The true instapaper

As a kid, I was fascinated by Doctor Doogies journal.

A blue screen instantly appeared after he flipped the switch on his computer. He didn't need to type commands in a command line, nor navigate through icons and menus. It was instant digital paper.

I'm pretty sure I tried to emulate this with some batch scripting that would create files, directories and start WordPerfect. Most of those files are probably still around somewhere on floppy disks in my parents attic or basement.

This desire for an instant text area seeped into this site to some degree. I borrowed heavily from the the now defunct Notehub - a pastebin for MarkDown. But I didn't care for the randomly generated URLs. I wanted the hierarchical structure of a website, just without having to log in and click through 5 to 10 buttons or links to get where I needed to be.

For Micro, a URL will open the text area first, and only prompt me to log in when I try to publish if I haven't already done that.

That part, that instant input area, is not in place for the long form texts. I still need to write up the URL for the page and log in before I can start writing. I'd rather not have these two steps block the Doctor Doogie in me.

There's a different problem as well. I've chosen to have the articles and pages (except for Micro) stored as files on the server so they remain easily accessible to me long after this site dies. For only diamonds and text files last forever. But that means a bunch of drafts and ideas are scattered among those texts that I judge to be finished.

That is why I'm considering adding another feature to this site that lets me add ideas for posts, similar to Svbtle and stick them in a database until I'm ready to publish them.

The price of this feature is the added complexity to the codebase. I'm still not sure those expenses are worth the gain. I'm not that rich. I'm not a doctor, after all.

16.02.2020