Filbert Bin
Pumpkin Time
Link Finders
The latest episode of Reply All is all about online scams: #78 Very Quickly to the Drill. As a balance to all of the scamminess mentioned, they talked about a service called The Ring Finders. It's an organization that lists people with metal detectors across the country who will help find lost wedding rings. It was a great way to end the episode, and a good reminder that lots of people have the impulse to help—and people can get problems solved with that help.
That train of thought led me to the idea that there should be a website called The Link Finders. There's nothing more frustrating than knowing you've read a certain article or seen a certain piece of information that you can't find again. I wrote about some strategies for finding lost sites in 2006: Finding Lost URLs. It's a recurring theme in MetaFilter's backchannel, MetaTalk. There are two of those types of post on the front page as I type this: someone read something on MetaFilter somewhere, they've tried their personal searching bag of tricks, they come up empty, and they need assistance finding it.
Seeing that process in public is satisfying. Someone has a specific problem, others chime in with suggestions, and most of the time the person finds their bit of info. If the information is also of interest to you it's even better. You get randomly referred to a link you might not have seen otherwise and you get a sense that there is justice in the universe.
Lazyweb, go!
That train of thought led me to the idea that there should be a website called The Link Finders. There's nothing more frustrating than knowing you've read a certain article or seen a certain piece of information that you can't find again. I wrote about some strategies for finding lost sites in 2006: Finding Lost URLs. It's a recurring theme in MetaFilter's backchannel, MetaTalk. There are two of those types of post on the front page as I type this: someone read something on MetaFilter somewhere, they've tried their personal searching bag of tricks, they come up empty, and they need assistance finding it.
Seeing that process in public is satisfying. Someone has a specific problem, others chime in with suggestions, and most of the time the person finds their bit of info. If the information is also of interest to you it's even better. You get randomly referred to a link you might not have seen otherwise and you get a sense that there is justice in the universe.
Lazyweb, go!
Morning River View
This set made my day and I'm not sure how but that last track was perfection. Thanks, kottke!
new donut shop! ????
c2bk Infrastructure Report
Infrastructure updates to this blog continue apaceish:
And for fun here are the services I use for this site:
I still feel more couch than blogK at this point, but ticking off items that have been on my to-do list since the early part of this century feels good.
1 Proper pronunciation?
2 The hovering businessman emoji's ska roots.
- HTTPS1 on at all times
- Emoji everywhere
- Friendlier URLs for posts with slugs
- CSS now SASS-y
- Super modern git and CDN deploy process with a bash script
- Cutting edge access reports with analog
- Most recent CodeMirror for textarea while composing posts
- Deferred loading of video embeds
- Bug fixes and performance improvements
And for fun here are the services I use for this site:
- Hover for domain registry 2
- DigitalOcean for the virtual server
- AWS CloudFront for hosting images, scripts, and stylesheets
- ZoneEdit for DNS
I still feel more couch than blogK at this point, but ticking off items that have been on my to-do list since the early part of this century feels good.
1 Proper pronunciation?
2 The hovering businessman emoji's ska roots.
Election Profit Makers
Someday this election's going to end...
And when it does, the Election Profit Makers podcast will end. But today is not that day. When life hands you election absurdity, one response is to transform it into better absurdity. That's EPM: better absurdity. If you're not already gathering intel and riding those waves, it's time to invest while you still can.
This site that sprang out of a Hacker News discussion of a Tim Bray post is relevant to my interests.
Wednesday night moment of zen. You might need a chaser.
Let's Encrypt
I'm a big fan of Let's Encrypt. They made the task of setting up and maintaining SSL/TLS certificates—a process more convoluted than it should have been—into something simple. I've been using it for the certificate here and for several other sites for quite a while now and they have a solid process.
To top it off, their certificates are free (as in beer). They have taken away most of the excuses people use for not making their sites secure. (If you care about Google rankings you probably moved to a secure site years ago. If not, the time is now.)
All of this free goodness isn't free. They just shared their operating costs and are asking folks to donate to help keep it going. Even if you don't use their service directly, there's a good chance some of the sites you frequent do. I think it's worth supporting a more secure Web.
To top it off, their certificates are free (as in beer). They have taken away most of the excuses people use for not making their sites secure. (If you care about Google rankings you probably moved to a secure site years ago. If not, the time is now.)
All of this free goodness isn't free. They just shared their operating costs and are asking folks to donate to help keep it going. Even if you don't use their service directly, there's a good chance some of the sites you frequent do. I think it's worth supporting a more secure Web.