Mostly Technical · Feb 27, 2024
Ian & Aaron discuss morning people, PHP/Laravel origin stories, using ChatGPT to write blog posts, Diet Coke vs. Coke Zero, & more.
Sponsored by LaraJobs & Screencasting.com.
Sent questions or feedback to mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail.com.
Ian
Hello?
Aaron
What's a good word, Ian? See, you're frozen. You don't know what to do.
Ian
I know. It's great.
Aaron
The word is
Ian
good. The word is good. I woke up early this morning. What's your deal with waking up early? Do you like to waking up early?
Aaron
Well, we can get to me in a second. What are you talking?
Ian
Okay. So woke up around 3 o'clock. Real early.
Aaron
No. No. No. That's not early. That's crazy.
Ian
That's overnight?
Aaron
Yeah. That's still the middle of the night.
Ian
Woke up. I never knew this either. Woke up, couldn't get back to sleep. Doing the towel. Doing the towel.
I always get, I could always go back to sleep too. Like, it's not uncommon. I wake up quickly, but then I always go right back to sleep. Could not get back to sleep. So I, you know, threw in the towel.
I went downstairs, did a workout for, like, an hour. Came upstairs, made some eggs, watched as the kids got up and, you know, mosey down all delirious. It was interesting. It was, like, a whole different view on the day. I'm, like, never up that early in the day, like, watching the whole morning unfold.
So it was fascinating.
Aaron
Gosh. 3 AM is unbelievable.
Ian
I know. I couldn't get back to sleep. I took a shower. Ready to hit it hard. So far, I'm okay.
I I'm expecting that. Yeah. I mean,
Aaron
it's something It's 10 AM your time, so talk talk to me at 2 PM. Okay. So
Ian
Could you get ugly?
Aaron
This this is like, this is a coincidence. This is a happenstance. Stance.
Ian
Mhmm.
Aaron
Are you gonna are you gonna make it? Are you gonna make it a 3 AM? Are you gonna 3 AM guy now?
Ian
No. I can't be a 3 AM guy, but I am tempted to become a morning guy, which I'm very much not a morning guy. But
Aaron
Morning guys
Ian
are the worst. It is interesting. Well, this is part of it. It's like morning people are horrible. Hate morning people.
Hate them. But it is, like, interesting to, like, start your day so early.
Aaron
You know, the worst, you know, the worst thing in the world is
Ian
what's that?
Aaron
I was I tried to be a morning guy for a while, and it was better. It was just better. Everything
Ian
was better. Everything's better.
Aaron
I was so mad about it. Yeah. And I actually I actually became full morning guy and that I tweeted about it, which is just like
Ian
Oh, you committed.
Aaron
You hate to do that. Yeah.
Ian
Right. But then you gave it up.
Aaron
Then I gave it up
Ian
for sure.
Aaron
Yeah. Then stuff stuff happened, then I gave it up.
Ian
I love being up at night. It's like it's quiet. I can, like, do some work or whatever I wanna do, but then I just discovered it's quiet in the morning. If you're up early It
Aaron
is quiet in the morning.
Ian
Quiet in the morning Yep.
Aaron
Yep. Which is
Ian
sort of crazy. I didn't even who who would have known?
Aaron
It feels so much less degenerate to be up in the morning. Way less degenerate,
Ian
which is what I don't like about it, though, to be honest. Honest. I'm like, a little bit It's
Aaron
too clean. Yeah.
Ian
Yeah. I'm not, like, a big degenerate, but, like, a little little just a little dirt. And if you're up at night, that's when, you know, nothing good happens after midnight and all that. I like to be up in that hour. When you're up at 6 AM or 5:30 and you're hitting it hard, that's, like, that's clean living right there.
It might be too clean. Yeah. But Yeah. It's hard to eat a bag and
Aaron
cheese at 5:30 in the morning, you know?
Ian
Yeah. Exactly.
Aaron
So here's here's the here's the other thing, though, that's hard about trying to be a morning guy. It's easy to miss the morning. Like, you can just keep staying up. Right? You could just stay up and stay up and stay up.
Right. But if you like, if you're, like, weak of will or or, you know, weak spirited person, someone who wears glasses, for example, then you can just hit snooze. You just hit snooze, and it's over. Like, your big miracle morning that you were gonna get all the stuff done that you saved for the morning, it's over.
Ian
Well, this is a fascinating part of what I experienced this morning because I was just, like, awake at 3 o'clock, and I was just ready to go. Yeah. So I had a whole different outlook versus the, like, you have the alarm, you're forced up, you're all groggy and crappy. And, like, you know, that's like a whole different morning experience that I do not like. No.
But this, like, you just pop up and you're ready to go. Well, it's a little different.
Aaron
So how much how much would you pay per month? How much would you pay per month to wake up at 5 AM every day feeling that way? Feeling like, oh, let's go, baby.
Ian
Man, you know, it's so hard because, like, what the the trade offs to the thing. It's like, especially, like, there's some things I like to do at night. Like, last night, I was watching Messi. It was messy night. Drinking cheap wine.
Aaron
The boss restricted you.
Ian
You're on Twitter watching out.
Aaron
Hey. I follow you.
Ian
You know what's up. So I'm drinking the cheap wine. I'm watching messy. He was on the West Coast, so it didn't end till, like, midnight or whatever it was. Mhmm.
And so I'm already, like, like so now that's already too late. If I'm gonna be wake up at 5 AM, guy, like, can I go to bed at 12 30 or 1? Like, that's not sustainable.
Aaron
Okay.
Ian
Yeah. So I'm gonna have to go to bed at least by, like, 11. Mhmm. I mean, 6 I can survive on 6 hours, but I don't know.
Aaron
Wait. We'll get back to Fantasyland in a second. Did you go to bed at 12 buzzed and woke up at 3 and did
Ian
a workout? Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
Dude, you are going to
Ian
It's crazy.
Aaron
Die. I cannot wait for next week. You have to write down exactly how today goes because next week's podcast is gonna be hysterical.
Ian
I have to say, I wasn't, I wasn't really that hammered Well, I wasn't like, oh, man. I was drunk, and I, like, rolled out of bed and did my workout. I was actually I was mostly fine. I was like, you know, because I started drinking kinda early. So then I was actually done with the cheap wine by, like, 9, I'd say, or 9:30.
And then so I had, like, another 2 or 3 hours there to let it wind,
Aaron
wind down. Good planning.
Ian
Yeah. It was alright. What I can't see the going to the oh, you're good.
Aaron
Let's say midnight's your cutoff. You can wake up at 5 feeling like inspired, rested, ready to go. What are you paying for that?
Ian
Well, that's like you're changing my whole identity here. So it's like, do I wanna change my identity? But if I want to change my
Aaron
identity I don't want the
Ian
goods. I don't want the
Aaron
goods. You don't have to
Ian
pay it all. Think let's say, like, if it turns out to be very productive, like if, if I go through the rest of this day, right. And I've been very productive this morning before we got on here, I've been very productive all morning. That holds I mean, it's gotta be worth what? Like, $1,000 a month.
Right? It's gotta be worth something.
Aaron
Easy. And if you change if you change the parameters to as long as you're in bed by 12, you wake up at 5 feeling fully rested.
Ian
I mean, fully rested is huge thing. Yeah.
Aaron
It's huge. Right. I'm paying so much for it. To be able to sleep 5 hours a night and wake up fully rested, I'm paying a lot for that.
Ian
You're actually paying for that right now.
Aaron
I wish I could pay for that right
Ian
now. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
My kingdom my kingdom to wake up feeling rested.
Ian
You know what? This is like a thing. I get thrown off these things. Does this happen to you? So this is making me think of another thing.
So like with working out, like I'm I'm good about the working out I'll work out 3 or 4 days a week and then I'll get sick or I'll go on a business trip or whatever, or we go on vacation and then that's it. Like the working out stops. And once I'm out of the rhythm, I don't work out again for, you know, months. And then tell him, like, I really gotta get back into it. Like, I totally forgot about it.
That's how I feel like this would be. See, that's like, I I can wake up early, but I'm gonna go play poker 1. I'm gonna play poker before 4 AM. And then obviously, I'm not getting up at 5 AM. I'm getting up at 10 AM.
And then I'm just off of it. And I'm, like, back to staying up late, and that's the I'm night owl again. So I don't know. Yes. Maybe that's the best
Aaron
That that's exactly how I am. We can adjust the magical parameters to to account for that, but that's exactly how I am with with regard to, like, returning text messages or emails or DMs. Like, it goes,
Ian
you know,
Aaron
I don't do it. I don't do it for a day, and then I'm like, oh, man. I feel bad. I really gotta have, like, a, you know, good response. Bitty.
Shoot. Missed that one. Yep. I really did like that guy.
Ian
Yep. Yeah. Yep. I well, I guess I don't know. Careful.
Careful. Mostly known you in this phase. You know, I've known you best in this phase where you have many children.
Aaron
Yes.
Ian
But you tend to be well in control of your messaging. Like, like, when I message you, like, I don't just get a message back right away. Like, you're, like, offline or you're you're disconnected, and then you have a time slot where you are writing people back is the impression I get.
