Bookmarklets fill a space in our mind similar to that of RSS feeds. They're useful and typically very simple to use once you know how and have a setup for them. They can't get as advanced as things like browser extensions or standalone apps can but they're much easier to try making or modifying. Unfortunately, it's rare that we actually find bookmarklets or come across people mentioning their usage of them.
As of writing this we have already added JWZ's bookmarklets to our link page. These bookmarklets are for changing your current tab's URL in some way based on what you have open, like opening the source of an image on websites that disable or replace context (right-click) menus. If you need to search for certain words in/or certain elements instead, the XPath function might help.
There are also bookmarklets for AO3, like a Y/N replacer and a search filter saver.
Someone posted a bookmarklet on MetaFilter Projects for converting a page into a format that's supposed to help with reading speed. We made a modified version of it that has lower contrast, light text on a dark background, a smaller font size, and cyan asterisks instead of red ones between sentences:
javascript:void%20function(){javascript:(function(){var%20a=Math.floor,b=document.querySelectorAll(%22p,%20title%22),c=[],e=%22%22,f=%22%22,g=%22%22,h=0,k=0,l=%22%22,m=%22%22,n=window.open(%22%22,%22_blank%22);for(var%20d%20in%20b){var%20i=b[d].textContent;i%26%26(c=c+%22\n%22+i)}for(f=c,e=f.replace(/\n/g,%22%20%3Cbr%3E%3C/br%3E%20%22),g=e.split(%22%20%22),h=0;h%3Cg.length;h++)k=a(g[h].length/3)+1,l=%22%3Cspan%20style='font-weight:bolder'%3E%22+g[h].substring(0,k)+%22%3C/span%3E%3Cspan%20style='font-weight:lighter'%3E%22+g[h].substring(k,g[h].length)+%22%3C/span%3E%20%22,%22.%22==g[h].substring(g[h].length-1,g[h].length)%26%26(l+=%22%3Cspan%20style='color:cyan'%3E%20*%20%3C/span%3E%22),m+=l;n.document.write(%22%3Chtml%20style='background:#333;color:#CCC'%3E%3Cp%20style='font-size:17;line-height:125%25;font-family:Arial;max-width:50vw;margin:auto;margin-top:100px;'%3E%22+m+%22%3C/p%3E%3C/html%3E%22)})()}();
This version also grabs headings and lists instead of only paragraphs and titles.
javascript:void%20function(){javascript:(function(){var%20a=Math.floor,b=document.querySelectorAll(%22p,title,ul,ol,li,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6%22),c=[],e=%22%22,f=%22%22,g=%22%22,h=0,k=0,l=%22%22,m=%22%22,n=window.open(%22%22,%22_blank%22);for(var%20d%20in%20b){var%20i=b[d].textContent;i%26%26(c=c+%22\n%22+i)}for(f=c,e=f.replace(/\n/g,%22%20%3Cbr%3E%3C/br%3E%20%22),g=e.split(%22%20%22),h=0;h%3Cg.length;h++)k=a(g[h].length/3)+1,l=%22%3Cspan%20style='font-weight:bolder'%3E%22+g[h].substring(0,k)+%22%3C/span%3E%3Cspan%20style='font-weight:lighter'%3E%22+g[h].substring(k,g[h].length)+%22%3C/span%3E%20%22,%22.%22==g[h].substring(g[h].length-1,g[h].length)%26%26(l+=%22%3Cspan%20style='color:cyan'%3E%20*%20%3C/span%3E%22),m+=l;n.document.write(%22%3Chtml%20style='background:#333;color:#CCC'%3E%3Cp%20style='font-size:17;line-height:125%25;font-family:Arial;max-width:50vw;margin:auto;margin-top:100px;'%3E%22+m+%22%3C/p%3E%3C/html%3E%22)})()}();
Thoughts
- On the subject of browser tools, we've been trying out Tree Style Tab (with indent lines) in an attempt to make our tabs easier to go through. It helps somewhat.
- We got ranger as a file manager but we're not sure how often we'll use it yet.
- We usually have our file manager show thumbnails instead of listing files, so this feels very strange to use.
- The file preview does work but it's still not as easy or intuitive to use as drag-and-dropping from a grid of thumbnails. Maybe we'll get used to making more helpful names for our files, or maybe we'll decide to go back to a GUI file manager.
- There's also a good chance we'll just switch between the two depending on what we're doing. The reason we wanted a terminal file manager is because we have the terminal open often for music or text editing, so using a terminal file manager to preview or organize files related to those things feels more convenient than opening the GUI file manager (currently Nautilus).
- Whenever we open Pinterest to look at something or see what someone else linked, it feels overwhelming. We're used to avoiding the site even more than sites like Twitter, making it more immediately alienating in a way that's somewhat interesting. There seems to be very little context for anything, and there is rarely any indication of what you can find on other websites, but exploring Pinterest more is always an easy option thanks to the large search bar and recommended content. The scale of the site makes it easy for individuals to curate what they like but we find it to also feel extremely impersonal.
