Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Will

@simons.dev

skate goals before I'm 40:
1. Switch flips
2. Ollie Wallenberg

December 4, 2025 at 4:41 PM

Will

@simons.dev

Currently working on building an Archivist style diy book scanner. In my research, I realized that Noisebridge in SF has one from the before times. Here's a picture I took last night ~~ it's in a hallway, covered in dust. Ready to be revived

December 4, 2025 at 6:46 AM

Will

@simons.dev

got rid of DO and switched skateboard.fyi hosting to Hertzner

skateboard.fyi

November 14, 2025 at 5:41 PM

Will

@simons.dev

Interesting career development - I got a job as a butcher in a small neighborhood shop. I'm learning a lot, getting better at knife skills and customer service. Best of all, I am feeling strong from lifting 40ish lb things all day.

November 13, 2025 at 5:24 PM

Reposted by Will

Andrew Lawrence

@ndrew.bsky.social

we can have artisinally curated snuff films on demand or universal health care, your choice america

November 7, 2025 at 4:27 PM

Reposted by Will

Andrew Lawrence

@ndrew.bsky.social

if you believe fully autonomous robot butlers are just over the horizon you are actually one of the dumbest motherfuckers alive and we should take your money from you so we can put it towards something worthwhile

November 7, 2025 at 2:23 PM

Reposted by Will

BUM LUNG

@citizenio.bsky.social

March 24, 2025 at 4:44 PM

Reposted by Will

Andy Bell

@bell.bz

There’s never been a better time to switch from Next.js to Astro nitter.net/rauchg/statu...

nitter.net

September 30, 2025 at 7:25 AM

Will

@simons.dev

borzoi dog spirits met on a rainy sf day

September 30, 2025 at 5:57 PM

Will

@simons.dev

failure is obvious

and success is revealed through it

salmon.leaflet.pub

September 24, 2025 at 5:42 PM

Reposted by Will

kepano

@stephango.com

File over app · 2023
stephango.com/file-over-app

File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom.

File over app is an appeal to tool makers: accept that all software is ephemeral, and give people ownership over their data.

In the fullness of time, the files you create are more important than the tools you use to create them. Apps are ephemeral, but your files have a chance to last.

The ancient temples of Egypt contain hieroglyphs that were chiseled in stone thousands of years ago. The ideas hieroglyphs convey are more important than the type of chisel that was used to carve them.

The world is filled with ideas from generations past, transmitted through many mediums, from clay tablets to manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, and tapestries. These artifacts are objects that you can touch, hold, own, store, preserve, and look at. To read something written on paper all you need is eyeballs.

Today, we are creating innumerable digital artifacts, but most of these artifacts are out of our control. They are stored on servers, in databases, gated behind an internet connection, and login to a cloud service. Even the files on your hard drive use proprietary formats that make them incompatible with older systems and other tools.

Paraphrasing something I wrote recently:

"If you want your writing to still be readable on a computer from the 2060s or 2160s, it’s important that your notes can be read on a computer from the 1960s."

You should want the files you create to be durable, not only for posterity, but also for your future self. You never know when you might want to go back to something you created years or decades ago. Don’t lock your data into a format you can’t retrieve.

These days I write using an app I help make called Obsidian, but it’s a delusion to think it will last forever. The app will eventually become obsolete. It’s the plain text files I create that are designed to last. Who knows if anyone will want to read them besides me, but future me is enough of an audience to make it worthwhile.

November 26, 2024 at 3:26 PM

Will

@simons.dev

Skaters With A Cause - Thrasher October 1984

"Four skaters take to the road on a cross country skate trek to benefit the Multiple Sclerosis Society and, as Bob Denike reports, to find out a little more about America and themselves."

August 31, 2025 at 7:43 AM

Will

@simons.dev

skateboarding is old enough that there are archeological digs to uncover skateparks!

Kenny Brophy @urbanprehistorian.bsky.social · Aug 29

We backfilled the #KelvinWheelies trenches today. It’s been an amazing few days of skateboarding archaeology & I want to thank our awesome team, Kieran of Archaeology Scotland, Glasgow City Council, our funders @socantscot.bsky.social and the legend that is Jamie Blair of Clan Skates. 🛹

August 31, 2025 at 7:41 AM

Will

@simons.dev

one of the goals of skateboard.fyi is to make a graph of connections similar to how wikigrapher works wikigrapher.com/pages?title=...

August 30, 2025 at 11:45 PM

Will

@simons.dev

first commits towards open-sourcing some components I worked on for skateboard.fyi.

First up is the ImageZoomer ~~ a minimal approach to image zooming. I wanted something that was non-intrusive, and didn't require clicking, pinching, or fiddling too much.

bigredwill.github.io/image-zoomer/

ImageZoomer - Minimal image zoom

A React component for minimal image zooming.

bigredwill.github.io

August 28, 2025 at 11:31 PM

Will

@simons.dev

reading about the atproto before bed tonight
going to try a proof-of-concept event app on top of it

August 27, 2025 at 5:58 AM

Will

@simons.dev

August 20, 2025 at 5:17 AM

Will

@simons.dev

got a job as a laborer, working for a restoration contractor. Coding for fun in the evenings. Feels good.

August 19, 2025 at 3:26 AM

Will

@simons.dev

Deep linking to a page with query param

Ron Allen for H Street
Thrasher Magazine - September 1989

skateboard.fyi/magazines/th...

August 19, 2025 at 3:25 AM

Will

@simons.dev

Thrasher covers on skateboard.fyi

The site is a work in progress, if you'd like to contribute to the annotation work, let me know.

#skateboarding #archivist