How’s it going?

I’m back from an un-announced 2 month break. 😅 Also, happy new year and hope its been good so far for you.

A re-introduction – Hackletter is where I share my journey about building side projects, the lessons I learn and success I have. If this is no longer relevant to you, you can unsubscribe. We can still be friends, I promise!

Other than falling sick in the beginning of this year, it was good so far.

The question that I explored few issues ago, which is "Can AI be your coworker?", is answered now.

With ChatGPT, its a sure shot YES.

I mean, go on to Twitter and search for "chatgpt, you'll find overwhelming responses on what its capable of doing.

Staring at the blank page is the biggest issue that knowledge workers tackle with.

For us - programmers, it might be staring at the blank file. Flow state is what we all aim to be in.

But how long can you be in flow state. Can you just keep working?

Ernest Hemingway, a well renowned author, would stop writing his piece when he knew what came next.

This isn’t an email about building your side hustles, like you get from me every other Tuesday. But it sure helps you in doing it.

It’s about coffee. ☕

I wrote a short post on my website about how make my coffee these days and my thoughts around it. These are the highlights from it

• Pour over coffee
• I drink it black
• Beans are ground using a hand burr grinder
• v60 is the technique I use

AI is becoming mainstream these days. It has become more accessible and easy to use.

Over the past couple of days, I've toyed around with all this cool AI stuff and I wrote a blog post noting down the things I enjoyed.

Full Post - Playing with AI - Can it become your coworker?

I’ve built multiple projects that no one asked me to. It wasn’t part of my job either.

The main driving reason being – solve problems, little or big, that I face in my life.

I’ve always looked for ways I can use technology, or the programming skills I’ve acquired, to help me optimise and live a better life.

I feel that should be the ultimate use of your skills. Sure, you can get a job and help others solve their problems, and in turn get money. But why not put those skills to use for yourself.

Finding time to work on your side projects is difficult.

Especially when you have a day job which task which takes up your time and energy. And if you have other commitments, like kids, you know that becomes complicated.

It makes you feel like you aren’t making enough progress on your side projects. Right?

Sacred Side Hustle Hours

Does it happen to you - After a while, you don’t get the same amount of joy while making progress on the side project as you got when you started it?

I asked this on Twitter and there were interesting replies.

Number one reason why people loose interest in side projects is because they under estimate the time and energy it takes to ship. Starting with wrong or too many expectations are enough to make you loose interest.

Set your expectations right.

I love it when people give me hand written things, like letters and post cards.

It feels personal and authentic. Modern fonts and text miss that feel.

I attempted this by clicking pictures of handwritten sentences in a notebook and screenshotting notes on iPad with Apple pencil and uploading it to the web. That's the only way to get it to the web - take pictures and post.

It sure works well on Instagram but not so much on the searchable internet.

It's hard to learn everything on the job. If you don't have a job this concept applies more.

In the early days of the job, you have a lot of new stuff to learn and see how things integrates with everything else. It's exciting learning and filling in knowledge gaps. When you finally understand what to change where, and that works, it's joyful.

The joy decreases as you get comfortable with the codebase.

The tech stack is fixed and rarely changes. Most of the times, you never get to start a codebase from scratch. Consider yourself lucky if you do.

… even if it is the same email, you aren’t the same man.

Wait, here is the original quote -

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man. – Heraclitus (Greek philosopher)

Ichigo Ichie 📖

I've got you supplies for your digital garden. I've built an easiest way to get started with your digital garden.

First things first - What is a digital garden?

The phrase "digital garden" is a metaphor for thinking about writing and creating that focuses less on the resulting "showpiece" and more on the process, care, and craft it takes to get there.
— Joel Hooks (My blog is a digital garden, not a blog)

It is a place where things grow.

I’ve been a bit sick over the last week and I needed something to play with.

I came across n8n, an automation tool like Zapier, which was fun. First I created a workflow (or an automation) that runs every morning and sends me a message on Telegram telling how many views I got on my website.

Rain started pouring in last week and the weather is all pleasant. Temperatures dropped below 30C and that's a relief as it was close to 40C in the summers.

Cup of coffee ☕ and the sound of rain 🌧️ is a bliss.

Coming to the topic of this week's Hackletter - Self hosting apps & services.

Hope you are doing great.

I've told in the last email that I've started to work on Letterhive, which is an SEO friendly archive (or a website) for any newsletter. I want to talk about how the development went till now.

No links to share this time too, but you can expect it soon.

Setting up the project

Hello, How are you doing today?

I've been working on my new side project, Letterhive, which is an SEO friendly archive (or a website) for any newsletter. The content is automatically updated as the users send emails to their subscribers, and, it works with any newsletter 🎉.