- Are.na doesn't (as far as we know) let people take notes on each item in a collection, but the collections themselves can have descriptions. Each item has space for a "source" link, even if people don't always use it. Offsite links themselves, like articles, can be saved as well as PDFs. Are.na feels much easier for us to look at and that probably says something about what values each site has in its design.
- There is probably also something to write as far as "Pinterest reimagined as an entity in a horror story that causes harm via passively generating maze-like spaces out of each person's attempt to navigate it," but that goes for modern web algorithms in general.
Things
- "Mouse Cursor History (and why I made my own)"
- We use Lyra cursors. Besides the bright tip, they don't have the most contrast on dark content but we like the look of it and it doesn't bother us too much.
- Radiooooo lets you listen to music from a specific place and decade.
- Make WordArt
- "The Incomprehensible Scale of 52!"
- "Fuelled" short film
- "How I Learned to Love Nightcore"
- "Web Design as Architecture"
- Rarebit webcomic template for Neocities
- "How to Make Constructive Comments"
- "How To (Legally and Ethically) Steal Ideas" is writing advice.
- "How to Start Bullet Journaling: the unconventional method"
- "Sympathy for Anton Ego: An Antifan Manifesto" is about how (what this person refers to as) antifandom can be ethical and create positive experiences.
- Jetset, a blog for a "reality show" set in the Sims 3.
- "The Power of Album Covers"
- OnlySans
- "Fear of Cold"
- "[The cold] was present before anything existed. It will remain after everything is done."
- "darja bajagić's art is difficult to look at and difficult to look away from"
- "Violent images matter. We must force ourselves to see. We are not bloodless. Violent images are not dangerous, but what is is the overwhelming effort to sanitize and delete our access to an unvarnished reality. For the “righteous,” sinking in denial and their perverse wish to protect their untarnished eyes and minds, how can you refuse to acknowledge a mere re-presentation of a horrific event while others are forced to live through the horrific event itself?"
- The "#Altwoke Manifesto" has many interesting quotes, or at least sentences with interesting phrasing.
- "The moderate midwifed the birth of the Alt-Right through bipartisan compromises."
- "The radical is too comfortable inhabiting only the periphery of academia & activism. Radical academics and activists are insulated not only by algorithms but also their obsolescence. The radical academic has failed to bridge the gap between intellectuals & larger society. "
- "A journalist in New York may engage with a senator in Washington over Twitter. A misguided 17-year old from Wisconsin who received their political education from /Pol, Breitbart, or Reddit can also join that same dialogue, and disrupt it. This is the best case scenario, unfortunately."
- "All systems have integrated into platform stacks, and by extension, nations and governments are but another component in the Internet of Things (IoT). "
- "Every Shitty Video Essay Ever" and "Your Average Video Essay"
- Powder Game is a small physics simulator where you put down materials in the form of dots and let them interact, often to create gusts of wind.
- "How It Came to Pass" and "We Don't Live in a Society"
- Printable zines to use as sketchbooks for isometric art. Here's a non-zine isometric template as well.
- "MP3 Blogs and wget"
- WiGLE is attempting to map all wireless networks.
- "Social cooling" is used to describe how mass data collection can create unwanted incentives and a culture of conformity.
- "Data is not the new gold. Data is the new oil. It is damaging the social environment."
- "Privacy is the right to be imperfect."
- We tend to use various mediums (TiddlyWiki, physical paper, conversations, etc.) as "scratchpaper" for processing information and then consolidate what we've decided is important into a to-do list. From experience, we try to keep our to-do lists fairly centralized and only consider something learned once we've tried it and assessed how well it worked.
- The majority of our current issues with this stem from disagreements about what to do with all the rest of the information that doesn't get into the to-do list. Some of us want to keep things as simple and organized as possible by discarding unused information while others want to keep it in case we want it for later. The naturally-occurring solution was that we process things in the space we prefer, keep our own smaller (actually larger, because each movement up takes out the less prioritized tasks) to-do lists and the tasks with the most priority make it into our group meetings.
- "...because the Index was carried out by monks, matters of medicine were of little importance. Physicians felt that their scholarly work was being undermined by ecclesiastical authorities. The medical community needed its books; it relied on relationships established through travel and letters and thrived on learned debate, new editions of texts, and large reference volumes, all published in print."
- Post-mortem/reflection on the process of creating the story.
- "A number is not a shortcut to understanding; it is a tool for those who have already achieved it."
- "My screenshots are still a document of computation, but often only incidentally, the way a snapshot of a nice tree is also a document of forest management. They are an archive of a life lived in the vicinity of screens."
- "My phone is in cahoots with FAANG and friends. What was once a discrete object is now at one with the platforms, and as long as it’s receiving a wifi or data signal, nothing I feed into it stays private for long. Increasingly, anything I put into my phone has the sense of being always-already shared."
- "Start a blog. Don’t amplify stuff you disagree with. Mute stuff that bugs you. Focus; veer occasionally. Add context to links. Consider waiting a day after writing something before posting it. Write for yourself first. Expect to not know what you have to say until you’ve written."