En

2447M

One of my regularly recurring hyperfocus subjects is how to collect digital things from the web. While I don’t do much structured research, I often do unstructured research. I tend to do this in two ways:

• basically surfing the web and collecting bits and ideas
• going down the rabbit hole on a specific topic, trying to find information or details (this often involves comparing things as well)

I have a tendency to want to collect, organize and archive the things I find: interesting websites, personal blogs, articles, notes, ideas, products, tools, ways of making a zine, all sorts of random things, depending on the topic I’m hyperfocused on at the time. How to do this collecting and organizing and archiving is itself a frequent subject of my hyperfocus.

I tend to want to collect various types of things - articles, guides, scraps of ideas, quotes, images, personal websites of random people, things I see in the real world, my own thoughts and ideas, references, manuals, websites of tools and apps, PDFs, etc. I also want to collect things around a variety of topics - technology, website making, programming, note taking, zine making, photography, writing, ideas for creative projects, lifestyle dreams, methodologies for thinking, philosophies, taxonomies, etc. These are all digital artifacts, most originating on someone else’s website or as a social media post (these have an URL) and some originating with me (these are image files or text, sometimes even audio recordings).

My problem is twofold: what tool to use to collect these things and how to organize/structure my collection.

Some of my requirements for my ideal collecting/curating/archiving setup:

• cross platform - at minimum available on iPhone, iPad plus a Mac and/or web interface
• quick and easy to add to from any platform
• easy to organize in folders/collections
• good previews - both for links and files/text, so I don’t always have to click through to see the content I’ve saved
• stable sync between platforms
• easy to export in a universal format - something like plain text, webloc, etc. so I can move things out of the system easily. Ideally should already store things in an open format.
• stable, fast apps - modern apps with a UI that is easy to use and fast to load/operate
• longevity - something that I can trust to be around for at minimum 10 years, ideally more. Either open source, based on an open format or a company with a long track record and a stable long term business model. Big tech is not an option.
• very cheap or free - no more than $5/month, ideally less or free
• link archiving - ideally should be able to archive a current snapshot of the links I save and store the files, text I add as well

Things I’ve tried so far and why they aren’t ideal:

• Safari bookmarks - cumbersome to organize, only stores links, no good previews
• Are.na - slow, buggy iOS app and web interface, cumbersome to organize, plus $7/month is a bit over my budget
• Anybox, Raindrop.io, other Apple-based bookmark apps - mainly just links, usually paid, not open format based, doesn’t feel like I can trust them to be around
• self hosted bookmarking (eg. Shaare) - links only, cumbersome interfaces, usually web only
• Pinboard - links only, single person business doesn’t feel safe in terms of bus factor
• Notes apps (eg. Apple Notes, Bear, etc.) - links are not first class citizens

So I keep searching for the perfect tool. I’m afraid, that I’ll need to make a compromise somewhere, but I still hope there is something out there for this that I can confidently use.

Well, anyways.

2446W

Saw the most amazing documentary film today. It’s a Hungarian film titled “Kix” and it follows the life of a boy from a poor Budapest family over 12 years! Starting with a random encounter with one of the filmmakers when the boy’s 8, it follows his childhood and adolescence spent mostly on the streets of his neighborhood fooling around, getting into fights, skateboarding and lighting bins on fire. It’s a touching, challenging film about a kid, who isn’t exactly a hero charachter, but certainly has a lot of charisma that he uses to try and make his place in the world despite living in a single room with 5 other family members.

The film is beautiful as a piece of cinema and that’s not something you see every day with a documentary. It also made me realize how different my chosen medium of photography is. I can imagine a long term photography project around a similar main character, but I feel that photography can never do what a film like this can.

Well, anyways.

2446M

I have gone countless rounds in the past few years on the topic of mini-businesses. The idea of coming up with a simple, single-product business that I can run under an independent brand, independent from my own face that is, is very appealing to me. Part of that appeal is the pseudonymity so that I don’t feel like it’s me on the line if it fails. Another part is the speed and simplicity: set something up in a few days, that’s a complete package, standardized, so I can offer it on-demand without needing to do any of the maintenance, marketing and other ongoing work a typical business requires. Basically I would set something up, set it on autopilot and only engage with it again if there is an actual customer that I need to provide the service to.

I’m back to this idea today, but there is a slight difference. The current iteration acknowledges that I don’t need to provide what I think is the best, most universally valuable thing I can, that it doesn’t need to be at the bleeding edge of my capabilities. I can set something up based on simple skills that are well within my comfort zone. I’ve been struggling for years with a pattern where as soon as I become comfortably competent in something I immediatly feel it’s not valuable anymore. This is not a business issue, this is an issue of identity and mentality. This current mini-business iteration is a step towards resolving this and becoming comfortable with just doing acceptable work, boring but simple work, something that doesn’t challenge me on a skills level. For many people this will sound like I’ve discovered that jobs exist, and I don’t think they’ll be entirely wrong.

Another aspect of this that I feel reluctantly proud of: I am inching towards setting up work that can provide an income, that’s based in what I can comfortably and easily do and separating that from my passions and ambitions in both tech and photography. I’ve been telling myself for over a year that I need to do this, that photography can be a calling but it doesn’t seem like an easy path towards it becoming a living. So now I’m trying to take a step into what could become a more sustainable model for me: a simple business for making enough money with not much effort and time and resources made available to pursue what I truly value but can’t seem to figure out a way to make a living off of.

Well, anyways.