soueuls

I have been a nomad for quite some time, I will be settling down with a friend in Chiang Mai for a year.

I also increased my budget for an apartment quite a bit to have a nice living/surrounding area.

I finally plan to start creating content and have a nice setup for it, likely a new chapter in my life, I hope I will enjoy the process

I would say Svelte is fairly minimal and works well with HTML. If you want even more minimalism then maybe : HTMX, Alpine or Stimulus.

The whole purpose of jQuery is pretty much gone. Huge browser inconsistencies is a thing of the past.

I don’t think it solves new problems.

If you want to learn vocabulary efficiently then spaced repetition is still superior.

For grammar I still prefer a textbook.

And then it’s a lot more fun to practice with other humans.

To what extend?

- non violence? Having such a database is not going to help you much

- if you plan on threatening, then maybe.

I realised a long time ago that I barely have any say in what countries are changing to. I pretty much just pay taxes without any control whatsoever.

So I decided to treat countries as hotels.

Instead of wasting years trying to lobby against one tiny things, I just treat countries as hotels.

I pay taxes. But when I am not satisfied anymore, I just move to somewhere else.

I organise my life based on quarters, months and weeks. So not much, it’s just the end of a quarter, nothing special

There is none but the general process is

1. Look for interesting results in Midjourney gallery

2. Use a similar prompt

3. Pick 5-10 interest results and build a collection

4. Upload said collection on Etsy (using placeit mockups) and offer hand made painting + print on demande

5. If I make a sale using POD there isn't much to do on my part

6. If I made a handmade sale, I ask a local painter in Phuket to reproduce my Midjourney image and sell it with ~300% profit (this greatly help because I can them remove the AI defects or take custom orders if needed)

7. I also use "Waalaxy" to do Cold Outreach of Linkedin (I target hotel/condo manager or people responsible for purchasing).

I have been doing this for a few months, got two leads, sold 60 artworks for a newly built high end condo.

This resulted in roughly 65 * 200 = 13000$

Nobody is forcing anyone. And filter questions are ok, but FizzBuzz is definitely insulting.

It would be like me trying to hire someone to improve my SEO, someone sent me his CV with 8+ years of experience, who talk about long tail keywords, cannibalization issues, internal linking and I ask : "Do you know what is the Google Console?"

I think both parties can have red flags

I have definitely quit hiring process where I have been asked about FizzBuzz.

It’s outdated, useless, shows a lack of imagination.

I don’t want to work with people asking me whether I can perform a loop with a basic conditions.

And it’s a hill I am willing to die on.

I am financially independent, mostly here for the intellectual challenge. And I have never met anyone asking me about FizzBuzz having then the capacity to entertain me intellectually.

I built an entire business around selling custom art for hotels/condo in Asia using Midjourney.

No, death does not make me uncomfortable.

The memories of my loved ones will remain in my brain until it fades away.

I use Feedly premium and treat my newsletters the same as any other form of written content (including HN, Product Hunt)

Each day I go through 300 articles using shortcuts :

n -> go to the next p -> go to the previous m -> mark as read x -> discard o -> open

I do my daily curation this way. I would say I read roughly 5% of the articles/content.

But it's pretty quick and I am aware of new major versions of programming languages/frameworks I use.

New products, interesting newsletter content, etc.

As projects grow, I am just a lot less productive when I don't have any strong abstractions over the DOM.

Read "The Mom Test"

It obviously depends on your values, where you live etc.

- The war in Irak by the US and Vietnam by US/France was absolutely unjustified. But they are both able to compare Putin to Hitler and position themselves as peace makers.

- It's probably even more obvious in recent history. World War 2 with "Pétain" being praised for doing what he could to limit the casualties when France lost the war in under 3 weeks. He is now considered complete evil (he was summoned to lead France when the army was already defeated, Germans controlled Paris. Of course he had to do bad things.

I think there is also a tendency for people who never experienced war to rewrite history in their own head. It's again obvious with the Pétain example. If you listen to French, they would all be part of the Resistance. Yet the historical records show a different story. The population was neutral for the most part, not actively collaboration, not trying to destroy rails either.

This would be hard to pull off for society as whole. Companies would need to hire 2x or 3x more employees (and train them).

Schools need to be available, groceries etc.

That being said, it does work if you are a contractor (in most cases). That's exactly what I have been doing for the past 4 years.

I don't have a family, I am working 4 hours every day. I don't take unnecessary weekends. I just work from 8am to noon and call it a day.

Afternoon is spent for sports, reading, social activities or just tinkering.

Jules Verne - 80 days around the world - 20000 miles under the sea - island of mystery

I don't celebrate Christmas (I come from a European family that normally do).

