I'm a.... Creator?
The idea that "creating content" can be a full time job seems crazy at first. Yet, we're regularly fed examples of individuals doing just that. They exist on a multitude of platforms and their own sites. If we lookup something online, we'll probably reach for the familiar creators we've seen before who have a style we like and I'd wager choose these individual voices over a business. This issue, I highlight some stories from and about other creators on shipping content.
I consider myself a creator - through my blog, youtube and twitter. I guess that means I've been one for many years. You might too. Granted I'm not full time or particularly successful - so why do I bother? I enjoy the random connections it can bring and the warm fuzzy feeling that can only come from helping other developers with their programming who I might never reach otherwise. To wake up in the morning and get a comment or query from another dev, gives me a smile to start my day. I've only really recognised this in periods when I'm not sharing, something is a little off with my world.
In other news, it's the school summer holidays here in the UK, so I'm having a bit of a breather. In an effort to keep these issues interesting, I've reduced their frequency to once a month. Let me know if you prefer it, or want more of me back in your life.
As always, keep on shipping!
Ian
Stories
The Part Time Creator Manifesto
Shawn Wang argues that we need more people creating part time and how you can do it too. This is how I operate so enjoyed hearing thoughts on the reasons why others don't want to go full-time.
Tesco Value Popcorn
Craig Burgess has been cropping up a lot in my feed recently and for good reason. This piece on what constitutes 'value' and whether we really want it for our own creations caused me to smile knowingly throughout.
A fake, GPT3-generated blog reached #1 on Hacker News
As if to prove a point, this article describes how fake content was able to rank highly on HN. Partly this was due to selectively choosing subject matter that would rank well. It's scary to think we will see more of these sorts of blogs in the future and that they may not be identifiable.
How I Built a Tech YouTube Channel
A great insight from YouTuber 'TechnoTim' on all that's required to produce videos and how he's built a channel of 50K subscribers in a little over a year.
Code
Clockwise - a meeting cost calculator
I recently made a video about clockwise - a tool designed to hold more efficient meetings by showing the cost of devs on the call. Hold shorter meetings by scaring your managers!
Headless recorder
This useful Chrome extension records your browser interactions and generates a Playwright or Puppeteer script. Much easier than referring to documentation....Possibly.
A collective list of free APIs
I've had a need for public apis after writing a couple of articles recently. This is a great list of freely available API's that's well worth giving a star.
A Favourite Video
How many robots does it take to run a grocery store?
I enjoyed this video from Tom Scott on how Ocado run their online store. Having been a shelf stacker a couple of times in my youth, seeing how an operation can reliably run at scale doing an actual box packing algorithm was mind blowing. Microsoft Kinects even play a part in packing some of the more awkward items.