This looks awesome. I do all my writing (creative writing, outlining, todos) in Bear and really love it. But this app seems like it would make outlining more fun and intuitive. Def gonna try it!
Great to see fresh, innovate apps like this that prioritize fast native experience.
For the past year or so I’ve been writing a book of fables. I originally began the effort inspired by the book The Little Prince. Over time, I’ve begun reading book after book of fables. I love finding different ones—from
the classics like Aesop to Buddhist koans, Persian, Indian, Chinese, Arabian fables.
The format is just so fun and I think the philosophical lessons can be really powerful. I think of it as different parts of different societies trying to gift us with wisdom…all we have to do is open a little book and give it a look!
That said, many of the books I’m reading are old and out of print, so alongside writing my own I want to share the best fables I find. I have a regular newsletter where I write about creativity, drawing, writing… and once I’m done the book I want to share fables through it.
Great! Maybe you can help me out. Some 10 years ago i went to an exhibition in portugal showing old woodcut illustrations of fables. These were released as a book which i held in my hands once but cannot find anymore. I thought the name was montaigne but probably my mind is playing tricks on me.
Fascinating! Perhaps the woodcut illustrations of Mantegna, a renaissance Italian painter?
I did not find a book of fables of Mantegna’s illustrations, but I did find a painting of a fable (The Boy and the Filberts). It is possibly credited to Aesop, but not confirmed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_and_the_Filberts
Also worth nothing: During the same period and area, another artist named Verona illustrated a book of Aesop’s fables: “It was also in Verona that the first illustrated edition of the fables of Aesop was published in 1479 (21.4.3), with woodcuts designed by Liberale da Verona, one of the city’s leading painters.” (https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wifb/hd_wifb.htm)
Do you recall any of the stories or characters in the book you read? Or anything about the book that left an impact on you?
I recall seeing the goose and the golden egg. The illustrations were more 17th centuryish. The name Jean de La Fontaine has been suggested to me a couple of times and this would certainly be fitting but strangely i cannot find the book following this name anywhere. It was a very fine print, hardcover, very elegant with full page illustrations.
Ah! The plot thickens. The Fables of La Fontaine are well known, but I hadn’t heard of Montaigne before. Apparently there is a link!
First there is this: https://www.jstor.org/stable/458505 “Montaigne as a Source of La Fontaine's Fable: La Mort et le Mourant” It notes major similarity and possible link between Montaigne’s philosophical essay and Fontaine’s fable.
But even more interesting is this: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1659-essays-michel-de... It’s two books—essays of Montaigne side by side with illustrated (by Hooghe) fables of Fontaine. Not a single book as you described, but interesting to see that there is clearly some connection between the two!
Montaigne is not a Portuguese-sounding word or name, seems more French to me, but "montagem" is a Portuguese word meaning "montage" which sounds generally like what are describing, a montage of fables.
That's cool, I've been thinking to write some fabels as well (although I'm not good at writing)! I enjoy how such tales can be simple and deep at the same time.
If you ever get to complete it I'd love to check it out
Nice! Give it a shot, you never know what might come of it :) I had been writing nonfiction essays when one day a story idea came and I shared it, got some good feedback, then just kept going with it.
They are not easy to write, but the key to the fable is the lesson, so I’m sure if you took one or two you wanted to share you could turn them into a story. Either way, you have some fun with it!
And thanks, I’m approaching the “last mile” with the book after many months of editing (working w an editor). I’m illustrating them too. If you like you can follow along via my newsletter, I share updates there: https://salman.io/newsletter
I recently did some optimizations on my personal website to make the images load “lazily.” In other words it only loads stuff once it hits the viewport. I think that’s what you’re looking for. I tried two techniques:
I tried to avoid the lib and use the native HTML… but for whatever reason the lib worked more reliably/effectively in manual tests as well as in my benchmarking via PageSpeed / Lighthouse. YMMV!
Just added the lazy sizes library, performance seems a lot better. Do you know how to change the placeholder for an iframe though? The docs say to use data-src for the placeholder but I'm already using that for, well, the iframe source URL.
I also added the HTML attribute, not sure I can see any real change.
I just tested on M1 Pro with Safari, and it loaded great even on really lousy internet where I'm at. So not sure if your optimizations are already in effect, but I'm not having the challenges others mentioned with the current version of site.
Awesome! Yeah I didn't do any optimizations when I first posted here, but I added lazy loading on the iframe as well as React component lazy loading, so it looks like it's working pretty well.
Woah! I was gonna play with Astro for a new site test, but I wanted the prefetch fast-nav that I’ve seen in NextJS and Gatsby. This looks like exactly what I want to make Astro so the trick! Thanks for sharing
Nice! I have a Hugo site I’ve tweaked over the years, and my workflow is similar to yours. I create/edit an MD file, then run a shell command which pushes changes to Github, which triggers a redeploy.
How do you handle images? That’s my main annoyance / biggest hurdle when publishing. I have to take each image, resize it for web, put it in static folder, and reference that pathname in the MD file. Not a big deal, but would love an easier way. I suppose I could write a simple shell script that does all of the resizing and prints out a path back for me to use.
You’ve likely heard the saying: “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” It warns against the futility of pursuing too many disciplines. Be a specialist, or you’ll be nothing.
It may surprise you to learn there’s actually an extended version: “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.” With a subtle addition, its meaning becomes inverted to tout the benefits of being a polymath (a.k.a. generalist).
Why is the former so common, and the latter so unknown?
The answer lies in modern society’s preference for specialization. This essay explores how specialization limits workers’ freedom, how the polymath approach can offer a reprieve, and my own learnings exploring a multitude of pursuits.
I think it's a mistake to call a polymath a generalist. The concept of a polymath is predicated on top notch knowledge and skill at multiple disciplines.
That too was my only gripe with the article - solid and engaging writing, but I was wincing every time polymath was mentioned. I feel like you could substitute most uses of the word with just 'generalist' and the article would have held together just as well.
Yes! I'm a huge fan of journaling, and do it pretty much every day (right now using a tool called Roam Research). So I suppose my questions started to pop up because I was adding more burden with all these public forms of writing as well — they hold a different (but meaningful) value than writing privately
Backend Engineer, Founding Team | Rested | Full-Time in San Francisco, CA | $120-140K
Over 40 million Americans currently suffer from some form of untreated sleep disorder. We want to change that. We’re looking for a backend engineer with a passion for helping others to join our founding team as the 5th employee.
Rested | San Francisco, CA | Backend Engineer, Founding Team | $120-130K (+Equity)
We're building a tech-driven solution to help people understand their sleep, assess risk for sleep disorders, and get easy access to treatment. Over 40 million Americans currently suffer from some form of sleep disorder, and most of them don't know it, or have great difficulty getting treatment. We want to change that.
We're seed funded and have an MVP that we are preparing to launch. I'm looking for a backend engineer to join our early-stage team, and take us to the next level. This is a critical role, with founding equity and major growth opportunities. We need someone with both the skills and the personality to set the tone for our engineering team to come. You can find out more about the opportunity here: https://www.hellohired.com/restedinc
