created_at: 2017-11-11 17:08:05 I saw The Big Short this past weekend. It was an excellent film, and it did a fantastic job of explaining what happened back in 2006-2008 better than most things I have ever come across.This movie got me thinking about some financial startups that we have seen over the last 3-5 years. There has been an uptick in people trying to "replace" your bank to make it simple to buy stocks or even set up different savings accounts.There is a new batch of startups that ar...

created_at: 2017-02-11 17:08:05 These last few months, I haven't been making good quality work. It has been stressing me out. None of the tricks that would normally work to get back to normal have been working. I have had a yearly goal to read 20 books. So, I decided to make a conscious effort to read more. Typically, I would be spending most of my time in the non-fiction section.But, I wanted to change things up and I wanted to change my approach to reading. I am one of those people that hig...

created_at: 2016-01-11 17:08:05 A few months ago a friend and I started experimenting with a concept for a fitness app. We wanted to take all the thinking out of working out. You would either get home or go to the gym and have some instructions ready for you. We wanted to take all of the pain out of fitness and have a professional craft a workout for you.The product focus was on email. Email is a simple way to deliver the information and very easy to build. Plus we can do all of the work manu...

created_at: 2015-06-11 17:08:05 Another blog coined the term "Flexbox Fridays." I wanted to run with that and post a few links and tutorials that have helped give me a basic understanding over flexbox.http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/05/22/centering-elements- with-flexbox/ http://demosthenes.info/blog/780/A-Designers-Guide-To-Flexbox https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Flexible_boxes ...

created_at: 2016-06-11 17:08:05 This past year has been jammed back with new tools, tricks, and packages to fill up our build processes including. It seemed like we talked about React and PostCSS the most. SVG became a norm instead of some weird thing that nobody used.I want to break out and list some things that I want to use and some things I use on a regular basis.ColorsOne thing that I always struggle with is making a great color palette. This is one of the main things that I like to try ...

created_at: 201-12-11 17:08:05 JS Prototyping Prototyping is one of those things that always interested me. It was something that combined design and code so well. I also thought that if you were going to write code for the design process why not just start coding. FramerJs was always interesting because it used CoffeScript and anyway I can keep writing JS was ok with me.Skillshare released this intro to Prototyping class, and I decided to take the Framer finally out for a test drive. I love ...

created_at: 2016-01-11 17:08:05 I usually keep a list of of my ideas. They can range from the simple to the massive. About two weeks ago, I read https://unicornfree.com/just-fucking-ship and thought enough was enough.I launched two ideas, Mentobi and Insane Tough. I have been kicking these two ideas around in my head for weeks now. I didn't really expect many results out of the launch. It just felt great to put something out into the world.They were not pillars of web design. I had just a few...

created_at: 2018-04-11 17:08:05 Part 1: Getting StartedGetting comfortable with HTML and CSS is no easy task. These tasks are underrated in the community and taken for granted.Be it that you love writing good clean and minimal markup with accessibility concerns addressed or you have a single div and feel like you can conquer the world in your CSS file.Javascript is a natural next step for anyone who spends time writing HTML and CSS. But, depending on which way you come at JS. It can be so ove...

A Decade of Change, Fatherhood, and Looking Ahead As I stand on the cusp of my 40th birthday, I find myself in a contemplative mood, trying to encapsulate the myriad of emotions and experiences that have shaped me over the last decade. It's a time of reflection on past lessons and future aspirations, particularly in light of the significant changes in my life over the last two years. Embracing Change and New Perspectives Change has been a constant companion, reshaping my perspectives and guid...

I have been using AI almost everyday since ChatGPT has come into my life. I have been spending at lot of time working with AI and learning the ins and outs of it. I even started a Youtube channel to share my findings. I have been thinking about my own knowledge base and wanted to take more control of my notes. I use a lot of different apps and I am a heavy note taker. But, I think the importance of having some private notes and some private sections of the internet is going to be more important ...

This is not investment advice. This is merely for entertainment purposes and commentary. Do Your Own Research. Investments are always a risky situation, and you need to do your own research to make sure that it is something for you. I can't stress this enough: all of these things we are going to talk about in this piece are going to be extremely risky propositions. I had a few apps on my phone for investments when I was looking for a space to hold some of my stocks. I had an account on Public....

