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I had lunch with a good friend today. In an almost full restaurant. It almost felt… “normal”.

It’s a really sunny day, which is amazing, especially since April had been really rainy. As it is usual in Portugal, apparently (“Avril, chuva mil”, they say here).

Our dog was uncharacteristically happy to see us when we picked him am from “dog school”.

Some things I work on are moving along and are looking good.

A good friend of mine just announced some great news.

It’s been a good day. And I felt the need to write this because there were so few of them lately.

8 years ago I was writing something similar, about a completely different situation, though.

The sunset in Nazaré, Portugal, yesterday.

An interesting debate on Marginal Revolution. Of course, the debate is as old as humanity. Still, people in our generation had to really look at the arguments because of how COVID impacted different people based on age.

So the lives of high wealth, low human capital individuals, including older individuals, are overweighted by traditional economic metrics, given that “naive” WTP measures do not adjust for the “wealth transfer upon death” externality. That is some but by no means all of the elderly. Their willingness to pay for risk reduction may be as high as the WTP of the young, but in social terms that does not mean their lives are equally valuable.

From here: Are young or old lives worth more? – Marginal REVOLUTION.

I’ve found myself searching on reddit for links from specific domains lately and I always forget how to do it.

So here it is, in case you ever need it:

https://www.reddit.com/domain/longreads.com/

Of course, change the domain name for whatever you need.

It’s a neat little trick that can help you at some point.

In the last email from IndieHackers I found the story of Carrd, the one-page site builder. The company just hit $1M ARR and the founder talked about his early experience building the product here.

Apparently doing the same two things over and over seriously impacted my ability to come up with “outside the box” ideas, and what few I did come up with were either too boring or just too damn cliché (yes I considered doing a to-do list app 😅).

So, perhaps the solution was to not think too far outside the box, and instead stick to the same general category as all my previous work — that is, web design, and specifically the “do-it-yourself” variety found in site templates.

And that’s when it hit me: how about a site builder?

Not only would this be a fun challenge (and one that would encompass both the frontend and backend), it also felt like the next logical step after years of making increasingly sophisticated site templates that were kind of edging towards proto-site builder territory anyway.

It’s an interesting experience, especially since he mentions in an AMA on the site (IH) that he raised VC money when he was already profitable and it wasn’t for the money only, but mainly for the network and advice.

Guess you could say I was in denial about Carrd’s growth and what it was becoming. I still thought of it as a side project even as recently as a couple of years ago, but a combination of events in 2020 (COVID-19 and protests in the US being the most significant) crazy accelerated growth and made it very, very clear that was no longer the case and I needed to treat Carrd — and, more importantly, the users who relied on it every day — with the importance it deserved.

Which was all well and good, but WTF do I do next? Do I spin up “Carrd Inc”? Do I begin hiring? If so, who do I hire? What sort of business/legal shit do I need to know about given how much user content is being generated literally every second? Questions I was reasonably confident I could figure out in time, but as growth continued to accelerate — we went from adding hundreds of sites a day to literally thousands within the course of just a few months — I realized there was a good chance by the time I did figure it all out, it’d be too little too late.

And that’s where the idea of the raise came in. As something of a solo bootstrapper I’ve always been pretty insistent on doing everything myself so the thought of getting others involved (let alone taking their money) wasn’t exactly appealing especially since we were profitable and didn’t actually need the money. However, I knew from talking to others there was a lot more to VC than just being cut a check, and that the network, expertise, and connections I’d gain would go a long way to address the issues I was facing at that moment as well as better equip us for taking Carrd into the future.

… which I guess is what it comes down to: doing what’s best for the product — even if it does bruise your ego a bit :)

The AMA is here and it’s worth reading all of it.

These days I’m watching Mythic Quest, a TV series about a gaming studio building an MMO. While the series is quite funny and interesting (with the voice actress of Aloy in the cast), something else caught my eye.

The main character of the aforementioned show is Ian, the studio leader. Who is played by Rob McElhenney, also known from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Rob convinced Ryan Reynolds recently to buy a football club in the UK (Wrexham). And the interesting thing? They never met in person before.

The price?

In a pinch-yourself moment for success-starved fans of Welsh club Wrexham, Reynolds and McElhenney completed a $US2.5 million […] takeover of a team that plays in the fifth tier of English football.

From here: Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney buy Welsh club Wrexham.

I’m jealous. I want a football club as well!

As McElhenney’s ambition took hold, he wondered if he could persuade Reynolds to join in, despite only being acquainted via modern technology.

Although the ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ star recently revealed on a US television show that the pair met last month for the first time to shoot a promo for the football club, prior to their successful bid for Wrexham the pair had never come face to face.

From here: Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds: Stars never met before buying Wrexham – BBC Sport.

Also, here’s a video from the stars:

A message from our owners-elect…

Welcome to Wrexham AFC, @RMcElhenney and @VancityReynolds 🥳

🔴⚪️ #WxmAFC pic.twitter.com/ho1vV8cvry

— Wrexham AFC (@Wrexham_AFC) November 16, 2020

photo from Extra.ie

I’ve changed both my laptop and desktop to M1 Macs recently. One thing I had on the previous laptop that I loved was that I had some quick actions to resize images and to change image type from HEIC to JPG.

