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Since 2003 I have printed every single interesting web site I've ever bothered to read - and some I haven't - to PDF file. Instead of Ctrl-D to bookmark, I Ctr
by boffinAudio 5y ago
Since 2003 I have printed every single interesting web site I've ever bothered to read - and some I haven't - to PDF file. Instead of Ctrl-D to bookmark, I Ctrl-P to print-to-pdf.
I keep these PDF files and use them where most people would have bookmarks.
The advantage is that I have an offline cache of materials (60,000+ files), a carefully curated list of stuff I like (or can be bothered to think about long enough to decide I might need it in the future), and endless amounts of material to pdfgrep for further drilling.
This has given me quite an edge, time and again, because while others are struggling to find that one bookmark that has the article they kinda remember reading once a few years back, I've already found it, gone to the new site, seen the state of the art as it progressed in the time since my visit, and so on.
I believe this has given me a 'second brain'. There is no greater joy than to drop into this directory and do an "ls -alF | grep <some search term>" and find every single page I've read since 2003 on that particular topic, still in the original form I remember - and then to re-visit the page and get the updates.
I have a lot of HN articles saved this way - as well as the HN comments too, and this has also served as a second harmonic to my general knowledge, ready and easily accessible should I need it.
Try this trick, it really kicks ass!
- natanavra 5y agoI do the same, just with Evernote. Either writing a summary of what I learned in a note and adding a link to the source, or clipping the whole page. I can probably write a couple of techincal books from all these notes.
- IndexPointer 5y agoI can't believe I never thought of this. I keep a huge bookmark folder with "things I might need 10 years from now", but finding things becomes a torture if you can only search by the title and not the contents. And after a few years it's likely that the page will be gone. But why save pdfs instead of downloading the webpages?
- prima-facie 5y ago> But why save pdfs instead of downloading the webpages? Ages ago we had this wonderful format called MHTML which allowed you to save an entire webpage (with images and all) as a single file. This was amazing for archiving and I remember saving lots of tutorials in this format. But the format seems to have fallen out of grace over the years to the point where it became difficult to find a browser that allows opening those old files. PDF now seems to be the best method of archiving content. Standards like PDF/A implement a subset of the PDF standard which ensures the content will be available for the years to come.
- IndexPointer 5y agoChrome mobile saves to mhtml if you download a page. Chrome desktop can save to mhtml if you select "webpage, single file". And of course they open the files fine. But it's not compressed, so you'll end up with smaller files if you use pdfs.
- boffinAudio 5y agoPDF is safe. Webpages are dreadful. I only need the information, I don't need the scripts.