Aaron
That is the reality. Yes.
Ian
Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard because if, you know, I'm doing something and I read a message and then forget about it, that's where that's where I get in trouble of, like, oh, yeah. I did read a message 3 days ago from that person.
And so I really try not to, like, even read the messages until which is another problem is that they get too many messages. I'm like, I can't open that. I can't open the Twitter DMs. I'm just gonna stay on the Twitter timeline. But yeah, then I try to like and it's it's been real hard recently because I typically do the responding when I'm at the computer.
And like we talked about, I haven't been at the computer Right. Forever. And so I'm just, like, not responding or trying to respond on the go, but I do I do specifically sit down and, like, alright. I'm gonna open either Telegram or Twitter DMs and, like, respond to everyone right now.
Ian
Go through. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not good about that.
I should get better about that. Yeah. I don't know. Modern society. Right?
Like you're just all this, the information you're just used to sucking it in and spitting it out.
Aaron
Being being reachable is not great. I wish I was unreachable.
Ian
Yeah. You are sort of unreachable now. Like, semi, you're you're having a little reachability break now, or is it not
Aaron
really Yeah.
Ian
It's sort of
Aaron
a reachability crisis. I mean, people can still reach me. I just don't respond, which is the problem.
Ian
You need a a BA. Right? Gotta get a I do need a BA.
Aaron
Who who
Ian
needs your stuff and I know. Filters it and gives you the important stuff and all that.
Aaron
Yes. I've been trying to hire a VA forever.
Ian
Got it.
Aaron
I hired 1 I hired 1 a couple months ago from the Philippines using Support Shepherd, which is, like a outsource agency. And she was the worst. She was totally scamming me for sure. 100%. Yeah.
Like, totally lying about everything.
Ian
Wow.
Aaron
Like, one time we got on a call and something I had asked her to do, I was watching the shared doc right before the call, and she was copying and pasting into the shared doc of everything that I had asked her to do, and you could tell she was pasting from, like, just some other website. And I was like, hey. Did you actually spend time doing this or did you just copy and paste? And that's the day that I had to let her go. So it you know, it's not it's not easy finding a VA.
Ian
No. I think we talked about this maybe on here before, but my whole philosophy is they have to be in person. Like, there's just too many things I need them to do in my local life that I feel like it's not worth it if they're not physically here where I can send them to do things Yeah. That I need done. Like You don't
Aaron
need a b a. You need an a. Yeah.
Ian
There's gotta be a better way to say that. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
You just need an assistant. Yeah.
Ian
Right. Executive assistant. Yeah. That's what they were talking about. In the day.
Yeah. Yeah. The executive assistant. Alright. I don't know.
Do we have anything else on that?
Aaron
I woke up today. I woke up today, local time, 8:47 AM.
Ian
8:47 AM. Wow.
Aaron
Which is why this 9 o'clock got pushed a little bit.
Ian
Because I also woke up fall asleep.
Aaron
Yeah. I also woke up local time 4 AM to go soothe 2 crying babies.
Ian
Mhmm.
Aaron
So the night nurse is gone, so it's just us now.
Ian
Oh, wow. You're you're not paying
Aaron
for for sleep anymore. No respites. It's just us forever. For 18 more years. It's just us.
Yeah. So, yeah, this morning I went in and they were doing the whole hysterical, let's cry alternating cycles.
Ian
That's fun.
Aaron
Here comes dad. Let's set him up. So, yeah, I was in there from probably 4:30 to 6:30 and then got back in bed at 6:45 and slept till 8:45.
Ian
Do they get each other going? Like, get like, is you get the one to sleep and the other one's still crying, wakes up the one you got to sleep, or does that kinda work itself too?
Aaron
These 2, it actually does seem a little bit like that.
Ian
The
Aaron
first two, it was not that way at all. These 2, it does seem like if if the girl is crying, the boy wakes up a little more easily. But hopefully that will subside because they're going to be in the same room for, you know, ever. Yeah. So hopefully they'll figure that out pretty quickly.
That's an interesting question is what age do we switch from twin rooms to gender rooms, you know?
Ian
Yeah. I think twin twins at the whole it's like a different rule set there. It is. You can just kinda go, like, me or forever. I feel like I've known some twins that are, like they were pretty old when they did the switch.
Yeah, although you cut the 2 sets So I guess like that I know I guess you and they're close in age. I guess
Aaron
they are
Ian
could even do it earlier I know. Like, sort of a little different scenario there.
Aaron
I know. It'll be interesting. It'll be up to them, of course, but it'll be it'll be interesting to see when they start agitating for, like, I wanna be in a room with all girls and
Ian
all boys. Yeah. Or just I mean, well, then you're gonna have this whole dynamic where the 2 twins are, like, are they closer with the twin?
Aaron
I know.
Ian
You know? And maybe they don't wanna be apart from the twin.
Aaron
I know.
Ian
They don't care about the gender stuff. They're like, no. I wanna be with my twin. Yeah. That's like a whole dynamic.
Aaron
Crazy. The dynamics are crazy. That's what I'm trying to get paid. Do you see my tweet about that? I'm trying to get paid for this.
Ian
Oh, yes, I did. There's got
Aaron
to be a way that I can capitalize on this.
Ian
Yeah. Probably tell you.
Aaron
Show Harvard Longitudinal Studies, something like this is weird and people love weird stuff. So how do I get paid for this?
Ian
I feel like, you need one more set. I feel like if you had one more set Wow. Then then you could definitely pull it off. I feel like 4 with 2 sets of twins with only 4 kids, not quite radical enough. But if you had 3 sets of twins and all of them were like 2 years apart, year and a half apart, I feel like that's something.
Now now you can go to HBO or lifetime, probably more likely. It was a good it was a good idea. I'll have
Aaron
to make my money the old fashioned way,
Ian
though. That's a bummer. Nothing worse than making money the old fashioned way. It's so much better making money other ways.
Aaron
Nothing worse
Ian
than now. Some money. Oh, we're getting money. Money for you know, finding money.
Aaron
Windfall? I would take a windfall.
Ian
Windfall? Who doesn't love a windfall? When you have to, like, grind every day for years. To me, it's fine.
Aaron
But worse. Like idiots.
Ian
Yeah. I feel like it I do feel like we're doing something stupid. That's how I feel every time I get any kind of spam or, like, text message spam or things like that. I'm like, I'm pretty smart. Feel like I could do this better than these people are doing this and make a lot more money doing it than they're doing.
Yeah. Because it's, like, some things are just obvious that they're doing wrong, and I feel like I could fix it and make this bad spammy stuff better and more, you know, close more deals, so to speak, gotten the spam. Like, why are we not doing that? We gotta go black hat.
Aaron
I I think it when I hear that, like, oh, yeah. My, you know, my buddy just sold his landscaping business for 7,000,000.
Ian
Right.
Aaron
And I'm like, what what what technology enabled that? And they're like, no. No. No. No.
Landscaping. They mow grass.
Ian
Shit.
Aaron
Bamboozled again. Or, like, fence builders. Fence builders. They make a ton of money. And they drive trucks that are bigger than houses.
They drive, like, f 4 fifties, and they climb out of them in their fancy boots, and they're just here to go. Ladder. Yeah. I'm like, what what am I doing wrong? It's a 2016 4 Runner, but come on, man.
Yeah. I don't know.
Ian
And they don't have a market. Every real world business you ever talk to have no idea about marketing. No idea about branding.
Aaron
No idea.
Ian
Like, I the way I feel, I'm on, like, Twitter and, like, you all these guru types where, like, I'm doing everything perfect. Everything's wonderful. It's all amazing. Right? Like, that's how I would be to them because they don't know I have no idea what's going on.
Yes. Like, I'm some kinda alien genius life form compared to how they think about branding and marketing stuff. And it's like, well, if we just took what we know and Yep. Did it in my town, like, I could just be the dominant force here in the men's building business or whatever. You could use the way that the way that you find
Aaron
a fence builder is you find a fence and you call the number that's on the fence, and the owner answers. And he's like, well, I don't know. Text text me your details. I'll see if I can come out.
Ian
You know, like Right. They're they're always inconvenienced. They're always inconvenient that
Aaron
you did the I'm sorry. I called you, but is there a way that I could get a fence built? We'll see.
Ian
It's a 100% of the time. That that interaction is always that way. Or the plumber.
Aaron
The plumber.
Ian
We gotta charge you $200 just to come out, and then, yeah, I guess we can do it. Blah blah blah. It's like a it's a pain in the butt.
Aaron
The toilet's leaking. Wow. What'd you do?
Ian
I I
Aaron
didn't do anything, man. The toilet's just leaking.
Ian
Man, we're wasting wasting our lives on the Internet. We are. We thought it was genius, but
Aaron
We could be out there doing manual labor, and we're in here, like, a couple of dilettantes.
Ian
We're trapped in here. Yeah. Could be out there.
Aaron
Typing on our little screens.
Ian
Man. Oh, geez. We're not gonna follow-up. Let's see. Yeah.
We got lots of follow ups. So
Aaron
Lots of follow-up.
Ian
We're working from the top here, I guess. Right? What do we got here?
Aaron
John follow-up on the, on the coffee soda conversation.
