Backlinks 2020-04-20 Tip is a macOS app which makes it easy to create a fully customizable tooltip based on scripts that you write in your language of choice. I would tend to use Alfred for this kind of thing, but I could imagine some use cases where this is nice.

Backlinks 2020-04-20 Simon Willison blogged about how he used GitHub Actions to create a self-rewriting README and Datasette based on a repository of TILs. He was inspired by Josh Branchaud’s five-year collection.

Bklnk helps you find Amazon categories A useful tip for Publishing: the bklnk category finder will list out the categories that your book is in.

Crank.js: using the JavaScript runtime to simplify React Suspense and Fiber React has been evolving and the Suspense API has been in the works for some time. The creator of Crank.js has blogged about the idea that led to its creation, which boils down to changing the idea of how “pure” React render …

Backlinks 2020-04-16 Simon Willison posited that SQL is a better API language than GraphQL and the conversation that followed was quite interesting with good points coming up in favor of using SQL (you can create virtual tables that are not backed by the DB at all) and also GraphQL. Simon’s coming at this from …

A thread of digital gardens, personal wikis, and experimental knowledge systems This twitter thread from Maggie Appleton is full of interesting and inspiring sites related to Knowledge Management. Andy Matuschak’s thread of “web books” Andy Matuschak started a thread on Twitter collecting up books …

PDF Expert reading mode I don’t have to read PDFs on my iPhone often, but when I do, something like PDF Expert’s reading mode sounds perfect. Reflowing PDFs isn’t trivial and it sounds like they did a great job with this feature.

The cut everyone takes in publishing Michael Warren Lucas has posted an article about Publishing: The Print Book Trade, and Money. You know that $25 hardcover book? Michael breaks down how the money is split between author, publisher, distributor, and retailer. He also shows how self-published authors can save more of …

go-cmp in the Testify library I like working with Testify as a more ergonomic way to write tests in Go. The problem is that some comparisons it does (as with times) can be incorrect. There’s an issue to use go-cmp instead, but they’re worried about backwards compatibility problems. I hope they make the …

Book Brush graphics tool for authors I’ve used Canva in the past, but this kindlepreneur article is the first I’ve heard of Book Brush. It looks like an amazing tool for Publishing on a shoestring. Of course, cover design is one of the most important things for a self-published author, and I don’t …