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I started a paper website business

daily.tinyprojects.dev

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Re: I started a paper website business

#171
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, it seems like half of the emails there are just spam.

It's a free service right now. I'm thinking converting it to a paid one like the one in the article might solve this problem.

To be clear I did not mean it as a dig on your service! It's a really cool idea, sorry for not saying it before. It was just a perfect irony.

You could also do some heuristics like not accepting emails with excessive HTML. Though I'm not sure how much it'd work, since you already require confirmation so presumably the spammers actually have someone authorizing the publication. (I didn't test your flow since I have nothing that warrants posting to say)

Re: I started a paper website business

#173

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…

So this got me trying out various things for dictation and transcription, as that would mean I wouldn't have to type quite as much. I tried using Windows Speech Recognition, and it's unfortunately seems to be pretty garbage. Tons of mistakes I had to manually correct, couldn't say too much at all without it being so garbled I didn't remember what I really said to correct it manually. But then I found out about built-…

Windows Speech Recognition, and it's unfortunately seems to be pretty garbage

Dragon Naturally Speaking (a paid product) is pretty good at normal dictation. My workplace bought me a copy when I was recovering from wrist surgery and it wasn't bad, especially since I could still use one hand. I've seen people mention using it for programming, with a bit of difficulty and a learning curve. But you can create your own custom commands, which is pretty much required if with keywords in a language that don't have a dictionary entry.

Re: I started a paper website business

#174
I like using paper to journal about my day or write about random thoughts I might have that I'd like to flesh out further through writing. A few inconveniences of writing it though is that you might want to selectively share some stuff from time-to-time, lack of ability to add media (though a portable printer kinda solves this problem), and having a limit of space, relying on indexing journals when they fill up. A lot of the caveats are solved by privately blogging, though I do miss writing instead of typing everything.

Something like this is almost a sweet spot of keeping the paper version as a "draft copy" while being able to enrich a digital version of your journal. As someone in the thread mentioned, being able to have private pages would likely encourage people to try it out for their journalling purposes. Otherwise, the project looks amazing!

Re: I started a paper website business

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Just copy writing you think is good, and keep a daily journal where you write exclusively in that style. It'll be slow going at first, but it works. Takes about a year before it's totally natural.

Re: I started a paper website business

#178
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. No one is ever going to write out a url by hand on notebook paper. Even in the rare case that a url would fit on a single line, it's just needlessly cumbersome work to do. I think the project author did a great job allowing for further site customization (styles, images, etc.) without overcomplicating the hand-written portion.

I don't mean writing out a URL... You could name pages like "Home", "About", "My trip to Paris". And then write on the piece of paper "[link to My trip to Paris]" Or you could write "[link from Posts]" to add it to a common listing. You'd basically just create a written form of Markdown.

Oh I misread. That type of linking definitely feels doable. Images & styles are a whole other can of worms though

Re: I started a paper website business

#179
post #154

That is not the first time I see one of your stories and it always brings me a smile to see your new ideas and how implement them. It also amazes me how some countries make it so easy to open a business. Doing so in Brazil would be a legal nightmare. Your projects are super inspiring and I always have a mind to leave my job and start doing the same. I should probably move to the US or Canada first, otherwise it might…

It's not hard at all to open a business in Brazil, unless you work with things that require safety inspections (food, health, chemicals, etc). Closing a business is a bit of a bother, but it is mostly a question of waiting.

No it is not. You might find it simple, if you don't compare to places that are easier.

First you need to file all the paperwork. Then you wait. Once you get approvals, you can't do anything without a bank account, and opening the bank account is a lot of trouble too, because they want to triple check everything.

From zero to operational is a long way, and with lots of legal liability along the way. I have a company closed for 15 years that still counts as a liability to me when I try to do anything, like renting an apartment.

You might be right in "opening" paperwork only being kinda OK. But you certainly can't do it like the original poster, that codes for a week or two, opens a new business and move on to new projects in series. (Yeah, not every project of his is a new company, but IIRC the larger ones become new companies).

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