Month: January 2018

Streaks

At the end of December, ​I always take a week or two off and use it as a time of regrouping, planning, and just relaxation before the new year starts. 2017 was no different and during that time I felt like I wanted to do something different to start the year.

Some writing or creation that was totally for me​. I decided to attempt to blog something every day, and “something” was taken very liberal. It could be just a quote, or a picture, commentary on a story, or something that was on my mind. It didn’t matter as long as I hit publish every day.

Back around six months ago, I noticed that I was going through something internally where I stopped wanting to publish any new content on my primary site. As I looked inward to figure out why, I noticed that it all came down to popularity and traffic. The site had its best year yet and tons of people are visiting it all across the world, which you would think would make you want to publish more, but that wasn’t the case.

Just thinking about that put me in a mental shutdown. I became too worried about making everything perfect and worried about feedback and just negativity all around on my part.

Flashback to December and I had this in my mind when I made the goal to publish something every day, and I jumped in, but I decided to not share new posts on social media, to leave the comments open, and treat it like no one would be reading. I will admit as the month dragged on finding inspiration for content got harder and harder, but I struggled with it.

I made a few mistakes where I didn’t uncheck the social share options and had a few good discussions, but over all, I call this month a success. I meet my goal. I had fun. Most of all it has taken the negativity away from publishing.

I’m not sure what the rest of this year will look like for this site, but I hope to continue posting more, and I doubt I’ll share it on social media. So join the old school RSS feed if you want to stay up to date. Or not. 🙂

Watch The Total Lunar Eclipse Online

From the NASA announcement:

If you live in the western part of North America, Alaska, and the Hawaiian islands, you might set your alarm early the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 31 for a lunar trifecta: a pre-dawn “super blue blood moon.”

Beginning at 5:30 a.m. EST on Jan. 31, a live feed of the Moon will be offered on NASA TV and NASA.gov/live. You can also follow at @NASAMoon.Weather permitting, the NASA TV broadcast will feature views from the varying vantage points of telescopes at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California; Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles; and the University of Arizona’s Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter Observatory.

“For the (continental) U.S., the viewing will be best in the West,” said Gordon Johnston, program executive and lunar blogger at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Set your alarm early and go out and take a look.”

The Jan. 31 full moon is special for three reasons: it’s the third in a series of “supermoons,” when the Moon is closer to Earth in its orbit — known as perigee — and about 14 percent brighter than usual. It’s also the second full moon of the month, commonly known as a “blue moon.” The super blue moon will pass through Earth’s shadow to give viewers in the right location a total lunar eclipse. While the Moon is in the Earth’s shadow it will take on a reddish tint, known as a “blood moon.”

For more information on what to expect check out this video:

 

We are all idiots at something

We all have our interests, and it’s impossible to be knowledgeable in everything in the world. For example, I’ve never been good at basic auto mechanics. One time I tried to change my oil I ended up draining the transmission fluid and then adding five more quarts of oil. When it wouldn’t go into gear, I couldn’t understand why and had to ask for help…

I remember getting picked on for that, and looking back it was a dumb mistake, but I had no one guiding me. I unscrewed the first thing I saw, which happened to be the transmission fluid.

Over the past few days, Strava has been in the news because they released a public “heat map” of all the workout locations from billions of data points all over the globe.

Apparently, you can use this data to pinpoint military bases throughout the world and what has previously been blacked out is now easily findable. To me, this is much like my auto mechanic story and a stupid mistake on the part of the leaders of our military. I mean how can you think it’s a good idea to use a social media app with the whole goal of tracking you with GPS on a base that should be blacked out?

One interesting piece of information on the story is Area 51 was indeed blacked out. I have assumed the other bases aren’t on some global list and if I’m being guessing even if Strava would have asked the military they wouldn’t have given them any information on what to block out.

But what this story reminds me of is that we are all idiots in our ways. Just as in my example I am an idiot. You are an idiot. However, if we work together, we can bring our IQ up collectively​ since there is a significant probability we are both dumb in different areas.

Mr. Rogers Documentary

Above is a clip from a new documentary coming soon called Won’t You Be My Neighbor? that is about the lessons, ethics and legacy of iconic children’s television host, Fred Rogers.

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was a staple of my youth. We watched it almost every day​ after school and I have so many memories of both the show and the people that were​ in my life during that season. This will be a documentary that I’m very much looking forward too. ​

Beginning Blogger: Ignore your stats

I’ve had this site for many years and I’ve never really had a posting schedule. I would wait for inspiration to hit, write a post, hit publish and then get a little bummed out seeing that all the time I put in was only seen by 12 people. You would do well, especially in the beginning, to just ignore stats altogether​ and press on. Keep publishing, keep practicing, and little by little grow your audience.

