Weekly Recap, 1532: Deploying Writing Prompts app, Start Chef!

On the 1532nd week of my life, I:

• Read: The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, by Michael E. Gerber
• Read: Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, by Seth Godin.
• Read: Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World, by Gary Vaynerchuk.
• Read: The Well-Grounded Rubyist, by David A. Black.
• Read: Full Stack React, by fullstackreact.io.
• Reading: Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts, by Ryan Holiday.
• Reading: Building Great Sentences: How to Write the Kinds of Sentences You Love to Read, by Brooks Landon.
• Reading: Reliably Deploying Rails Applications, by Ben Dixon.
• Wrote: 1 article for “30 Days of Articles for April”.
• Writing: An article on “How I Became a Programmer.”
• Biked: 176 km.
• Coding:
  • First React app, Writing Prompts, which is just a micro-site of getting a writing prompt for the day, my motivations, potentially a feedback form, and an About me page.
  • Improving the caching implementation for Daryllxd, but at this point, I’ve probably put in more effort than I should, but I can use this in the future.
  • Mini-concepts that I read deeply about:
  • How blockchain works and what it means to be a blockchain developer.
  • Open source code: redis-namespace code in the hopes of deeply analyzing how things work.
  • Getting started with Chef and provisioning servers for my future plans!

Tidbits:

• I think I’m reaching the tipping point on my JavaScript adventure in 2018: actually getting to deploy apps with React and Github pages is really cool. I’ve already created my first app and I want to create a lot more. I see microsites and micro-blogs as a possible startup idea generator, plus it’s so damn cool to work on something that can potentially help other people. I know that I’ll use some incarnation of Writing Prompts as I keep on fleshing it out.
• With that said, I have to replicate that experience with the back-end, and I think that Chef is a step in the correct direction. While I like the idea of Docker and container orchestration, I’m a patient guy. I want to learn this because I know that this will be helpful in the long term.
• Got to play Catan with my dad and brother a few times this week. Catan is a brilliant example of the Art of War: you don’t want to win too much, because everyone gangs up on you. I won twice, using deceptive strategies and appearing weak when I was actually strong.
• Felt some depression over the weekend, but I was ready this time. A good old fashioned walk around the neighborhood and a chat with friends and family and I was okay the next day. Historically, this pattern should repeat, but I’m hoping to get better at coping with this.