Mostly Technical · Mar 11, 2025
Ian and Aaron talk about scheduling your day, Aaron's newsletter, setting big goals, and a whole more.
Sponsored by: Bento https://bentonow.com/ Stream https://getstream.io/chat/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=&utm_campaign=mostlytechnical Laravel Cloud https://cloud.laravel.com/ PHP Tek 2025 https://phptek.io/
Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.
00:00 Small Meals Guy 05:44 The Schedule 19:55 Lifetime Goals 28:56 Aaron's Newsletter 46:27 A Potential AI Winner 52:57 Fully Accommodated
Ian
Hello? Good morning. How are we doing? Pretty good. Got a haircut.
Yeah. You're looking fresh.
Aaron
Fresh. I have them go a little shorter.
Ian
Yeah. You're so hip. You're so young.
Aaron
Cut those grays out. Yeah. It looks great.
Ian
I I have bad news about the beard. The grays are still coming through just a little bit. Yeah. I don't know how to break it to you.
Aaron
My daughter is always like, you gotta shave the beard off and, like, then you'll look so much younger, but Why? The beard is, like, hard
Ian
of, you
Aaron
know? I know.
Ian
Who cares?
Aaron
Than anybody. Yeah. Yeah. Fine. I know.
I don't like you know, the thing is, it's almost I'm almost ready to, like I just want it to be all gray on the beard because, you know, it's, like, blotchy. It's not even, like, really, Like, there's gray in different spots on the different sides.
Ian
Just You know, this is this is interesting. Is there a is there a reverse just for men? I mean, I guess that would be just for women, but I'm thinking reverse on a different axis. The different axis is instead of hiding the grays, turning them all gray.
Aaron
I guarantee you there is. There has to be.
Ian
I guess they just call that hair dye.
Aaron
Yeah. Probably hair dye. And maybe even maybe even the just for men has one. Right? Because, like, you're gonna get to a point too where it's like, oh, it's, like, 90% gray.
You just have, like, a blotch of dark black beard, and I can see people being like, I just wanna, like, cover that blotch.
Ian
You know who looks you know who looks great gray? This is a weird start to the show. You know who looks great as a gray man?
Aaron
Exactly who you're gonna say.
Ian
Who am I gonna say?
Aaron
You're gonna say Chris. He's got a Chris.
Ian
I wasn't gonna say Chris. Gray? Okay. But Chris has a magical type of sheen.
Aaron
He does have a sheen.
Ian
I It's almost like ethereal. Yeah. That doesn't count. That doesn't count.
Aaron
Number or something.
Ian
It is. It's like one of it's one of those cars that when you drive by it, it changes colors, and you're like, what
Aaron
is it?
Ian
I can't tell what color that is. So Max,
Aaron
I'm like, is it is it actually gray, or is it blonde, but it's crazy blonde? I don't know.
Ian
It's iridescent. That's the word. Yes. Iridescent. Okay.
Yeah.
Aaron
So it's not good.
Ian
So congrats, Chris. Steve Carell.
Aaron
Okay. Steve Carell. Oh, yeah. Okay. I haven't
Ian
looked like Steve Carell. Office. You know, he was he was Michael Scott for so long. They fixed him between seasons one and two. But then, you know, after the office, he he let it go gray.
He It looks great. Looks awesome. I love to look like that when I'm old.
Aaron
Oh, he's in shape too. You know, he's still staying there.
Ian
See, that's how they get you.
Aaron
Yeah. That that covers a whole lot.
Ian
It's almost as if that covers a whole lot.
Aaron
I'm working on that part. I gotta get a little trimmer. You working out? My gallbladder weight. Nah.
I'm doing my walking, you know, but I'm I'm trying to watch what I eat. I'm trying to eat less. You know? That's the thing. You gotta eat less.
That's the only way. Everything else
Ian
That's the only thing.
Aaron
Everything else is nothing. Right? You gotta eat less. So I
Ian
know. But eating is so fun.
Aaron
I know. That's so I've in the past, I've successfully messed with my eating a few times. And so, like, just dieting, that's useless. Right? You can't think about that way.
Or, like, even the idea of eating less, also useless because, like, at the end of the day, you're gonna have a food in front of you, and you're gonna wanna eat it. Right? So, like
Ian
Yeah. You watch what you eat. I eat what I watch. Anything nearby, I'm eating it, baby.
Aaron
So you gotta have a shtick. Okay? You gotta have rules.
Ian
Mhmm.
Aaron
So the new rules that I'm working with, right, and the new persona I've developed for this. Right? And this is kinda how I dealt with And this is getting in coffee. Coffee. Yeah.
So coffee, I became no caffeine guy. Right? I'm no caffeine guy, and that's it. That's who I am.
Ian
Because you can't betray an identity.
Aaron
Right. And so who I am now with this, this is just very recent. So we'll see how it goes. I am small meal guy. So I am like many small meal guy.
So, like, at at dinner, I'll have small. And if I get hungry later, I'll have a snack later too. Like, that's fine. I'm I'm mentally preparing myself to eat five or six times. Whereas I tend to be three squares, god.
Like, give me three squares, big You
Ian
are of a certain generation. Three squares is a
Aaron
pretty big
Ian
deal. Yeah.
Aaron
The government told me I got a Yeah. Exactly. Triangle and the plate.
Ian
Three squares mostly bread. Yeah. Right.
Aaron
Yeah. Exactly. So limiting what you eat is really tricky. So it's like, okay. If I don't have sweet thing, that's fine.
But it's like that's its own little meal, and that's it. Like, we're not like and if I have dinner, it's like, I have a little bit of everything, and that's fine. But, like, I'm small meal guy. So we're gonna see if I could stick with this small meal.
Ian
We do we do like a guy, so that's good. Being being a guy is very helpful. Small meals guy is interesting. This this is it's reminding me of small naps guy who's like, oh, yeah. I do that.
I don't sleep. I just nap every three hours for twenty minutes. Yeah. This is admittedly less extreme and way more healthy. But small meals, small naps, you you could be you could be a bunch of different guys.
Aaron
Yeah. You could be more than one guy. That's fine. So that's that's my current play on it is small meal guy. Where you're gonna
Ian
see how
Aaron
that goes. Yeah.
Ian
I like I like a thread, so we'll have to keep this small meal guy thread going for at least one week when you say, I'm not I'm not small meal guy. Giant. Three squares.
Aaron
Well, you know, here's the thing. It's because, like, the gallbladder is sort of enforcement. The gallbladder never ends. Right? You think you hack it out and you're done with it.
You're not done. So when you're not a gallbladder
Ian
at this point.
Aaron
Ghostbladder, your body doesn't really like the big meals when you don't have a gallbladder. So, like, it's not things don't operate quite as efficiently as they used to and stuff like that. And so it's like so so I do have a little extra motivation that like leveling out the food in your system is better and not having like the big spikes, which is just better for everybody in general, but like for me, especially, so I got a little motivation there. Wanna lose a few pounds. See how it goes.
Ian
Got the haircut. You're gonna dye the beard gray. You're a you're a you're a whole new man.
Aaron
Small small meal.
