Browser bookmarks frustrate me. I need them for personal and professional use. Yet, like email, bookmark management just seems like a silo wherein I pile new bookmarks on top of old. I try to remember what concise list of tags I used in the past. But it's all a guessing game. Eventually the number becomes so great I export them all to an XML file and put that in a different kind of silo on a hard drive.
My bookmarks, and I suspect most folks', can be split in to three groups. The stuff we use daily, the stuff we're currently using but one day (work projects for example), and the stuff we want to come back to someday.
The first and second groups are, IMHO, what the bookmarks store in a browser is for. I want quick access to these. It's important to keep the two separate and clear out the transient stuff appropriately. When I finish a job I should collate all the bookmarks I've stored for that job in a text file and add it to the git repository and tarball for the job.
I've helped reduce the third group by embracing Pocket. But I still have bookmark folders full of long-forgotten links.
I tried using Pinboard and Delicious but that's even worse. They're like cold storage. I put stuff there and fool myself it'll be there when I want it. But it's easier just to Google something than to try and search these services.
So what to do? I don't know. I like the idea of keeping all those third-group links in appropriately named text files. But will I bother to keep them updated? Will I bother to look in them when I need a link?
What I'm more tempted to do is distill anything I learn from a link in to a document. A tutorial in my own words. Anything else can go in Pocket or simply be read and discarded.
Five articles I've read and enjoyed recently.
Why '27 dresses' isn't a patch on 'Annie Hall'.
I have very little interest in the military and those who aspire to it, but this story about people who lie about it is very interesting.
A very insightful and funny article about growing up.
John W. Keely's elaborate 19th century engineering and science hoax.
A look in to a handful of locations that are keeping arcades alive.
Five articles I've read and enjoyed recently.
A sumo wrestling tournament. A failed coup ending in seppuku. A search for a forgotten man. How one writer’s trip to Japan became a journey through oblivion.
I didn't go to a mall until the late 90s, and I'll wager those in the UK are nothing like those in the US. Still, I found this fascinating.
Why Elton McDonald built the Toronto tunnel that captivated the world.
A man and his cabin in the woods.
Explained with 60+ studies
Five articles I've read and enjoyed recently.
Sometimes TV shows drag their unfunny, uninteresting, yet highly rated feet across our living rooms for years. “Who let this happen?” we cry in vain.
The inside story of a golden child, the killers she hired, and the parents she wanted dead.
Forty-two residents of the struggling cotton-farming town of Roby band together to enter the lottery. They buy 430 tickets. Then - on the eve of thanksgiving, no less - they hit the jackpot, winning $46 million. You might expect a happy ending. Not even close.
So much sense.
Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency.
Five articles I've read and enjoyed recently.
Another tech job we shouldn't need.
How have decades of mass media and technology changed us? A writer returns to his remote hometown — once isolated, now connected. And finds unexpected answers.
This advice has always sounded irresponsible to me.
What should happen when patients reject their diagnosis?
This was a disaster waiting to happen.