blockwriter

The Big Dig and Scratch & Win

I’m a little bit embarrassed to share it at this point, but I’m developing an application, called Biblish, that is meant to offer small utilities that augment the process of reading, writing, publishing, and distributing literature. One piece of that is a note taking software, called Papertrail, that allows you to take notes for books you are reading in print, and other users can subscribe to these notes and see them on a page by page basis as they read the book themselves.

https://papertrail.biblish.com

I am a writer of literary fiction first and foremost, and I never really understood the interest in tracking or reviewing books. I can see its usefulness for a certain segment of the market, but what I come to read is mostly the result of following the map of influences of the authors who inspire my writing. The quality of these works is thoroughly vetted by their centuries of survival. Little reviews do not seem like a useful mechanism for finding the best in contemporary literature either.

In any event, little reviews and social features are a much better way to develop a user base for your platform. Papertrail works fairly well as intended, and I use it extensively, but we found pretty early on that asking users to take extensive notes on books was too large a barrier of entry for people to cross and start producing the content the site needs to grow. My lead developer, who really functioned, perhaps a little too well, as cofounder, found a good job opportunity elsewhere, and I have not been able to replace him. Me and another developer are still working on it, but it looks to be on the road of another application that did not quite find a market.

My profile on Papertrail can be found below.

https://papertrail.biblish.com/russell

Vercel after moving away from Docker containers running on AWS.

I’ve been working on a note taking app specifically for literature where the idea is that small groups of writers will come across one another’s notes while they’re reading the same work. By responding to another user’s notes the original note taker then has the opportunity to revisit the note and also a book that they may have finished days, weeks, or months ago. It works alright, and I use it extensively, but as you might imagine taking notes on books is a pretty high hurdle for your average user to get over. I’m still hopeful I can find a small market.

It would be great if you could find the machine that is closest to 2 or more different locations, like if I want to challenge several friends across the country to post our high scores in a group message, and we needed to know what the shortest drive each of us would need to take in order to play the same make and model machine. Maybe it’s in the app, or I missed it.

Can you recommend any books on this subject specifically?

I've been doing research into the high-rise housing projects in Chicago. One of the things I'm curious about when it comes to advocacy for more housing and to have that housing be accessible regardless of mental health or substance abuse issues is, does that not pretty much look like high-rise housing projects? If you want more diffuse housing that is accessible and also available regardless of other contributing factors, then it seems to me you would have to build this well outside of urban centers, as the land is too expensive, but then I doubt urban homeless would find satellite housing desirable.

Maybe we should mandate that plastics are manufactured with an off taste, similar to the way gas has a sulfur smell added to it.

Yeah, I wish not only self-publishing one’s own work, it also creating a small journal for publishing other writers was the first instinct of young writers, especially young writers of fiction, rather than seeking publication through more traditional outlets. I think small collectives of dedicated writer and self-publishers and self-producers is literature’s best hope for a new epoch of great writing.

A reading habit, past a certain point, is self-propagating, in my experience. Based on conversation, explicit reference in other texts, and a general sixth-sense of what books to read next, I find that I rarely have a miscue. Abandoning a book that’s no good, or that you simply can’t get into for whatever reason, is a big part of making a self-propagating sense for reading highly reliable. I write a lot about what I read, and I think this further helps to direct my reading.

You can try writing a little testimonial when you start a book that would include your reasons for reading the book. When the book no longer seems to satisfy that rationale, it may be a good sign to abandon the book.

Papertrail is a service for taking digital notes for books you read in print in a way that is accessible, sharable, and optionally public-facing. It operates a smidgen like a forum where each book is its own kind of subreddit. It does, though, require having the book in question and actually reading it in order to participate in and contribute to discussion, but that’s not always a bad thing.

https://papertrail.biblish.com

I can’t understand this perspective. Why? What’s one guy being fired going to mean in the grand scheme of ai’s development?

These estimates seem weighted toward the reality that books are simply not read, and it is a meta-rationale, like the book's relevance to some theme that is perpetually bandied about in our political discourse, that is a more reliable vehicle for relevance. If books do end up being read again, and if therefore the individual merits predominate our perception, appreciation, and institution of these works, then the list would not be appropriately calibrated. As of now, it might be more right than wrong. It's not sad. It's not not sad. It's just the way it is.

Hopefully I find this again in my bookmarks when I am 50+, looks like an awesome thing to try one's hand at.

I'm opening a coffeeshop in Chicago and do not plan on accepting cash, just seems easier and safer to me.

I have the same negative perception of AirBnBs in New York. I think the city also encourages hustler types, or people that are plugged in with local polls, who get away with everything they can.

One of the reasons literary fiction is becoming a lost art, I think, is due to how difficult it is to write about fiction. That difficulty extends to the discussion of fiction. I'm not sure if that is because information has become more important in our daily lives, and we have therefore augmented our ability to construct and discuss fact-based narratives, at the expense of literary discussion, or if literature innately encourages a certain intimacy. In either case, we have lost the ability to appreciate literature's power of private influence in our lives.

The unrealistic character, running an illogical operation, comes to an obvious ending; point Shakespeare. I didn't realize Michael Lewis also wrote The Blind Side, which seems like a story that is, similarly, quite a bit more complex than it is presented by Lewis, as the article suggests was the case with the Bankman story.

How is this possible? When do you play, for how long?

What's being sold that violates laws administered by the EPA?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo

Interesting, but if you built that much housing in an area far removed from an ocean and without the historical economic, political, and social importance of Manhattan, it would become a ludicrous and near empty ghetto. Colorado may need more slightly more housing, but to use Manhattan as a scale does the present density of Colorado need to increase by 1% Manhattans? 2% Manhattans?

Whoever made the robots should have to stand next to them and listen to your troubles.

Print still has to work through some digital intermediary, unless you enjoy truly uncommon access to trustworthy and quality printing infrastructure. One of the first things that printing services are going to look into is feeding the works they print into ai systems.

Is it really a mistake to take your government at their word? Probably, yes. In this case, the actors likely knew they did not have the authority to unilaterally pursue this policy in a durable manner. It was misleading from the get.

Does anyone know a reliable source for purchasing Selectric II typewriters that are in good working condition? I worked on a Selectric II while working on a novel, and I am nostalgic for it and want it to write letters to friends.

I’m 6’7”. My knees render your button all but meaningless on most flights, but it’s annoying when someone in front of me attempts to investigate this fact past the initial resistance.

I’m working on a book of fiction that involves some of the figures mentioned tangentially in this article. Rosemont, run by the Stephenson family, a mob connected bunch, figures prominently. Interestingly, a gambling firm called Emerald with suspicious ties to Rosemont’s garbage collection was in line to open a casino in Rosemont, for which the Stephensons simply started building infrastructure before the license was granted, but an alleged meeting between Donald Stephenson and “No Nose” Lombardo put an end to those efforts. Rivers casino had to open over the border in Des Plaines so that Rosemont would not directly benefit from the tax revenue. Rosemont is a town of roughly 3000 people, and the citizens are actually paid some amount from the city’s funds for living there rather than contributing taxes, whereas Des Plaines is a town of 60000.

Isn’t that about the arc a rocket makes?

Those girls must also _be_ in their 70s.