This reminds me of a mermaid "documentary"* I watched as a gullible 15 (?) year old. It aired on Animal Planet, if I'm not mistaken. I thought it was absolutely real. _Mermaids are real_. I used to tell everyone to watch it...
Years later, I found out it was completely fake; the end credits even tell you it's fake (I missed that). I had a hard time believing anything after that realization.
I had an atheist phase when I was like 15. Probably lasted until my early 20s. I blame that on Carl Sagen, Richard Dawkins, et al. I obsessively read science books, and all of these smart people were telling me there isn't a God. They made sense; I believed them.
I think around age 20-21, I read Descartes' Meditations on Philosophy, which forced me to evaluate all of my beliefs about existence. Digging further into other philosophers (and religions), I realized there's not a whole lot I really know... about anything.
Eventually, I came to the belief of there being a creator, although who or what this creator is, I have no idea.
I built leetchess, a browser extension (works in Chrome/Brave) that makes your new tab pages full of chess tactics.
As a chess fan, I love it. It's something I wanted to exist. Although I haven't gotten any good feedback yet from other chess players. If you're a chess fan, please give it a try and let me know what you think!
You reminded me of one of the first interviews I ever had in tech. I took 2 phone screens, and a take home assignment. Last step: Zoom interview with some of the IT team (3 people). It started well, but I slowly started panicking. All three of them were shooting questions at me, which I answered them all correctly, as far as I know, but I was so... cold. Started stammering my words and speaking like a terrified child at the principals office.
I could observe myself and knew what I looked like, but couldn't break it. The CTO stopped me as I was speaking and said "this isn't going to work". As soon as he said that, I ended the call. I had some major imposter syndrome during that time, I think that played a huge role in my fumble. Still massively cringe when I think about that, though.
Static pages, sure. But what do you do if you want a contact form or something? Yeah, you can use services like formspree, but then you may end up paying $20/month for that alone. Perhaps I'm just ignorant.
It could be $0 on Render too, but then there's going to be a 3 minute load time for a landing page to become visible, lol. So if you don't want your server to sleep, you're going to have to pay $20/month.
> The only reason to dramatically overpay for the hosting resources they provide is because you expect them to expertly manage security and stability.
This and because it's so convenient to click some buttons and have your application running. I've stopped being lazy, though. Moved everything from Render to linode. I was paying render $50+/month. Now I'm paying $3-5.
I would never use one of those hosting providers again.
Some of them, yes. It seemed like they'd use it. I don't know. Maybe bad execution, or something. Although, maybe I should try again. Perhaps they were busy. I also didn't market beyond reaching out to people (which involved the people I know + cold email outreach).
I don't think it's impossible, but absolutely incredibly difficult. I tried everything.
Shopify stores, blogs (even owned a #1 tech blog), local job boards, global job boards, dating sites (which were shut down due to payment providers refusing to service these types of sites), various SaaS sites, etc.
Nothing made any real money. I don't know if it's just me - perhaps I'm just not meant to succeed here - but I'm still trying. Still building.
I think the biggest downer was when I built the coolest SaaS for martial arts academies. I thought it was guaranteed success, as I am involved in these communities, know a ton of owners. I reached out to all of them. Offered a free setup/trial. None of them cared, or even attempted to use it.
Likewise, I just built the coolest browser extension for chess players (in my opinion). I run a local chess club. Thought everyone would want to at least try it out. Maybe 2 users installed it. Lol.
I just stopped caring, and I look at it in a new way. Yeah, I may not have paying customers for projects, but I am expanding my portfolio. These are real assets that I own. The process is fun. Abandon the idea of making money, and it becomes more enjoyable.
One of my all-time favorites. Almost every time I'm involved in a conversation about books, I always mention this. It amazes me how many people have never heard of it.
I just built a Google Chrome chess extension. It is a new tab page full of chess puzzles. It has various difficulties, and a speed run game (solve as many puzzles as you can in 60 seconds). I personally think it's the coolest browser extension I have ever seen (being objective as possible).
It works on Chrome and Brave for now. Planning a Firefox release soon.
If you're a chess fan, you'll probably love it, but if not, let me know why (I'll try to improve it).
Thank you! I think so as well, haha. it's something I personally wanted.
And oh no! really hate to hear that. I thought it was responsive, but didn't fully test on smaller devices. Sorry for that. I will work on a fix as soon as possible!
Honestly, most modern books on Stoicism read like that; I tend to avoid them altogether. Although I will say that Donald Robertson has done a great job with the two books I've read of his (Stoicism and the Art of Happiness, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor).
The best modern book, in my opinion, is Pierre Hadot's The Inner Citadel. It's primarily about Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, but does a really good deep-dive into Stoicism (and frequently mentions other Stoics).