kickscondor

People are still creating great stuff along these lines - you just won't find it through Google or Facebook or most of Reddit. Complex, interesting hypertext creations and web sites are still everywhere. But try typing "interesting hypertext" into Google or Facebook and see where it gets you. You can't search for something that's off the beaten track.

This is where directories come back in. Check some of these out:

* https://marijnflorence.neocities.org/linkroll/

* https://neonaut.neocities.org/directory/

* https://webring.xxiivv.com/ (which led me to this gem: https://dreamwiki.sixey.es/)

Competing with Google in search has become an insurmountable task. Personal directories attack from the opposite direction (human curation, no algorithm) in a way that actually puts Google far behind. It's kind of exciting and unexpected.

I really like the turbolinks approach - you simply write HTML and then include the script in your head tags. However, I'm still hooked on Markdown. So I am still prerendering HTML - and then doing the routing with Hyperapp. (See https://href.cool/Tapes/Africa for an example - you get a prerendered static HTML page, but it uses JavaScript from there to render the other pages.)

The ultimate approach is Beaker Browser though. You can actually just write your whole site in Markdown (/index.md, /posts/batman-review.md, /posts/covid-resources.md) and then write a nice wrapper for them at /.ui/ui.html. This means you can edit posts with the built-in editor - and people can 'view source' to see your original Markdown! It's like going beyond the 90s on an alternate timeline.

(A sample of this is this wiki: hyper://1c6d8c9e2bca71b63f5219d668b0886e4ee2814a818ad1ea179632f419ed29c4/. Hit the 'Editor' button to see the Markdown source.)

This seems to be a good fit for IPFS, since it's a single page with no absolute paths.

While Beaker does let me update the source code at that location - you can also link to the current version permanently by adding the version number (46, in this case) to the end.

hyper://467f73aff5af260ab04a4f064fa8cd7fda6f23fed4ff227bc29514c3381a2087+46/

> You can find the code on Github and this website works completely offline. Save it to your computer (Ctrl+S) in order to not loose access to the s4 in case this website will be down at any point in the future.

I'm also seeding this on Beaker. hyper://467f73aff5af260ab04a4f064fa8cd7fda6f23fed4ff227bc29514c3381a2087/

Somehow your link is truncated. The complete link is: hyper://a8e9bd0f4df60ed5246a1b1f53d51a1feaeb1315266f769ac218436f12fda830/ (with a '30' at the end)

Was hoping there was a link to the results - either a search box or some statistics. But hey - free code. Not complaining.

Also, if you haven't checked out Beaker Browser now that it's nearing 1.0 - great things are happening. This hasn't been broadcast much - but Beaker now has a built-in editor pane and forking mechanism. It's the best shot I've seen at a 'view source' 2.0.

There's been some healthy competition lately forking and editing the default twitter/mastodon clone. (Which is here: hyper://a8e9bd0f4df60ed5246a1b1f53d51a1feaeb1315266f769ac218436f12fda830/ But forks of it are here: hyper://0e0d1685c3575cf1df94191e14b4ecf068c43bcefee787ffbbed3d1f4666cab4/ and here: hyper://b798b86cc282ae065697f36a2a07072bfa28e5fdfa1d9a8c6fac0f07ff7d6676/.) If you want to learn Javascript, this seems like an amazing way. (Kind of like jsfiddle but for actual apps.)

Yeah this is less a statement on chronological ordering and more a product of subscribing to all of your uncles. I do think chronological ordering can help you diagnose this problem quicker.

You did a fantastic job - and very generous of you to release the code as well. Applause.

I dunno - the JavaScript player is really well done. There are some surprising touches - like the background changes with the video.

If you’re still confused, click on the dot in the upper left corner and you’ll be on the home page. Each of those squares is someone’s profile page. Many are just made of random lists or links. Others are detailed journals.

I think it’s turned out to be a great place to discover new people and as a portal to unfamiliar places on the Web.

I'm with you. I chalk it up to growing up in a noisy house. I like to be in the middle of people/the city/TVs blaring.

There are also people who like to work in darkness, perhaps because nighttime is their comfortable time. I'm not that way - maybe sometimes.

Totally appreciate what you're saying - some of the time I'm just in a basic text mood as well. (And am a fan of, for instance, legiblenews.com.)

Most of the time I'm a JavaScript maximalist, though. Crufty, dank and deplorable.

I always try to support bad things.

