Somebody pointed out a useful feature of Windows Notepad:  date/time stamp logging.  Imagine you want to keep a diary of sorts in a Notepad file, and have a date/time stamp at each “entry”.  Normally, you’d open the file, press Ctrl+End to get to the end of the file, enter the date and time manually, and then start typing.

You can get Notepad to do that for you, automatically.  Here’s how.

1. Open a blank document in Notepad and type “.LOG” (without the quotes).
2. Save the file as diary.txt.
3. Close Notepad.
4. Now start Notepad again and open the file that you just saved.

Notepad adds a blank line at the end of the file, enters the time and date, and positions to the end of the file so that you can start typing your notes.  I guess it really is a “notepad” program.

Some people laugh, but I find Notepad to be incredibly useful for writing quick design notes and thoughts.  Sure, it’s a primitive tool.  But I don’t need anything fancy at that stage.  I need something that will open quickly and let me enter text with a minimum of fuss.  I’ve not found anything better for that than Notepad.