Ian
You don't even know. You gotta get your touch phrase down. Yeah.
Aaron
I gotta get I gotta get it. It's not quite the business level. Yeah. But we got it. We're good.
Ian
Small plates guy.
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
Alright. Well, I got I got a few things. Where do you where do you wanna start today?
Aaron
I don't know. Well, you got this newsletter I saw. So what's the deal with newsletter, Taj?
Ian
Do you have the newsletter? So We do have the newsletter.
Aaron
And then I'll I'll
Ian
new stuff. Yeah. New stuff. All of that. It's okay.
Okay. I didn't put it on the board, but I have another topic that I wanna discuss. And it's, it's the exploit explore schedule. So we can we can come back
Aaron
to that one. We definitely should be on the board. You have other things on the board.
Ian
I just forgot. I just forgot. It's okay. It's good.
Aaron
Well, we can start with that if you prefer.
Ian
Let's start with that, and then we'll hit them with the newsletter. So that in the biz is called is called a tease. So stick around for the newsletter talk. Okay. So last week, we finished the show.
So if if y'all didn't get to the end of the show, well, joke's on you. So we finished the show last week with a discussion about how to correctly partition time. You know, we talked about Sanderson, and Yeah. We both fawned over him for a while and then tried to figure out how to make that work for our lives. Yep.
Okay. So this week, I this past week, I executed a strategy. Of course, it has a name. Of course, it has a name.
Aaron
Execute it.
Ian
We execute a strategy. It has a name.
Aaron
You gotta have a name.
Ian
We've talked many times about explore, exploit Yes. On the pod. You know? Look for something new that could be valuable and mine something that you already know is working. That's the exploit side.
So this past week, I worked on an exploit explore schedule. So in the mornings up until about well, the goal was you'll be pleased to hear this. Up until about 2PM, I was supposed to be exploiting, which means just doing things that we know will move the needle,
Aaron
will make courses,
Ian
whatever that number go up. Yes. Exactly. So the goal was to do that until 2PM. Okay.
Oftentimes, it just kept going.
Aaron
Continued on.
Ian
I just spent most of the day doing the things I should be doing. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? So here's the here's the strategy, or here's the point. And this this does borrow from Sanderson a little bit and his, his mental setup, which is like, all I have to do is the thing I have to do, and then I can do anything I want to do.
Right? That's it. It doesn't matter if I write I don't know what his number is. 2,000 words that suck. I can go play video games for the rest of my day, and I am a success.
Yeah. I have historically been doing it the opposite direction, which, of course, bleeds over into the entire day being exploration. And then you get done and you're like, I'm so busy. I can't do anything. I didn't get anything done.
Yes. You're tired. You're mad. Right. So I would typically come in and just, like, tinker and fiddle and be like, Oh, I could fix that.
Or let me see if this works. And let me work on, you know, let me work on some esoteric open source bugs. And then it's like, Well, there there goes today.
Aaron
It's already noon. Yeah.
Ian
Man, it's way past noon. It's awful. So I switched it, and I said, okay. I'm gonna come in. First thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna record course videos.
So we are working on screencasting.com right now.
Aaron
Hold hold on one second. One second. Okay. So what's the schedule? Like, was the schedule just the flat?
I'm gonna work till 2PM. Every day, the the schedule is the same. Work till 2PM on the exploiting and then the time.
Ian
So that that was the plan. I didn't stick to the plan, but in the good direction.
Aaron
Right. Right. Well, that's crazy. It's good or not good, but I see what you're saying. Yes.
We'll see
Ian
you've got the exploit energy now. It'll balance out. Yeah. So the plan was come in every day and until two work on something that you're like you're certain will move the business needle forward. Mixed metaphor.
So that's that was the plan. So I came in this week and I sat down. And every, every day I came in, I recorded videos for screencasting.com, which is what we're working on right now. I think last week I got 38 videos done.
Aaron
Holy cow. That's crazy.
Ian
I know. What's that? I don't know.
Aaron
Imagine there's not productivity all year long. That's what
Ian
I'm saying. So it might be working. But Sanders just
Aaron
comes to
Ian
the I know. I gotta be more like Sanderson. I gotta You gotta be out
Aaron
there evangelizing him now. I got
Ian
$40,000,000 is what I gotta get. You're working. I'm just a few steps behind him. So yeah. And then in the afternoon, I was free to, like, explore, work on, you know, anything else that I wanted to work on.
And now moving forward, it won't just be, like, it won't just be recording videos. There are other things I need to do that, like, are clearly exploitative, which is, like, I do need to work diligently on open source. That falls into that. But only existing open source falls into exploit. Explore would be new stuff, and I'm I'm not doing that right now.
Yeah.
Aaron
I think you're good on open source library.
Ian
We're good there. Exploit would also be, like, migrating the platform from lemon squeezy to Stripe because lemon squeezy is not great. It's imploding and it's owned by Stripe now. So what are we doing here? So that's the kind of stuff that falls into that morning bucket.
And then the afternoon bucket's like, I don't know, man. Do whatever you want.
Aaron
I love it. I have no notes here.
Ian
No notes. I got a no notes.
Aaron
No notes. What time do you start working usually?
Ian
I try to be here by eight. Oh, wow.
Aaron
Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that's plenty of time.
Yeah. So, I mean, you're so productive. And a lot of your stuff is, like, interesting because it's, like, it is, like, ten, fifteen minute videos. And I know it takes more than obviously, it's gonna take you an hour, two hours Yeah. Potentially, whatever to make one.
But, like, you could get two or three or four YouTube videos done in a strong session. Right? I know. If you're on YouTube video day or whatever. Right?
Or like, which is the other thing with your stuff too. It's sort of interesting is, like, the thing was where, like, the open source even like, any of the coding stuff, I think the quicker you can sort of get rid of some of that, with, like, hired help or whatever. Yeah. I mean, it's, like, the kind of thing where, like, it's not because forget if it's even good or bad for business. It's just that, like, when you get into code, it just sucks up your time.
You know? It's like whatever. There's a bug and and all of a sudden it's been three hours or, like, yeah. Oh, you see, should we factor this thing? And now that's
Ian
a pretty long thing. Three weeks.
Aaron
Yeah. Exactly. Like, you get sucked into it because that's just the nature of it, and there's no discrete endpoints ever. Correct. Whereas, like, when you're making videos, it's like, oh, like, I made these videos, and now they exist.
Right? Whereas, like, the software is like, yeah. There's already probably 500 issues. Right? And, like, requests and all this stuff.
But stuff you just want to
Ian
know this before. We love a finishable project.
Aaron
Yes. I love a finishable project. So, like
Ian
We love that.
Aaron
The more you're in finishable project land, it's, like, better for your own psyche, and you're just accomplishing things that are firm. Whereas, like Yes. It's that's the thing with software. It's like any new feature, what the ROI in any feature is very dubious. Right?
Like, there occasionally, there's one that's like, oh, that that really changes everything, and you're gonna get so much more adoption. But, like, 95% of the time, you're like, I built this feature. Some people like it kind of, you know, I don't know. I don't even know if anybody's using it. Like, you know, like, that's, like, how it ends up being.
