A Religious Engineer on Life and on using Noteshelf

We first saw Oscar’s sketches on Twitter. Most of it were in Spanish but nevertheless, we were delighted and intrigued in his enthusiasm in using Noteshelf  and the seemingly religious overtone in his notes that we just have to contact the guy.

Apparently Oscar stumbled upon Noteshelf while looking for apps for his first iPad. He wanted a note taking app that would allow him to take down notes as a professor and also to jot down church sermons. Hence the regularly implied religious tones in his sketches.

Sketching has been one of his many hobbies. As a child, Oscar was fond of doodling on scratch papers, drawing on empty notebooks and just sketching his ideas whenever he can. He discovered digital note taking only a year ago, becoming aware of its benefit and power. Researching more, he found a page that talked about sketch noting and how it helped to remember notes, hold one’s full attention and fully utilise the two hemispheres of the brain. 

Sounds seriously brainy? With Oscar’s Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering plus a Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, it was no wonder. If that wasn’t enough, he’s currently working under the FabLab Cali  of the Universidad Autonoma de Occidente, engaging in development of prosthetic hand using digital fabrication. He’s also working on designing a 3D printer that uses cotton yarn, technologies that are mean to inspire and improve people’s lives. He’s also volunteers at the network, enablingfuture.org, a community of collaboration and cooperation to provide assistance to people with disabilities.

He’s also a very religious man, proof of which are his sketches shared on Twitter and Facebook. His day starts with a prayer and still ends in a spiritual tone, with him going at church at night, to listen, preach, counsel and even teach a discipleship course. It was no wonder most of the sketches he has shared on Twitter and Facebook were religious in nature. 

It was extremely flattering how Oscar shares his faith and belief using Noteshelf. He has tried other note taking apps but according to him, nothing comes close to Noteshelf’s near authentic writing experience, and we quote “feeling so close to writing with real pen and paper.” That aspect has been a consistent point of comparison for Oscar in finally deciding to use Noteshelf regularly.

And used it extensively, Oscar did. It became an excellent tool for him to prepare for class, take notes, review papers, sketch and more. He has notes of all kinds, from several of his courses, for solving problems, drawing, reviewing and annotating documents that he shares with his students. Not only that, he also uses Noteshelf to occasionally sketch and draw playfully with his lovely 3 year old daughter; he’ll basically draw a hand and his daughter will choose from the wide array of writing tools to colour the nails and even put in stickers from Noteshelf’s extensive emoticon options.

What for you are the most important feature of Noteshelf that just makes things easier?
“Transformation tool and zoom mode are the most important feature for me.”

He was also grateful in sharing with us his fave stylus, the Dagi stylus, which has a transparent disk at the tip, similar to Adonit Jot stylus. “I feel comfortable with it because it allows me more precise strokes and writing because I can ‘see what I’m doing.’" He currently has an Adonit Touch 4 and loves how it works with Noteshelf’s palm rejection features and accuracy.

On that note, this happily married fellow also shared with us the other apps and gadgets he also uses on a daily basis, such as Procreate and iDraw for drawing and design and for engineering and teaching, Pythonista, Computable and TexWriter.

We can’t help but ask a challenging and well, a semi-bias question: How would he recommend Noteshelf to those that are using another note taking app? His reply and we quote “With Noteshelf taking notes revives that experience of writing with a pencil and paper. It’s amazing the quality of the strokes with different tools and the feedback in each line. No delays between what you write and what appears on the screen, complete freedom of customization from colors of pencils, pens and highlighters, paper types and even covers for notebooks. Noteshelf is a supremely versatile application that meets all the needs of who loves to take notes.”

Oscar Campo with Wacom’s Bamboo Stylus fineline

Oscar Campo was born at Pasto, Colombia and now currently lives at Cali, Colombia. He currently works at FabLab Cali at the Universidad Autonoma de Occidente where he develops prosthetic devices. He’s also involved in the enablingthefuture, a community helping people with disabilities. For more information, visit the website www.fablabcali.org or www.enablingthefuture.org.