By ignoring the stats it’ll keep your focus on what matters, the content, and not on doubting yourself. I know seeing thousands of people viewing an article is exciting, but at the start, ​you have the advantage of obscurity and can use that to hone your skills.

Really the only thing that matters is showing up, day after day after day, and pushing out your content, sharing your ideas, and making a community. If you can do it, it’s possible to make friends all over the world and honestly change your life.

Digitally Storing Book Quotes

In the past few years, I made the jump from digital books back to analog, and one of the first reasons I moved was because of the price. On a lot of books you can get the paperback cheaper than the eBook, and the hardcover for just a few dollars more.

But as I started building out my library a lot of other interesting things began to happen. I feel like I can remember where I read stuff better, I can flip through the book more comfortably, I can let friends and family borrow them, and it gets my eyes off the screen. Tons of wins!

However, one downside is converting quotes into digital notes for easier retrieval. In the past what I’ve been doing is marking the spot and then grabbing my phone and manually typing it all out. It’s a very slow process and not that great. The other option is to take a photo of it, but then those aren’t searchable.

Today I came across this post on using the Day One app as a Commonplace Book or what I call a Morgue File, basically a place to dump “all the things” so you have one place to look and search in the future.

In that post, they recommended an app called Scanner Pro from Readdle that is your camera on steroids. You can take a picture, and it will then OCR the text, electronic conversion of images of text into machine-encoded text, and allow you to copy and paste into whatever app you want.

It works surprisingly well but it is clunky because of all the steps involved going between two different apps, but still way faster than manually typing it all out.

Of course, a tool like this can be useful in a lot of other scenarios as well. For instance, digital scanning receipts for taxes, documents you need to email, and more. Scanner Pro priced at $3.99 is not a bad deal and I’m certain there​ are others on the market that might be free or even less expensive.

How about you? Do you have any tips for taking better notes and quotes when reading analog books? I’d love to hear them in the comments below.

Pitching Your Product to a Journalist

In my spare time, I run a tech news site, and I am constantly getting bombarded with pitches to cover everything from code packages, to SAAS apps, to new tools and utilities. Including things like this is why I initially started the site and I love it.

I love helping people by boosting interest in what they’ve spent their time creating, and I love the relationships it brings.

One of the downsides is time. I have a set number of hours every night that I can dedicate to the site either through writing new posts or managing the business side. But with a full-time job, a family, and other hobbies it’s honestly limited.

If you are making a pitch to me here are some things I am looking for:

  1. A Heads Up. Giving me a heads up that you will be launching in a few days is fantastic, and it helps me plan a post to coincide with your launch. That helps both of us. But I need a press release, so I can sit down and write it. I can’t follow up with 100 questions. I will honor an embargo, but I will not sign an NDA.
  2. That I can understand it. You’d be surprised how many things people send me that I have no idea what it is. I’m not going to waste my time attempting to figure it out. I’ll move on.
  3. That it’s ready. I will not cover your creation until it’s fully launched. No landing pages, no newsletter signups. It has to be purchasable, downloadable, or usable or I’ll move on.
  4. That I understand the use case. Please give some examples of why what you’ve created is useful.

Remember I am not expert in your domain and all I want to do is write an article on it. I don’t want to spend hours trying it out, and I don’t want to make mistakes in covering it. Help me by explaining what makes your product unique, why the world should care, and what features are essential. The more you can help me the more I can help you.

I know this post comes across as selfish, but as I look at my mailbox with dozens of pitches just sitting there, I needed to document ways that we can better work together.

Crying Wolf

Living in a home with others causes you to get comfortable with them, to get complacent, and to get lazy. One example of this is when you need something from someone else.

If they aren’t in the same room, it’s easier to scream for them than to get up and address them properly​. This, of course,​ starts a pattern and before long everyone in the house is doing it and the ones on the receiving end will grow more and more annoyed with it.

One problem with this is when the unthinkable happens, and you need someone immediately​. Having someone run to you instantly might be the difference between life and death. Seconds matters. By training others in your house that your screams aren’t important, on that day you need them, they just might ignore you.

One easy change to speed up your JavaScript build times

I came across this Field Guide for Better Build Performance by the Slack engineering​ team and inside contained this gem which is mentioned in the monstrous​ Uglify Readme:

It’s not well known, but whitespace removal and symbol mangling accounts for 95% of the size reduction in minified code for most JavaScript – not elaborate code transforms. One can simply disable compress to speed up Uglify builds by 3 to 4 times.

Depending on your needs this can be a quick win for speeding up your build times.

GitHub, Tell me when it closes

Have you ever wanted to know when a GitHub issue or PR is closed, only to find out, when you start following it, you get swamped with tons of emails and notifications for every comment on it?

I ran into this for the first time a few months back and it was a nightmare. Every morning I’d wake up to notification emails with commentary around it that I honestly didn’t care anything about. All I wanted to know is when the issue would be fixed so I could update my code base.