I don't have much to share at this point. I just bought the domain. As soon as I have a demo up and running, I will share the links.

First steps are to use Letterhive for this newsletter. I'm building for myself initially.

If there is anything that has helped me directly in building apps and do my day job, it is this - a consistent place to note down.

Something that is always available for you write or scribble.

What I use depends on the work I'm doing. I use a notebook and pen for day job which lies just beside my mouse on the table. It's always open - I make todos and do my thinking there.

When it comes to working on side projects, I use Notion as you can properly organize things there.

You read that right. In order to become better, do boring things consistently.

Let me explain.

The boring stuff, things which are not Snapchat-able or Instagram-able, are the ones that make you better.

Eating at home is boring. Working out is boring. Reading a book is boring. Journaling is boring.

If you didn't know yet, I'm building a side project, Stackblocks, which lets users embed an archive of their newsletters on personal websites.

And, it just got a paying subscriber in 12th April this year. 🎉

Will not be able to put this feeling in words, but ecstatic is a close match.

https://twitter.com/aravindballa/status/1514089921178349571

Well yeah, we should write comments in code to explain what’s happening in a better way.

But before that, why not write self explanatory code?

Programs are meant to be read by humans and only incidentally for computers to execute.

- Donald Knuth

Before we write a comment, give a thought if you can change the name of variable or a function to make the code talk for itself.

We’ve got problems life. In fact, life is made up of problems. And living your life is to solve them.

The author of the book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, puts it like this - “Happiness comes from solving problems”.

I’ve never thought of it in this way. I feel real happy when I figure out a way to solve things. Even when checking off a todo list item, it’s bliss. Which makes me think - Are todos a list of problems we want to solve?

Yeah, right?

A crazy thing happened at the beginning of this new year.

I got a email from founder of an amazing app, that I respect, to check if I’m interested to work with him. In that, he mentioned that he listens to Learning Curve Pod and few episode have resonated with him. He liked our conversations, which was one of the reasons for that job offer.

This was a great news.

Brittik and I (co-hosts of the podcast) found ourselves getting excited over the fact that people are listening to our conversations. We discovered new energy to start back the podcast and try doing it consistently this year.

I've been tweeting from more than a year now and this is my thought process behind sharing lengthy content like blog posts.

Take advantage of the algorithm

People are lazy. And the algorithm wants to keep them lazy.

When you share just the link on Twitter, the algorithm doesn't distribute it much. Because that takes the user out of the Twitter platform. Even if it does, people wont open them.

Okay, that’s a click-baity subject line. But I’m glad you opened.

This letter is about my routine which works for me. I have been consistent with this from more than an year now.

Coffee ☕️

I am a developer – I turn coffee into code. (Cliché, I know) But frankly speaking, I’ve been loving my coffee lately. You could say I wake up so I can drink it.

It’s been some time since I sent a newsletter and this is pretty late that usual.

First of all, Happy new year! 🎉

I took up a challenge this month to write 30 essays in 30 days. I hope and I want to do it. If you want to follow the progress, here is the tweet thread that I’ll be updating every day.

The subject of this letter describes what I was doing for the past 2 months.

This year I spent a lot of time working. A day job and a side project and a podcast which were demanding my time every week, constantly. I did not take any proper breaks. It didn’t feel I needed a break. I was enjoying and having fun with all of them.

Then it all came on me suddenly. Don’t know if I should call it burnout, but it is probably that.

I just stopped doing everything except my day job. And it felt nice. I didn’t want to spend my free time on anything other than relaxing.

Takeaways form SEO for Devs Course

I’ve been taking SEO for Devs course by Monica Lent. And I pick up a lot of valuable stuff from it. It is a free email course.

I still have to cover the last two emails from it, but I thought of sharing the stuff I’ve learnt and implemented on my websites, Stackblocks and aravindballa.com .

I highly recommend the course if you have a blog or a website running.

Hey, Does 11:30 CET sound good?

I get confused when ever someone asks me this. Even if I plan to master the conversion of one timezone, my friends are spread across the timezone.

I wanted to solve this problem.

I closed my eyes and visualised my skill repertoire to see what do I have at my disposal to solve this.

I consider myself somewhat lucky. Aren’t we all? There is some amount of luck involved in every successful person’s life.

A lot of things in life happen because of luck and nothing else. No physical effort can force it. No intelligence and no education can increase it. .

Friction is a necessary evil. It is both a boon and a bane. If there is zero friction in this world, you wouldn’t walk, couldn’t move stuff around, etc. If there is too much friction, things wear out and get damaged.