Ian
Yeah. And I guess we and then Taylor chimed in on that too. I don't
Aaron
think it was Yeah. I don't
Ian
know if it was directly to us, but it was in the same
Aaron
vein. Sauce.
Ian
So yeah. So John Newmaker, he goes half cap, full cap, like half and half, I guess. Decaf and full cap. What so where are you on that, I guess, before we even get too deep this? Where are you?
Aaron
I thought you went
Ian
for coffee with somebody, so it sounds like you're not totally off.
Aaron
I'm not totally off.
Ian
That was a decaf. I'll have you know. That was decaf? Okay. That
Aaron
was decaf.
Ian
Very nice.
Aaron
That was decaf. So that still fits in with with my my budgeted allowance. So I'm still 1 to 2 half calf in the morning here at home. And then just to feel a little bit of god's son on my face, I get out
Ian
of the
Aaron
house and go get go get my decaf.
Ian
You addicts are too much, I'm telling
Aaron
you. Yeah. It's it's truly a thing. So this feedback from from John Newnemaker was to get cometier decaf, which apparently is the best kind of decaf, and it comes in, like, frozen pucks. There are some pictures in the thread.
Cool. But it comes in frozen pucks, and he just uses 8 ounces of hot water, and you have coffee, which is Oh,
Ian
frozen puck. Look at this thing. Okay. I didn't realize this was the Yeah. He's got
Aaron
a whole drawer full of it.
Ian
A frozen puck of coffee.
Aaron
I gotta be honest. I don't understand the frozen part. They look like Keurig pods, like Keurig, plastic things. But they're yeah. They're totally frozen.
Ian
You put them in hot water or something like that? Is that what goes on there? Yeah. 8 ounces of hot water and milk, and you have coffee. Right?
I don't know about this.
Aaron
I I love coffee scheme.
Ian
Right? Don't you love a like, when I was drinking coffee, I was like, Arrow Cross. Yeah. They're like, yeah. We we talk we love schemes, and a coffee scheme is one of the best scheme.
Aaron
Coffee scheme is a scheme. It's an artisanal scheme. Here's the problem
Ian
with my tea. Butter in your coffee
Aaron
or whatever. What's the commentier? Is I'm am I am I using a teapot now? How am I getting 8 ounces of hot water?
Ian
Yeah. You gotta have a kettle. You gotta have electric kettle. That's the game with tea. If you're gonna get into the tea game, you need an electric kettle.
And I would suggest getting a good one. I've had the bad ones. The good one's better.
Aaron
I do love accoutrements, but I don't know if I'm gonna become a tea guy enough to like get it an electric kettle. So anyway, that's, that's a new to maker's comment is check out the commentier, which looks like d to c, good branding, you know, all clean, that kind of stuff. So
Ian
to c. That's another thing I feel like wouldn't mind doing.
Aaron
Yeah. Although I hear I hear horror stories on Twitter of of d to c margins, shipping, returns. It does seem like the margins are pretty rough.
Ian
Everybody thinks they're gonna be the, the shaver people, but Yeah.
Aaron
It
Ian
doesn't always work out that way.
Aaron
Yeah. So next one down, drew bread vic hits this the Zevia soda. We got a couple of replies about Zevia.
Ian
Never even heard of this. I have no idea what it is.
Aaron
It's because off brand sodas suck as a rule.
Ian
Right. So,
Aaron
yes, that's like you go to you go to a restaurant and you're like, I'll have a diet Coke. You're like, actually, we have main root soda. They get you a diet main root cola. And I'm like, no, Give me Diet Coke.
Ian
Even worse, they say they have Pepsi, and you're like,
Aaron
oh, that's embarrassing.
Ian
Yeah. It doesn't Okay. Well hate Pepsi.
Aaron
I have I have monopoly money. Same same idea.
Ian
What's a those look like a Coke 0
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
Like thing.
Aaron
Yeah. Coke 0 like thing. I, I picked up some some zevia. I went to the local Sprouts next to the apartment studio, picked up some zevia.
Ian
Don't even know what that is.
Aaron
Aggressively average cola. I'll be honest.
Ian
What you would have expected?
Aaron
Here's my problem, I think. I don't like regular Coke.
Ian
Mhmm. I like That's weird.
Aaron
Diet Coke. Mhmm. And so all these cola replacements generation. Yeah. All these cola replacements are like, we're almost Coke.
And I'm like, I don't like Coke. And so I think what I like is maybe aspartame.
Ian
Right. I hate aspartame. See, I can't. Anytime I taste it anything, I love it. It's gross.
I hate everything about it. Good. I just want to, like, sugar. I want the real sugar. Oh, how can the aspartoutines so bad?
Aaron
It's so good, and it's so good for you. It, like, makes you forget stuff. You're like, I don't remember anything. No. Yeah.
Ian
Definitely not good for you.
Aaron
So, Stevia, thanks thanks for the feedback, Drew. It was, it is I will say it, like, is the only thing that can scratch that itch because it is, you know, 0 caffeine, 0 sugar, actually clean, you know, whatever. But frankly, I may I'm I would be more open to trying Coke, diet caffeine free diet Coke, which is basically just like dirty water. I think I would do that before Zevia. So
Ian
Isn't that Coke 0, or is Coke 0 something else?
Aaron
Coke 0? Here's the thing. Okay.
Ian
I'm not up on all my different Cokes.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's Coke. You know Coke.
Mhmm. There's Coke. Yeah.
Ian
I drink a lot of Coke
Aaron
in my day. Yeah.
Ian
Same page there. Then there's Diet Coke, which is,
Aaron
like, fundamentally different, tastes completely different.
Ian
No sugar.
Aaron
No sugar, tons of aspartame
Ian
Whatever is in there. Right?
Aaron
Fan. Right. Then they were like, oh, wow. People that love Coke want a lower calorie, like, better version of Coke, and that is Coke 0. Oh.
Where where
Ian
still has caffeine.
Aaron
It still has caffeine, and and and it still tastes a lot like Coke.
Ian
Closer to Coke.
Aaron
It is so much closer. So people are always like, try Coke 0. And I'm like, no, it tastes like Coke. If I wanted a 0, I would do Doctor Pepper 10,
Ian
which, you
Aaron
know, 10 and 0 were not the same number, but they're close
Ian
close enough.
Aaron
Yeah. Because I don't like diet Doctor. Pepper. I like regular Doctor. Pepper and Diet Coke.
Yeah.
Ian
Well, I'm fascinated by this whole drinking soda thing in general. Because to me, I don't know if it's like a northeast thing. Maybe there's a little regional difference here, or maybe I'm just not in those circles. But to me, drinking soda is pretty much, like, in the same ballpark as, like, smoking cigarettes. Like, I don't see people smoking cigarettes, and I don't see people
Aaron
drinking soda. James Dean then. If it's smoking cigarettes, I'm the coolest guy that ever lived.
Ian
Like, I don't see people like, I don't do either one, and I don't see people doing either one. Like, I don't I don't see people ordering Cokes places and things. Like, it's not like literally 0 more people than smoking cigarettes, but, like, it's still, like, way, way less than you know, when I was a kid, just everybody drank Coke all the time. That was the only liquid there was was Coke. Yep.
Everywhere Coke, home Coke, 2 liter gallons of Coke or whatever the thing is. Like, the whole thing, that's what we had. That's what all anybody drank. Now it's definitely not like that, you know, in people's houses. And then at restaurants, you see people drinking it, but you also see people just having water or having, like, other beverages.
So I don't know. It's
Aaron
interesting. It's so embarrassing to order a water at a restaurant. I can't I just can't imagine.
Ian
That's why I like
Aaron
to actually because
Ian
They don't give you the water, but you guys get wine. Like, all there is is wine. There's no water in European restaurants or Italian restaurants.
Aaron
Yeah. You you know what's actually pretty good
Ian
Mhmm.
Aaron
Is, Chipotle's plain soda water. So the button next to the Sprite?
Ian
Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. Uh-huh. The button next to the Sprite, it comes out ice cold and super bubbly. And so that's good.
Ian
Do you know every single one of those machines has that same button? You don't have to go to all these buttons.
Aaron
Okay, Ian.
Ian
You can go to McDonald's for that. You can go anywhere for that.
Aaron
Woah. This I'm I'm entering into a new world and and discovering things, and you are telling me you're you're giving me a hard time. Okay? I'm Look
Ian
at your hard time.
Aaron
Just I'm just dipping the toes literally into the water so you're out here
Ian
be aware so you don't have to, like, make a special trip to Chipotle's to get a nice cold seltzer. You can get that literally anywhere that has a soda fountain. So you're I
Aaron
love your Chipotles, though. Chipotles Chipotles is
Ian
the best. Falling off a little bit.
Aaron
Oh, okay. We got
Ian
Oh, don't you think?
Aaron
To get through. No. We don't have time. No. It's gotten worse expensive.
Ian
This well, yeah. That's fine. But, like but I feel like it's gotten worse, like, tasting.
Aaron
No. Disagree. No.
Ian
Alright. I gotta try. I haven't been in a while because the last few times I had it was a little off and then I've been going to the salsa fresca. I don't know if you have salsa fresca. No.