Some friends asked me about it and I never remember how to do it. Since I’m looking for it on my own now, here are links to the solutions:

• Quick action to change to JPG
• Quick action to resize images

The solutions are using Automator, an automation MacOS app that exists on every Apple computer.

I like snow. Actually, I lie. I like the first snow of the year. I don’t really like it after that.

I was born in Romania, where the 4 seasons are actually quite clearly separated. This means that every year of my life it snowed during the winter (usually a lot).

Since moving to Portugal I didn’t really see too much snow. Especially with COVID, I couldn’t really travel during the winter of 2020. And to make it even more snowless, in 2019 we went to the French Pyrenees during Christmas. Because, apparently, it snows a lot there. Well, we had 15-16 degrees and lots of sun.

This means I didn’t see snow since early 2019. And yesterday, in May, I found out that somewhere in Portugal there was snow!!

Serra da Estrela is the highest point of continental Portugal, at about 1,990 meters. And that means you can get snow in April sometimes, but rarely in May. I wanted to go there in April, but a combination of good weather and lockdown meant I accepted I wouldn’t see snow this winter as well.

Not anymore! I just saw snow. Not a lot, because it already started to melt, but snow nevertheless! And 3.5 degrees Celsius when at home there were 20 degrees. What can I say? I’m happy!

And here’s a pile of rocks that probably has multiple authors. I don’t know what’s it about, but it looked nice, so I took a photo of it.

By the way, driving to the top of Serra da Estrela is quite easy, if the road is not snowed in. The road is new and really good and the scenery is spectacular. There are also ski facilities at the top and they have a webcam where you can see if there’s snow or not.

I played Mass Effect a long time after they launched it. I don’t know why, but I didn’t hear about the series until the second title. Which I LOVED. It is, even now, the best SF franchise in gaming, in my opinion.

I have a post (in Romanian) from 2012 when I was impatiently waiting for Mass Effect 3. Which I enjoyed, but nothing compared to the 2nd one.

Well, I’m actually quite happy now because I just started playing Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the remastered version of all 3 games. I’m playing it on the PS5, but it’s also available on the PS4 as well. And on PC and XBox.

I wanted to replay the game for a long time now, but it wasn’t available anymore on the PlayStation consoles (even on PS Now) and once I heard they are remastering it, I said I would wait. And the wait is over!

I’ve put one hour in the game already and it’s almost as amazing feeling as I remember. But I started with the first one, of course. And I still don’t feel the nostalgia hitting me. I thing the beginning of the second one, with The Illusive Man looking at a sun from close range, being voiced by Martin Sheen, will manage to do that.

Buuuuut… it’s gonna take a while. The 3 games are more than 100 hours gameplay in length and I don’t have that kind of time now, unfortunately. So I will play it over the next months, especially since I don’t expect any new games any time soon.

If you’ve never played the games, you should. The graphics is showing its age a little bit, but the story is as good as I remember it being. And you actually play it in 4K and 60fps on the PS5. I think you can actually play it in 120fps on PC. So it’s worth trying it again.

Here’s the trailer:

Image from EA

About 15 years ago or so a friend asked me why I didn’t play World of Warcraft. I didn’t know too much about the game, so I asked why she did. She answered something like “you can be part of groups, you meet online, you talk, you make money, you fight”. And I said, without trying to be an ass, even though I probably sounded like one: “Oh, but I do that in real life!”

Assholery aside, I always felt that life, in general, can feel like a game sometimes.

Well, Packy McCormick from Not Boring actually wrote an article on it and it’s pretty good.

But crypto itself is not the game. It’s just the in-game currency for a much bigger game, played across the internet, that involves CEOs, influencers, artists, researchers, investors, and regular people, like you and me. That’s a much more fun topic to explore than which asset class is outperforming which. This is bigger, more permanent than day-to-day market fluctuations.

We’re all playing a Great Online Game. How well we play determines the rewards we get, online and offline.

The Great Online Game is played concurrently by billions of people, online, as themselves, with real-world consequences. Your financial and psychological wellbeing is at stake, but the downside is limited. The upside, on the other hand, is infinite.

Social media is the clearest manifestation of this meta-game. Beginner-level Twitter feels weird, like a bunch of people exposing their personal thoughts to the world. Medium-level Twitter is Threads and engagement hacks. Twitter Mastery is indistinguishable from an ongoing game. This is also true for Reddit, Discord, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and other social networks.

Read it all here: The Great Online Game – Not Boring by Packy McCormick.

I found this Ted Talk video today: What I learned from 100 days of rejection.

While the talk and its conclusion are interesting, the stories of this guy’s rejection are so funny and the reason for my recommendation. Especially when he went to a stranger’s house with a flower in hand and asked permission to plant the flower in that guy’s yard. I can only imagine what my reaction would be if someone asked me that.

Below’s the full video. You can also visit Jia Jiang’s blog where he has the list of all the rejections he got in 100 days here.

Photo by Daniel Herron on Unsplash