And that's, like, a lot of time then spent on stuff of, like, dubious ROI. No. But that's not I love this breakdown because some of that maybe some of that is even in exploration time because it's like Yeah. Like, this feature, I wanna build it because it's cool. Who the hell knows if it's gonna help any of these things succeed?
So I'll shove that in exploration time because it's a little more dubious and then I can have, you know, just maybe bug fixing and then like videos and like things that are more concretely helping in, you know, the mining time or whatever
Ian
you would. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Aaron
Exploitation time. Cool. I think that's great. And I love it. It's good.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's really simple. It's like 2PM.
It's a nice it's nice line. It's, like, more than half a day, but still gives a good chunk behind it to actually get some things accomplished in exploration time. And
Ian
Yeah. I thought about complicated. I thought about, like, you know, breaking it down block by block for projects and putting them on the calendar, and I thought I'm never ever ever gonna stick to that. Yeah. There's no chance.
And there's no way to, like, even correctly plan for that upfront. There's it's just impossible to do.
Aaron
Yeah. I think it's just too much. But even if you even wider but still more structured, I think might not be I I didn't I think this is just, like, perfect. It's like Yeah. You can still go where you wanna go.
Like, I wanna do courses this week or maybe I wanna do YouTube videos or I wanna do you know, you can still have that flexibility to move around. It's not, like, so structured, but at the same time, there is still a limited world of things you would ever do in this part of the day. And so it's also not where you're gonna just totally wander off on something.
Ian
Yeah. I wonder if I wonder if the real the thing that matters from this strategy is that I've restricted the first thing that I can work on when I get here. That may be the only thing that matters
Aaron
main thing.
Ian
From this whole strategy is when you come to work, you cannot start with a bug that could potentially literally take you until 06:30PM when you're Right. Going home.
Aaron
Yep. Or
Ian
That may be the only point of this whole thing that is relevant.
Aaron
I have three things I can work on or whatever it is. I have a small world of things. You're always gonna have a sense of which one's the most critical anyway. Right? So it's like, well, that one's probably gonna get more attention on most of the days, and that'll all naturally work out correctly, for the most part.
So I love it. I think it's great. I mean, I had another question on it, and now I came over. I hate when that happens. Oh, yes.
It was. So you went to so you went into overtime, though?
Ian
I did go into overtime. Yeah. Because, I think I think this is a momentum game. And it felt like once I had the momentum going, I was like
Aaron
Keep going.
Ian
It's not that bad. Let's just keep going. Also It it works that it also points to this being a good start the day strategy because momentum works the other way around. If it's 2PM and it's like, alright, time to switch to exploit mode, time to record a video. It's gonna be like, oh, getting the momentum up for that is very difficult.
Aaron
That's exactly what I was just gonna say. Like, the the order is also perfect because you just want like, when you're in momentum mode and overflowing, you want that to be on the more sure thing, generally speaking. Right? And then, like, yeah. And then other times, you'll stop and work on exploration, and that's great, and do a live stream or do whatever, and that's all good.
But, yeah, I think that order is critical, actually, like, to make it all work right. And, yeah, I love this idea. I wanna stick I gotta I might have to steal this. I don't have exactly the same thing, but I have I have a variation on it that I could play with potentially. So I like that idea.
Ian
Alright. I'm influencing.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Wow. Okay.
So week one in the bag. Very successful. You have to write Sanderson a beautiful handwritten letter.
Ian
I will. Is he where is he physically? Is he he's not in Texas, is he?
Aaron
No. He's outside of Salt Lake City.
Ian
There you go. That's right. Yeah. I knew he was somewhere with a lot of land. Oh, yeah.
That's okay. Open country. Yeah. Great. Very, very happy about it.
Feels better at the end of every day.
Aaron
Yes. That's the thing. I do love when you get in those zones where it's like, oh, yeah. Like, I accomplished something Yeah. Real here.
Like, I kinda I kinda gotten that with the HubSpot website recently because we got it done and, like, not it's not up yet, but Will King is designing it and things are being designed and all that. But it's, like, I kinda got in a groove with it, got it done finally. And it was like, oh, every day I was like making solid progress on it. It's like, oh, yes. Progress.
And towards something that's even the website shouldn't really ever be done done, but it'll be done done enough to ship and then continue on with it. I actually don't wanna get in done with it mode because that's how I usually approach it. And then I'm done with it, and I don't go back to it. And I don't wanna do that this time. So Mhmm.
Wanna keep working on the website, but, but at least it'll be done to shippable, and that'll be nice. So, yeah, that when you get in those grooves, so nice. I love that stuff. I was gonna say my son actually wrote Sanderson a letter Really? Years ago.
And he used to when he started on YouTube, he would do these live streams, which he still does sometimes, but he would, like, take banned letters and stuff, which I haven't seen him do in a long time. But my son, yeah, wrote told him, his fave his favorite book and all this stuff. And Sanderson, like, signed his letter and gave him, like, a it's hard to describe. But basically, like, when Sanderson does the leather bounds, he signs them. And the way they do that is, like, they take they print just the, like, it's like a four way page thing, and they just sign those pieces of paper.
And then they send it off to the binder, and it gets bound in. So he sent him one of those. He sent him the pen you did the signature with. So my son's got this whole little shrine of Sanderson where all of his stuff that was read on air and signed and all that stuff.
Ian
I'm getting emails from Jake Tapper, and he's getting a whole, like, swag set of signed goods from Sanderson. I'm doing I'm doing something wrong here.
Aaron
Gotta write Sanderson a letter. I think that he was he was this big it was it's crazy because it was, like, probably six or seven years ago now, I guess. It's like my son was probably, like, seven. But he's so much bigger now than he was even just then, so it's it's it might be harder to actually get ahold of him. But,
Ian
yeah. I think one of the only YouTube shorts I've ever watched was a few weeks ago, maybe last week, and it was of Sanderson talking about something, but he was signing while he was talking. He always saw
Aaron
it.
Ian
I think I saw I think I saw those signature sheets while he was talking. I thought, oh, that's clever that they do it pre binding.
Aaron
So he is this is where he is, like, he's very efficient like that. Right? So he's like, okay. That's why he started doing YouTube, actually, is because he had all these things to sign. And he was like, well, I don't wanna like, he used to just sit
Ian
and sign them. And he said, yes.
Aaron
Instead of just sitting here and signing these for hours and hours because it's like some of the you know, 50,000, a hundred thousand he's signing. And it takes weeks and months or whatever. So he's like, let's do YouTube while I'm here, and we'll stream and I'll answer questions and, like, whatever. Or he also does, like, a podcast podcast with this other guy. And so when he streams or does the podcast, he's signing the whole like, literally the whole time.
And you see people running in and out with, like, taking away the piles and bringing them new piles, and he's just he's just double dipping.
Ian
It's like God. That is totally the dream.
Aaron
So good. Yeah.
Ian
Good for him.
Aaron
Yep. Great. Great. Mister efficiency. You got those big goals.
I don't know. I feel like what do you what's your deal on goals?
Ian
What what do you mean what's my deal on goals? What are you talking about?