I don't
Aaron
know if that's
Ian
knockoff, but I think it's more, like, regional. But
Aaron
I I'll try Salsa fresca. Silly name. Won't go there. Last bit of Twitter feedback is, Josh Manders says, what's the good word is said a lot here in the Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota area. So
Ian
Interesting.
Aaron
I'm not crazy. What's the good bird?
Ian
Is it that picked it up. But not in Texas. Right? Not not you hear you don't hear people saying it around you. Yeah.
Aaron
No. I think that's an Aaron Francis original down here in the south.
Ian
Working on the Internet, you picked it up somewhere.
Aaron
Maybe. That is true.
Ian
Alright. We did have one other, email feedback, which I've been trying to read lately from, Joey Mackenzie. Thanks, Joey. This is a big long email. I'm not gonna read this whole thing, but I did think, the one or two questions here was interesting for us to cover on air, primarily, since this actually just came up from me yesterday.
Also, your Larabel slash p p origin story. What's your
Aaron
origin story? Mhmm. But would you have to say that Joey's email is titled Mostly Praise, comma a few questions. So I'm already team Joey. Yeah.
Right. Big, big, big fan of Joey. So
Ian
if you want to if you want to
Aaron
get to the top of the queue. Yeah. Mostly praise a few questions. That's good framing, Joey. Good job.
Ian
Interesting subject lines. Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. My origin story is pretty basic. I started with ASP dot NET when I was, like, 11 or 12 Crazy. And quickly transitioned to PHP, no framework, and did PHP for, like, no framework for, like, 10 years just as a hobbyist. And then the first framework I picked up was Yi, y I I.
Mhmm. And it was great at the time. I think it was Yi 2 or maybe 1.1 at the time.
Ian
I was kinda like that name.
Aaron
It's so hard to say out loud, though.
Ian
It is. Yeah.
Aaron
Yi. What? Yi. You got to spell it. I I was deciding between Yee and Laravel 4.
I think it was Laravel 4. And I tried to install Laravel 4 locally, and it was like, you need, ext dash intl for this to work. And I was like, I don't know what that means. And I tried to install yi and it worked. And so I just picked yi, which is kind of funny.
Ian
That is funny.
Aaron
So I did Yi for maybe 2, 3, 4 years and then switched over to Laravel. And the whole time the whole time I've just stuck with PHP because I've known it for so long. Like since I was, you know, 13, I've been using PHP. And so it just feels so natural to me. And I've always been so focused on I've always been so focused on trying to build the thing that I'm building that I don't really get wrapped around the axle on, like, what should I be using to build this?
Which somebody the other day was like, how do you all avoid shiny object syndrome? And then my response was because Laravel gives me literally everything I need to build the thing I'm trying to build that I don't worry about. Like, I wonder if I should pick up Astro or, you know, Svelte or whatever. Because my goal is not to I think we've talked about this before. My goal is not to be a great engineer.
My goal is to build something and, you know, either get rich or become a fence guy. So that's kind of. That's right. So that's I mean, I came by it honestly. I was a kid, and I liked PHP, and so I've stuck with it.
Ian
That's crazy. I wish I could get my kids on the PSP or any programming. They're not really into the programming. But
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
Yeah. That's kinda, that's, like, it's so crazy that you've been doing it that long. It's like
Aaron
I know.
Ian
Old school. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Laravel, we're kinda in the shiny object.
Right? Like, I feel like I'm inside the the shiny object still. Yeah. So I'm flying around up in the shiny object. Like, I don't need a different shiny object.
Aaron
Sounds good.
Ian
Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Mine is yeah. I was doing cold fusion at the startup y thing in the dotcomish era and then the lead or the CTO, I guess he was.
Because, like, for this next thing, we're gonna use, PHP. And I was like, this thing's terrible because, like, ColdFusion gave you all this awesome stuff and had none of the awesome stuff and also had no packages or libraries or frameworks or anything. And I was like, This is terrible. Why are we doing this?
Aaron
And has a boss ass name called fusion.
Ian
I know. Cold Fusion is so good.
Aaron
It's so
Ian
cool. HP was so bad back then, but, anyway, but then I started my own stuff, and I was like, well, I could pay for ColdFusion's server, and you have to license it by the server and, like, all that stuff. And I'm like, well, that's not gonna work. So I'll just use PHP because now I know it. And even though it doesn't anything and there's nothing useful in it at all, it's all, like, the most base layer and I have to invent everything.
I guess I'll just use that. But, no, PSP is much better now, obviously. But, yeah, that's that's kinda it. And that was, like, 2002 or something. So yeah.
Aaron
But then don't forget, you discovered Taylor.
Ian
I did discover Taylor.
Aaron
You're you're like, if I knew if I knew a single musical agent to a single giant star, I would say you're like that person, but I don't. So imagine that I know who doctor Dre's agent or discover is, and you're like you're like that person.
Ian
Should I should I yeah. I can give that story super quick. I was, like, even the hired hired dev, and, it was funny because, like, I found Laravel, and this is awesome. I wanna, like, do stuff and, you know, just like the vibe of it, the docs, and all that stuff. Yeah.
Everything we all love about Laravel even back then in version 2, I think it was, or maybe late version 1, whatever it was. And then I was like, gosh. Just hire this guy. And then I went on some website. I was like, it was like, it says programmer's website.
It was like, was it like something tree or code tree or
Aaron
Code tree was the thing that I was
Ian
It was like a it was like a you posted your code snippets and like, it was like a social network of sorts for
Aaron
okay.
Ian
Coders. But, but they had some kind of feature. I mean, I'd never even used this thing. I just found him on there, and it was like, you can flag if you're looking for work, and he had done that. So I was like, oh, let me reach out to him.
And that was it. And he came and worked here, and, rest is kinda history and did a lot of cool stuff.
Aaron
That's why you're the godfather.
Ian
That's why I'm the godfather. Yeah. And then I just found out everybody on the Internets here was doing that first, commit on GitHub Uh-huh. Tool that's been going around. And my first commit was in Laravel.
My first
Aaron
Oh, that's cool.
Ian
PR on GitHub was in Laravel and the the number 200 or something like that. And then, Taylor said that's out of 35,000. So pretty early. Not many out there can top that. Nope.
Early on. I got an eye for these things, but, I don't always turn them into money, but I do have an eye for them.
Aaron
Well, that's step 1. Yeah. Having good taste having good taste is step 1.
Ian
Yeah. I don't know
Aaron
what step 2 is, but step 3 is profit. So Yeah. We'll we'll figure that out.
Ian
We'll do that later. Alright. That's all. We had a lot of follow-up this week. Got a lot of follow-up.
Aaron
Follow-up. We love the follow-up.
Ian
Let's let's get that. I like to clear that out to cleanse my mind. Alright. There we go. Just do a little housekeeping.
Alright. Alright. So what is this? You intrigued me with this. You the note is Aaron bought a chili pad.
I'm very curious what a chili pad is. I mean,
Aaron
like, this is anything up?
Ian
No. I have not. Have you brought this into some
Aaron
kind of Texas
Ian
thing or, what this is? I I literally have no idea. A chili pad. Is it like a a thing you actually slap on your body to put, like, the stuff inside you because it's good for your health? Is it a, some kind of pad for you and your mistress?
Is it that kind of thing?
Aaron
Any Me and my wife.
Ian
Well, you know, it's like a chili pad. Like, this is some other kind of thing. Okay. Is it, something to be your bed? Like, is it, like, cool at night or something like that?
Aaron
Oh, getting hotter.
Ian
Keeps you warm at night.
Aaron
Getting getting colder, getting hotter. It is a pad for your bed Okay. To regulate temperature. Yeah.
Ian
Alright. So this is like the what's that other one that everybody uses? Like BedJet? No. No.
I never heard of that one. The one that like, it's, like, suit is it, like, sleep 8 or something like that?
Aaron
8 sleep?
Ian
8 sleep. Yeah.
Aaron
I don't know if 8 is a temperature. Is 8? Oh, it sure is.
Ian
How about that? But your thing's not an 8 Sleep. Right?
Aaron
No. It's a chili pad.
Ian
Okay. I don't know what a chili pad is. Let me look this up. So chili pad.
Aaron
Chili pad by sleep me bed cooling system.
Ian
Sleep me.
Aaron
Okay.
Ian
It is similar to the sleep aid. It's like I got an external unit that's pumping Yes. Stuff around.
Aaron
Pumping, I think, cold liquid through a
Ian
Right.
Aaron
A bed topper.
Ian
Okay.
Aaron
Here's the deal. We gotta get the sleep going, man.
Ian
I love the schemes. Yes.
Aaron
The sleep has gotta happen.
Ian
Right. Definitely. Right
Aaron
now right now, the sleep is not happening. I think
Ian
that's the one that I have.
Aaron
A couple times last night. And Mhmm.
Ian
So we're
Aaron
in this rent house. Rent house doesn't have a ceiling fan. I know ceiling fans in bedrooms are, like, ugly and bad design. I love a ceiling fan in a bedroom. Right.
I just I just love to be like, I want to sleep in a vortex.
Ian
Right.
