Preserving my Favorite HN Links

Originally published on: Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:18:05 +0000

One of my favorite web sites is the HackerNews / YCombinator site: http://news.ycombinator.com

The site name may be a bit misleading as the term hacking relates more closely being innovative than the more negative connotations that have been associated with the word.

This particular site acts as a collector for links which may be of interest to the indepedent / start-up software author and/or business-owner. I like the site because of the mix of really good technology links and links about business strategies.

The most worthwhile part of the site for me is the area for comments about each submitted link. I find the conversations there very intelligent and worth reading. Often, I skip the original link and read the comments first.

The question came about today about the rise in posted links which deviate a bit from the site's original themes. ( See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1016946 )

As the community grows, I'm sure that some links are very important to part of the HN members but not all.

I suggested that we might think about listing our own favorite links. As like-minded members of the HN community locate each other, it's more likely that posts of interest won't be missed as they scroll off to the bottom of the site's list.

For a couple of years, I've kept a simple text file containing the original link with the HN link underneath, followed by some brief, descriptive commentary if necessary.

A sample of the file looks like this:

I wrote an AWK script that will format the above text file into a static HTML file.

hnfaves.awk

# Build static HTML page for HN favorites.
#
# License: MIT / X11
# Copyright (c) 2009 by James K. Lawless
# jimbo@radiks.net http://www.radiks.net/~jimbo
# http://www.mailsend-online.com
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
# obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
# files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
# restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
# copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
# Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
# conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
# included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
# EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
# OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
# NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
# HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
# WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
# FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
# OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

BEGIN {
   printf("<html><head><title>HN Faves</title></head></body>\n");
   printf("<font face=\"Comic Sans MS\">\n");
   printf("<h2>Favorite HN links for jim_lawless</h2>\n");
}
NF==0 { printf("<p />") }
NF>0 {
   for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) {
      if(substr($i,1,4)=="http") {
         printf("<a href=\"%s\">%s</a><br />\n",$i,$i);
      }
      else {
         printf("%s ",$i);
      }
   }
}
END {
   printf("</font></body></html>\n");
}

I then constructed a script that will apply the AWK script against my text file of favorites producing an HTML file called hnfaves.htm

The script then FTP's the favorites page to my web site here: http://www.mailsend-online.com/hnfaves.htm

I'll now link to this in my HN profile so that anyone interested can look at the bookmarks that I specifically list for the HN site.

Unless otherwise noted, all code and text entries are Copyright Š2009 by James K. Lawless

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