My biggest problem with Google is that in the 2010s they began flagging sites that had too many links as "link farms" - this discouraged bloggers from posting blogrolls and killed many directories. This really damaged the Open Web that the author is talking about. You saw a widespread abandonment of blogs during 2011-2015. (People stopped seeing traffic to their blogs and just assumed blogs had died due to lack of interest.)

In a way, yeah, they made the Web safer. And cleared it out almost completely in the process.

> There is a very reasonable argument for essential services like search engines and news websites to conform to/adopt standards like AMP, but for the rest of The Open Web, ingenuity and risktaking should be encouraged, not discouraged, for the true good of all Peoplekind.

Hadn't really considered this - because minimalist page size is often such a given - but, for instance, many amateurs often don't know yet how to crush their pngs and such.

> https://bilge.world/open

Cool - thanks for this!

(As an aside, it's great to see a continuation of topics like this - which is commenting on last week's article from Parimal Satyal. It makes this place seem more like a forum.)

This is a cool idea. Oh to be a streamer with an auto generated face. Reminds me of A Scanner Darkly.

I wonder if there are tools for removing (or repatterning) these as post-processing. In fact, you’d think single pixel defects might get washed out in conversion to a lossee image format.

That's cool - thanks Pixxel! So Fraidycat literally just grabs the title and link from each post in the feed - so it has to do with how DF formats its feed. It appears that the JSON feed works correctly tho: https://daringfireball.net/feeds/json

Also, there is a redesign underway that will give richer post view: https://github.com/kickscondor/fraidycat/issues/30

Also posted this to the Tiny Directory Forum: https://forum.indieseek.xyz/index.php?topic=23.new#new

This is a small group of others who run this kind of personal directory.

The return of personal directories continues. Love to see it! Really cool that you opened up the code.

Since directories are my own personal obsession, I'll pass on my take on the topic: https://www.kickscondor.com/foundations-of-a-tiny-directory/

I appreciate the author’s work on so many projects, but the quote doesn’t resonate with me. There is a new post almost every day on HN about “saving the Web” that gets voted to the top - and it has been this way for several years now.

But I don’t think fixing broken links is at the top of our priority. Many links need to be broken. And I’m glad my old stuff isn’t around. Hopefully much of my new stuff will go away too. I think this is just humanity’s process - to sift through it all and hang on to the pieces people want to save.

It’s funny you say this, because I see this article linked all the time - and it’s had a major influence in my circles. (Public wiki and Indieweb culture.)

See, for example, the recent ‘Gardens and Streams’ pop-up camp: https://archive.org/details/gardens-and-streams-wikis-blogs-... (Which was both preceded by a year of blog posts about the concepts and which spawned a ton of discussion on the topic.)

A lot of the buzz around Roam Research also plays into this, with many people suddenly tossing around the phrases Zettelkasten, commonplace books, mind palaces, personal knowledge bases and garden wikis. (You can even search HN for these terms and find regular discussion here about that. See also: Obsidian from this week.)

If you want me to put together a longer directory of links I can. Or maybe you’re happy to just bookmark it and forget about it - I get that too.

Oh hey! Really honored you took the time. I love that your blog has has had some attention these past few days. You write very thorough articles and I love that you have a somewhat quirky design, Parimal. It’s classic!

Really glad this was helpful. And it’s really cool you took the time to say thanks.

Seriously?? wow I'm so glad!

Oh don’t be depressed - my messy site took five years to make and you would be disgusted at the guts of it. And besides, there are many many days still in the future - I just flicked through my calendar and couldn’t seem to reach the end - so there is time to unlock more for you. Your site looks good, so I think you are underestimating yourself, which is lying Sami - it’s lying.

Yes - I was resisting - but now I quite agree. Follow this issue: https://github.com/kickscondor/fraidycat/issues/17

Hey - good to hear! Thank you for sticking with it.

I had to rewrite an app as well - but it turned out to be incredibly simple.

Here's my first commit: https://github.com/kickscondor/duxtape/commit/55dbde9519aedb.... Can't really call it a rewrite - more of a search-and-replace. (Though I had a bit of code that used the old peer sockets - and that code works differently now.)

Well then here are some little directories to inspire you! :)

* Edwin Wenink's 'etc' page: https://www.edwinwenink.xyz/etc/etc/

* Gabby Lord's: https://omglord.com

* Fingers.today: https://fingers.today

* Neonauticon: https://neonaut.neocities.org/directory/

* Gwern: https://www.gwern.net (the whole thing is a massive personal directory)