Aaron
Don't don't
Ian
give me that. Don't give me that skepticism.
Aaron
Hold on. Before we get the goals, I wanna thank today's sponsors, which is, Bento, our friends at Bento, the refreshingly better email marketing platform. Our friend, Jesse at Bento apparently got stabbed in the eye with a fork. I don't I don't have any more details on that, but
Ian
By by his two year old daughter.
Aaron
By his two year old. Not not an act of vengeance. It seemed like the eye is gonna be okay. It was the impression I
Ian
That's the impression I got. But, yeah, it looks pretty.
Aaron
Shout out to Jesse. Hopefully, the eye repairs, and you just got a cool past for a while, and it's all good. But, I've I've had that fear a million times. Obviously, the, the two year old ISAB. Okay.
And, also by PHP Tech twenty twenty five, the conference for continuing education and community building building for PHP developers. Check them out at phptech.io. Thanks to the sponsor.
Ian
And friend of the pod, Daniel Colbourne, will be speaking at PHP Tech. Yes. Yes. If you wanna go if you wanna go corner him and ask him questions about, event sourcing, PHP Tech, that's the place to be.
Aaron
Where is PHP Tech? I don't know if I remember. Do we do we look at that, actually?
Ian
Yeah. I looked it up last week. I think I said it was Chicago, I think.
Aaron
Okay. I think that's usually where it is.
Ian
Is that right?
Aaron
I haven't been to, like, a pure PHP event in a really long time. I did used to go occasionally, but I don't know. I just stay in the Laravel world. Alright. So what's your I'm
Ian
happy to see that pure PHP conferences are still around.
Aaron
Okay. It is. Goals. Long term goals. So like Sanderson, he's got the long term goal.
He's like, I wanna write this huge series of novels. It's gonna take me till I'm 75. I have it planned out that way. Same goal. And I'm like building all of these structures around me to, like, make that a possibility.
So anyway, long term goals.
Ian
His I need to hear about this story first. He wants to build, like, a singular or I guess all the same universe series of stories.
Aaron
His universe is called the Cosmere. Most of his books take place in it. The ones that don't are actually awesome too, but, like, most of the books take place in it. All the ones you've been recommended, I think so far take place in it. And so they're all in, they're separate individual stories.
It's a really amazing idea. Does this it's so you could just read the story that you're in and it's fine. But if you read, the other stories, then you'll start to see the overlap and characters go between and magic go between and stuffs interconnected. And I do say, so I'm rereading his fifth book right now in the, like, kind of his main, main series, the stormlight archive. And I think it's on the border a little bit of getting away from him.
Cause there's just like thousands of character. It's it's a little intense. But this is the end of an arc. So he's got in this main line series is five books in the first arc, and it's gonna be a second arc of five books.
Ian
Good. So
Aaron
he's gonna be the first arc. And all of these are, like, four to 500,000 words. So it'd be like the equivalent of, like, four or five, six novels of a normal length. Yeah. Let's see.
Yeah. So he's building this whole thing. The last series is gonna reset with the new arc. So I think, hopefully, it comes a little a little more under control. I think it got away from a little hair here.
But, anyway, yes. So he's got this Cosmere. The The story of the Cosmere is gonna take him his whole life to finish. And, you know, he's got a Wiki with all the, like, information.
Ian
I heard about that in in internal or at least I think some of it's internal. Yeah.
Aaron
It's all internal. Yeah. You can't go check it out. But it's got, like, you know. So I think he does have plans if he doesn't make it the whole way or whatever.
But, like, that's his plan. He's got this crazy goal. He's halfway there, basically, but he's got, like, another twenty five, thirty years to go on it. So, you know, that's a great like, I had the goal, like, you know, had the family, get the house, start a business, which now I'm kinda like I checked a lot of those boxes.
Ian
Behind you.
Aaron
Yeah. Exactly. So I'm like, man, I maybe I needed, like, a lifetime goal. Like, what's what's the next job to be like? Yeah.
I know. That's the thing. It's like like retirement and all that stuff. That's, like, not a goal. You know?
That's, like, sort of a goal, but it's not, like, a goal goal. Like, a good accomplishment. So, like, I don't know. So what's your take on goals? Do you have a do you have a lifetime goal?
Ian
I don't think I have a lifetime goal.
Aaron
Okay.
Ian
At least not as as, discreet as Sanderson's. Yeah. I love a I love a big goal. I love a big dream. Yeah.
I think directionally, big goals for me would be, one, of course, make a ton of money. So that's that's big goal number one. But then get some, like, family property compound going.
Aaron
I love a compound.
Ian
I need a compound. Somewhere, like, maybe Northeast, maybe, like, Great Lakes, something like that. Something where
Aaron
compound that you live at or a vacation compound?
Ian
I think originally or to start, probably a vacation compound. Yeah. Something something Dan in real life esque. So if anyone has seen that movie with, Silver Fox, Steve Carell, Dan in real life is a great movie. But they go up you know, the grandparents have this house on the coast.
I think it's in, you know, Northeast somewhere. And all the family comes up, and they do crossword puzzles and make pancakes. And, like, that's that's directionally. That's the dream. I think along the route, there are other dreams, like, have land where I can, like, build stuff and, you know, do earthworks and that sort of thing.
I'm like or something. Yeah. And have a hobby garage where I can tinker, all of that kind of stuff. Yeah. But, yeah, nothing nothing is, like, crystal clear as, you know, whatever the Cosmere is, which seems nice.
Yeah.
Aaron
We have a I have the I've got, like, a house similar goal that we've talked about that, Jamie and I, about, like, yeah, the where are the kids gonna come back to Yes. When they're all out kind of thing, especially, which, like, it's kinda interesting because, like, when we have our current house, which is big enough for, like, the kids, although when they have families, I don't know if it's not really I mean Exactly. But it's not really ideal, I'd say, for that. But, but it's also, like, an expensive ish house, like, in terms of taxes and things like that. So it's not not ideal.
The place we traditionally go on to, like, vacation as a family's Martha's Vineyard, which not the best place to have a family vacation house because, like, they're all, like, $10,000,000. So, like, that part is not ideal. So well, that would have to change a little bit, but, yes, something where, like, all the family comes back to, I agree. Like, that's that is kind of a thing on our list also. Although I also kinda think it's a little bit different, you know, like, that's still kind of a money thing ultimately.
Like That
Ian
is a money thing for sure.
Aaron
It's like, well, we have enough money. We have a second house somewhere Yes. Whatever and big enough for everybody, and that's cool. It's not quite the same as, like, I wanna build the Cosmere, and it's like No.
Ian
It's not.
Aaron
A thing I've created. I agree. I mean, like, it's just a thing I could buy. Yeah. I don't know.
So you don't you don't have a long term goal. I'd like a mega long term goal, a full full life goal other than,
Ian
oh, I'm not doing all
Aaron
the standard stuff, raise your family, blah blah blah. Right. All that stuff.
Ian
All the blah blah blah. Yeah. I have all that. But Yeah. No.
No. I don't. And maybe I should.
Aaron
It seems like your kinda thing. I feel like you It does. You could have a, like, I want to accomplish x by the time I'm 70 or something like that.
