Monthly 2026, 06 - My Map to Internet Use

I use different browsers for different stuff, and I refuse to share bookmarks between devices, because I really don't need more entries in my password manager. As such, I think I want to find a system that works better for me. For that I really only need to pull the different links in my bookmarks into a well-sorted Markdown document. That will give me an easy to reference document that can be updated from basically everywhere. The issue in the way I work with bookmarks so far is that there's some stuff I have issues with revisiting, because of how cluttered the interface becomes after the number of saved links reach a critical mass that my primary browser has far since exceeded. Worse, even, the way the interface is designed (in that it's a graphical interface working with nested folders) makes it cumbersome to move items once I felt that I was done investigating them, and even if I have little time, I'm insentivized to just leave the new entries in the unsorted folder, even if it should belong in a folder nested three levels down.

What I'm hoping to build with this document is a quick searchable collection of links, perhaps with tags that would allow me to filter for stuff without having to navigate too much. For example, I have a number of websites that I would check for buying books, especially used ones. They would live in a section that's nested as Shopping -> Books, and then each entry gets a tag that tells me what the website specializes in.

It's very simple in the software that I use to create a project that includes an unlimited amount of markdown files, which would flatten the directory structure into a collection of files that will specify what they contain by name. As such, the naming convention for the different files should be: {Type} {Subtopic}, to make sure the automatic sorting will group the same type of stuff together. As long as there are a manageable number of total files in the top layer I never have to think about introducing subcategories, which will immediately make things much easier to navigate. The first one of this type I'm checking will be the Reading category, because it takes up much of the bookmark chaos that could be reduced on occasion, simply by catching up on the reading I wanted to go.

There might also be links that I'll struggle to remember, but am working with over the span of a few days or weeks. For that, there'll be a Working file, which hopefully doesn't grow out of proportion. I don't really want to have more than one of those, so no subcategory needed.

Then, there's the Interactive folder. which will include all those study apps that I'm at least semi-active on. Hackerrank, for example, I can't fathom using on a phone, where just keeping the page open would address this problem exactly.

All these documents run a real risk of collapsing into each other, and as long as they don't become too large, I'm guessing that I will let that happen eventually, because the goal here is to minimize clicks to find a link, while not having a single huge document that I would have to navigate entirely through word searches. It's kind of like building a bookshelf: I would like each document's title to be inviting and tell me exacrly what's in there.

I'm quickly noticing that I don't necessarily feel like deleting all links once I've checked them off, so this is perhaps the first time I have a use for the checkbox option in Markdown. It does mean that bloat is only a matter of time, but I'm not against making Archive Files for checked off items. It's something I've done anyways, especially for the weeklies. I'm also finding that I need to occasionally give the links I'm adding a title, because not all websites include the content title in the URL and I have little hope of remembering what was in there when it's just a date. Sometimes that's probably not a problem - as long as I've not checked it out to reference later. I'm briefly considering whether I want to add dates to them, but I'm guessing not. There can be too much documentation, and there's not really a good way to sort it by date anyway. The new collection of links is proving most useful in logging my research rabbit holes. Markdown supports some checklist views. It messes up the sorting system slightly, but on the other hand I can see by the state of the checkbox whether I've exhausted that portion of the rabbit hole yet, and the nesting gives me a nice line of where I found which source, which might be useful for the times when I'm looking for a source without knowing the title.

I've moved most of my unsorted and frequented links into my Map now, and at the moment this is has been pretty practical. For research specifically, I've enjoyed looking for links on my phone (usually on commute), moving them into the Working document and reading them on a sizable screen when I get home. It's also great to not have to think of what I was supposed to do at what workstation when all I want to do is some of the research work. What can still be improved is sorting alphabetically, which I'll probably do at the very end, if it still makes sense. For example, the guitar chords I've found I sort it by artist name first, then song title. There might also be good case for a more optical representation of the tagged links. I might go through the tagging again, when I'm done transferring the rest of the links, because I've done significantly less of it than I thought I would.