I don't really believe in timed, organized gathering. People I am meeting once a year are by definition not really important in my context.

Since I quit being an employee, I think the concept of weekend, holidays and such have lost their meaning.

This will likely change if I adopt a kid soon.

I took a one week break to reflect on my life and big choices I would have to make.

I decided I was not particularly interested in having a romantic relationship. My desire for endless intellectual and world exploration was bigger and I was not willing to compromise on this at all. And I enjoyed the experience more when I was alone, not having to consider someone's else opinion.

I am quite more happy now.

I try to always carry a book or a kindle with me.

I use dead time to read :

- toilet - waiting in line - transport - random breaks - before going to sleep

I also read on my computer to relax a bit.

I try to block time to read, but more often than not it does not work, because it’s not always a priority.

But I never fail to read when I always have a book with me. Few pages here and there, multiple times a day go a very long way.

I usually average between 40 and 70 books a year.

I usually read multiple books at the same time, a classic, something technical, a fiction, maybe a biography or a business book.

I never force myself to read something specific if I am not in the mood (but I always have something purely entertaining that almost always work : Terry Pratchett at the moment)

Your best bet is probably to just find a simple form backend that can make use of webhooks (or easily communicate with Zapier, Integromat, N8N)

I don’t think someone is going to build a form with hundreds of integrations, it’s not worth the time investment

I try to be useful in my local community.

I was living in a condo in Thailand and noticed there were many designers. I offered my help on the WhatsApp conversation to make a free workshop about AI generated images, because I thought many designers might not know about it but gain something valuable from it.

After the workshop we just naturally went to grab some beers.

I like to give free and fun programming courses for kids to get them interested in science. Of course these kids come with their parents, or siblings, etc.

I don’t want to quote the Bible, but just try to be useful, entertaining, tell good stories, or just be easy to be around.

If you work from home, do something unexpected once a week (it could literally be anything : I became friend with a prostitute in Phuket, because I was reading Don Quichotte earlier this year. I did not want to read from my place, so I just decided to head for the closest bar, order a cold beer or two and enjoy my classic. Few of them came to engage the conversation because the bar was almost empty because of Covid, I treated them as absolutely normal people, we just ended up shared life stories until late into the night, practicing English, talking about which part of the world we would like to visit)

We are still regularly meeting to grab a coffee or do free diving.

You can make friends with pretty much anyone (especially in big cities, you are not the only one feeling isolated)

I don’t see why the ideas should be opposite.

There have been many things I have been paid to do.

I would have done them nonetheless.

Tbilisi, Georgia?

Yes I say it.

I have studied at Tsinghua University, it's easier to conduct research there. There is pressure due to political correctness.

Be it in science like AI and humanities.

It's still a tradeoff, in modern countries, the state slowly replaces older structures (like family).

It's safer.

But little by little, you end up with people who don't do much than living outside of big cities, commuting back and forth, going back home to watch Netflix and order some food.

Working conditions in SEAsia are still not as good. But it's affordable to eat outside, it's affordable to enjoy a lot of social time with family and friends. Friends and family, colleagues, low paid workers will meet together several times a week.

I am from France, my mother used to be a factory worker, she had more money, but I don't think she was happier. I am pretty sure it was the opposite actually.

She felt a lot more isolated.

What I notice, is that countries with strong regulations don't have street food, night markets.

Because these are chaotic. Once your country goes down the regulation road it's not possible anymore.

- What about the cold chain? - What if people pay with cash and don't pay taxes? - What about noises? - Isn't it dangerous.

Sure your food is safer, but social life slowly erode.

I also find this annoying, but I think it’s mostly an American/European thing.

It’s not only about tech, we do this with kids, over protecting it.

We do the same with food.

It’s a trade off. When you pay super attention to the food, sure it’s safer. But your communities become a bit boring without any street food, no night market, etc.

I prefer living on the other side of the world. Less safety but more personal freedom

You just turn off your TV and block the related keywords on social media.

Can you do something about this war? No. Neither can I.

You don't need to be glued to this for hours. We have no information about who is playing what game.

When you start seriously playing with DALL-E you realise how pride and limiting they are.

I wanted to create illustration for books, produce high end book collections and redirect part of the profit to a charity in Benin and rural China.

It’s hardly possible, you can’t generate any forms of violence. Yet violence is part of life, and pretty much half of literature.

How are supposed to illustrate Lolita or do justice to Dostoevsky with these constraints?

I seriously hope a competitor take the lead.

It was very useful in the past, but most of the problems it solved does not exist anymore.

I used it extensively because I never really like the imperative approach, it’s a bit too error prone