Ian
I like that. I'll have to give that some consideration. Yeah. Because I do have all of my goals are pretty near term.
Aaron
Yeah. Like, you have the also thing, but that's already you're kind of, like Right. Sort of
Ian
That that again, that's exactly the one I was thinking of, but it's very near term. I don't know. That is a good question.
Aaron
I guess if you had, like I mean, obviously, that's a very very copying standards and kind of thing of, like, not Cosmere, but, like, I
Ian
I should write the Cosmere. Or something.
Aaron
You you write the nerd mirror or something like that. You know?
Ian
I think the Cosmere is the nerd mirror just for
Aaron
the record. Probably true. Yeah.
Ian
Yeah. Maybe something like you know, if if I find the process of writing enjoyable, maybe something a book number thing. Okay. Yeah. I don't know.
That's a good question. What's a lifetime goal? It's kind of a it's kind of a big question, isn't it?
Aaron
Right in below with your lifetime goals.
Ian
Yeah. Tell us what your lifetime goals are. And if they're any good, maybe I'll steal it. Maybe I'll steal it for myself. Yeah.
That's my goal now.
Aaron
It. Yeah. Yeah. I
Ian
made this.
Aaron
Invented. Even, like, Sanderson, like, people had big story arcs that there's another big fantasy guy who Sanderson actually took over for when he died. That kind of had
Ian
a similar. Yeah. The one thing I
Aaron
don't know if that guy had it as a life goal to begin with though. It took him his whole life, but
Ian
did not exactly the same
Aaron
as like having a life goal. So I don't know. But, you know, there are people out there who have these kind of things, but it's not it's not super common, I don't think. So outside of, again, like, standard, have a lot of money. So you can do whatever you want, which is fine, but also focuses you near term a lot kind of.
Ian
It does. Yeah.
Aaron
So alright. Alright. Well, it'll be interesting to see what the people say on that one.
Ian
Yeah. Tell us your life goals, and we'll tell you if they're any good. And if they're super good, they'll become my life goals.
Aaron
Then you'll be hearing about them Yeah. On the podcast. Yep. Exactly. Alright.
What do we got here?
Ian
Wanna do newsletter?
Aaron
Yeah. Sure. Let's do newsletter.
Ian
Let's do newsletter. Before we do newsletter, let's talk Stream. Stream is scalable APIs for chat, video, voice, feeds, and moderation. So scalable APIs for basically everything. Laravel.com.
You can find more at cloud.laravel.com. So a couple of good dev tools sponsoring the show. We love to see it. So thanks thanks to GetStream and Laravel Cloud. Alright.
Newsletter. Yes. You put you put this on here, so you tee us up.
Aaron
So you you, posted last week that you were gonna well, apparently, you send Steve awesome things you find on Twitter is my understanding.
Ian
All the time.
Aaron
Yeah. So you're harassing him with awesome things you find on Twitter.
Ian
Constantly.
Aaron
And then you thought it might be too annoying, but he said it's not annoying. Yep. And then I think this is gets a little fuzzy here for me, but it sounds like then you were like, hey. Let's put all this in a newsletter instead of just keeping it to ourselves.
Ian
Yep.
Aaron
And this will now be a weekly, I assume. Or is it daily? Weekly newsletter with Aaron's curated list of awesome things on Twitter. Basically, the way I look at this is that you're digging into Twitter so the rest of us don't have to. And, like, you've muted the bad stuff.
You've got your highly curated tools and techniques. You're gonna dig out the cool Laravel technology general interest stuff. You're gonna be like the drudge of the Laravel community where like you are pulling in interesting information. I assume maybe even beyond Twitter, I don't know if you're gonna be exclusively limited to Twitter. Just like when Aaron finds something that tickles his fancy.
Ian
Yes.
Aaron
It's going to go on the newsletter, and you will care you're going to be, dare I say, Peter Jennings of sort of the news here. Say. I dare say. I should
Ian
start smoking. Honestly.
Aaron
Yes. I mean, that sounds great. I love that.
Ian
Okay. Great. I thought I was I thought I was gonna get, I thought I was gonna get accosted here. So No. The story is the story is correct.
You you have accurate accurately recounted. So, I'm sending Steve stuff all the time. Poor guy. I don't know. You know?
I don't know if he ever logs off, but I sure don't. And so I'm just like, you know, it's Sunday night at 10PM, and I'm like, oh, look at this tweet. I just so, yeah, yeah, I'm sending him stuff all the time. I think this the inciting incident was I sent him one at, like, 7AM my time, which is 6AM his time. And, of course, he didn't respond until, you know, eight or whatever.
And I was like, yeah. I'm so sorry that I'd send you all this stuff at all hours of the day. Yeah. And that's when he was like, no. It's great.
I enjoy seeing Twitter through your eyes. Also, that's a pretty good newsletter idea. And I was like, that's a great newsletter idea.
Aaron
Great newsletter idea.
Ian
So yeah. So now what's happening is, I so we have a Slack channel just called tweets. And whenever I see something that I send to Steve, I will just drop it in that channel as well. And from that channel, our our Linda, who is Kelsey, picks up all the tweets and goes to a screenshot tool and makes, like, a pretty, you know, consistent looking screenshot out of it Yep. And then throws it into Lex.
Page. So we're using a we're using a AI writing service called Lex.page. And it's quite nice just detour on on Lex. It's quite nice because it is clearly created by writers and not by AI thread bros. And so their their whole thrust like, the main focus of Lex is we will we will be your writing assistant or your writing partner or your writing editor and not like, you don't have to write anymore.
You're freed from the shackles of expressing yourself. It's like, no. No. No. No.
You do the writing. We will help. And so we use Lex. Page for the newsletter because it kinda, like, learns from your previous newsletters and can start to match the tone and that sort of thing. So Oh, yeah.
Kelsey throws all the tweets into a newsletter template or, like, a just a new document per week. This will be week two. So she throws it into a new document, and we have the section, at the very top that's like, what? Anything on my mind this week? And so, like, I think last week, I talked about, how I spend my time because it was on my mind after mostly technical.
So I mentioned mostly technical linked to it, obviously. Said at the end of the show, talked about this. Here's how I've been trying to do it this week. Great. Now next, here are some tweets that caught my attention.
And so then it's a screenshot of the tweet and just, like, two or three sentences of why I think it's interesting or whatever. Yeah. And I think we did we did four or five, so it's not very many. It's not gonna be, like, 30 tweets. It's just, hey.
Here's a little here's a little sampling of what I found on the Internet. And then below that, a little bit about, like, what try hard is up to. And then there will be other sources. Like, there will be articles and maybe podcasts and stuff like that. But it feels like it feels like we had a need, and the need was we've gotta be sending more emails that are like, hey.
Here are all the things we're up to, and here's some interesting stuff that we're doing. But that's just not like I don't know. That's just like, you want me to subscribe to your company's brag list? Like, I I don't care about that. So I haven't I hadn't yet found a way to, like, do it in a way that I thought was valuable.
