Build a link blog like Simon Willison(xuanwo.io) |
Build a link blog like Simon Willison(xuanwo.io) |
And I fully agree with the notion of "backing up" or keeping track of what was there (that's why I typically include a screenshot in my links).
But the key thing for me is that the time spent in the context shift "in and out" of writing starts taking a toll--especially since I tend to only post about links over breakfast, since I seldom have time to write "properly" by the end of my day, and prefer to devote my breaks to moving and doing house chores for "exercise" and getting tech out of my mind.
So a link blog of such density seems like a tricky juggling act...
Like reaction videos, this is a great way to repackage original material for a wider audience. The cynic in me bristles at the "value capture" here but the optimistic view is that this approach could genuinely breath new life into the "blogosphere".
I've been getting better at fighting that temptation, but I still suck at it. Setting deadlines for blog posts usually helps me focus my efforts.
So, I started untested (https://untested.sonnet.io) where for 111 days no matter what I'd share a post per day. Here's the first post: https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/111
Consistency really helps - there are posts that I had spent weeks on and barely anyone read them in the first place. Then, once I started posting smaller, messier notes almost daily, both the traffic (not that important to me) and the amount of interesting interactions with people (very important to me) went up by 100x.
Another way in which I avoided yak shaving/scope creep was to ditch my own site and rely on Obsidian Publish (I went back to my own solution after a year, as a reward for mostly sticking to the plan)
I personally prefer this format (https://eamag.me/2025/Links-For-January-2025) and you can post single links on social media instead no?
I implemented this feature on my blog a couple of weeks ago. I view it as the equivalent of a retweet, only that I own the content. If someone wants to subscribe, they can follow the respective rss feed. Maybe in the future I automatically push the updates to mastodon/bluesky/etc.
feed section: https://staticnotes.org/feed/
rss feed: https://staticnotes.org/feed.xml
https://github.com/chapmanjacobd/journal/blob/main/lists/kno...
> https://youtu.be/Of9yvKINITg # 10 hours of silence occasionally broken up by the Taco bell Bong
I'm joking, this is really funny, and many of your links are very interesting and informative. Thanks for sharing.
In fact, I also posted about Simon's post: https://www.jjude.com/cpn/informal-guidelines-for-running-a-...
As he says, having a link blog is a "low stakes, high value" activity. More people should carry it out.
Are you using a screen reader or some other non-standard browser?
We're at the point now where I can reasonably keep large numbers of video/text recorded from OBS in S3, run my own speech-to-text, I can cram it all into a SQLite DB, wrap it in a web front-end and then serve it all from cloudfront or wherever.
There is obviously benefit in organizing thoughts using essays as a tool, but if you just want a record of your quick thoughts I almost think screen-capture + webcam + spoken word might be a decent option. Literally use OBS to record your 1-hour (or 4 hours) per day HN habit and keep it for prosperity.
I'll later on clean up the thoughts, though, not just serve them unedited in some way unless it was a really clean take on a topic - trying to be respectful of the audience's time.
I do think you're onto something, though, with the idea about using screen recordings as a means of capturing your reactions and thoughts regarding some matter that can be shown visually. I think I'll be doing that soon, but with some editing to the video.
That is the kind of thing I would normally consider for a CEO or President because the idea of having a secretary whose entire job is to write out your notes is a luxury most can't afford.
We are literally at a point in time where we could dictate to a LLM and then get it to turn it into a book for us (if we so desired). It may not be perfect today, but it won't take long at the pace we are improving.
To the sharing of interesting things and thoughts.
Added a new section to my blog that lists one page per year. Each page lists all my entries in reverse chronological order. Wrote about it here[1].
https://github.com/hoarder-app/hoarder is great for this purpose.
Here's everything from my domain: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=simonwillison.net
A few of my recent self-submissions went nowhere, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42810520 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461073 for example.
I added it to my sharing link service (kinda like a link blog, I think): https://links.l3m.in/en/
I can see a trend like this in the blogosphere being beneficial for everyone involved specially the readers.
- Multiple links in the same post make it difficult to organize discussions and thoughts.
- Monthly posts require extra effort to maintain and update, which didn't align with our initial goal of sharing more casually and recording our thoughts in real time.
- Modern static site generators support maintaining archive pages by month, so we no longer need to do it manually.
Hoping those ideas make sense to you.
A weekly, or monthly collection is something a reader can take their time for. Or put aside for a moment and come back later to it.
A downside of link bundles is that on an average blog, each installment becomes a page, and one has to click a lot before one gets to the interesting part.
My linkblog therefore sends a collection of links every week via RSS (and others like Bluesky, Mastodon, etc. will follow, if I ever take the time to implement it), but on the web it is just one long list, ready for consumption: https://ewintr.nl/linklog/
My link blog entries are often quite long: https://simonwillison.net/search/?type=blogmark