Aaron
And this is one of those houses where, like, the air ducts, like, have uneven distribution.
Ian
Mhmm.
Aaron
So it's like, oh, the kids' room is kinda, it's kinda pleasant. You walk back into the master bedroom, and it's like, oh my god. It's a a furnace. There's a jet engine running back here. And so I wake up a few times a night just, like, sweaty.
Ian
Yeah. Temperature is a big thing for sleep.
Aaron
Oh, it's the freaking worst. And so I'm never gonna get better if I don't sleep. And I'm never gonna sleep if it's a 1000000 degrees. We've already got you've we've already got, like, some box fans and stuff going back there, and it's, like, it's not working.
Ian
More industrial.
Aaron
I need some I need something a little bit a little bit better. And so
Ian
Some kick.
Aaron
Yeah. So I have a friend who has a chili pad, and I texted him. And I was like, hey, what's the deal? He's like, it's worth every penny. I used to wake up a bunch, and now I sleep in a t shirt because sometimes it's it's so cold, and I don't wake up at all.
Uh-huh. And I was like, man, that sucks because it's expensive, but it sounds really great. And he said, you can come over and sleep in the middle if you wanna try it out.
Ian
Oh, you should've done that. You should've logged that. Oh, man.
Aaron
I was like, that's alright. So I got one. I got half of it. So you can buy them. They come in, like, halves, right?
So you and your your sleepmates can have a different temperature. Sleep mate was for the general public. In my case, that would be my wife. You can have different different temperatures. She doesn't have a problem sleeping, so we just buy half right now because it is expandable.
You don't have to, like, buy a whole new set. That's gonna be So it should arrive today.
Ian
Okay. Haven't used it yet. I see.
Aaron
I haven't used it yet. And you like so it goes on top of the mattress under, like, under the sheets and stuff.
Ian
Right.
Aaron
And it has a little external unit that has, you know, little hoses plugged into it, and you just like it just you set the temperature you want. So you're like, I wanna sleep at 65, and it just keeps it at 65. So don't know, man. We'll see.
Ian
I like it. I'm I'm up for this. I think, yeah, that seems like a reasonable thing to try out. Everybody swears by these things. I'm more familiar with the 8 Sleep or whatever that one's called, but, people seem to always I always see people talking about it, and they're like, I love it.
It's the best thing ever. So I like it. I like a gadget. I love a good gadget.
Aaron
Love a gadget. Yeah.
Ian
Yeah. A gadget's gonna solve all your problems. That's always to believe. I think so.
Aaron
So I like that. If not this one,
Ian
the next one that I discover. Yeah. But, no, this isn't good. So and I mean, well, you'll have to report back. So it's arriving today.
So by
Aaron
Should arrive today.
Ian
Next next week, you should have data for us Yep. On, how you're feeling and all that. Are you a are you a Apple Watch to bed man?
Aaron
I'm not an Apple Watch at all, man.
Ian
Oh, well, there you go. Are you in any you don't have any you're not sleep tracking or any of that kind of stuff?
Aaron
No. And I promised on Twitter that I wouldn't start saying my sleep stack because, you know, all these all these bros are like, oh, you know, my sleep stack is you know, I do I
Ian
like that term.
Aaron
Yeah. No. I see that
Ian
domain is taken. Is that domain available? Sleepstack.com. No. It's a good that they tell you about
Aaron
they tell about all their vitamins and their, you know, their white noise and their chili pads. So, no, I don't do any sleep tracking at all. I don't know. I I don't know. I just don't know how useful it would be.
I know. I know that I just
Ian
got like, it would stress me out. Like, I'm like, oh,
Aaron
man. Exactly.
Ian
It says, like, I only got 74% optimal sleep last night, and I would no. I feel terrible. Yeah. I I don't think I need that much data. It's too much data.
Aaron
There's too much data. Yeah. You know what I you know what I would pay for? It would be hard to pull off, is I would pay for a sleep tracker that lies to me and tells me I did better.
Ian
But I
Aaron
would have to believe it's honest. Right? So that's the hard part. Yeah. Because what I want is a sleep tracker to be like, man
Ian
You want placebo?
Aaron
Bud. Yeah. 92%. Now then I'm like, oh, I thought I was tired.
Ian
Right. I hit 92%.
Aaron
I actually do feel great. But, you know, the whole thing with placebos, you can't know about it.
Ian
Yeah. I feel like that might not be good for you, to be honest with you. It's like, yeah, you do have a problem sleeping. You need to fix that problem. Pretending you don't have a problem does get you pretty far, to be honest, but then at some point, you just scratch and burn.
Aaron
Oh, that's interesting. You don't think lying to myself is a good long term strategy?
Ian
I I mean, I'm not a doctor. I just played 1 on here.
Aaron
But Right. But you are a podcaster,
Ian
which is better
Aaron
than a doctor.
Ian
Yeah. Interesting. I'm very excited to hear about this because I've I've even though I've heard tons about these things, I've never known anyone, I don't think, or at least I haven't had a discussion with anyone I've known about this. So I'm looking forward to this analysis here. Maybe you're gonna be like, boom.
This is it. I feel a 1000 times better. Let's do it.
Aaron
That without without setting my hopes too high, that is my hope. Boom. This is it. I feel a 1000 times better. So I'm not setting myself up for disappointment at all on
Ian
the phrase. That's the
Aaron
way to do it.
Ian
Yeah. Alright. What else you got? So do you you tweeted about I know you I mean, you wrote a blog post about this. So you were you found a little time at the computer.
I'm back, baby. Yeah. You're back to, write up a blog post. So tell us about that.
Aaron
I wrote a blog post. So this is, this is part of the walk and talk series. This blog post originally was dictated by me to voice memos on my iPhone.
Ian
Interesting.
Aaron
And then and then sent to, Deepgram for transcription and then sent on to chat gpt for cleaning up and writing of the blog post. So I did all of that. You know, I I dictated it early in the year, probably early January. Oh. And finally, like, got it transcribed and sent it to chat gbt for, like, final writing, and it came back from chat gbt kinda crappy.
So I still haven't figured out I still haven't figured out the best, I guess, prompt or or way to set it up so that it, like, writes a good blog post. But, you know, it was 40% useful when it came back from chat gbt. So I had, like, the the chat gbt written version and then the full transcript below it. And I ended up taking most of it from the full transcript. But, anyway, the bulk of the, you know, the bulk of the material was written just by me talking, which is really nice because it's way easier to talk.
You can do it on the road. You can do it on a walk. It's just it's just way easier. And so the other day, I went to I went to Barnes and Noble and was like, I'm gonna like, I'm trying to I go back to PlanetScale March 8th, which is in, like, 2 weeks.
Ian
Oh, wow.
Aaron
And so yeah. Oh, no.
Ian
I'm
Aaron
not I'm not well yet. I was supposed to be well. So I'm trying to, like, do a little bit every day to be like, okay, I can, you know, rebuild my work muscle. And so this day, I was like, I'm gonna write this blog post. And so I did.
And it's kind of self referential thing, because the title of the blog post is do literally anything. And the whole theory is, like, I often get overwhelmed by, like, all of the stuff that I either want to do or the stuff that I have to do. Yeah. And kind of like we talked about with texting friends back and I get I see all the stuff I have to do, and I'm like, oh, well, pity. Yep.
Pity that nothing can be done. That's that's too bad. There's too much to do, so I can't I can't do anything. That's a real shame. And the solution has always been, and I always have to remind myself, just do anything.
It's just like start anywhere. I have found I have found that the the motivation comes from the action and the action does not come from the motivation. Like, once I start doing stuff, I'm like, yeah. I can do stuff.
Ian
Let's do some stuff. I know.
Aaron
I do things. If I just sit there or I, like, you know, I'm scrolling Twitter and like, I got so much to do. I should worry about that. Nothing ever gets done. So that that was the impetus behind the whole thing.
Ian
I do feel like, kind of that's also like an offshoot of your sort of max effort era in a sense of, like because you're kinda doing a lot of things. And I feel like I know when I get doing a lot of things, then you kinda get that crushing sensation start creeping in that, like, well, I have this thing I started that I didn't finish and this thing that I should do something with. And now you have a huge, long list of things you wanna do something with, and then you're just overwhelmed. And you're like, well,
Aaron
then you're just overwhelmed.
Ian
Overwhelmed. Yeah.
Aaron
I think when we started this show, you were actively shedding responsibilities.
Ian
Right? That's right. Yeah. I have I have shedded a chunk of things. I'm still working.
I've got a couple ideas in this regard, but, more to do. But, yes, I have been shedding, and that's been good. Like, because you just build up these things. So, like, shedding Yeah. Shed anything and then do anything.
The shedding is doing in a sense. So you can, like, when you do anything, you end up with something that you don't want anymore, you gotta take the time
Aaron
and get
Ian
rid of it, and then, yeah, shut it. But but, yeah, I I thought it was a great article and just, like, totally great. It's just, like, just getting in there. You're always surprised at how much you can do too. It's like, oh, I just did a couple hours here and, like Yeah.
I got way farther than I thought I was gonna get or better than I thought it was gonna be or, you know, all those kind of things. So people seem to like it. What's the feedback, man?
