Taking notes

I'm reading several books at the moment, all online, some free and some on safari. I've taken in a bit on Lisp, some XML, and some more general reading about programming , but mostly I'm trying to get a more thorough understanding of Linux. I'm OK programming under Linux and muddling through configuration with a HOWTO, but I've never taken the time to get really familiar with Linux/Unix. Using Linux, as opposed to writing it, which I'm sure is great fun, is a pretty dull dry subject, but it's the foundation that everything else I use is built on so it will be worth the effort. I'm reading Running Linux and I'm finding it a fairly pleasant read. I had a look at RUTE, but the style was a bit rambling and started from very very basic principles.

I'm a little bit annoyed that the range on Safari is too narrow. I can understand that O'Reilly themselves fill a particular niche, but Safari provides access to several publishers with a wider range of titles. I sent them an email asking if they could make Paul Graham's ANSI Common Lisp available.

I take notes when I read. I used to do it on paper, but I prefer to keep them all in text files now. If I don't take notes it's too easy to read through a chapter and take very little in. Taking notes as I go forces me to think about what I've just read in the same way as explaining it to someone else would, and almost as a by-product gives me a nice aide-memoir and index.