Transcript: I did a bit of diagram website explorations yesterday, as per my intention, and made some progress. Looked through about four or five entries, and in doing this, I'm kind of thinking about this experience, and how it'll be for everybody else on Friday, and I think what I'm noticing is, it's a lot of data. It's something like 200 unique websites. Ellie has done a marvelous job categorizing them into different shapes, or rather tags and categories, more or less continuing the process they started on their own website, but going a little further. So that helps, but the truth of the matter is it's a lot of websites, each one with its own particular sort of style and opinion and domain, informational domain, not just web domain. And some of these contain many other links as well, so if this were to be crawled, we're talking about a lot of content. So I think I'm just kind of pondering how to best keep this from being overwhelming to everybody else on Friday. What are we looking for? I mean, I did find in just a few visits, I found something that Weiwei and Spencer helped co-write and co-create, which is really cool. So there's certainly an element of personal connections that I'm already finding within these links. And then there was something that I co-signed, the Pluriverse project back in 2022, I believe. And there I was with my signature. So there's these little social connections that are cool, but I'm also considering giving people a little basically scavenger hunt of things that they might find interesting for themselves. You know, make them broad enough that everybody can find something that's actually requiring you to think about what you're looking at. So I'm going to continue pondering, but that was my intention for yesterday.
The speaker did not complete their weekly review, which usually provides clarity and insights for the upcoming week. Despite this, they have many projects, personal life commitments, and community efforts to attend to, not to mention taxes. They plan to set week intentions using voice instead of writing, including the exploration of websites for the Diagram Website Explorers Club and developing a Canvas element-based editor for Daily Jam. The technical aspects of this project involve real-time data updates, efficient pixel manipulation, and secure user authentication through tokenization. A function is set to run every five seconds to update the canvas with the latest pixel data, ensuring all viewers see a consistent image while minimizing performance impacts. Other tasks include preparing tax paperwork, organizing Boulder events for systems and AI, and sketching ideas for a project called "co-net." The intention is to spend more time outdoors in the nice weather and to schedule the next "Site Craft Hang," while thinking about potential content for the "Explorers Club" website. Overall, it's a productive Monday morning with good weather contributing to a positive start to the week.
The author is reflecting on the challenges of effectively showcasing their work on the internet, particularly in relation to portfolios and resumes. They express frustration with the limitations of resumes in capturing the depth of their experience and contributions. Additionally, they discuss the ongoing financial and practical challenges of maintaining online projects and the importance of preserving past work for the benefit of future creators. The author considers using archive.org as a potential solution but expresses reservations about outsourcing this responsibility to a non-profit organization. They ultimately prioritize the use of such resources for preserving knowledge that benefits the broader community rather than their own personal or professional work. The speaker is exploring the idea of preserving their work and experiences in a meaningful and sustainable way. They express concerns about relying on external platforms like archive.org and consider alternatives such as hosting their own content and encoding it into a lower fidelity medium. They also discuss the concept of creating their own encapsulation and representation of their work, which they hope will be more long-term sustainable. The text discusses the idea of creating a collaborative storytelling and writing platform that acts as a memory time capsule by archiving and snapshotting links. It addresses the challenge of link rot and suggests that decentralized hosting and a network of machines could potentially help in the future. The text discusses the concept of a scoped IPFS that functions similar to RAID, where each file is known only once but stored multiple times based on its significance. It also touches on the importance of data permanence on the internet, addressing concerns about archiving family photos and trusting companies like iCloud to maintain data indefinitely. The author questions if they should trust these companies and expresses uncertainty about the longevity of their data stored on such platforms.
The new tab space in our browsers is incredibly valuable digital real estate that we encounter frequently, yet it's often underutilized with features like most visited tabs that create a self-perpetuating cycle of repetitive usage. Inspirational quotes and mindfulness reminders in new tabs can offer a moment of pause and intentionality but lack interactivity, unlike a scratch pad which provides a versatile tool for capturing fleeting thoughts and tasks. The discussion moves to the limitations of bookmark bars, which enforce a strict hierarchy and lack flexibility in display and organization, with items in folders often becoming out of sight and out of mind. Finally, the concept of desire paths in the physical world demonstrates how natural patterns of use can conflict with designed layouts, suggesting a potential parallel in digital interface design and highlighting a need for more spatially aware computing beyond the flat, 2D box we typically engage with. The text explores the idea of a more spatial and intentional experience of the internet, suggesting that the information we deal with doesn't fit well within the confines of a basic square interface such as traditional browser tabs or virtual desktops. The author envisions a new tab page as a garden with different plots representing various personal projects and interests, also suggesting it could connect to other services and websites through API. The emphasis is on creating a tranquil and purposeful online space contrasting with the typical attention-grabbing nature of the internet. Reflecting on past experiences with customizable home screens like iGoogle, the author recalls enjoying the flexibility and fun themes but also felt constrained by Google's branding and the limited selection of plugins, signaling a desire for a more personalized and less biased digital workspace. Individuals reacted to them. The current plan is to halt the activity, but there was significant information provided. Individuals reacted to them. The current plan is to halt the activity, but there was significant information provided.
After a hike, I encountered Steph, leading to ongoing communication about hosting events. We discussed her co-organized salon on the AI alignment problem in March and my interest in hosting a website-building event during startup week, potentially in April or May. We also contemplated a tool for managing our projects and events, like a specialized project management software. Further, we talked about the connection between online communities and the physical gatherings they can inspire, emphasizing the cyclical relationship between the two.