Aaron
Feedback has been great. I was I was, very, very pleased by the feedback. Yeah. A lot of people a lot of people really liked it. Some people that I, like, look up to really liked it, which was a lot of fun.
Like, Ben Orenstein really liked it. Jason Cohen really liked it. The God of, you know, the Godfather.
Ian
He's the real
Aaron
I know. He's the real Godfather.
Ian
The the bootstrapping sass godfather.
Aaron
Yeah. And so that's fun. You know, it's always fun to get good feedback from people that you like. Yeah. And it makes me feel good.
I feel like I enjoy writing. I happen to think that I'm good at it. And it's nice when I put something out there and people are like, Yeah, this is really good. It's like, oh, cool. So
Ian
So that's kinda interesting because, like so how do you then integrate like, you tried to integrate chat gbt, and it didn't work.
Aaron
But what
Ian
do you think about that? Because, like so your kinda unique voice, is what you like and think you're good at. But then, obviously, there's the benefits of, like, if I could offload some of this, then, obviously, I can maybe do more or do any versus doing none. So I guess, are you now off are you are you dissuaded on chat gbt? Are you feeling like you just gotta dial it in more?
Like, what do you think about
Aaron
all that? So the way that I thought about it after I saw the output come back, first, I was disappointed because I was like, man, this is generic. Yeah. But the way the way that I think about it now is it's like someone else wrote a version of the idea. And while I won't use someone else's version of the idea, it was helpful for me to look at it and read it and see, like, did anything that chat gbt wrote evoke any emotion?
Did they have any good turns of phrase that I liked? Or did they have, you know, I think part of my prompt is like, don't introduce new ideas. Like, I really want you to take this transcript and clean it up into, like, more of a narrative, like, a a post. Yeah. But as I'm reading the one that comes back, does it spark any new ideas in me?
And so I think in terms of, like, offloading, the bulk of the offloading was me recording it via voice and transcribing it. That was, like, a huge amount of, a head start.
Ian
Because when
Aaron
you sit down when you sit down and stare at the blank page, it's really intimidating. But when you record via voice, you can only move forward. Like, you can't go back and say, like, actually, I don't like the way that I worded that. You just got to plow through it. And so then you sit down with a first draft that's kind of crappy.
And you sit down with a, you know, first and a half draft from someone else's point of view, chat GBT, and then you're like, great. I'm gonna take all these raw materials, and I'm going to mold them into what I want to say. And I think the other thing that I've really found interesting this time was the, the benefit of, like, letting it stew because I like, you know, I dictated this thing. And then I'm like, I'm done with it. But it's like still in the background.
And I'm like, Yeah,
Ian
I thought I could, you know, this is
Aaron
another good point or like, actually, this is also the solution for when I'm feeling underwhelmed. And I don't know what to do. And like, so having distance between, you know, writing it the first time and then like editing and refining it, I think was really helpful. So I'll still use it. I just I do wish the chat gbt could adopt my voice a little bit more, but I don't know.
Ian
Do you tell us to write like Aaron Francis? Because it's probably trained on you a little bit.
Aaron
I have so what I did was I took, all of the text from 1 or 2 of the articles that I felt like were most me, And I fed it in and said, analyze this for, like, voice tone and style or something. And so I'm telling chat gbt, what do you think the voice tone and style is?
Ian
Right.
Aaron
And then I take that, and I put that back into the prompts for the next one that says, use this voice tone and style. And so I'm like, I'm trying to speak your language, man. Like, just write write like this thing that you told me. So I, I'm I don't know. I I don't know.
I would have to ask it if it knows who I am. I don't I would doubt it.
Ian
No. No. I would guarantee you it knows. Yeah. I would I would try just that because you've
Aaron
written nothing
Ian
and your name's been out there enough that, like, it knows I mean, knows me and I've written less than you for sure. And it's Interesting. Pretty good analysis that it had, like, I tried to one of the first things when it first came out even, I was like, you know, who has such a unique style of a certain type of writing is Taylor. Cause like, specifically around naming things.
Aaron
Uh-huh.
Ian
And so I was like, oh, you like name name a product, whatever. I gave it to some, like, sample thing, you know, like Taylor Atwell would. And it's like, oh, Taylor Atwell is known for his, like, succinct and blah blah blah stuff. And I was like, man, that's like him. That's like exact like, it's like perfect.
Aaron
The notes. That was
Ian
actually really cool. So, yeah, I think you'd be surprised. Do you wanna try this? What should I ask you? Who is it?
Who is a lot. Who is Aaron Francis? Yeah. You might you're I don't know if you're I
Aaron
ask myself this every day.
Ian
But,
Aaron
who is Aaron Francis?
Ian
The problem is there's a guy
Aaron
on Love Island named Aaron Francis.
Ian
That's what I mean. So you might have to give it more of, like, you know, PHP developer Aaron Francis or, like, whatever. I don't know. Oh, you're Yeah.
Aaron
Hell, yeah.
Ian
Did it? Alright.
Aaron
Look at this.
Ian
God, I feel like Give it to us. World. Give it to us. This is awesome. I keep this to myself.
Aaron
Alright. Who is Aaron Francis? The ultimate question. Multiple individuals known as Aaron Francis, each with a distinct profession and background. Depending on the context, here are the primary figures named Aaron Francis.
Number 1, Aaron Francis, the software developer and content creator.
Ian
1. No.
Aaron
Suck it, Aaron Francis. I'm number
Ian
1.
Aaron
Okay. He identifies as a software developer, content creator with focus on educational content related to web development, specifically Laravel. Yes. Strong presence on YouTube where he makes videos, shares insights on software development. He has been involved with the PlanetScale's developer educator platform for MySQL.
His professional journey also includes an interesting transition from being a CPA and tax accountant to embracing software development and creation. No. No. No. No.
What
Ian
about me. Alright. That's amazing. Follow-up. Ask it about your writing style.
What's, you know, Aaron Francis, the software developer's writing style or whatever?
Aaron
Also, can we just can we just pour one out for Aaron Francis, professional Australian rules footballer and Aaron
Ian
Francis, the
Aaron
reality TV personality? Man, if you wanna if you wanna be number 1, you can't be on TV. You gotta create content about Laravel. Alright. What do I say?
So I say, what do you know about the writing style of Aaron Francis to software developer and content creator? It's like a cool title. I love that.
Ian
Yeah. That is good. Alright.
Aaron
Man, this is weirding me out.
Ian
See, I told you I would know you.
Aaron
That's great. I gotta I gotta reassess, like, my internal view of myself. I was like, there's no way there's anyone would ever know me. Here we go. As he's known for writing style that mirrors his professional ethos, approachable, informative, and engaging.
He values sincerity and optimism, which is evident in the way he communicates technical, complex manners in a way that's easy to understand and relatable. Nice.
Ian
I mean, I thought it was amazing.
Aaron
It sounds amazing. Here's a closer look at what my based on the principles he holds dear. I do hold these principles dear, and it gives me, like, a wall of text. But the the bullet points are personable and conversational, optimistic and supportive, educational yet accessible, actionable and practical and motivational.
Ian
I think that is the real Aaron Francis. Awesome. Freaking great. Now you're gonna have to go maybe after the show and feed
Aaron
your notes into this and
Ian
just tell it to write it like Aaron Francis and see what it does when it does into this and just tell it to write it like Aaron Francis and see what it does with that. That's gonna be very fascinating.
Aaron
Yeah. This is free up with that. Rules.
Ian
Oh, yeah. See that?
Aaron
Look at this. Weather weather listen, dear dear listener. Whether you're a budding software developer or simply curious about technology, His approachable style ensures that you'll find value and encouragement in his work. That's amazing.
Ian
I mean, this is just a whole another level of interesting stuff of, like like, the benefits of your get out there mentality. Right?
Aaron
Totally. One of the
Ian
benefits of those of us who've gotten out there a little bit is like, we are inside the machine now and that has potential benefits. Like, now, obviously, there's people suing people because they don't wanna be in the machine without permission, blah blah. Personally, I like being in the machine. Like, but Yeah.
Aaron
Who cares? You're not gonna win.
Ian
Care about
Aaron
that. It.
Ian
Yeah. I'm not gonna make I don't care about the $3 you're gonna pay me for my
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
20 year old blog post. Like, I'm in there. Now I could say write this like Ian Lansman, and it actually does come out, like, sort of like something I would write. So I think that's, kinda useful. Come on.
Your mind is blown. I love this.
Aaron
My mind my mind is actually blown. This is this is wild.
Ian
Yeah. You're gonna be able to utilize this. This is gonna be good for you.
Aaron
Cool.
Ian
Even have an outline and stuff. Look at this. Even have it writing the whole thing. I feel like you could be like, Hey, take these notes and like create an outline of an article. Yeah.
You know? Like, it might sometimes I feel like it is better with when you step it through things than just, like, we just give it the raw materials. It comes out, like, not always the best. But then if you, like, guide it down the path, it's a little better. So you could be, like, outline it like Aaron Francis would with, you know, some of the stuff and and write up the article based on the outline or whatever.
Yeah.
Aaron
Cool. My my point of view on it is I'm trying to get it to do I don't really want it to do, like, idea generation. You know?