If you’ve ever hit this, the kind folks at thoughtbot have a useful utility called, “Tell Me When It Closes“, that does one thing. Send you one email when an issue or PR closes. That’s it!

This is a utility that’s well worth bookmarking as I’m sure you are going to hit an issue in 2018 where you want this.

8 Years Ago

On this day 8 years ago a woman was in pain.

She tried walking to take her mind off it but nothing could soothe​. Her face would grimace every few minutes and I could tell she was miserable.

She insisted to visit the hospital but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to go to early and be sent back home. To save my marriage I reluctantly agreed. On the drive over I was calling family and internalizing how it would all go down.

When we arrived they took her vitals and rushed her to a room. The nurse came in asking hundreds of questions prepping us for what was about to occur. Minutes later the family started rolling in. Her dad couldn’t stop pacing.

Shortly after, the doctor sent everyone out. Finally, ​it was time!

In the blink of an eye, ​a glorious gift arrived. So small. So fragile. So wonderful.

On this day 8 years ago my second child was born.

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

Growing up in a state where the interstates are littered with car tags claiming “first in flight” the history of the airplane and the Wright Brothers is a story I’ve heard since elementary school.

In fifth grade, I had the opportunity to take a field trip to the Outer Banks and Kitty Halk. At the time, I had no interest in the history behind it and didn’t think much of the sand dunes and museum.

I just completed reading the history of the Wright Brothers by David McCullough and it was a fantastic look at the lives of both brothers, their father, and sister Katherine.

Besides a history lesson, a lot of knowledge can be gained from this book.

The brothers drive and determination was unwavering as they designed, tested, and flew the first airplane. Before this, they spent years studying scientific journals and papers, then spent a great deal of time just watching the birds fly. All to gain more insight into what they were trying to accomplish.

When they put their minds to it they scraped by with the profits from their business never accepting any outside funding. This is in stark contrast to the Langley project:

Not incidentally, the Langley project had cost nearly $70,000, the greater part of it public money, whereas the brothers’ total expenses for everything from 1900 to 1903, including materials and travel to and from Kitty Hawk, came to a little less than $1,000, a sum paid entirely from the modest profits of their bicycle business.

Work ethic was another area that I really enjoyed. Here is a summation of a story when one of the brothers was in France for the first debut of a public flight.

The flyer arrived all torn up and had to be rebuilt. A wealthy man allowed him to use a big room in his business as a workshop and even gave him men to help with the rebuild. These men could barely understand English and were more of a hindrance, however, Mr. Wright kept the same work schedule as the other workers. When the lunch whistle blew he took lunch. When the end of day whistle blew he went home. Neither brother ever worked on Sunday and it seemed like they knew all the pieces would come together at the right time. Unlike many of us today.

Neither brother ever talked about bad about a competitor and was always humble. Even after being ridiculed in the papers as loons, liars, and idiots. A much different world than what we see from leaders today.

If you are interested in learning more about the brothers you can buy this book on Amazon or start a free trial on Audible and Get it free

“You are not your code” is offensive

“You are not your code” is a popular saying in developer circles with the idea being that the code you create is just code, and you shouldn’t be offended if someone points out faults, makes jokes, or is pessimistic toward it.

In order to spend weeks, months, or years building something you have to have an enormous​ amount of passion for it. This intensity​ is what drives you to wake up day after day to work on it. It’s not just “code” to you. It’s a part of you. It’s a love affair.

To me, it relates back to school projects. If you put in the work and really tried then received a bad grade it’s personal. If you are lazy, don’t care, and just turn in the minimal who cares if you get a bad grade because you are not the work you put in. Maybe that is the difference between why the saying is offensive to some and not others?

Take this guy who built his own log cabin by hand:

If you were invited to come see it as his guest would you start pointing out the flaws in his work? If you did would he want to punch you in the face? Or would he say, no big deal it’s just nails and wood? You and I both know he’d be offended.

When you put yourself out there through any creative endeavor you are being vulnerable. You are sharing a part of you that isn’t natural and to be slighted is like taking a dagger right in the gut. It hurts.

Unless feedback is specifically asked, it’s best to point out the positives and keep your complaints to yourself.  As the old saying goes, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”.

Agree? Disagree? Sound off in the comments below.

Starting Your Own Charitable Foundation

I love reading about personal finance and the more you read it feels like the same stuff is repeated over and over. However, The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins is one I just finished and it’s a short no-nonsense guide that I really enjoyed. This quote sums up his advice perfectly:

Simple is good. Simple is easier. Simple is more profitable.

Every part of the book focuses on simplicity and things that any of us can do, as long as we remove and avoid debt. Outside of the personal part one part that made me really think was at the end he has a section on what to do with your wealth after you’ve spent a lifetime generating it.