That’s from your 8th standard Physics lecture. Snapping back to reality, having a sweet spot with the friction is crucial. You tend to do a task or a habit when there is less friction associated with it.

And when you have or create more friction to do a task, you are less likely to do it.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #23 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

I’m trying a new audio experiment

Imagine you are out for a run. You have earphones plugged in and you are listening to great ideas from all over the world. You are into it for 9 minutes and one idea in particular gives you that “aha” moment. You somehow connect it your previous idea, and you are experiencing this jolt of joy.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #22 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

Trying to do multiple things at once is not that fun. Side projects quickly start demanding more and more time from you. They never finish in a weekend.

But I think I’ve figured out a balance between side projects and day job, which works for me. At least for now.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #21 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

When I build apps or websites, the first thing I want to do is to write code. Because that is what I’m comfortable with and I like to write code. But with experience, I understood that without proper planning it will take multiple iterations to get to the final outcome.

And when . Not actual money, but time.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #20 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

I told you that there will be no Hackletter this week and I’d be on a trek. Both of them didn’t happen. I had to cancel my trek in the last minute because of few emergencies.

Now on to this week’s letter…

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #19 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

Side Project chit chat

If you don’t know it already, I’m working on a side-project. And trying to build in the public by tweeting when I work.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #18 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

Don’t leave a bug unattended 🐞

With experience, I’ve learned that - it’s good to act on the bugs you detected immediately. That’s how we can build quality software.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #17 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

In this week’s letter, lets go meta and talk about how I do this.

It is not straight forward. And if you are looking to start your own, this isn’t probably the advice you should look at.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #16 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

Being busy is not important. Working on the right things is. Even if you don’t work long hours, when you choose to work on things that are essential, you move close to your goals.

I now plan my weeks. I think about what has to be done in the week so that I get a little close to my goals. If I don’t plan things, I keep working on random things that come to me. It’s like . Planning helps me get that .

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #15 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

There wasn’t a letter last week because I wasn’t doing great mentally. The week was pretty rough. I went on a short vacation to a nearby hill station and things came back to normal. Not completely, but better.

Choosing to work vs Having to work

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #14 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

I wrote an article on what I do before ending my coding sessions, at work and for my personal projects.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter 13 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

I was a curious kid in college. I still am. I always want to find solutions to the issues I face. Only if I solved them all, my life would be at peace already.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter 12 from the Hackletter where I talk about my learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

I recently built a corner on my website with the details of the books I read on Kindle and the highlights I take while reading them. I call it – Bookshelf. . Thanks to modern technology, the website updated automatically while I keep reading and I don’t have to push a button.

Hi , I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #11 from the Hackletter where I talk about the learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

Takeaways from Show Your Work!

It’s a great book. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend getting a copy. It’s short one packed with gold. I couldn’t resist taking notes while reading the book. These are my takeaways from it.

Hi , I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #10 from the Hackletter where I talk about the learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

Is Notion’s new API ready yet?

TL;DR Mostly yes, but not complete.

Hi, I’m Aravind Balla and you are reading letter #09 from the Hackletter where I talk about the learnings and give you behind the scenes of things I keep doing for fun.

Customising your tools

Most tools these days, come with this capability of adding plugins which let us extend the usecases of that tool. Plugins in VS Code for example. We have plugins that help us format code, run some linting checks, change the colours (themes) etc.

Few days back, I work on setting up a websocket client for a frontend React project at work. There was a lot of thought process involved.

• Do we store the socket instance in state?
• Or a ref because we wont have to update it.

You might have know from my previous letters that I’m rebuilding my website using NextJS.

Turns out, recording videos while working on it harder. And it doesn’t make sense to record the non interesting parts, or parts where a lot of manual work is involved instead of creative work. There is one video yet to be edited where I set up themes (dark & light) using Tailwind CSS. I worked on the parts where I had to fill up the content from my old website. And I’ll record more videos when I start working on interesting things like /bookshelf page, page views counter, etc.

A few notes from the commits I pushed recently

Hello, hope you are well in these crazy times. It wasn’t a productive week for me since the last Tuesday. But I could manage to ship a few updates to my new website over the weekend.

Repo I’m working on - https://github.com/aravindballa/website

I have nothing to share in this letter as I hardly wrote anything.

Solving something is good. When it is for yourself, meaning when you solve your own problem, it’s the best.

But to make it a successful Saas, there are a lot of factors to consider. Building it in way that is scale-able is the obvious part. Building it is actually the small part of the big system.

Finding the right audience is the key. Or customers as people call it. That problem needs to be a real big problem to people and they should be ready to pay for it.

Hey,

Happy Ugadi. I hope you and everyone at home is well.

Incremental Static generation