Updates from August
Hello hello!
Sorry for missing last month’s update: we are in the final throes of pre-paternity leave, and everything is trending in the right direction (number of critical projects completed up, daily caffeine intake down, nursery readiness up, amount of undocumented operational tasks or otherwise bus-factor-ish work down) except for the things that are not (amount of free leisure time in a day zero). Things are, legitimately, in a good place: I had a big list of (personal, house, Buttondown, Third South) work that I really wanted to get done by today and almost all of it is, and now I am mostly just trying to be disciplined and not start anything that would otherwise fade away if I suddenly had to not pay attention to it for a few months.
But: I have been writing!
First, on the technical side:
- I weigh in on Paul Graham’s latest ‘Founder Mode’ essay.
- I answer a question from a reader: do you keep a technical edge as a cofounder?
- I jotted down some notes on how I use HAProxy
- I went briefly viral for my notes on acquiring buttondown.com for $85,000
- I report from the field on using Yet Another AI Tool to port over some tests
- I share a tactic for improving Django’s paginator
On the media side:
- Some notes on Farm RPG, an idle game that I finally put down after two years of ~daily play. (It’s good!)
- Two industry books that I anti-recommend: The Unicorn Project and Team
- I found things to like about the first season of Ted Lasso, and fewer things about the second season
- I highly recommend you watch Cromartie High School.
This month, I’m trying to finish up some long-standing Third South projects and get a new asset slightly wrangled; burning down as much of Buttondown’s operational backlog as possible; doing a bit of dessert-work iteration on a side project with what time is left.
I hope you are well.