But wrapping it in this, like, this nugget is is pretty nice, I think, because it gives people a, like, a clear reason to subscribe. And if they don't like the try hard updates, they just don't read them. Like, they're either at the I think they're at the bottom. And so it's like you read them, you read all the interesting tweets, you know, thought perokes your thoughts. These guys are up to something.
I don't care. Let's move on. And so I feel like this is both a valuable way to deliver interesting information, and it's very, very low lift on my side. I can't write a newsletter every week that's like, you know, 500 words or a thousand words of, like, some novel insight. I just can't do that.
But I'm already spending too much time on Twitter and, you know, sending stuff to Steve. So why not send it to Kelsey too, and then we'll turn around and send it to everybody? So there you go. Feels great.
Aaron
It's good. Yeah. I was hoping you were automating it, and you are. So it's like you don't have to worry about it. So that's great.
You just do what you're already doing. It takes two extra seconds to drop it in Slack, and you're done. And, yeah, actually, I saw it, and then I forgot to sign up. So I just signed up this morning. So now I missed last week.
Ian
You missed last week.
Aaron
I know. But now I'm now I'm on it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's great.
Because like you said, like, we whenever you just send, like, stuff about your company, it's so, like, you know, it's for a certain audience wants that. Right? But it's, like, not broadly applicable. No.
Ian
It's not compelling to sign up.
Aaron
Yeah. So then that's what
Ian
Like, I can't I can't whether or not people enjoy getting it in their inboxes, I can't get anyone to sign up for company updates. You know? Alright.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah. I think it your stuff's kinda interesting because this is, like, Aaron updates more than, like, company updates on a certain if you position it that way, which I think would probably be the way to position it. So, like, you kind of have a little edge there on it, but still, I think that this then tied in with that makes so much more sense. It's like, oh, just interesting things I found on the Internet, and that's great.
And then plus, obviously, your stuff or whatever you Mhmm. Your big tweet of the week or whatever should always be in there, and that kind of things. I like it. I think this is kinda like what you were getting at with, like, when you were gonna do, like, the the pardon the interruption style thing.
Ian
I know.
Aaron
Like, this is, like Much lower lift. Accomplishable, you know, with the amount of time you can dedicate to it. Yeah. So, yeah, I I like that.
Ian
This is a good this is a good day for me. I've got I got one, I think, no contest, and then I got one. I I love it, and this is maybe my second. I love it from y'all today.
Aaron
Crazy. You've come back, and Ian is very concrete, if I may talk about myself in the third person. And, like, when you're in the walker. You're steady. Exploration land.
You know? Like, I'm like, Aaron, come come back. Like, I like when exploration Aaron, but I also like Aaron who's, like, shipping courses and doing stuff. So, like, this way, it's like, yeah. We're getting back into, yin and yang, the hormonal balance of Mhmm.
Where it's like, yeah, there's stuff happening. And this newsletter is now gonna ship forever because you're always gonna find five interesting things on Internet. And Kelsey's always just gonna be all put it together because it's gonna take her only ten minutes or whatever. It's not like this is a five hour project for her every week, and it's all gonna happen. And it's gonna be great, and it's gonna be additive.
People are gonna enjoy it. So I think it's it's perfect. That's right. Good marketing.
Ian
That's good. It's coming up all air and today, baby. It's gonna be a good week.
Aaron
So then so this tied to perfect because yesterday, I was like, I'm done with Twitter. Right? Yeah. Done. So I canceled the deactivated the account.
Ian
Right? You did.
Aaron
Deactivated. Gone. Oh. And I was like, this is perfect because, like, you and, like, there's, like, three or four other people that I'm like, they're really the only reason I go to Twitter and
Ian
oh, you're you're right.
Aaron
Oh, man. So I was like, now I will get your important tweets because you know another thing they've really screwed up with Jason and Gregory is there is no way to like feed a Twitter account as far as I could find to, like, an RSS feed, which is my No.
Ian
No. No. No. No. No.
No.
Aaron
No. No. Everything cut off from that. There is this there is some site I found. It's, like, you gotta pay them.
It's, like, $25 a month or whatever. I'm like, I'm not paying $25 a month for, like, Aaron's tweets to be fair to me.
Ian
Oh, okay. First of all,
Aaron
you didn't
Ian
you didn't have to name me. You could have named somebody else.
Aaron
You're the most important set of tweets I need to see. So I can always go in. Listen. I didn't like whatever. We have mostly technical.
I have a help spot account, which I don't do anything with. Like, whatever. I still have Twitter accounts. So I get to check-in on you, before the show and make sure I know what's up. But this is I like the newsletter idea too because it's like, oh, it's gonna be, like, shipped right to me very conveniently.
And you're going through all the hard work of picking out the, like, handful of actually interesting things I might have been slightly sad to miss. Now I'm not even gonna miss those because you are gonna deliver it to my end all.
Ian
Pressure. Pressure. I am the only source of Twitter for Ian now. No.
Aaron
It is. It's all it's all through you now, man.
Ian
So Okay. This is big.
Aaron
You know, the only thing that made me sad was, like, man, nineteen years. That's crazy. Like, nine That is crazy. Years on a website.
Ian
That is crazy.
Aaron
Active use for nineteen years. It's pretty crazy. So that part is a little crazy. But, yeah, it feels good. It's like too, so much negativity for me.
It's like, I can't go through what you've done and like create a 4,000 word mute list and do all that. Like that's not just not into that. And like that to me is not like Twitter. Like that's not the Twitter I feel like I wanna participate in. And, obviously, everybody has different opinions on us.
It's not a fault. I don't care about that. But, like, just for myself, like, I want the raw fire hose, the good and the bad. Like, give it all to me. And now it's just it's just I just can't do it.
So
Ian
It does I will I will admit. It does it does feel a little bit like I'm sticking a finger in the dam, and it's like, nope. This this will fix it. And then another one springs, and I'm like, I got it, guys. This past week has been awful on Twitter.
It's just been a disaster.
Aaron
Even with your mute list, you can't
Ian
Yes. I'm getting all kinds of, like, viral stake ads. I'm getting all kinds of, like, foreign language tweets. Like, if there was one blocked. If there was one filter, it's like, what language does this person speak?
Aaron
There you go.
Ian
And, you know, we don't even have to make it American centric. We can say what languages does this person speak. Because in other parts of the world, people speak more than one language. Sure. That's fine.
But here, I don't speak more than one language. I don't want tweets from Mexico or Japan or Indonesia. Like, I'm sure those are great tweets. I can't read them. That I just don't and what am I supposed to do with it?
Aaron
Like, they need the
Ian
views. We gotta bump
Aaron
the views. This guy we got nothing left to feed him since he's muted the only things people are talking about. And so we just gotta give him this
Ian
We'll feel it.
Aaron
About Trump, but it's in Japanese. So, like, it's fine. Dude.
Ian
Like, even if I loved, even if I loved Pakistan versus India cricket, which I don't, but I understand that that would be interesting. You have to show me those tweets in English.