I like to run experiments. In the past, I would take 30 days and try to do something completely different or take that time and try to get a new habit going. I have done everything from giving up sugar to publishing a blog post every day. I like trying to find little pockets of the day that will make me uncomfortable and try and take me out of my comfort zone.I had been feeling a bit stale lately. I was using the Calm app and saw a new feature that would allow me to check-in with how I was feeli...

Glitch is one of those platforms that I find myself going back and using all the time. All of these online IDE's have interesting communities and I like to explore and look around from time to time because as with each different people are hanging out in each one and you can learn it by just looking at other people's work. Below are just a few of the great projects that are on glitch and that inspired me to build and explore these topics even more. twitterbotimage-resizeFavorite Books 2018lit-el...

Glitch was officially launched in mid-2017 after a few name changes and rebrands. Glitch is a community of developers that offers a simple and fun way to deploy your own Javascript applications. When you first go to the website. The UI and the terminology might be a bit much. So, let's walk through a few elements. Getting StartedGlitch makes it simple to get into code right away. They come with three default templates so your configuration is minimal. hello-web-page - this template generates one...

Digital Wellbeing is a new Android app that will tell how frequently you use your apps, the number of notifications you get and how many times you unlock your phone. Some apps in the past would help block apps and website and show you how many times you unlocked your phone, but this is the first time this type of information has been available on the OS level. Last week, I installed the beta of Google's new offering to help curb my cell phone addiction. I had also turned on some features in YouT...

A HTTP library is still a common plugin to include on a project. Depending on what I am working on I will still use jQuery to make some of these requests or include a library like Axios to handle the requests. If you are looking for a way to not include third-party scripts and work with native browser features Fetch will be something that you want to start to look at for including in your project. Lets take a look at a native way to make a GET request before fetch. var request = new XMLHttpReque...

Google just announced Project Stream, an experiment to stream games from Google's servers via Chrome. Google is allowing people to test streaming Assassin's Creed Odyssey during this trial period. For controls, you can use a wired Xbox controller or a PlayStation controller. For my demo, I just used a keyboard and a mouse. Game streaming services are still a new thing. I know that PlayStation has had something for a few years now. It makes sense to apply what was done for streaming music and vid...

Why Framer X Is So Exciting? I have dabbled in a bunch of different design tools over the years. I have a Sketch license and I have been hopping into Figma a lot lately. Framer X is a giant new update from Frame that bring React into design tools. Framer X offers a workflow between a typical design tool window, and React code in a text editor that comes in the form of a typescript file. Now, I haven’t used the product yet. I am just looking at windows and screenshots. I love the idea of a desig...

Airtable is slowly becoming my new favorite service. It is had to recommend another piece of productivity software as there are a million already but Airtable is something that is unquote and worth looking at getting into your workflow. Airtables has a very simple API that can help you prototype your app idea and store text for you. It can also help you build a data structure that is going to feed into your app as well. There are a lot of use cases for your app in prototyping and developing idea...

On any machine that I use I have anywhere between 3-6 browsers installed. I have a few Firefoxes, Chromes, Safari, Opera and Brave. I like to keep a lot of different options because you never know what the news will bring. One of them might bring a new feature out first and you can start playing with those ideas quicker. I started noticing new warnings in chrome after a recent update. "Input elements should have autocomplete attributes" [https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/form-control- infra...

2017 didn’t end the way that I wanted. I started the year off strong. But, this year I want to make a few changes and reset quickly. One focus, this year is going to be building some systems to help me be more productive. I want to create a system that will put my back up against the wall but also force me to act more and turn off that inner critic. I want to take some things an automate and prepare as much as I can. ...

Writing was always something that I wanted to get more involved in my day to day life. Early last year, I started a blog and had some posts up, but it was nothing more than that just random posts at random times.I tried to start the habit of blogging every day for 30 days. I would write a blog post every night on a topic I was thinking about or something I was working on. What ended up happening was about 20 poorly written, not even 500-word posts and about 10 with some value to them.It was a go...

Lately, I have been experimenting with new apps that change my thinking and change my behaviors. I was using something early in the year that was basically a "mood tracker." You would just mark down if you were feeling positive or negative and it would also look at your social to see what type of stuff you would be posting and analyze that. It was cool to do for a few weeks but it was hard to see myself keeping up with something so granular like that.The 5-minute journal is basically a simplifie...

I love when giant tech companies give keynotes. If they are streaming I tend to watch them and soak in the presentation. Facebook's developer conference kicked off today and I watched with excitement to see all of the new announcements start to trickle in.I was mostly interested in anything that they are doing with VR. Having Oculus in the portfolio there was bound to be a number of announcements. They announced "Facebook Spaces" spaces are there social VR app that allows you to do certain thing...

