Top all-time · #2084
James G
Personal blog · jamesg.blog · on HN as zerojameswebwriting
James G writes with words, wonder, a personal blog at jamesg.blog about web and writing. Since 2021, 38 different Hacker News readers have linked it 172 times, most often “Challenging programming projects you should try”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Challenging programming projects you should try7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2024-02-28
- Adventures Building a Spreadsheet in Python4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-08-21
- Making my bookshelves clickable4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-02-14
- Advent of Technical Writing (Complete)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-17
- Building a personal predictive text engine2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-15
- Build a Query Language in Python2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-08-17
- Cataloguing my vinyl collection with computer vision2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-03-16
- Building a Lyrics Recommendation Bot2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-12-08
- Papers with Code RSS Feeds2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-05-22
- What are effective ways to sift through new research?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-05-09
What Hacker News says?
> curl -sL -H "Accept: text/roff" https://jamesg.blog/2024/02/28/programming-projects/ > post.page && man ./post.page && rm post.page What if I have a post.page in my current directory? > curl -sL -H "Accept: text/roff" https://jamesg.blog/2024/02/28/programming-projects/ > /tmp/post.page && man /tmp/post.page What if another user runs the command at the same time, then? Or what if a malicious user creates a 666 mod…
Comment linking /2024/02/28/programming-projects/
on “Serving my blog posts as Linux manual pages”Submitted Serving my blog posts as Linux manual pages as a story · 344 points
HN discussionFrom the post curl -sL -H "Accept: text/roff" https://jamesg.blog/2024/02/28/programming-projects/ > post.page && man ./post.page If curl's process is interupted, it'll generate a non-0 exit code and the man command won't be exectued. That's how double ampersands work in shell.
Comment linking /2024/02/28/programming-projects/
on “Serving my blog posts as Linux manual pages”Submitted Software Technical Writing: A Guidebook [pdf] as a story · 177 points
HN discussionThere's no need to fork or use an intermediate file; you can just pipe straight into `man`: `curl -sL -H "Accept: text/roff" https://jamesg.blog/2024/02/28/programming-projects/ | man -l -`
Comment linking /2024/02/28/programming-projects/
on “Serving my blog posts as Linux manual pages”Submitted Making my bookshelves clickable as a story · 115 points
HN discussionMaybe 'man <(curl -sL -H "Accept: text/roff" https://jamesg.blog/2024/02/28/programming-projects/ )' works then?
Comment linking /2024/02/28/programming-projects/
on “Serving my blog posts as Linux manual pages”Submitted Adventures with compression as a story · 73 points
HN discussionFYI, 'curl -sL -H "Accept: text/roff" https://jamesg.blog/2024/02/28/programming-projects/ | man -l /dev/stdin' works for me - no need to safe the roff file locally.
Comment linking /2024/02/28/programming-projects/
on “Serving my blog posts as Linux manual pages”Submitted My favourite data structure: The trie as a story · 40 points
HN discussionThe tool actually is open source, so you could self-host it if you wish. MIT license, in Python. The repository [1] is linked in the blog post the author wrote about the project [2]. [1]: https://github.com/capjamesg/web-reader [2]: https://jamesg.blog/2024/11/30/designing-a-calm-web-reader/
Comment linking /2024/11/30/designing-a-calm-web-reader/
on “Show HN: Artemis, a Calm Web Reader”Submitted Things you can do on your personal website as a story · 39 points
HN discussionFor reference, and not implying it's better or worse than your work OP, I've pleasantly used Fraidycat ( https://fraidyc.at/ ) in the past. It's a webextension, so completely local, and also incorporates the idea of having a "calmer" experience: no infinite list of links to check, different update rates, ... I love your philosophy page, OP ! ( https://jamesg.blog/2024/11/30/designing-a-calm-web-reader/ )
Comment linking /2024/11/30/designing-a-calm-web-reader/
on “Show HN: Artemis, a Calm Web Reader”Submitted Challenging programming projects you should try as a story · 22 points
HN discussionAnother day, another story on HN that will have me down a rabbit hole (yesterday's was a three-hour tangent into ternary bit compression after the Microsoft paper) :D Your project is delightful -- thank you for sharing. I have explored this realm a bit before [0] [1], but in Python. The tool I made was for personal use, but streaming every keystroke through a network connection added a lot of unnecessary latency. I…
Comment linking /2023/12/15/auto-write/
on “Show HN: Predictive text using only 13kb of JavaScript. no LLM”Submitted Cataloguing my vinyl collection with computer vision as a story · 20 points
HN discussionThe actual blog post announcing this also has an epub! This looks very thorough and an interesting Kindle read. https://jamesg.blog/2024/01/03/software-technical-writing/
Comment linking /2024/01/03/software-technical-writing/
on “Software Technical Writing: A Guidebook [pdf]”Submitted The heroes we don't deserve: Those who work on web standards as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI have used <meter> in the past for polls, too (see https://jamesg.blog/poll/ ). <meter> is nice when you want to illustrate the extent of a scale, but in many scenarios one should _also_ show the exact value represented, numerically (i.e. my poll shows both the <meter>, more for illustration, and the number of votes).
Comment linking /poll/
on “Just because you can doesn't mean you should: the <meter> element”Submitted The indie web as a story · 12 points
HN discussionShare your blog! I was literally writing about starting blogs 10 minutes ago ( https://jamesg.blog/2024/01/06/the-web-is-yours/ ). You can take your blog in whatever direction you want; you can write technical, professional posts, or write about anything else that interests you! No matter what you write about, there is probably someone out there who will be interested in what you have to say. If you share your blog…
Comment linking /2024/01/06/the-web-is-yours/
on “Ask HN: Experience Starting a Blog”Submitted Making My Bookshelves Clickable as a story · 10 points
HN discussionWell, it is hard to change a company from the oral/meeting-driven style to an async writing-based culture and a fear even the best resource won't really help with that. But since you've asked also on an indiviual level, I found some nuggets on technical writing in https://jamesg.blog/2024/01/03/software-technical-writing/ - certainly way better than a SEOed listicle
Comment linking /2024/01/03/software-technical-writing/
on “Ask HN: Technical Writing Resources”Submitted Search Engine Shortcuts in Firefox as a story · 9 points
HN discussionDay two of this series is out, too): https://jamesg.blog/2023/12/02/navigation-links/ Further reading on technical writers and startups (knowing your audience, role, and more): https://jamesg.blog/2023/11/27/technical-writing/ I welcome ideas for what I should write about in the series! I have a couple of exciting ideas to explore; more would be sincerely appreciated.
Comment linking /2023/11/27/technical-writing/
on “Advent of Technical Writing: Navigation Structure (Day 1 of 24)”Submitted Build a Query Language in Python as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI write about coffee, web projects, and the IndieWeb at https://jamesg.blog . I post bookmarks at https://jamesg.coffee .
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share Your Personal Site”Submitted HTML's Readability, Robustness, and Intuitiveness as a story · 8 points
HN discussionWill fix! Here is the link that should be there: https://jamesg.blog/category/advent-of-technical-writing/ Not featured in this series but a precursor and canonical read is: https://jamesg.blog/2023/11/27/technical-writing/
Comment linking /2023/11/27/technical-writing/
on “Advent of Technical Writing: Style”Submitted Anxiety as a story · 8 points
HN discussion
