Hello! 👋

It’s “Holy Monday” today. I’ve been making the joke that righteous anger is not only justified, but encouraged today. Let’s flip some tables, and prune some junk from our lives. 😅

(If I send this late and you don’t get it until Tuesday… well, join me next year!)

Easter is on the way!

AI

If you are still avoiding premium subcriptions for LLMs/AI, look for Google’s “AI Studio” and try using “Gemini 2.5 Pro”. It’s “experimental” so it’s free right now. Just with a slow rate limit.

Cool things I’ve done with it recently:

• Vibe-coded some changes to a landing page. Generated some fun SVGs with animations.

• Asked for some specific summaries of YouTube videos. (Unsurprisingly, it has great access to YouTube content).

• Used it as a model selection in Cline. (A free VS Code plugin).

It’s meeeee

I wrote a few drafts that never went out, since the last email I sent to this itty bitty list. But I was overthinking.

So, let’s just catch up from here 😬😅

(Editing Tommy: this turned into a lot of potential “draft” ideas and little substance. Better to publish than not, I think. Catching up is weird sometimes.)

Howdy friend 👋🏼!

Here's some overdue updates that I thought I would send in February!

Anticipation list for Feb/March

• 📚 🎹 I ordered Andrew Huang's new book Make Your Own Rules. It's here, and I just need to actually read it. 😅 Without looking inside, I'm sure I'd recommend it to any artist/creative types, or folks trying to "launch" stuff on social media or YouTube.
• 🎸 I got to see Cory Wong live , for the second time! 😄
• 💍👰 Our wedding anniversary is in March! It's a busy time, but it's our anniversary, so we can celebrate when we want. Which might be April. 😅

Howdy, howdy!

I love talking about "app ideas". Or just ideas. It's like a fun game for me. I even enjoy it when non-technical folks tell me about an idea they have for some app or website that they wish existed.

I enjoy asking questions and digging into it.

And those situations very often lead to one of two directions:

Happy New Year!

Some quick updates based on the last email:

my current “deep dive” interest is absorbing a lot of content to be up to date on digital marketing stuff

• SEO is changing in some interesting ways this year. Unfortunately, Google still favors a lot of trash/lazy content. More on that another time?

• Marketing is still marketing. Psychology of sales and pricing remains. 😆

• Apparently some folks' "secret sauce" is: buy cheap ads on Bing first, and A/B test. When one works, spend big on Google ads.

I read once that the open rate for emails with “this” in the subject line is always super high. So there you go!

Hope you’re well!

The girl

It’s been so incredibly long. There was even a draft that never got sent, with a lot about Elizabeth being 3 years old. 😅

Writing regularly sounded easy for a while.

I genuinely thought I'd start the craziest and best Dad blog of all time once we had a kid. Then she got here.

And with regards to Dad blogs -- I'd much rather spend the extra time playing with her than talking about playing with her. And seeing her squeal with delight when she gets to play with Legos (yeah, we pluralize it) is way better than being popular online.

For real though -- today, we played with real "big kid" type Legos, and she was so excited. 😍

Hello, friend!

I'm keeping it light again this time!

Here's just a few fun things from the internet:

• Jon Batiste performing What a Wonderful World. If you aren't familiar with Jon's music, this might be a great introduction. If you haven't heard it: It's not like you think it is!
• Epic Rap Battles Of History does: Harry Potter vs Luke Skywalker. This may be their finest episode. The writing and the puns are absolutely top notch.
• Cory Wong's YouTube series "How To Musician". It's an eight part series, and if you're a musician you must watch these! I linked here to Episode 4, which I think even non-musicians should watch. Cory goes deep into IDENTITY and it's just great.

Hello friend!

There’s so much craziness in tech, but I’d rather add value than just provide links… so I think I’m skipping the tech news this week? 🤷🏻‍♂️ Hope that’s okay!

Segue to music

You probably know I’m a fan of “unconventional _____” type music, among all the other genres I welcome into my home. Haha. For example, I have an “unconventional lullabies” playlist of songs I would sing to Elizabeth at bedtime when she was ~2-6 months old.

Welcome back friend!

Remember when we used to write (almost) weekly?

Whew! How the world has changed since March!

Elizabeth is about to turn ONE YEAR OLD!

Howdy, friend!

How is it March 15th already? This feels like the fastest year yet. 🐎

Elizabeth is 5 months old! When showing pictures to folks, I can only scroll back a week or so before I start saying "she hardly looks like this anymore!". She's still not crazy about tummy-time, but definitely prefers to (try to) sit up.

I think she figured out raspberries yesterday. That's the sound I woke up to today. 😆 So. Fun.

Howdy, friend! I hope you're doing so well! ("swell"!?)

I read once that email engagement rates go up if you use the word "this" in the subject line. So I used it twice in all caps. 😆

There's so much more I wanted to say this week, but I'm forcing myself to keep this one short and get back on schedule...

Heelllloooooo friend!

It’s February! And by the time you’re reading this, “the big game” has already happened! I hope your favorite team won. ;)

Speaking of sports, my friend Rod came over recently and helped me do a sort of “technical rehearsal” for a podcast I plan to start. More on that soon…?!

This email doesn’t contain any tech news, necessarily. But it have multiple video links!

Helloooooo, friend! I hope you're doing great this weekend!

FIRST, I want to say a huge thanks for the replies to the last email. And for the other compliments and nice things you said in other places, and IRL. It's always great to hear nice things. =)

Dad stuff 👶🏽

So, we made it through the first couple weeks of daycare, and our first run in with diaper rash. Ugh! Poor thing. Also TMI, so sorry! Haha!

Hello, friend!

Happy New Year! How were your holidays?

We had a great break from Christmas to New Years Day, and it's probably best described as being "very chill". Laura and I were sitting in the quiet by 9pm on December 31st. A bit unusual for our house, I think, but it was a welcome rest.

Elizabeth's first day of day care was Monday, and whew! We had posted some silly and dramatic posts on social media, but inside really did have confidence.

Greetings!

Hope your Christmas was good!

Rather than completely take a break from these emails over the holidays, I’m just trying to keep some momentum and send along a few links.

Laura and I usually take part in a fast of some kind at the beginning of the year, and I’m seriously considering stepping away from Twitter for all or most of January. Interesting, that’s where I get a lot of “input” that I planned to turn into content for these emails. How’s that gonna play out? I’m not sure.

Episode 2: Christmas week!

Merry Christmas! I hope your week has been great! It seems like everyone acknowledges -- and I will, too -- that this time of year can be extremely hard for many folks. Whatever your situation is, I'm hoping it's good, and that you are finding continual hope and peace.

Technically this should have gone out last Sunday, so I'm a couple days behind on the info. That should explain the lack of obvious holiday theme in this email. But the draft was still so relevant, I'm sending this tonight (the 25th!) instead of delaying it.

Baby

Hello! I hope you're doing well!

Thanks for checking out my little Email Experiment!

"Content" ideas are all over the place at the moment, and I'm hoping that if I start regularly sharing, that a bit of a niche might begin to develop.

Here's some interesting things from this week

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How’d you get this far, anyway?