Ian
Right.
Aaron
And so, like, you know, generate the outline is great because then I can fill it in or take this transcript and turn clean it up is great because it, like, uses my ideas. But I don't ever wanna be in a spot where I'm like, hey. Write me an article about, you know, the benefits of waking up early. And I read it, and I'm like, sure, whatever.
Ian
Good enough. Throw it out there.
Aaron
Good enough. So I don't know. I'm that's where I'm trying to use, you know, I'm trying to get better about using it in general because I feel like I need to I need I need the leverage. Everyone else is gonna have the leverage, and I need to have the leverage as well. And so this is one of those this is one of those experiments to to use it in a way that I find is congruent with what I want to do in life.
You know?
Ian
Yeah. Well, this is what also one of the things where I think, this actually changed my thinking on a number of things, that I don't so I wanna get into yet totally. But, I always do this on, this is my whole thing. No. It's, like, 5 years from now, they'll be like, he's still dropping hints of stuff, but Uh-huh.
But, like, Google, whatever. They've had some weird stuff with the Gemini. Yeah. Stuff. But one of the cool things is they're working on the large context windows of, like, a million or 10,000,000 tokens.
And I think that's gonna be really cool is even for stuff like this, because now you can just give it everything you've ever wrote and you can be like, yes. Okay, here's everything I ever wrote and what, you know, do get the tone off that rather than just like 2 articles, whatever. I mean, it's somebody like you is leaving a little different because it's already got everything you've ever written and is trained on it already deeper, which is even better than when you just shove it in the prompt. But still, you can, like, give it a bunch more information about whatever you're trying to do, which I think is gonna make it a lot better versus now we're kind of a little more limited in how much you can shove in there in one go. But, yeah.
So I think that changes a lot in a lot of actually to be able to use the big context window and not have to, slice and dice it up so much.
Aaron
Try to string it all together yourself.
Ian
Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah.
Aaron
That's gonna be really interesting for, I think, people that are these, like, obsessive second brainers where they have just, like, huge digital archives that they can then literally dump the entire thing in and be like, hey. So tell me what my blind spots are. I'll be like, well, you certainly write a lot about this and, like,
Ian
how that's
Aaron
that would be really cool.
Ian
What what do you think about, I don't know. What do you think about AI tools in general? Like, I feel like the you know, stuff's starting to integrate, like Notion. Notion had it initially for, like, helping you write, and then now it's moved to, I think, a better position of, like, more second brain ish. Like, hey, let's, like, ask yourself questions about whatever you want, about the stuff you've written inside Notion, which I think make more sense.
Yeah. But I've also never actually used it. So, like, there, I feel like there is this layer of like, AI is just gonna be injected into everything for us. But like in reality, are we gonna use it as much as people want us to use it? I don't know.
Maybe.
Aaron
I think the best well, first of all, Notion's the worst. Just wanna get that out there.
Ian
What do you think, like, what's your Notion you're in Trello? Or what do you do with Notion like things?
Aaron
Obsidian is where I keep, like, notes and stuff.
Ian
Obsidian. Okay. Well, it's just like an open source Notion or whatever, basically. There's a wiki
Aaron
Don't don't don't talk down to Obsidian like that.
Ian
I know everybody's Snyder is a cult cult following. I I actually didn't know about it
Aaron
till, like,
Ian
2 months ago. Yeah.
Aaron
It's good. It's got markdown. It's got keyboard shortcuts. It's fine. I just don't like, this whole second brain thing, I'm like, I don't wanna do that.
I wanna forget stuff. Forgetting stuff is a feature.
Ian
I'd like to do the second brain, but I don't wanna have to build it. You have
Aaron
to build it, and you have to maintain it, and you have to
Ian
spend all your time worried about, like, oh, my tags and
Aaron
my folders and my formulas. And I gotta, like Right. I gotta, like, write down my mood every day and what I ate for lunch.
Ian
I'm like,
Aaron
I don't why? What am I getting out of that?
Ian
Yeah. I don't want any of that part. That part's all terrible.
Aaron
No. It's all terrible. It's all terrible. If you have a second brain, that's great for you. So I think the the best AI stuff is gonna be invisible.
I think this whole life, let's why don't you chat with AI about your notes? I'm like, no. You tell me. You tell me what what I should be thinking about or what's valuable or, like, maybe in certain cases, asking my notes, like, is anything I can come up with a good example is is interesting. But I think in most cases, I just want somebody with a feature brain or a product brain to be thinking, like, what's the best use of AI here?
We don't even have to call it AI. Just give me, like, you know, sidebar suggestions that like blows me away with how relevant it is. That's the kind of stuff that I'm hoping for in the future. And I think in terms of, like, generation, I've already hit on it. I want it to do certain hard work for me, but not generate new ideas most of the time unless I'm in, like, a brainstorming phase.
Ian
Right. Yeah. I agree. I I think, like, not not everything has to be called AI. It's definitely a big thing.
Like, some things that
Aaron
make sense.
Ian
If the AI is doing a lot of heavy lifting for part of it, it makes sense. But if it's like, but I do feel like a lot of the best features will be stuff where it's not like that. And it's like, like all the stuff we just said about it sucks to build tags for everything. Mhmm. Like, let the AI figure out what tags
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
That something should have, and you don't even think about tagging it. It just tags it, and that's great. And most of the time, it just does a good enough job, and you who even cares if it hallucinates 1 weird tag once in a while? It doesn't matter, Yeah. Because most of the time, it does a good job.
Like, that would be really cool, and take some burden off you and all that kind of stuff. So
Aaron
perfect Perfect example. Google Photos. Google Photos is the perfect example of seamless AI because I can search. Yeah. I can search for, like my brother's name is Jonathan.
I can search for Jonathan on the beach 2016, and it'll, like, it'll find pictures of my brother on the beach in 2016. I'm like,
Ian
we were there at this time,
Aaron
and it just, like, it just does it. And that's what I'm looking for. I don't want to categorize photos. I want to say Christmas 2001, and it pulls up all of the pictures from Christmas 2001.
Ian
Yeah.
Aaron
That's perfect.
Ian
That is crazy how long Google's had that, you know, too. It's like
Aaron
Yes. I know.
Ian
All this AI stuff seems new, but it's really, like, the machine learning version of AI has been around now for, like, 10 years, and they've been tagging people and Mhmm. Figuring out that this is a cat or a dog or whatever for the whole time. The way that
Aaron
they can figure out which baby is which, I'm like, I can barely understand which baby is which.
Ian
Yep. Yep. That is crazy. How can you recognize the faces and everything? So, yeah.
Yeah. I do like Google photos for that. It's so much better than the apple stuff, but I'm otherwise in the Apple ecosystem. I know. So I used to, like, sync it over to the Google Photos, but then that's, like, a pain in the ass.
So I don't bother
Aaron
We use Jennifer and I use Google Photos for our entire family library, and then we will, download, you know, the top 0.1% and put them on the shared photo stream for, like, grandparents and cousins and stuff.
Ian
Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
That's the only that's the only problem is everyone's on the Apple shared photo stream.
Ian
Right. Keeps you in the ecosystem.
Aaron
It does.
Ian
It works. You know what I just got, for myself? I'm gonna get one. I don't know what it's called now. Of course.
I'm gonna let me go look back at it quick. You know, years years ago, I tried one of those digital picture frames and it was, oh
Aaron
yeah, trash obviously. Yeah.
Ian
But now they're not trash. I have one and it's not trash. So now I'm going to get one like for my parents and then you could just sync stuff to it. And it's just like the picture frame just updates with like new pictures of the grandkids and stuff like that. What's the
Aaron
screen like?
Ian
It's not bad. It's, this is the one I have is a 10 inch and then they I think just came out pretty recently with, a 15 inch. 15 inch? Yeah. This one's called the, the Aurora, a u r a or aura.
Carver.
Aaron
A u r a.
Ian
Yeah. It's on Amazon, but it's like a pretty slick package. It was easy to set up. It was not complicated at all. It's like an app.
You load photos into it. It can, you can email photos into it. I think there's like some automated stuff, whatever. I just pre put in like 50 or 60 photos from like my top favorite ones. And, it worked awesome.
It's like $150, the 15 inch ones, you know, like, 300, but yeah, it's like pretty low profile. Like we have it on the mantle. If I had the 15 inch one, I'd probably think about that more as like a wall thing. I guess.
Aaron
15 inches.
Ian
Yeah. But, maybe they have a 7 inch 2. I'm not sure. But, a 10 inch. It's awesome.
Like, it's just rotating photos and, like, there's different settings, and it works, and it's great. Like, the resolution's, like, pretty solid, so it doesn't look all grainy and funky. And yeah. So Yeah.
Aaron
This looks pretty good.
Ian
It's pretty good for, like, the
Aaron
And that 15 inches big, isn't it?
Ian
It is. Yeah. And what's cool too, is it kind of know that you might want to like do this as a gift. So like they have a whole setup for that where like you can receive it, load it all up with stuff and then, like, give it to somebody else. And it caused some awareness of that.
You've done that and whatever. I've I haven't actually gone through that process with the one I wanna give my parents yet. But, so, yeah, pretty cool.