There are certain people in your life you can have conversations with unfiltered. I mean unfiltered like you can tell them something that you trust would get a deep and honest response. You know that they will take you seriously and respect you. I am lucky to have a few people in my life that I can trust with that level of access to what I am thinking and feeling.When I talk to these folks these conversations are always the best because you learn the most from them. There is a deep admiration be...

Starting tomorrow, I am going to start a 5-week challenge to start to ship some of my ideas finally. As important as I think it is to make sure that we that we actually try to release our ideas onto the world. We also have to keep in my mind the fact of that matter that should this idea exist and who would benefit from them. I have been thinking about sales a lot and being able to make one of this challenge.One of the best feelings that I have had in the last 6 months was selling a copy of a cou...

Do you have a notebook or a list somewhere of some ideas that you thought were just amazing? Have you ever been out with friends one day and came out with a killer t-shirt idea? Or even worse have you made something and shared it with the only friend and then put it away to never be seen again. I am one of those people who rarely ships but ends up collecting a bunch of ideas and concepts that I believe in. But, I don't ship. I make excuses and blame the world. But, I don't ship. If you can relat...

In 2009, a documentary was released called, "We Live In Public." The film follows Josh Harris, founder of the site Pseudo.com. While watching this movie, it was hard to believe that it all took place in the 90s. Josh Harris founded a streaming TV network during the 90s boom.The movie was an interesting look at the tech climate in the 90s. These are companies and scenarios that some of us might not remember quite well. In the 90s boom, some of us were only a few years old.It is almost hard to bel...

Last year, I started doing this challenge on Medium where I would post 100 words a day. 100 words each day and that was one of the rules. I did this for a number of months and some of the writing I am sure was brutal. But, having that daily win and that daily sense of accomplishment was something that was just contagious. Since, I stopped this a few months ago, I have only written three posts. Then previous three months it was almost 65. I wanted to that mentality back to the blog and start to e...

Growing up, there were only two rooms in the house that had air conditioning. We would all fall into those rooms on days when it was too hot. I always remember that feeling of walking from the cool, air conditioned room, opening the door to get out, and hitting that wall of moisture and heat.The summer is always a time that my mind associates with the movies. Overtime, my once weekly ritual has become, "we can wait till Netflix."Things started to changed last winter when "The Force Awakens" remi...

When I was younger, I had some issues when it came to communicating in general. Maybe part of it was the fact that I was the youngest of four kids and I had trouble communicating with other people.The interesting thing is that I was never much of a reader. I always liked stories but I never read a lot.There is something that is really powerful about a story and about writing. If you have something to say and you get people hooked onto your story, you can get them to go on a journey and you can t...

My gaming nowadays is usually limited to a few hours here and there. My Steam playtime for this year has been 20 hours of NBK2k17 and 10 hours of Metal Gear. My machine is an Alienware “Steam Machine” just in case performance becomes an issue.According to Wikipedia, “No Man’s Sky’s gameplay is built on four pillars — exploration, survival, combat and trading. Players are free to perform within the entirety of a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, w The world is massive and I have...

Last month, I saw someone on Twitter posting an update on their goals. They had it all listed in public and they were making updates to there lists once a month. It was really inspiring and it made me want to mirror that and get my goals down and publish them. Here is my first crack at some goals for 2017. I will refine these over the next few weeks. But, here we go. Focus Javascript Javascript 30, ES6 For Beginners Class Make Amazon Echo Skill Improve Sketch/Figma SkillsMake Sketch PluginRandom...

I didn't sleep well. I woke up and ignored my morning routine and I just went right into my day. Skipping the morning routine is always a recipe for disaster usually. The day came and went and everything seemed particular harder. I wasn't sharp, I always felt like I was a step behind. After, a long day I like to take a few minutes and get some headphones on. What I am listening to doesn't matter but it gives my mind permission to not think about the world around me. I had a question on my mind t...

I woke up today sore from the gym. It was actually almost hard to walk down the stairs this morning. I have also been recovering from a knee injury from about a few weeks ago. The one thing that I love about going to the gym is it is always time away from a screen. My phone is not in my hands and I am just doing my thing.Everytime I am at the gym I can't help but to want a little more data and a little more information. I have been wearing activity trackers before. I have had a Fitbit, jawbone u...

