I love having buddies that own a cigar shop down the street. It’s so cool to be able to just go randomly hang out with my friends and smoke with them. One downside is, I’m probably smoking a few too many cigars.
Playing an RPG brings me a lot of the same joys as reading a fantasy novel. I might try switching off reading and playing RPGs with deep story lines.
Any suggestions?
So it turns out, GPT-4 knows enough about Pokemon Emerald that you can ask it to pretend to be a text-based interface for it and it just… works?
This is so cool! I wonder what other games you can use GPT-4 to play?
The coffeeshop fallacy is a mismatch between the work one imagines to be involved in a pursuit and the actual day-to-day labour.
It is most common in industries with a strong survival bias which create a fun or desirable product.
This is a great article that everyone should read if they are thinking of starting a coffee shop/brewery/arcade/boutique shop/etc…
A few years back, my wife and I decided to open a coffee shop in our little town here. Seeing as there was no shop for miles around, its seemed like a great idea. We did all of the research, picked a spot, and even started down the path of branding. It wasn’t until one day, a friend of mine who previously owned a fancy shop downtown sat me down and told me what no one else would.
I had visions of sitting in our shop chatting with locals while a barista served me Cortados all day long. Little did I know, such businesses were almost never profitable, constant headaches, staffing issues, cleaning, supply chain issues and not to mention, I would end up cornering myself into my own minimum wage job for the foreseeable future.
Ultimately, we ended up scrapping the idea of starting a shop and one did open. I can now sit in there comfortably drinking a Cortado and know that I can just up and leave when I’m done without having to first mop the floor.
Remembering Names
“A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie
Whenever I meet new people, I’m terrible with remembering their names. It would seem that the moment they tell me their name, I instantly forget it.
Lately, I have started writing down people’s names in my notes along with something I remember about them (I know, I’m Michael Scott). I will also put them under headings that refer to the context in which I met them.
An example of this might be
Soccer
- Mike: Lawyer, wears a suit everywhere
- David: twins on the soccer team
- Steven: bald with beard
Gym
- Christian: Manbun
This has been working surprisingly well, as the moment I write a name down with a character trait, I remember it forever. Very seldom have I had to go back and review my notes.
It does make me wonder though, what memorable character trait does someone have written down in their notes about me?
Being at the soccer fields feels like the show Severence.
I take the kids to soccer, go to bed, wake up and I’m at the soccer fields again.
cobble_stone (The Texture of Your Childhood)
This is cobble_stone. Doesn’t seem that interesting, does it? It is just a bunch of bricks after all. Well, what if you were told these bricks have been lurking in the shadows of your life and you never knew it.
The mind does an incredible job of convincing you that whatever you are thinking about during mediation, you are doomed to forget unless you keep thinking about it. Case in point: this post was constantly swirling around in my head during today’s mediation.
Thinking something nice about someone? Tell them.
When you think something nice about someone, you should tell them.
People don’t hear enough compliments.
This is always a win-win for all parties. I really try to compliment people as often as possible. I think it makes me feel even better than them!
There really is no better use of my time, or yours.
My daughter just got a toy today that resembles a Skip It.
i haven’t thought about these in 25 years. Being a 90’s kid that was raised by the TV, it immediately brought the jingle from the commercial to my mind.
Naturally, I had to find the video on YouTube. Here it is in all of it’s nostalgic glory.
I have rewritten my blog engine for the third time. At least, this time the front end is rendered by Hugo and it’s compatible with micro.blog themes.
Rogule - a dungeon a day keeps the Balrog away
Rogule is a minimalist online Roguelike game you play in your web browser. Everyone gets the same dungeon each day. You get one chance to beat each day’s dungeon. It is free to play.
This is super cool!
Honestly, it’s probably the phones
The most plausible explanation for teenage unhappiness.
As a proud owner of a teenager, I 100% agree. Teaching them to self regulate is important.
Idea: Micropub Browser Extension For Replies
I LOVE finding sites that support webmentions. For me, it’s an instant subscribe. These are people who are looking to build community on the web in a new way.
The process of “replying” and sending a webmention to a post is still a bit cumbersome. Here are the current steps:
- Read an article that I want to respond to
- Determine if the article supports webmentions (either they offer a URL box OR you have to view the source to see if they have a webmention endpoint).
- Copy the URL
- Paste the URL into the “reply box” in something like Quill
- Write your reply
It works, but it’s not ideal. Also, the average user is not going to go through the trouble of doing all of this.
“There must be a better way…”
Solution
I am proposing a brower extension that you would authenticate with your micropub endpoint using IndieAuth. Once authenticated, the steps to reply to a post become as followed:
- If the site supports webmentions, the plugin will have an active icon
- Click the icon to reveal a text box
- Type your response and click send
(behind the scenes, the extension posts the reply to your blog and then sends a webmention to the URL you are replying to)
This would greatly reduce the friction of using webmentions for responses to posts and I believe would further the adoption of this technology.
Maybe I will get around to building this someday…
Let me know what you think by sending me a webmention ;)
To enjoy life, you don’t need fancy nonsense, but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren’t as serious as you make them out to be.
-Tim Ferris
I’m trying really hard to resist writing a “per my last email” response to a former client that keeps asking me the same question over and over again.
Being a professional is hard…
Currently reading: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
Thank you everyone on micro.blog for the suggestion. I’m absolutely loving it so far!
📚
2D Liquid Simulator With Cellular Automaton
One interesting way to represent liquids in a grid based world, is to use a form of cellular automaton.
I love seeing when complex behavior emerges from simple rules. This is very cool.
Extremely high winds 💨🍃at the soccer tournament today.
They ended up cancelling all of the games at the same time so we had the privilege of sitting in 1.5 hour traffic in order to exit the complex.
Time for pizza 🍕
