Metaphors We Web By
A history of our metaphorical understanding of the web
Multi-layered calendars
Calendars cover the entire spectrum of time. Past, present and future. They are the closest thing we have to a time machine. Calendars allow us to travel forward in time and see the future. More importantly, they allow us to change the future.
The beauty of finished software
Let me introduce you to WordStar 4.0, a popular word processor from the early 80s.
WordStar 4.0
As old as it seems, George R.R. Martin used it to write “A Song of Ice and Fire”.
Why would someone use such an old piece of software to write over 5,000 pages? I love how he puts it:
It does everything I want a word processing program to do and it doesn't do anything else.
DAK and the Golden Age of Gadget Catalogs
Hi. My name is Cabel. And I’ve probably got the neatest job in the whole world. I wear many hats. But here on my personal blog, I get to write about the things I really care about, just for y…
Apple Annie’s Weblog · On micro.blog and how I want to use it.
Perhaps my longest post to date, in which I talk at length about using micro.blog and what I hope to do with it.
Vika's Hideout
Independent Websites and Where to Find Them | Eric Murphy
The Bullshit-Asymmetry Principle, aka 'Brandolini’s Law'
A New Zealand libertarian blog about Austrian economics, organic architecture, romantic realist art, Ayn Rand, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Von Mises
Maurice Parker - Drummer
Colin Walker - Nov 19, 2023
Writing, blogging, life, tech and mental health with a philosophical/psychological slant
Things you're allowed to do
A list of things you're allowed to do that you thought you couldn't, or didn't even know you could.
Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers
boooooo 🍅🍅🍅
A History of Link Blogs – Angry Robot
A blog.
John Gruber’s Daring Fireball debuted in 2002. The “linked list”, his version of the linklog, did not appear until 2004. It was a separate page and an RSS feed intended as a perk for his paid subscribers. At some point in 2005, it shifted to the main column of the site along with the regular posts.
How Google warped the hyperlink
30 years on, SEO and social media silos have replaced pre-web visions of linking
Index
The Nature of Hypertext
Hypertext means more than just text with a bunch of links in it Hypertext is something of a neglected subject these days. Everyone is talking about the Web, but nobody is talking about the class of…
Top-down emphasizes the collection rather than the item, allowing items into the collection only by blessing from on high, rather than by their own action. It thus inhibits individual contributions and funnels decision making through a single point, often introducing delay and compromising immediacy.
Top down favors the static over the dynamic, wanting each piece to be fixed in its assigned place in the hierarchy. It inhibits spontaneous addition, editing, and deletion, for fear of compromising the structure of the top-down edifice.
Don't Click Here: The Art of Hyperlinking
I've often thought there is a subtle art to the humble hyperlink, that stalwart building block of hypertext, the stuff that Ted Nelson's Xanadu dream was made of. The word hypertext was coined by Nelson and published in a paper delivered to a national conference of the Association for Computing
Curators Are the New Creators — Gaby Goldberg
We’re experiencing a content overload. There are an average of 550 new social media users each minute, and over 40,000 search queries on Google every second. The Facebook like button has been pressed 13 trillion times, and each new day welcomes another 682 million tweets. It seems that every time we blink there’s a new podcast published, or blog post to read, or book recommendation to order on Amazon. To make a long story short, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to disaggregate signal from noise.
Write Hypertext, not Plaintext
Living a plaintext-only life is tempting. But the further one goes with plaintext, the more they re-invent Markdown or HTML. Let's just give up and live hypertext life instead.
A better ranking algorithm
Thoughts on how to create the perfect ranking algorithm, both practically and theoretically.
The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
Proving you're a human on a web flooded with generative AI content
God Help Us, Let's Try To Understand The Paper On AI Monosemanticity
Inside every AI is a bigger AI, trying to get out
Reverse-engineering GPTs for fun and data
Uuuh, a mysterious page on my website.
Hixie's Natural Log: Reflecting on 18 years at Google
It’s All Bullshit | JS Tan
The tech industry is supposed to be the cradle of innovation—but it’s become a redoubt of waste and unproductivity.
AI and Trust - Schneier on Security
abracadabra: How does Shazam work? - Cameron MacLeod
Freelancing with ADHD: A Survival Guide
“Wow,” the psychiatrist said as she looked over the test results. “No question — you definitely have ADHD. Your results are off the chart…
The Small Website Discoverability Crisis
There are a lot of small websites on the Internet: Interesting websites, beautiful websites, unique websites.
Unfortunately they are incredibly hard to find. You cannot find them on Google or Reddit, and while you can stumble onto them with my search engine, it is not in a very directed fashion.
It is an unfortunate state of affairs. Even if you do not particularly care for becoming the next big thing, it’s still discouraging to put work into a website and get next to no traffic beyond the usual bots.
Can There Be a Theory of the Email Job?
notes on a book I'll probably never write