-to-ask-your-own-self)

*I want to be able to search and index the whole damn thing

*Be able to find things like this easily: http://ask.metafilter.com/82208/when-things-are-this-down-theres-only-one-direction-they-can-go-sideways

*Lets me make to-do lists, that can be contingent upon other tasks, and with the option to embed in day once done.

I'd like to suck in google calendar data, and maybe Facebook statuses and checkins.

I'd really love to be able to sketch into it, but will settle for importing jpgs.

Is this too much to ask? I want to be able to download my brain into one place and be able to retrieve things again. Is there a way to do this on paper that makes reviewing/tracking easy? Or failing my perfect journaling app, what's the next best imperfect one - PC or Ipad?

Help me find a good hosting platform for a lit journal.

deathpanels — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 10:12:16 -0800

Help me find a good hosting platform for a lit journal. So I'm starting an online lit journal but I'm unsure of what is the best way to host it. I've used Wordpress for similar purposes before but I've always found it very restricting and difficult to style.

I plan on running this as a quarterly (or possibly bi-quarterly), so the ability to distinguish between issues is pretty important. I'm also planning on releasing an eBook of edition of each issue.

I have a bit of space and a domain name already, but I'd rather have a better hosting platform than my current solution (uploading PHP files via FTP). Mostly I want to be able to customize the platform to my needs without starting from scratch. I work as a web developer so doing a little programming is not a problem for me – I just don't want to reinvent the wheel.

I am interested in using a journal for self-improvement and personal growth and need some suggestions for resources and aids to take my practice further.

JoannaC — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 18:29:40 -0800

I am interested in using a journal for self-improvement and personal growth and need some suggestions for resources and aids to take my practice further. A new bluetooth keyboard has vastly increased my productivity on my iPad, which is nearly always with me. I have been experimenting with some journal/diary apps and am finding it a really helpful tool. I am very introspective, and have been told many times that I 'think too much.' Writing some of it down is helping me. I want to go to the next level and use the journaling experience to improve myself, grow as a person, really 'work on' myself and so forth but am not sure how.

So far, I have been doing daily recap type things of what happened the day before, and then using tags to reference certain topics. I had success on one occasion with writing out a list of things to say at a therapy appointment---the appointment was three days away, and writing about it over the course of those three days helped me crystallize the main point I wanted to work on. I also had success with writing one day in a letter format to my recently deceased grandmother. I had been really missing her, and writing out some of the stuff I was feeling game me some closure on a bit of it.

I am looking for more stuff like that. I have read some previous askmes and what I am *not* interested in:

- keeping a record that my future children will read to learn about me. Even I don't tend to re-read them past a few days, although I suppose the tags can help me mark stuff I might want to refer to later. If I ever do have children and want to keep a record for them, that will be a separate process from this one.

- Answering all sorts of pre-fab prompts and questions like 'what was your first pet?' or 'what food did you most enjoy in childhood?' I want to go deeper with where I am *now* and really do meaningful work here. If there is no specific point, I don't want to write about it just because.

Some issues I am working on:

- Improving my friendships and my romantic relationship
- Getting better control over impulse eating and such to lose weight
- Being better able to deal with stress and roll with the punches
- Wasting less time; doing more productive things
- Handling my emotions better (I cry, over-react, catastrophize)
- Supporting the process of CBT, which I am involved with now

Hacks, tips, books, websites, resources, suggestions?

I also welcome discussions of pros/cons of specific iPad apps. I am using MaxJournal right now because you can keep multiple books and it handles pictures better than some of the other ones I have looked at.

B2B or not 2B? Wetting beak in manufacture.

evil holiday magic — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 01:50:16 -0800

New to manufacturing. How do I go from making things to having something made? A couple years ago, I developed a line of notebooks to address the shortcomings I saw in existing products. They were handmade, but I only did that out of necessity. Now I'd like to have them manufactured in quantity.

I'm familiar with some of the basics of binding (through experience in graphic design, and the primitive techniques I used while making them myself), but I've never had blank books made, or sought out any kind of manufacturer.

When I say I made them, I mean I cut the stock with an X-Acto knife, clamped them individually, glued the spines, attached the covers and closures, and clamped them again. So there is some leeway in what manufacturing entails -- whether it meant renting access to some cutting or binding equipment, getting certain stages of the process done and doing the rest myself (or sending them elsewhere to be completed), or getting them made somewhere from top to bottom. I just need to make it more practical to continue selling these.

