I’m not a music aficionado, I like music playing while I’m working just for the background noise. So switching music streaming services shouldn’t be a big deal.
A few years ago I became a Spotify subscriber and although I tried other services I always came back to it. The user-curated playlists and the ability to easily find music was always nice, but one lacking feature was the ability to listen on more than one computer on the same network.
Every day, it seemed like someone in my family would start playing music on another device kicking me off. I finally had enough and decided to add a family plan but with a family of four, I didn’t like the pricing. $5 for each additional member would push my bill to $30 a month and I am unwilling to pay that. Continue reading “Apple Music”
Dayle Rees launched a new PhpStorm theme that combines the Material UI theme with his Peacock color scheme.
Back when I used Sublime, Peacock was my favorite theme and I’m happy to see this being integrated with PhpStorm. You can get this theme from the Github repo and it includes all the instructions for getting set up.
They say reading at night is good for you. It’s relaxing and gets your body ready for sleep. Typically I would agree but not with Show Your Work by Austin Kleon.
It was 10 pm, I was tired, ready for bed, and I assumed reading the first chapter would put me right to sleep. I was wrong. I ended up reading almost the whole book and then couldn’t sleep for another few hours with ideas racing in my head. Finally, was able to fall asleep around 2 am and wasn’t excited about waking up the following morning.
I’ve always been the type of person that enjoys sharing things. That is the reason this site exists and all my other side projects are around this same notion. Even though I share a lot at times I hit that burnout point and Show Your Work happened to be the right book at the right time for me. It helped put clarity and perspective to the things I want to do.
The book is fairly short, around 200 pages, and is a quick read. Here is the list of chapters to give you an idea what it covers:
You don’t have to be a genius.
Think process, not product.
Share something small every day.
Open up your cabinet of curiosities.
Tell good stories.
Teach what you know.
Don’t turn into human spam.
Learn to take a punch.
Sell out.
Stick around.
If you decide to get this book I would recommend the paperback version. It’s small in size at 6×6 but it’s high quality and has lots of little drawing and quotes included like this one.
Be An Amateur
In the past, I’ve been hesitant to share what I’ve been working on for fear I’ll never finish it. Of course, all the other fears too, like being exposed as an amateur and mocked off the internet. Austin covers all of these excuses and more.
Which brings me to one of my favorite quotes from the book about dealing with people hating your work:
Sometimes when people hate something about your work, it’s fun to push that element even further. To make something they’d hate even more.
If you have the desire to get your work seen, improve your marketing, or just want a nice book to add to your collection pick up a copy. I enjoyed it.
The joys of a new year. A time to reflect on what all you accomplished and start planning out those new years resolutions. One of the hardest parts of this process is figuring out what all you did the past year. Sure big events are easy to remember and if you keep a journal then going back through it will help fill in the gaps, but there is a lot that slips through the cracks.
A new trend that has started becoming popular is apps and services sending you a personalized yearly review based on the data they have.
WordPress sent me one highlighting the number of posts, website traffic, most popular days, and most commenters.
Todoist, featured in the main post image, sent one showing how many tasks I completed each month, when I’m most productive, and how I rank compared to others using the app.
These are just two of the services I use that did this and I loved it because it made me want to share the results publicly and, in turn, give the vendor direct word of mouth advertising.
From a business standpoint if you have the data then generating user reports like this shouldn’t be too expensive to create, especially if you are comparing to other forms of marketing, but the benefits are a more personal recommendation.
Plus since it’s all in your database you’ll be able to reuse this same marketing tactic year after year with no further expenses.
I’ve been a digital reader most of my adult life but for the past year I’ve been trying to reduce my screen time and started buying real books. I started out with paperbacks but now I’ve moved into wanting hardcovers because they seem more sturdy and will stay in better condition longer.
The one drawback I experience is with the book jackets or sleeves. They always seem to shift and move and get wrinkled or creased. I decided enough was enough and I now remove them when I start reading, then put them back on to place on the shelve.
I thought I’m surely not only that finds these annoying and went out to research why these jackets are still included and the history behind it. According to Wikipedia:
After 1900, fashions in, and the economics of, publishing caused book bindings to become less decorative, and it was cheaper for publishers to make the jackets more attractive. By around 1920, most of the artwork and decoration had migrated from the binding to the dust jacket, and jackets were routinely printed with multiple colors, extensive advertising and blurbs; even the underside of the jacket was now sometimes used for advertising.
As dust jackets became more attractive than the bindings, more people began to keep the jackets on their books, at least until they became soiled, torn, or worn out. One bit of evidence that indicates when jackets became saved objects is the movement of the printed price from the spine of the jacket to a corner of one of the flaps. This also occurred in the 1910s and early 1920s. When jackets were routinely discarded at point of purchase, it didn’t matter where the price was printed (and many early jackets were not printed with any price), but now if book buyers of the 1910s and 1920s wanted to save the jacket and give a book as a gift, they could clip off the price without ruining the jacket.
Now that the jackets hold most of the design it’s as much a part of the book as the pages themselves and I feel like they shouldn’t be tossed away.
I looked into what others are doing with their jackets and came across a few different ideas:
Use them as bookmarks (front flap for the first half, back flap for the second half)
Throw them away
Remove while reading
Keep and frame them to hang in their study or library
I would rather the design be printed on the covers but also understand the economics of doing this would raise the price.
When reading books with a dust jacket what do you do with it? Do you find them annoying?
For the past two years, I’ve made the same new years goal, read more books.
Both years I’ve failed. I would start off reading every night and a few weeks into the year something would happen to cause me to veer off course. A new side project idea, a new writing project, just to worn out, you can insert any excuse here but I just lost track.
Each year I would put on my list of goals an actionable item like read 20 books, but that number overwhelms me. It’s like standing at the base of a mountain preparing to climb it, all you see is a rough and rugged path. Of course, with climbing once you start you can’t say today I don’t feel like walking. Your only choice is to trudge along and make small gains every day until you finish.
A goal of reading a total number leaves an opening for procrastination. Today I don’t feel like reading I’ll catch up later.
Instead of continuing that same pattern I’m going to set a daily goal of twenty pages. For the average person, reading an average book, twenty should take at most half an hour. So it’s not overwhelming and something easy to block off time for.
Another benefit is by doing it daily then it’s much easier for it to turn into a long term habit.
Twenty pages is inspired by Farnam Street and Jeff recommended 25, but he is an overachiever. 🙂
At the end of every year I like to look back and see what all I accomplished. Since almost everything I create and work on is online, generating stats and data is relatively easy. Plus many services are now sending “year in review” emails so it’s all automated. Here are some of this years numbers for Laravel News and this site.
Laravel News
Here is the break down for this year on Laravel News
1.5 million views with the best day bringing in 27k.
356 new posts, growing the total to 1,053 posts. Down from 679 last year.
Longest posting streak of 6 consecutive days. (I typically take the weekends off)
Most popular post was the Laravel 5 release announcement because it hit the front page of hacker news.
Top referring sites: twitter.com, facebook.com, news.ycombinator.com, laravel.com. Thanks to all the others that linked to the site.
Most visitors came from The United States, United Kingdom, & India. 212 countries in all.