Google I/O is this week and with that comes a few days of nonstop Google News. The big announcement of I/O this year comes in the form of a new hardware device called "Google Home."Google Home is a speaker that has Google built into it. It is much like Amazon's Alexa, but it has a new "Google Assistant," A connected speaker that allows you to perform simple tasks around your house is the device that you never thought you needed until you got one in your house.Amazon had a huge lead on this produ...

Today, went a bit different than a normal Monday for me. I did everything that I wouldn't normally do. It all started with me hitting the snooze button and waking up almost two hours later than I would normally set out to do. When I woke up, I almost felt like I did something wrong. I felt guilt for sleeping in and I felt guilty for missing something on my goal list. A funny thing happened that I noticed. I wasn't able to put my day on autopilot. It made me aware and more conscious in the moment...

I have a bad habit. I constantly think and dwell and even get obsessive about a topic. I can sometimes do a deep dive on something and let it consume me entirely. In some cases that can be really helpful and can guide you in learning something new very quickly. But, today I got some answers about myself.I think I am afraid. I think that I might be afraid of everything. I am afraid of what people might think of my ideas. I am afraid of the person who calls me a bad writer. I am afraid of letting ...

Uber finally introduced its self-driving cars to the world. They were rumored to have been working on this technology for quite some time but I don't think we have ever seen it until today. Uber has a small fleet of cars in a few neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. This type of automation has been in Teslas for quite some time now and Tesla even just released an update.This Uber trial feels like something different. I have watched a lot of videos of people using the Tesla Autopilot but this was that ne...

Hosting of my projects has always been a sore spot for me. I either want total control over the server or want nothing to do with it at all.Github has a way to eliminate some of that stress for me. Github Pages is a way to host a static site on GitHub's servers.Each Github account gets one site with a custom domain, but you also get unlimited project sites.Projects sites are username.github.io/reponame or domain.com/reponame if you set up a custom domain for your main site.All you have to go to ...

I have been dabbling with some React work over the past few months. It is hard to find a blog or some code on Github that does not talk about React. I had heard about React Native, but had been using Ionic for another project to get the cross platform support. Now that React Native had Android support, I had been looking for a project to dip my feet in the water.I had a design that was fairly simple and I wanted to use it as the basis to learn a new technology. React Native has really good docum...

Late last year, I went on a cruise. The cruise ship had a robotic bartender that would serve you drinks that you ordered from a tablet in the bar. Of course, this was the first thing that I wanted to check out; a delicious piece of technology awaiting me on a vacation.When we got the bar, it was a bit underwhelming to see the arm make the drink. There was a cool display that showed what drink was coming up and whose order it was. It was really easy to order something really specific or abstract,...

These videos starting to come across my feeds this week. I loved watching them they were so personal and they were so honest. Plus, it triggered a donation to charity. I wanted to do a video but I wanted to explore that question first. Why am I even here? I have always been an introvert. I have always had trouble communicating my true thoughts and my true ideas to people. Every since I was young I always enjoyed writing and writing. Share Twitter](https://johnsiwicki.com/why-i-write)) Facebook...

Google Glass was something that I was ravenous for. The product eventually became dead and Google learned a lot from that experiment. I had the privilege to try out a pair for a weekend. The experience was just kind of strange. It didn't feel natural at all but, on the other hand, there were a few things that were certainly forward thinking about that type of device.Out of nowhere, Snapchat rebranded last week and is now a "camera company." They also announced a brand new piece of hardware calle...

Challenge 1Do you have a notebook or a list somewhere of some ideas that you thought were just amazing? Have you ever been out with friends one day and came out with a killer t-shirt idea? Or even worse have you made something and shared it with the only friend and then put it away to never be seen again.I am one of those people who rarely ships but ends up collecting a bunch of ideas and concepts that I believe in. But, I don’t ship. I make excuses and blame the world. But, I don’ ...

As 2015 came to light, I noticed a few things that kept happening to me. I kept failing to do any of the goals that set out to accomplish. Every December, I start to prepare for the coming year and try to set out a set of goals. I break them up into three sections: Professional, Personal, and Wild.The professional ones are pretty self-explanatory as is the Personal ones. Things such as get a raise, go to the gym, are common things that pop up. I wanted to make a third list of just things that ar...

Web hosting is one of those areas that I just had to deal with. I have number of different projects scattered across the web on different services. My own shared hosted, Github Pages, Heroku, paperplane.io just to name of a few.There is one thing that is common among all of them. There is either a key feature lacking, a speed issue or just a pain to manage.I pay around 10 bucks a month for a hostgator basic storage package. I have had great luck with them but if I start to use to many resources ...