I'm in the Los Angeles area.

Literary translation journals? Or not?

little cow make small moo — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 08:11:48 -0800

Where should I try and publish a literary translation? I translated a short story into English a little while ago, and now I'm trying (with the author's enthusiastic consent) to find appropriate places to submit it for publication in English. I have some idea of what the options are for trying to publish straight-up English creative writing (duotrope.com! a splendid resource, but sadly doesn't seem to deal with translations at all), but I don't know whether it's best to submit a translated story to a regular (perhaps genre-appropriate?) journal, since some of them accept translations, or to look for publications specializing in literary translations.

Any reason to focus on one over the other? Recommendations for specific journals? All input very much appreciated!

Looking for magazines with a local cultural focus

Shepherd — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 04:56:09 -0800

What are the best small local-history/culture magazines or publications in North America? I've just become the chairperson on the board of a local publication of long standing. It has suffered from a declining readership and, frankly, spotty quality over the past decade. In the last year, a new editor and designer have taken the reins, both volunteers and without much experience but with lots of enthusiasm.

The magazine serves a largely semi-rural population with a couple of large towns and a mid-size city in the mix; its focus is non-fiction, but it's written for general access and is not a scholarly journal.

I'm looking at this as a chance to start a longer-term revitalization of the magazine, and I thought the best way to go about it would be to seek out exemplary magazines that have the same rough characteristics as ours, and look at what other publications are doing with success.

Here's a list of six characteristics that I think define the magazine, more or less in order of importance for what I have in mind:

- Geographically defined;
- Non-fiction;
- Articles on past history and current culture*;
- High quality of writing and design;
- Independently owned and locally published/distributed;
- Regularly published.

*culture not just meaning music and the visual arts, but culture in the more traditional sense as well: professions, traditions, etc.

Don't feel entirely bound to hit all six of the above, but the top three are pretty important. Feel free to colour outside the lines if you think you have a line on something amazing. The "Small Farmer's Journal" has come up as an interesting publication that works as an example: it's not bound by geography but by a culture, yet still kind of falls into our wheelhouse.

Thanks!

Quirky Travel Journal Questions

sarajane — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:34:11 -0800

Quirky travel journal questions - Italian Edition. We are taking a family tour of Italy. Package tour; 3 days each in Venice, Rome and Italy. The 8 of us range in age from 14-70. I'm putting together a little travel journal for each person with some blank pages and lists like regional specialties, a gelato flavor translator and questions like "what was the best/worst thing you saw/ate/smelled today?"

I'd like to add more specific quirky questions such as: How many paintings of St. Sebastian did you see today? Which was the goriest? But that is the only question like that I can think of, never having been to Italy myself. What other odd question(s) should I ask?

I want to start writing a journal. Can you recommend me some kind of journaling software?

_Seeker_ — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:11:01 -0800

I want to start writing a journal. Can you recommend me some kind of journaling software? I don't want to use any kind of online service, I just want some kind of offline, desktop program.

Basic requirements:

works on Windows 7

it's free of charge

Would be nice if:

it has password protection

it also supports Linux

it is open-source, or at least doesn't save the entries in some kind of binary format file

the database file can be synced to Drobox

Why kids need art

pupstocks — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 09:38:11 -0800

What are the most important/relevant research studies and academic journal articles on the topic of art education advocacy? Now that this semester is coming to a close, I'm interested in doing some reading while I still have access to a university library. I have one more year of library access (with subscriptions to journals, databases, etc), and I want to make the most of it, especially between semesters. I want to learn more about topics that interest me, and I'm beginning with the question of why art education is important and valuable. I'm interested in knowing which studies are considered the most important or seminal on this topic. I've seen some advocacy materials from non-profit organizations, etc, but I'd like to go to the actual source of published research.

I'm not very experienced in library use, so the more information you have about the articles or studies you recommend, the easier time I will having finding them! Thanks all. I look forward to reading!

Old yearbooks: Historical value?

compartment — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 10:39:45 -0800

Do old yearbooks (mostly 1930s and 40s) have any historical value? I fished about ten of them out of a recycling bin, and intend to reuse their covers in homemade sketchbooks. Some of the yearbooks are really beautiful, others are just interesting. Am I about to destroy something I shouldn't?

