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I started a paper website business

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Re: I started a paper website business

#141
post #40
post #9

Three above this story on the front page is an article called "The Web Is Fucked", complaining about how there's no character on the web any more, and lamenting the 90s, Geocities etc. etc. I'd say this story refutes that one.

This makes me remember that my primary way of finding new things on the web back in middle school was just typing educated guess urls in until I found something. Makes me wonder how interesting the web might be if I just started doing that again, and how boring it might have been if I'd just had a working search engine back then. Then again I also seem to remember getting bored enough with the web to only spend an ho…

This makes me remember that my primary way of finding new things on the web back in middle school was just typing educated guess urls in until I found something.

It was nice back in the early days when you wanted U.S. state government information, you could almost always enter something like http://state.xx.us and get the state's home page, then explore from there. (Where xx was the state abbreviation.)

Cities were very often http://city.state.xx.us.

Now many (most?) states have vanity URLs, and the cities are worse. I think Chicago's changed its URL at least three times.

Re: I started a paper website business

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To second what the other commenter said to you: I have seen someone with terrible handwriting fix it. He decided he cared, found pens and notebooks he really liked, and started using them attentively. People treat pens like they're all the same, but the drying time, line thickness, weight, drag across the paper, etc. all vary enormously, and if you care, you can probably find the right tool and get your handwriting t…

I disagree on the suggested method, but I agree that handwriting can be improved. Someone who writes in prescription cursive isn't going to get better with a new pen and different paper. It takes deliberate practice and attention to detail. This is why "a poor craftsman blames his tools" is an adage.

I have terrible handwriting and have had the idea in the past to try and relearn with a new style. Like maybe the way they teach French children in school! But when I looked online for a book on how to learn handwriting as an adult they were all for veterans who had lost their dominant hand and that was incredibly depressing. Anyone have a good resource?

Re: I started a paper website business

#144

It feels less like a paper website business and more just like a traditional website builder except with some OCR to turn notebook pages into web pages. Like, you've still got to edit the page to add links, images, colours, etc. In fact, that seems like the most complicated part. It's a fun gimmick and a nice selling point. But someone will be able to use this idea for Wordpress/Wix/Squarespace plugin. Would be surpr…

Disagree because:

* I primarily see this as, not a traditional website builder, but as a way to take paper journals and transform them into web journals/blogs.

* As someone who has tried all manner of tools and software for journaling (literally like tens of software apps), I've found that my brain just works best with a nice paper journal and a great pen (I highly recommend the prismacolor premier fine marker). It just works far better for me than anything else.

I'm so glad this project is at the top of HN. It is the ultimate "hacker project" of someone that scratched a personal itch, and found out other folks would be willing to pay for it.

Re: I started a paper website business

#147
post #70

It feels less like a paper website business and more just like a traditional website builder except with some OCR to turn notebook pages into web pages. Like, you've still got to edit the page to add links, images, colours, etc. In fact, that seems like the most complicated part. It's a fun gimmick and a nice selling point. But someone will be able to use this idea for Wordpress/Wix/Squarespace plugin. Would be surpr…

Wouldn't be HN without the "you can build this trivially" [ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 ] response.

Wouldn't also be HN without the misinterpretation of BrandonM's response.

Here is dang's comment about that topic/meme [1]

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29178442

Re: I started a paper website business

#150

So I diligently kept a pen and paper journal about my game designs for three years (wrote about 100,000+ words on paper). Switched to digital for a year, wrote 120,000 words just in 2019 (starting every morning sitting at a Starbucks and writing it helped), switched back, then switched back again, doing less and less words each year (for 2021 I'm at like 15,000 words, so pathetic, it's only like 12 entries total, nee…

Google's OCR (as found in Lens, Docs and whatever) is insanely good. At least that was my impression based on my own notes (my writing is horrible and I often add very small side notes).

Oh yeah, camera quality makes a big difference.

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