Aaron
Anti glare matte screen matte finish screen. That's what I was looking for. Yep. Because the old ones the old ones were bad. It was very clearly LCD,
Ian
like Right.
Aaron
Super bright reflective screen.
Ian
Yeah. No. It's it's pretty good. I mean, obviously, it's still, like, a backlit photo as compared to, like, the one on your wall that's not quite like that. But, but otherwise, it looks really good.
I I I like it.
Aaron
Alright. Cool. I like it.
Ian
Yeah. There you go. Product recommendation. Alright. I don't know.
Anything else?
Aaron
No. I don't think we're
Ian
all ground. We managed to a lot of ground. Technical, but, we got a few little chat gbt technical things in. And,
Aaron
we mentioned we mentioned it briefly, but Taylor's back on the sauce. He he quit Coke 0 for a week and tweeted today the, like, the 5 things I learned about quitting. He's like, life sucks without Coke.
Ian
Yeah. So he's a Coke hero, man. So now I understand the difference, though.
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
If I was going to get into that game, I would definitely be I would just go probably real Coke. But if I didn't, for some reason, wanna go real Coke, I would definitely do Coke 0. I would not die. But yeah. You know, the Coke 0.
You gotta have what you gotta have. You gotta have some vices. Right? Everybody's gotta have a few vices.
Aaron
Speaking of vices, have we talked about this zen stuff?
Ian
I don't know what you're talking about. So I don't know.
Aaron
Z y n. Maybe it's z y n n. No. Just z y n. Nicotine pouches.
Ian
Okay. I do not know about
Aaron
these. Nicotine?
Ian
Are you a nicotine guy? Have you ever smoked
Aaron
or done anything? No.
Ian
Maybe this is the time.
Aaron
Yeah. Maybe this is the time.
Ian
I think I mean, this website is all time awesome. I absolutely love this website.
Aaron
Are you getting the full product contains nicotine warning?
Ian
Like, there's nothing. It's just like a login screen, and
Aaron
it's login and f t a. Yeah.
Ian
It's amazing. I can't even yeah.
Aaron
I'm not gonna get past it because I'm not gonna register for
Ian
Well, no. There is a sidebar menu, but I don't think it talks about the products anywhere. It's, like, the reward pro oh, no. I guess you can't I'm
Aaron
only getting logged in. Everything I click, I have to log in.
Ian
I guess they want only be 21.
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
Where did you you just saw this around, I take it? This is, like, a thing? Yeah.
Aaron
I just saw it around. Cool kids on Twitter using Zen.
Ian
Who's smoking? Who's using nicotine? I thought we were done. I thought a place, like, on the v
Aaron
or whatever.
Ian
It's different. I let me just tell you. A three letter dot com. I mean, right there, I'm impressed already. Like, this makes me wanna smoke.
Like, get these pouches.
Aaron
It's not smoke. It's a pouch.
Ian
I could just slap it on and I think it's gonna hop you up. I don't think you should get this. I think when you get, you know, nicotine, if you're not used to it, it's gonna have a caffeination type effect on you. I believe.
Aaron
I know. Doesn't that sound awesome?
Ian
Just go all in. Don't you wanna be a guy just like you're like, imagine you're in the seventies. You're just going all in on all the bices. You're just gonna go out on like drinking. You're just gonna be smoking, drinking, partying, riding the hog around the long straight highways of Texas.
That's what you're gonna be doing. You're gonna have a leather jacket,
Aaron
Man, smoking's cool.
Ian
If I could
Aaron
have, like, a leather if I could have, like, a leather jacket Woah. And a freaking cigarette hanging out, I would be the king of cool.
Ian
You're James Dean. We already decided that. Dean.
Aaron
No. I can't smoke. Smoking's terrible for you.
Ian
Man, I don't you love this website? This website is fabulous. This huge warning at the top. It's just like
Aaron
pass. I'm yeah.
Ian
I'm not So good.
Aaron
I'm on Google Images now.
Ian
It's perfect. It's this might be the perfect website. It's so good. I just love this website. This is what a website's supposed to be.
You know what? There's nothing fancy. It's a huge ass banner at the top that says this will kill you and log in to
Aaron
us. In here. And you know you know, they built this log in. They didn't outsource this to some to some
Ian
Oh, no.
Aaron
VC back. Fancy. Freaking. Yeah. Bcrypt the passwords and check it against the database.
What's the problem, Ian, with nicotine? Tell me why nicotine's bad.
Ian
Well, I mean, I think it's addictive, and it's bad for you. Like, I don't know. I've used vodka. I think it's worse because it's, like
Aaron
Agree.
Ian
Actually getting into your lungs.
Aaron
And all the other stuff.
Ian
You got here? Yeah.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah. Listen to us for sure. This is medical advice.
Ian
Know if the nicotine in and of it itself, if you're just injecting it into your blood, through your skin is actually bad for you or if it's only in smoke form. I kind of think it might at least it's I'm pretty sure it's definitely worse for you in smoke form. So I guess the upgrade the bad
Aaron
part. Right?
Ian
Right. And I think just And, like, the tar, the hot stuff. Smoke. Yeah. Tars and stuff getting inside your lungs is bad.
So if you do it this way, it's probably better, I guess. But see, to me, I don't know. I don't know if you do you have you known a lot of smokers in your life?
Aaron
No. No. Not even Okay. Not even hardly any.
Ian
Okay. So I've known a lot of smokers. And, the thing about smoking is like the nicotine is part of it, but like a huge part of it is like the social and physical aspects to it. Like you're holding this thing, you're inhaling this thing. You're bumming cigarettes off people outside of a building.
You're like, it's there is a whole, like, cultural aspect to it that is part of, like, the addiction and the appeal. Mhmm. That, like, hey. I just slapped this patch on me. I don't think it's going to satisfy.
Obviously, like, you're trying to if you're just using this to get off of smoking, that's, like, a different sort of thing, and you're trying to at least get through the chemical part of the addiction. But I don't know. I'm not gonna be the most
Aaron
popping us in.
Ian
Yeah. Well, yeah. Exactly. Like, you're not gonna be like, hey. Let me bum bum a cigarette off you, and let's sit outside this building and smoke and chat and make a single serving friend, because I I got a cigarette off.
Yeah. That was a whole
Aaron
thing. Interesting.
Ian
I saw it a million times.
Aaron
That's how
Ian
it was in the old days.
Aaron
Yeah. It sounds like the word on the street to me. Alright. So we'll hold off. We'll hold off.
I won't become a nicotine guy.
Ian
You might wanna wait till you get other things settled down a little and then start the nicotine. I just, you know Are you a cigar guy? Kinda bad. Cigar? I like a cigar.
Aaron
Cigars are gross.
Ian
Oh, no. Cigar is good. Cigar with a scotch? Living, man.
Aaron
Scotch is gross. Scotch gross. Tastes like a campfire.
Ian
Well, if you get bad scotch, that's true. But if you get good
Aaron
scotch All Scotch all scotch and all mezcal tastes like a charred end of a stick.
Ian
Now you get the Macallan goes that it's so sweet and delicious.
Aaron
Petey. It's too petey. No.
Ian
That's so good.
Aaron
I don't want petey.
Ian
Want the McAllen. That's great.
Aaron
And when I go when I go to a fan when I go to a fancy cocktail bar and they're like, we can make you a smoky old fashioned. I'm like, don't. I don't want that. Don't put my old fashioned in a little container and then smoke it and charge me an extra $4 for it. I don't want that.
Ian
I'm not a big fan of smoke, flavor and things. I tend to not like the PD smoky, scotches. But, I like the Glenlivet. It's okay. But the ones that are heavier or the ones that are more, like, chemically, I don't really care for.
But the Macallan is just so sweet. It's not even PB at all.
Aaron
You can bring some to Laricon and I'll try it, but I'm not, I'm not guaranteeing anything.
Ian
That's what we'll do.
Aaron
I wish I
Ian
had started up pre COVID. The, the going for like the good ones were like $200 bottle, 2.50. Now it's, like, 500. Like, no.
Aaron
Oh, okay. Don't bring it to Lyricon. I don't wanna
Ian
We'll we'll have we'll have some. I'll bring you a bottle. Okay. We'll sit and get drunk on the Macau. It'll be great.
Aaron
And we'll we'll throw in some zens and walk around and make some friends.
Ian
Here's your patch. We'll get we'll get zins. We'll get zins with our logo printed on them, and we could just be in denial.
Aaron
Can you imagine walking up to, like, an awesome group of smokers who are just, like, as cool as ever and be like, in a way, I am also smoking because I have a zen, So we're the same. Oh, this
Ian
is weird. They're totally taking over. It's so funny.
Aaron
Oh, man. Ian, read us out.
Ian
Oh, man. Oh, no. Wait. What's going on here? Things are happening.
Alright. I say we'll drop it there. Let's see. Get my little list of, things to read through. Alright.
Follow us on mostlytechnical.com, on the Twitter at mostly tech pod, and, email us at mostlytechnicalpodcast@gmail, and we will probably read it and, talk about it on the show. Thanks, everybody. Have a good week.
Aaron
See you.
Ian
See you.