Top all-time · #8029
John Bokma
Personal blog · johnbokma.com/blogprogrammingsystems
John Bokma's personal blog at johnbokma.com covers programming and systems. Since 2010, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 49 times, most often “Posting a tweet picked from a file at random”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link John Bokma's Firefox articles on keymarks (keyword bookmarks) and RSS live bookmarks as how-to references for local search shortcuts and feed subscriptions.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /firefox/keymarks-explained.html4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-03-22
- Posting a tweet picked from a file at random2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-03-08
What Hacker News says?
Firefox used to display and RSS icon in the url bar if the site had a feed, allowing you to subscribe you to "live bookmarks" - feeds: http://johnbokma.com/firefox/rss-and-live-bookmarks.html This is completely hidden from the UI by now.
Comment linking /firefox/rss-and-live-bookmarks.html
on “It's time to head back to RSS?”Submitted Show HN: Static blog generator in about 1.2KLOC as a story · 9 points
HN discussionI am still blogging [0][1]. And I thought static blog generators where quite the thing, I even wrote my own [2]. [0] https://plurrrr.com/ [1] http://johnbokma.com/blog/ [2] https://github.com/john-bokma/tumblelog
Comment linking /blog/
on “If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs”Submitted Overcoming coder's block as a story · 8 points
HN discussionYou can create them yourself in Firefox if you want. See http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.html
Comment linking /firefox/keymarks-explained.html
on “DuckDuckGo on CNBC: We’ve grown 600% since NSA surveillance news broke”Submitted Hand coding an RSS 2.0 feed in Python as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe UI is weird, that said, the feature goes back 20 years, see e.g. http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained/comments.htm... I wonder if it existed all the way back in a version of Netscape Navigator? On Firefox Android, you can also just go to into settings, search, manage search engines, + add search engine. So, basically, exactly where you would expect it. I think on desktop it's just as easy? Can't you j…
Comment linking /firefox/keymarks-explained/comments.html
on “Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice”Submitted Perl Time::Piece Unicode Issue as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI fail to see the point of these "bangs" versus resolving them locally (e.g. using firefox keyword bookmarks -- http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.html ). Specially if you are using DuckDuckGo which I guess it's for privacy reasons (rather than say quality of results), why would one proceed to send them many more queries than they ought to receive? Just do these redirections locally and send them to the…
Comment linking /firefox/keymarks-explained.html
on “DuckDuckGo Traffic”Submitted Show HN: Static blog generator in about 1.2KLOC as a story · 2 points
HN discussionEasier with Firefox smart keywords http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.html
Comment linking /firefox/keymarks-explained.html
on “StackOverflow.com vs.Experts-Exchange.com”Submitted Running Pdflatex Using the Alpine Pandoc LaTeX Image as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI made a LaTeX template for Pandoc, so one can write a resume in Markdown (and some YAML) and generate a PDF (or LaTeX). It's on GitHub: https://github.com/john-bokma/resume-pandoc It needs a LaTeX install, and Pandoc, of course as explained in http://johnbokma.com/blog/2017/05/17/installing-latest-pando... The instructions are for Ubuntu 17.04 but work for 19.04 as well (tested this weekend). Example resume: http:/…
Comment linking /blog/2017/05/17/installing-latest-pandoc-on-ubuntu.html
on “Show HN: A LaTeX-based resume building app”Submitted A Docker Image for Sass as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYes, see my estimate for another skull: http://johnbokma.com/blog/2016/08/20/verifying-the-weight-of...
Comment linking /blog/2016/08/20/verifying-the-weight-of-a-t-rex-skull.html
on “3000-pound triceratops skull excavated in South Dakota (2020)”Submitted A Tale of Three Docker Images as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI self-host two blogs [0][1]. I even made the static site generator I wrote for the second one available [2]. Each time I visit a Medium page I wonder why people are still using it. [0] http://johnbokma.com/blog/ [1] https://plurrrr.com/ [2] https://github.com/john-bokma/tumblelog
Comment linking /blog/
on “Dear Devs, please stop using Medium for your contents”Submitted Sexing Tarantulas Using Molts as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIn firefox (and others) you can create a bookmark and give it a keyword. Two different ways to do it: http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.html http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart%20keywords
Comment linking /firefox/keymarks-explained.html
on “The curious case of DuckDuckGo”Submitted Getting started with the Perl version of tumblelog on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere is also JSON: https://jsonfeed.org/ When I wrote my own static site generator [0] I added JSON first because it's dead simple to do so. Later I added RSS and it was quite some work to get it right ([1][2]), as in I wanted both the Perl and the Python version to output an identical feed. Last time(s) I checked, they do validate for my tumblelog [3] [0] https://github.com/john-bokma/tumblelog [1] http://johnbokm…
Comment linking /blog/2019/10/09/hand-coding-an-rss-2-0-feed-in-perl.html
on “Tiny Tiny RSS”Submitted Getting Started with Tumblelog as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPlease don't use RSA or DSA [0] [0] http://johnbokma.com/blog/2019/05/27/ssh-public-key-authenti...
Comment linking /blog/2019/05/27/ssh-public-key-authentication.html
on “A little SSH file copy magic at the command line”Submitted Blacklisting Domains with Postfix as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFor the curious http://johnbokma.com/blog/2017/06/15/disappearing-claws-in-t... has photos of Diplocentrus melici and shows its habitat.
Comment linking /blog/2017/06/15/disappearing-claws-in-the-dark.html
on “Researchers synthesize healing compounds in scorpion venom”Submitted Pandoc Resume LaTeX Template as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe blog has an archive feature like Anarchia. In fact I was heavily inspired by Anarchia when I wrote tumblelog . However, instead of grouping by month I group by (ISO) week number to keep the pages small (I blog daily). But I do plan to add a calendar feature to make it easier to go to a specific date. See also my tumblelog [0]. I already had written a program to generate my other (main) blog [1] so based on my ex…
Comment linking /blog/
on “Show HN: Static Microblog Generator in Perl and Python”Submitted The “find in page” sound and how to disable it as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttp://johnbokma.com/blog/ http://plurrrr.com/ The latter is made with https://github.com/john-bokma/tumblelog
Comment linking /blog/
on “Ask HN: Show Us Your Personal Website?”Submitted Timezones in Alpine Docker Containers as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