Aaron
The I can translate that. I'm not gonna click the grok button. What am I gonna do? Sit there and
Ian
drop like a few tweets in a row that are all eight different languages. What what good is that? Between that and, like, let's let's Photoshop JD Vance's face on everybody, it was just That's
Aaron
kind of the best. That's the best I've seen in a while. That almost cut me because I was like, man, this is, like, the best meme in a long time. Just, like, the little chipmunk faces. But, yes, it's like, oh, that's all my feed is, is chipmunk faces of JD Vance, which I appreciate.
But
Ian
So annoying. So, yeah, it's not it's not been great. I'm candidly losing losing hope that it will ever turn around.
Aaron
I think there's. In the interest of people to turn it around in the way there's
Ian
a chance.
Aaron
You want it.
Ian
There's a chance they come along and some, you know, some cracked engineer at Twitter is like, oh, what if I did this? And, like, fundamentally changes the algorithm and Accidentally Yeah. Eliminates bots or something. There's a chance that they, like, go on a wild hare and just fix everything.
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
But my hopes are diminishing that it will it will be fixable.
Aaron
Yeah, man. Because what's even it's like I don't know. It's just so much between, like, the general negativity, right, which is, like, 90%.
Ian
That's human nature. Yeah. That's a problem.
Aaron
All the, like, everybody everything else is, like, I'm just angling to, like, play the algo. So even if you see something, like, positive, it's, like, still you know, everything is buried that you'd well, I'd wanna see, like, okay. Here's a new cool little Laravel thing somebody built. Like, that's bare I never see that anymore no matter what. So then it's like, okay.
So now it's just like all the other crap, and it's like, I don't know. It's just not it's just yeah. So maybe they'll fix it.
Ian
Maybe they'll fix it. I I
Aaron
would like to see it then.
Ian
I hope.
Aaron
I don't wanna see it done. It's like Twitter. It's like a huge older than my oldest child I've been using
Ian
I know. That long.
Aaron
Like, but but right now, it's like, I don't know. I wish there was also a way to, like, deactivate, I guess, without I don't know. I feel like the deactivation stuff is a little obviously, they're intentionally making you make a decision that's Yeah. Dominance. But
Ian
Scary.
Aaron
I feel like there's, like, a a better angle to that possibly that would even benefit them, but whatever. It is what it is. So you're you're you're in or you're out, and that's it.
Ian
So No. I I just want viral slap content and OnlyFans accounts to be just completely banned, just completely gone. Because every time you tweet something, the first, like, is from Daphne or whatever, and she has zero followers, zero following. And so
Aaron
That is another thing that got deleted.
Ian
Figure this out.
Aaron
That was totally another thing that I hit, which I haven't even seen that much of in the past, which is, like yes. So, like, anything I tweeted or even replies to people.
Ian
Yes.
Aaron
It's like somebody writes back, and I am their only follow or they have zero followers. And but they're commenting to I'm like, how is this account? This is like the lowest hanging of low fruit. Like, how can an account that was just created like, how can they just be randomly replying obvious just drip like, this is not you don't need AI. You don't need any this all seems fixable with just technology we had twenty years ago.
Ian
I don't know. Like I hate to I hate to say it, but I fully agree with you. And I think they're doing a I think they're doing a bad job, which, you know
Aaron
Because I don't think they care about doing a good job. Right? Like, it's like, how can we influence people in the ways we're interested in influencing them, and they're not really worried about, you know, a good experience for the user.
Ian
I don't know. I don't know what the problem is, but there is a problem.
Aaron
I mean, it's crazy. Anybody who uses it for a second is like, you just see that it's not, yeah, it's not great.
Ian
It's not, it's not great, Bob. It's not great. It's kind
Aaron
of another thing with like getting the links, not in the tweets is like, that's like interesting meta info that like you could use. And now I feel like that's disassociated. So it's like, well, yeah, we'll still like push this tweet. That's like an OnlyFans account, right, where the OnlyFans link is in the second tweet. It's like, no.
Just like, why are you showing me this? Like Yeah. Alright. So that's So
Ian
the newsletter. Yeah.
Aaron
I'm very excited about the newsletter. I think that's gonna be cool. Especially, I would I would expand just because, you know, you never know about Twitter, but also just there's other interesting things that I'm sure you come across. And so There are. I would make it to, like, Aaron's, you have good taste in these things, and I think that's valuable, and people will be interested in what you think is important enough to share.
So
Ian
Yeah. I think generally a curation angle is is correct. That's what we're going for.
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah. I would you do it like, make it available on the website at some point too? Yes.
Ian
Mhmm. Yeah.
Aaron
I think that'd be that'd be good. Yeah. I don't like when these things are buried only in newsletters, really.
Ian
I know. I don't either. Yeah. After we get a few issues up and we get the process for getting, getting the former issues out of Bento, Bento now Com, then we'll figure out how to get those on the website as well.
Aaron
Yep. Cool. Yeah. I like it. Alright.
What else we got? We got one more on the list here. We're you guys have a quote.
Ian
I've got a potential AI winner first.
Aaron
Oh, I kinda thought that was your other thing. Okay. What's the picture? I don't know.
Ian
So I've got a potential AI winner, and we we can we can end on this this quote, which is going to be posed as a question to you. We don't have long. So the potential AI winner, here's my, my thesis on who could win big from AI, and it's people who are prolific or have been prolific in the past. So here's here's something I've done recently, which is I have an idea for something I want to write.
Aaron
Mhmm.
Ian
I go to a GPT and Gemini, and I turn on deep search on both of those. Okay. And I say, here's the idea for the article that I want to write. Please go search aaronfrancis.com through all the podcast transcripts and find anytime I've talked about something kind of related to this and bring it up, surface it for me. Here's a bunch of articles I have written already.
Like, I've done all the work to write them. This is the tone, the style, the cadence you should use. Yep. And then, like, also go out and find things that either support or deny my point of view, and here is my point of view. Go.
And it, like, goes out and finds everything I've ever said about it. And I can go to grok and do the same thing on tweets. I can say, go find anything that Aaron has ever said on this topic. And so then I get three research reports, one from Grok, Gemini, and GPT. And then I turn those into PDFs, and I feed it into Claude and say, hey.
Here's research. Here's yeah. It's crazy. Here's a bunch of research that I did. Yeah.
I just lied to it. I said, here's a bunch of research that I did. Can you combine this into an article written in the voice of Aaron Francis, which is, you know, based on these eight articles. You can, you know, just pull out the voice, and it writes it just writes out the first draft of an article. And, you know, it's, like, 60% good, maybe 70.
But then I take it into Lex dot page, and I start just, like, changing everything, writing it as it should be. And I think it's, like, I have an unfair advantage here in that I have a lot of public words available that it can just, like, consume and kind of triangulate what I would write an article on it. It's crazy.
Aaron
Yeah. I totally agree. I think that everybody who's like, duh, I don't want my stuff in the AI. I feel like totally the wrong approach. It's like saying in 1999, you don't want your stuff in Google.
Like, I feel like, yeah, maybe that seemed like a good idea, but, like, in reality, like, this is gonna be the new authoritative source. Don't you wanna be the authority potentially in certain Yes. Segments, or for your name to come up when people are like, tell me about Laravel and whatever. I want Aaron Francis to be there. Right?