I hate everything I create. I have been really working on writing more. I have been working on getting into the habit of doing daily pages. Today, I was listening to a talk about selling digital products. I was at work, so my attention was in and out. The audience member was talking about her product and she mentioned that she wanted to get people to tell their story and getting themselves to talk. I am one of those people who have that little voice in their head that tells them to shut up.So, I...

I wanted to get in on the end of the year review. So, I decided to list out some of the stuff that I did this year that I was proud of. 52 Stories Publish on Medium57 Posts On Person Blog5 Episodes of Podcast Released1 Class Launched On Skillshare1 Android App Launched 1 Facebook Bot Launched10 Month Challenges Completed 15 Books Read/Listened ...

I feel like I am broken. I haven't felt excited about anything that I am working on. The things that would normally bring me joy were bringing me nothing.Early, this year there was a lot of excitement and my lot of energy. I was doing a lot of my goals and getting a lot of things done. I labeled them as experiments as I way to make me feel ok about thing sucking.But, suddenly I stopped. I stopped doing the things that brought me joy. I stopped making time for the activities that felt like I was ...

Writing in the morning is like a shower for my brain. It just cleans things out and gets all the junk out of the way so I can easily focus. It is amazing what it does with my mind and my focus. It has made me a better person and has made me I try to hit either a word count or a timer. This morning I woke up to late and I was not able to get that time in before I started my day. I try to do something that is called Morning Pages. I just basically write for as long as I possible can and just throw...

Yesterday, we created some circles with Snap.svg. For today I wanted to try and see if we can move those circles around. If you reference the Snap Animation Docs there is .animate and .bounce give us that moment and that little bounce at the end of the animation. In the end all we had to do is add this one line.circles.animate({ transform: 'r360,150,150' }, 3000, mina.bounce ); ...

Sometimes, you just need to sit down and start something. I have had so many problems getting back to my writing habit. So, I wanted to get back to it and I wanted to go back to that method that has always worked out well for me. I like to just sit down at the page and start to write and see what gets out. A lot of the time it is pure garbage. But, it is one of the few methods that work for me when it comes to writing. I find that if I don't do that then it becomes almost impossible to start. I ...

Whatever machine I am working on I always have a regular install of Chrome and then a Canary build. You can install Canary alongside a regular Chrome build so there is almost no reason to not have it. The updates come fast and today I noticed a new tool in the dev tools. https://www.youtube.com/embed/U9xfYbKxosI ...

Apple just announced their foray into streaming music and how they are going to leverage the Beats acquisition. Honestly, it was nothing special. Apple wrapped up some features that nobody wants or ever asked for and tried to convince us that we need them, and we need them right away. They made a huge push for their artist connect feature where artists can post updates, and you can comment on things and share. They also have these new radio stations and in all fairness those could be interesting...

Tube videos while in mid chat. Have you ever tried to recommend a friend to install an app in Google Play. How amazing would it be to see that link converted into an install button with a short description? I hate email - We all hate it, and we all want it to go away. Maybe this is an area where Twitter can make some inroads. Facebook is updating messenger to work with business during the checkout flow. I still do a tremendous amount of talking via email. Being able to subscript to individual up...

Rejection is a hard thing to deal with for me. Sometimes, it is something that can be washed away and moved onto the next thing. Then there is this other said where you start to believe in some of these things that you were being told.It seems like at each stage in my life I have always had someone tell me that I couldn't do this or that. I almost wanted to make a list of all those moments and how they impacted me. But, I was talking to a good friend today and he said something that really stuck...

Tomorrow is April 1st and I have been pondering a number of challenges to begin. I wanted to wait till the next month the first of the month to start something as it is just easier to track.I find for me the best way to learn is to keep doing and keep doing it. If I want to learn something I Just have to find a way to get into my routine and into my day. If I want to get great at JS and never write any of it.I am just finishing up a Ruby on Rails course. While, I did learn a lot, I also feel lik...

Apple Music's launch a few weeks ago reinvited the streaming wars. Apple Music has given out a generous free trial that I am sure made a lot of people sign up to give a go. Music services, unlike video streaming apps you only want one. I don't mind switching between Hulu/Netflix and Amazon Prime.I tried Apple Music and after about 5 minutes I just wanted to go back to Spotify. Itunes is just an application that I don't desire to spend time with.There was always a dark horse app in this race that...