Once you reach a certain level where you can live comfortably off your investments he recommended starting a charitable foundation and what is surprising to me is you don’t need to be a multi-millionaire. You can open your own foundation with a minimum of $25,000, and he recommends the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program because of the low fee structure. Mr. Collins states quite a few benefits to doing this:

  • You get the tax deduction in the year you fund your foundation. So I got to take the tax benefits when they mattered most to me.
  • If you have stocks, mutual funds or other assets that have appreciated in value you can move these directly into your charitable foundation. You get the tax deduction for their full market value and you don’t have to pay any capital gains taxes on the gain. Double tax win and more money for your charities.

Outside of, this the greatest advantage is that everything runs throughs the foundation and not you personally. Based on this advice you can give freely and keep yourself distanced so you are not getting inundated with people asking for things.

I’m currently in my 30’s and very far away from this but I think it’s a great idea to keep in the back of your mind to support causes that matter to you.

Humor: Freelance Email Generator

The folks over at toggl created a humorous email generator for freelancers that features two sliders for how much they want to pay you, (from nothing to way too much), and for how professional you want the tone of your response.

Freelance Email Generator
Example of the Freelance Email Generator

The email for this option comes out as follows:

Hi there,

I don’t usually work for exposure, however I’ve got an alternative offer for you.

I’ll charge you my usual fee but give a $100 rebate for every new paying client this work brings in over the next few months. If we manage to break even, I can even offer a commission on new clients!

Now, I get why you may not want to take this offer.

There isn’t any guarantee you would get your money back. Now think about it this way – this is almost the same deal you’re offering. With exposure, there is no guarantee that it will lead to paying work.

If you’re not willing to take the deal I offered to you, why would you expect me to take the offer to pay with exposure?

Sure it’s meant as a parody but still fun to play around with. They just need more emails so they randomly change as you move around the sliders.

Using the Noun Project for Journaling

2018 is just getting started and I know many have set out to start new habits break old ones and begin with a fresh start. One of the things I started is keeping a daily log book so I’ll be able to revisit memories that happen throughout 2018.

As I was researching log books I came across this awesome daily plan bar by Mike Rohde who is the sketchnote genius.

I love how all his have little drawings and color that make it look like a work of art. Not being a great artist I wanted to duplicate this effect and I found a little life hack for creating drawings quickly, search the noun project.

If you are not familiar with the noun project it is the home of millions of icons for almost everything. I use the Mac app but the site works as well. Just enter a keyword and then use the results as inspiration in your log book or journal.

The featured image on this post is an example I put together for this post and I think having the little icons and visual flare makes it easy to come back to in ten years and flip through your history.

Hawaii missile alert

On Saturday morning a missile alert was pushed out from the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency and according to the Washington Post this was the cause:

Around 8:05 a.m., the Hawaii emergency employee initiated the internal test, according to a timeline released by the state. From a drop-down menu on a computer program, he saw two options: “Test missile alert” and “Missile alert.” He was supposed to choose the former; as much of the world now knows, he chose the latter, an initiation of a real-life missile alert.

I can’t imagine how a designer, developer, QA, and all the other links allowed something this bad to even make it into production. Much less something so important as a missile warning system.

I can’t imagine how scary it would have been to be on the island when this was pushed out and it makes me think of all the cold war bunkers we still have peppered around our nation. Back then I imagine everyone would have had the thought of dying at any minute in their mind. Which if we are honest is not necessarily a bad thing since it would keep your focus on what matters most to you.

MLK on Slavery in Strength to Love

Today in the USA we celebrate the life of the civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.

As I think about his life I’m reminded of an excerpt I read from his book Strength to Love:

Men convinced themselves that a system that was so economically profitable must be morally justifiable. They formulated elaborate theories of racial superiority. Their rationalizations clothed obvious wrongs in the beautiful garments of righteousness. […] Religion and the Bible were cited to crystallize the status quo. Science was commandeered to prove the biological inferiority of the Negro.

He continues…

So men conveniently twisted the insights of religion, science, and philosophy to give sanction to the doctrine of white supremacy. Soon this idea was embedded​ in every textbook and preached in practically every pulpit. It became a structured part of the culture. And men then embraced this philosophy, not as the rationalization of a lie, but as the expression of a final truth. They sincerely came to believe that the Negro was inferior by nature and that slavery was ordained by God.

Years later and this can describe many of the race relations still facing our nation. He then brings it all back to this verse in Luke that quotes Jesus before his crucifixion:

Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.

Dr. King was also a Baptist Minister and by tying it back to these ten words it would have been a powerful statement to those he was trying to reach.

Freebie: Heroicons UI

Heroicons UI make the perfect fit for any in-app UI. Their soft edges and consistent 2-pixel​ stroke give them a friendly personality​ that work great for both professional and playful UI’s.

This is a great new icon set by Steve Schoger that he decided to release free under the MIT license.