If I'm Aaron Francis. Like, I don't wanna not be in the index and hence not be included when people ask you questions like that. So, yeah, I totally agree.
Ian
I wanna be able to produce this is the rich get richer. This is the problem right
Aaron
here. Yes. Right. Then you can't even double down on it.
Ian
It gets
Aaron
me right as
Ian
you done a good job of, like, putting stuff out there. And because I have, now I can just outstrip everyone because I have all these tools that I can feed in my old stuff and help me produce new stuff even faster. It's that's the part that's like, man, this is this is a potential way that I could ride the wave and not be crushed by it.
Aaron
Well, cool thing about how the AI works, though, is I do think that what people can do if you're in that position where you don't have ten years, like Aaron Francis has, I love that we're talking to the third person that that Aaron Francis has, or these like, well, third person history is like, now that the context windows are getting bigger, like you just need to keep your own pile of your own stuff.
Ian
You do.
Aaron
And you just paste that in every time. And it's like, okay, when I have something I wanna write, here's a hundred thousand tokens of all the stuff I've written that yes, is not in the index, but here it is. And it's doing the same exact thing as if it was in the index. Right? So
Ian
And that can even be voice notes. Just record one to two minute voice notes and just put them in a folder somewhere.
Aaron
Yeah. So there is, like it's sort of nice in that way where it's, like, in the past, there wasn't even a way around it. It's like, well, just start doing SEO. And in two years, it's, like, maybe you'll get somewhere, maybe not, you know? Like, you could actually jump that.
You could still jump it to the top in terms of your own utilization of it anyway, not as much, obviously, in the you being a reference for others, but at least in your own utilization, you can still do that. So it's like Yeah.
Ian
Don't don't use me. Nobody listening use me as a reference for your writing. Wait a second. Hold on.
Aaron
But see That's not fair. This is really cool too because it's like, I I well, I think I've done, I haven't actually released any new products. But when I've occasionally need wanted to name a new product, I have emulate the best product name I know, which is Taylor Otwell. I'll be like, hey.
Ian
Love it.
Aaron
In Taylor Otwell's style, like, what would you call product that does x y z? And it it's like, okay. Taylor Otwell's style Taylor Otwell's style is to sync and, you know, blah blah. And, like, it'll it'll give you those, like Cool. Same type of names, and you're like, oh, wow.
That's, like, crazy. It it knows how taylor names things pretty well. And so Yeah, so there's some cool things like that that people I think Could be leveraging. Yeah. I'm still I'm still not on the ai doom train.
I still feel like I don't know about this that you need to use all four of these. It seems a little why do you have Claude Wright? Is Claude better at Wright? No. Chat GPT just launched the the 4.5.
Ian
It was
Aaron
supposed to be very good at writing.
Ian
So I also am now using 4.5 to write as well. So I actually have Claude three seven write a draft and g p t four five write a draft, and then I kinda compare and contrast. Given the same research material, I have them both write a draft. And they come out pretty different. And so it's Yeah.
It's instructive. I don't think you need all of them. We just happen to have all of them for different, like, business purposes, and so I just use them
Aaron
I use them all. I haven't
Ian
The deep research things are incredible. Yeah.
Aaron
I haven't even used Gemini yet. Other well, I guess I have in that when you Google search, sometimes you get it.
Ian
It's out of the way. Way. Yeah.
Aaron
I've used that, but, I haven't, like, used it used it where I don't even know how where you go to it. I guess there's a place Yeah.
Ian
That's part of their problem. It's buried in it's buried in the bowels of Google.
Aaron
Okay. Yeah.
Ian
But, yeah, they're all good at something different. I think if I had to keep only one, it would probably be GPT, the pro subscription, just because it's just so good.
Aaron
That's just what I use in the store.
Ian
Alright. You gotta run, but I have I have a I have a scenario for you, and I need I need your your first gut reaction. Okay. So Oh, boy. You're you're in Dallas, and you're going out to dinner.
So you can't park anywhere, so you got a valet. So you pull up to the valet, and you open the door, and the valet says, hey. We're fully accommodated tonight.
Aaron
Okay.
Ian
What does that mean?
Aaron
I mean, I think I would take it as there's no more spots in the valet, but it is a weird way to put that.
Ian
Why do people know that? What does that mean? We're fully accommodated. I pulled up to the valet. I opened the door, and the guy said, hey.
We're fully accommodated tonight. And I just stared at him. And I I looked at him, and I said, can you say that in English? Does that mean you're full? And he said he laughed.
He was, you know, like, 19. He's like, yeah. We're full. I was like, okay. Next time, just say we're full.
I've never heard in my life, hey. We're fully accommodated.
Aaron
Like, we're fully accommodating. Like, we're being very
Ian
That's what I thought. I thought, oh, you're full service? That's great. I love that for me.
Aaron
Are you gonna check the oil and, like, you know, clean the windshield? Like
Ian
Or like, hey. We we've got everything you need. We're all staffed up. We're fully accommodated. Like, just say we're full.
I I had no we drove off, and my wife was like, I didn't I had no idea what he was saying either.
Aaron
So Oh my god.
Ian
That made me feel better. But you knew.
Aaron
I mean, I think it helps that you did the setup to you know, I figured it was gonna be something weird. So it's like Oh, yeah.
Ian
It's like Whereas guess how much, and then it changes how much you guess.
Aaron
Yeah. Whereas, like, just pulling up, if somebody's saying that to me, I think I probably would be like, just like, what what? Like, I at least ask for a repeat because I'd be like, oh, I'm not sure what you're saying. Yeah. I can totally see that.
That's that's fair. So now did you not go to dinner at that restaurant at all? Did you abandon ship?
Ian
No. He told me where a South Park garage was.
Aaron
Yeah.
Ian
So Was
Aaron
it good?
Ian
I don't know I don't know if he's 19 and that's the company line or if he's like he he learn learned that big word somewhere, but it it threw me off. So I don't know who's the dummy, me or him, but, one of us for sure.
Aaron
A good valet is.
Ian
Yeah. I love a fully accommodating valet for sure. Yeah. That's that's what I appreciate. Fully accommodated is another story, unfortunately.
Aaron
Pull up, you get the valet takes your car, you go to a nice dinner, you come out, they they get your car. It's
Ian
good stuff. Yeah. That's the business model. It's great. I like that.
Aaron
To the parking garage, walk in two blocks.
Ian
Like a commoner?
Aaron
Yeah. I don't like that. That's not
Ian
I don't like that either. Where it's at. Turns out the parking garage was, like, 15 steps away, which is another Dallas thing. It's like, hey. We've got a parking everywhere, but you can't use it.
It's like Wow. It's right there. I definitely can. So alright. There you go.
Fully accommodated. Fully accommodated. Which means we're done. Yeah.
Aaron
That's it. We're done with the episode, but that's the new shtick at the end of the episode. You're all fully accommodated.
Ian
You're all fully accommodated now.
Aaron
Alright. Thanks everybody, for listening, and follow us at mostlytechnical.com. We can get links to all the stuff and the podcast and the video, YouTube, all the good stuff. Thanks to the sponsors, and we will see you next week. Thanks, all.
Ian
See you.