To blog, or not to blog...

Carlotta Bananas — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:18:56 -0800

Looking for examples of well written blogs that cover a multitude of topics without seeming disorganized. I'm interested in starting a blog as a sort of random thought public diary and hobby journal. Yea, nice and vague. I've tried narrowing it down to a single topic or area, but when I get a good idea for something outside that field that can't be included I generally stop writing altogether. I'd like it to at least appear cohesive in some way and would love some examples of people who have done this.

Cheers!

Is there an online platform that will let me post status updates (like on Facebook or Twitter) that AREN'T public--as in, it's for me and me only?

lovableiago — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:47:06 -0800

Is there an online platform that will let me post status updates (like on Facebook or Twitter) that AREN'T public--as in, it's for me and me only? For some background: I've always been a journal-keeper. I really like being able to look back on various points in my life and see what I was doing/thinking/feeling. Facebook has actually been kind of cool in that respect, especially with that new Timeline feature. So, a lot of times I'll have a thought or idea or feeling or funny observation that I want to write record. For example, just now I got my paycheck and thought, "A week of vacation saved up--JOY, be thy name!" (just a dumb little thing but I'd get a kick years down the line out of looking back and seeing that at 27, these are the things that thrill me). Unlike many people I know, incredibly(!), I do NOT consider this worthy of posting on Facebook--no one cares (which I'm totally OK with) and it borders on bragging anyway (and aren't those just the worst?).

That said, is there some sort of application/website where I could easily log in, jot down my thought, have the date/time imprinted, and be able to go back to it later....that NO ONE else could see, or would at least be way easier to set to completely private than Facebook is? I realize I could also set up a Word document but then I have to add the date and stuff myself, and it would be limited to one location (e.g. if I keep it on my home computer, then I don't have access at work). And I could probably set my Facebook statuses so that they are hidden from every person I'm friends with but 1) I'd be too paranoid that I'd miss something and my private thoughts would somehow be exposed, and 2) I'm doing a Facebook-Free February anyway (that might become permanent because....ugh, Facebook).

Where to publish essay on meaning of meaning in psychology?

shivohum — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:52:27 -0800

What's a good venue to publish an essay on the notions of meaning and explanation in psychology (broadly defined)? I'd like to find a venue that would address both scholars in various fields as well as writers, artists, and the intelligent laymen who might be interested in these issues. I'm thinking approx. 8-10,000 words. It's going to be an essay that sketches out (a few of) the different notions of explanation and meaning that are predominantly used to address human psychology in science, explain why they are unsatisfying, and advocate for an alternative approach that is more literary in nature.

The essay would be semi-scholarly: it would be more informal, eclectic, and focused on its original ideas than on explaining its evolution from an existing academic discourse.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow

sciapod — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 07:26:36 -0800

I was given a five-year diary for Christmas. What sort of things should I be sure to keep track of over the next five years of my life? I was given a five year journal for Christmas, which will let me make five-line entries for the next five years of my life (ages 25 to 30). I've never been a journal-keeper, but this seems like a fun experiment, and manageable too, since the space is limited to five lines a day.

Apart from the normal day-to-day entries, what sort of things should I keep track of for the second half of my twenties? For you journal-writers, do you read back over your old journals, and if so, what sort of thing do you enjoy seeing your past self put down, or what do you wish you'd kept better record of?

Simple, cheap way to get onto iOS Newsstand

borborygmi — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 23:49:06 -0800

Is there an easy, inexpensive way to get our small periodical onto the iOS newsstand? A fair number of our readers have iPads or other apple devices, and we think they'd like to access our monthly journal via Newsstand, for iOS.

We've been looking at Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite. Adobe would be a great fit because we already use Premiere to develop our issues. However, it seems to get subscribers / notifications in iOS newsstand, you've got to use DPS Professional, which is $500 a month.

We're less familiar with Quark Xpress's offerings but it also seems to come close to $2000 for a multi-issue subscription, plus hundreds in fees. We've also looked at Aquafadas and MagPlus but their pricing seems similar. Our margins are thin as it is and we're not sure this is going to be worth the investment.

Are there any methods or software solutions we're missing? I guess I thought it'd be easier / cheaper to upload a PDF or .folio file to the App Store on a monthly basis, and notify users when a new issue had been posted.