September 29, 2020

Tuesday Letter #18 - Human Population, Screencasting Advice, and Retirement

Hey, Happy Tuesday!

To all the new subscribers this week, welcome, and thanks for giving me a chance. I hope this doesn’t disappoint.

As always, I hope you enjoy this week’s “Tuesday Letter” :)

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📜 Quote of the week

Here’s another test. Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it? If you’re all alone on the planet, a hierarchical orientation makes no sense. There’s no one to impress. So, if you’d still pursue that activity, congratulations.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

A lot of self-help books focus on helping you make the right decisions in life. This is a very useful framework to use. We can focus on things that matter if we imagine that we are the only human in the world since we don’t have to impress anyone.

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💡 Project Ideas

📊 An animated time series chart that shows the comparison between the human population and the number of species in the world. Something similar to an animated time series of programming language popularity (link). One would first need to find the data, and the plotting shouldn’t be too complicated. Presumably, we will see a completely reverse relationship between the two. Meaning as the human population grew, more species died.

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📹 Video & Screencasting

🆕 This week I have published another Django tutorial on my Youtube channel. This one is about Using Poetry for Dependency Management for a Django Project. I have improved the audio quality and started using Screenflow both for recording and editing, loving it so far. I am also planning to buy a slightly better microphone to improve audio quality. I am convinced that better audio quality will go a long way. I think I’ll purchase the Blue Yeti USB Mic. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. Reply to this email if you have any suggestions.

💬 After recording this video, I have stumbled upon a couple of resources that will make the screencast quality much better next time. Both resources are coming from Egghead:

1. Record Badass Screencasts for egghead.io by John Lindquist
2. Salvaging Recordings with Screenflow by John Lindquist

Notes on Record Badass Screencasts for egghead.io

Pick a lesson title

Use a “How do I…” starter. For example, “How do I start a Django Project with Poetry” and the title of the lesson would be “Start a Django project with Poetry.”

Teach Step by Step

Based on the title, come up with a series of steps to achieve the goal. For the example above: - Step 1. Install Poetry - Step 2. Run poetry init - etc

Show First, then Maybe explain

Explaining before showing can be a waste of time since many times showing is self-explanatory.

Remove Distractions

• remove minimap
• maybe even terminal location
• remove the top bar
• make sure to use a high contrast theme (default light/dark)

Avoid Intros and Outros

No need for “hey there, this is …” or “today we are going to…”. Just start doing. In the end no need to say “in the next lesson…”. That’s what titles and descriptions are for. Don’t waste time.

Stay on Topic

Don’t get on a tangent like “here I could have done this/that, but didn’t, because…”. Save tangent topics for different lessons.

Guide Their Eyes

“Select” highlight relevant parts of the code while speaking about what is happening. This way, you direct attention to the relevant part of the code.

Prepare to Record

• Set resolution to 1280x720 (HiDPI)

Record One Thought at a Time

• Just press recording and let it run. Don’t stop because of one simple mistake or a weird noise in the background.
• Stop and think about what you are about to say, how you are going to type it.
• Use as many takes as you want to say the thought.
• After you are done with the thought, pause to think

Edit with Ripple Delete

• Remove the bad parts with ripple delete. Hold shift and select the region to delete
• apply volume smoothing

Reformat Code to Fit the Screen

• Turn on word wrap so that all words show up on the screen.
• To actually auto-format your code, click on the desired location and take note of the Column number. Then in settings, modify the width settings to that number. On save, your code will auto-format to fit on the desired width.

Notes on Salvaging Recordings with Screenflow

Fix Your Video Resolution in Screenflow After You Accidentally Recorded the Wrong Size

• In File->Document Settings change to the desired size (2560/1440)
• You might have to crop out the bottom of the screen. Don’t worry, it is rarely used.

Correct Audio Mistakes in Screenflow with Short Voiceovers

• if you think you could have said something better, just make a quick recording of that thing and add to the timeline as a voiceover. Genius!
• You can fix anything with this.
• Make sure you do this not too far from the recording, so your voice sounds the same.

Hide Mistakes in Screenflow with a Second Recording in the Top Layer

• If you want to hide something, make a new recording, then “Add to Timeline at Scrubber.” This will add the recording on top of the existing one.
• Crop the new recording to the desired part. (hold control)
• Extend the short recoding by holding alt and dragging.
• Essentially, you have a layer that covers a part of the original recording.
• That way, you can hide anything.

Fixing Typos in Screenflow After a Ripple Delete

• Remove the part of the video where you misspelled and extend the one without error.

Couple of other Notes I came up with myself

• Try using a code screenshot for the background picture.
• Don’t use the title in the thumbnail. Keep it super short.
• Hide your bookmarks pane in your browser
• Increase your terminal/vscode font

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🤪 Random

A few of the cool things I encountered/learnt this week.

• LogoSear.ch - If you ever need an SVG of a logo, this the place to look. Collection of logos from different GitHub projects.
• IconSear.ch - Same as above, but for different icons.
• Retirement originated in Germany in 1889. This was meant to free up some jobs for younger people. Found this out from Thomas rank video, which talks about a book The Happiness Equation.

🐔 Tweet of the week

🔥 Lit idea. I’m thinking something like this for Real Estate would make good $$$.