Starting a podcast, signing up for a pole showcase, and some programming stuff
Kia ora friend,
Sorry to make excuses but I have been neglecting sleep and been a bit lazy of late, so this newsletter may be a short one. I’ll promise to work on what I need to for next week.
Podcast!
I talked about starting a podcast ManawaTech, and I had a podcast booked in with one of the individuals who approached me to start the whole venture. I’m glad to say that I did the episode, but we are going to consider it a “burner” just to flesh out any issues, so we didn’t end up publishing this episode.
I did ask for someone to be a guest yesterday, but they could not make it, so I decided to record an episode interviewing myself. These were the prompts:
How did you get into technology?
How did you get into starting this podcast?
What is the goal of this podcast?
Where do you see yourself in technology and do you have any big goals in the future?
What are the biggest areas you struggle with technology?
What do you do outside of tech?
Favourite item on your desk? / Favourite desktop application?
It made me think about what the goal of the actual podcast was — and that is to expose the stories of people in the Manawatū technology community. Using myself as an “ideal” audience member, I didn’t even know we had such a strong community of people in the technology industry in this region. So hopefully, this podcast helps make this more apparent as well as provide a more human element by sharing those stories.
For me, this is putting myself outside my comfort zone. Creating content is hard, but it’s also challenging to interview someone, to be curious and to make them at ease I am up for that challenge, so I’m excited for the future to come. Let me know if you have any tips.
Pole Dancing showcase
At about June/July of this year, I started pole dancing, and a few weeks ago, I took a the plunge and signed up for a showcase.
I am nervous. And what do you do with that nervousness? Put if off.
But I think it’s time to get in touch with an instructor, get a routine sorted and practice, practice, practice!
But for me the major hurdle is getting on stage on performing in front of others! It’s going to be scary, but what is life when you are comfortable the entire time?
So wish me luck on this endeavour.
Programming Stuff
Last week, again I was scared to share a project I had been working on at work. It was a static site generator, which I planned to use to replace GitHub wiki.
I decided to share the project with the team, and there are some positives to take. Now, a downside is that a project like this will require some maintenance, which is not a huge issue because it uses SvelteKit, which is what we use for our client application. However, compare this with using GitHub wiki, which is no overhead at all.
Despite this, the positives include: the potential of creating a SvelteKit style guide or developer resource that not only is used internally but also externally as well. Before I worked in technology, the inner workings of tech was very much so a black box. A blog like this can act as a way to broadcast our development process. This is great for branding our business as a technology business but it also helps others, providing fulfilment. Another positive is that I learnt more in depth into SvelteKit, as well as the what goes on in vite preprocessing.
Not much to focus on this week apart from getting some rests, but that’s always the case.
Thanks for reading all of this, I hope you found some value in it.
I hope you have a good week, and catch you next weekend.
Stay focused,
Shivan
My Favourite Things
1. pgcli
pgcli
is a cool command line tool that connects to your Postgres database and provides hinting and syntax highlighting. It works much better than the vanilla psql
tool.
2. Riverside.fm
This is the application I use to record podcasts with guests. The recording not only takes place on your computer but also on the computer of the guest. When the podcast is ended you get a high quality video and audio that is synchronised.
3. Pipersong Chair
This is a new chair that I purchased in order to be able to sit cross legged plus in various other positions. I think it’s important to move while working and not be stuck in one position for too long — that could be standing and sitting in various positions.
Kindle Highlight of the Week
"It’s an offer you present to the marketplace that cannot be compared to any other product or service available, combining an attractive promotion, an unmatchable value proposition, a premium price, and an unbeatable guarantee with a money model (payment terms) that allows you to get paid to get new customers . . . forever removing the cash constraint on business growth." (Alex Hormozi, $100M Offers)