While I've tried all sorts of electronic aids, I've found the best was a full-sized Clairefontaine engineering-ruled spiral notebook. It's a scratchpad, it's graph paper, it's a place to tape stuff and it's a scribble-down place aside from a proper log. And I only have to remember now two things - we all have these neat phones that weren't there 5-10 years ago.

There's no electronic search, which is a downer, but I date the entries so my goal is "know the date, know where to look to reestablish state". It works as I print pretty quickly and not too badly. Others might type, but then you either need two keyboards or two windows and you're tied to power or the net. I would think there's a real business opportunity here, but maybe the taking-note market isn't as large or as well-organized as one would like?

It's even pretty robust paper that could survive a bit of liquid. Coupled with a good pen it's a good writing environment.