2023 Goals × Learning and Doing

Welcome to Syntax, the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there.

Happy Freaking New Year, everybody. We are going to do a show a show on our goals For 2023, both in terms of coding, what we wanna learn, what we wanna do, what we wanna build, in terms of our businesses, As well as, health, wealth, and happiness, you know, all those good things.

With me as always is mister Scott Talinsky. How are you doing, Scott?

Hey. I'm doing good. I'm doing really good.

Feeling the flow getting into it. Yeah. I think I I got back into the office last week at the time of recording this, and you know what? I took last week to say, you know what I'm gonna do this week? I'm gonna do email. I'm gonna do organization.

I'm gonna take care of some, like, small code tasks, and I'm not going to worry about any of these big ideas until after I get, like, a week underneath my my belt to, you know, really feel it. Comfortable and back in the flow of things, and I think it helped. You know, it was a nice week back. It wasn't leisurely, but I you know, it wasn't Stress filled as well.

So I think that really helped. How about you? What's what's been up with you?

About about the same. I've been Back on the home projects, which is fun. We took a I've known it. Yeah. We took, like, a a couple of month break after I finished my office in the basement.

I was just done with that with doing home projects, you know, just had 0, 0 ability to do any more home projects. But, we had a couple of weeks off at Christmas, and then I was like, I'm back in there. I'm back into it. So I'm spending my evenings doing little things here or there. I've got my got my workshop, started which is really cool because I get to finally put all my tools in a in a room and have space to just, like, it. Fix stuff and tinker. So I'm pretty stoked about that. That's in your basement or what? So any Italians listening can Maybe maybe turn away. But we have a cantina, which is underneath your porch.

There's this like, I don't know, 15 by 10 room, and it's meant for hanging hams and stuff like that. But, we're not doing that. It's and it's cold.

Like it's a cold room. It's essentially a cold room. So I was like, I'm going to make this my workshop. And I did put a little heater in there, and it takes, like, 5 minutes to warm up if I need it.

But there's, like, a like, there's a vent directly outside. So I was like, I'm gonna it. I gotta put a 3 d printer in here and everything. Nice. Yeah.

Yeah. That hey. I think I speak for most, ignorant Americans when I say that I thought a cantina was it. A type of restaurant. So because we have a lot of restaurants named so and so Cantina, and you're just like, oh, yeah. That's just a restaurant. I had no idea That it was a I just Googled it. It says that Cantina is a type of bar common to Latin America,

similar to the etymology canteen.

Oh.

Oh. So maybe I'm not a kid. I so when we moved in, I was like, but what is this room? It's so bizarre.

And, all of my Italian friends are like, dude, that's a cantina. Like, that's where you put your wine and your cheese and your prosciutto's and stuff like that.

So maybe that's just a local term then. I don't know. If you if you all if you all know, let us know if if which which one of these is right, or are they Both right. There's a possibility that both of them are right.

Yeah. Hey. We we took the kids skiing over Christmas, And, we we've been taking them to indoor skiing lessons, which is wild. Indoor skiing lessons. How does that work? Very cool.

It. It's I don't know if a lot of places have this, but Colorado seems to have it because, you know, it's Colorado. The mountains. Yeah. Yeah.

And so the way it works is that this is this giant like, and I I'm talking like, I don't know how big this thing is. Maybe like a 30, 40 feet long treadmill that's very wide and it's like carpet. It's like that, nylon carpet. It's like that it. That plastic carpet.

So it's this nylon carpet. They wet it down, and it's this big treadmill. And it's on a hydraulic system so they can increase The angle and whatever, and then there's some bars on the front of it. And so the kids are in shorts and a t shirt and putting on skis, and then they hold on to this metal bar. And the instructors on there with skis, he pushes the button, the the treadmill goes, and it feels like they're skiing. They can practice their pizzas and their french fries and all that stuff. And it actually feels like you're skiing on this thing, and it's so cool because That's wild. He keeps a remote control in his hand, and he pushes button and it increases the angle or decreases the angle or or or the speed even.

So like if, Landon falls down, he hits a button and the thing stops. So, you know, it doesn't Scoot him right up to the top or something like that. And it is so cool. And the I think the best part is, like, when I was learning how to ski, you fall Fall down in the snow. You're cold. You're wet. You're you're upset.

It's really hard. You're a kid. You're like, screw this. Right? But with Landon, it's like you fall down a 100 times in a nice warm environment or whatever. You don't really care that much. You're not getting hurt. Yeah. And you don't have to worry about the chairlift or anything. You're just worrying about the technique. So when we finally got him out on the mountain, he did a full day lesson. He came back in and was like, when can can I keep going today? We're like, no. We gotta drive home or whatever, but, he he was very encouraged to keep going, which is so awesome. Anybody who who's ever tried to learn how to ski can know how frustrating it can be when you're first trying to learn stuff. So yeah. We put both of our kids, Brooklyn's 3. We put her in a half day lesson, and honestly, I have no idea how she did. They Took her up on the gondola up to the top of the mountain, and I did not see her for half a day, and she came down and she wasn't crying. So, it's all success to me. That's That's about as good as it

gets. That was our Facebook holidays. Yeah. All right. Let's get into the goals for today. Let's start off it with coding goals because this is a coding show. We'll talk about what we wanna learn. It's not a skiing show? Well, no.

Ski skiing show. Well, I I honestly enjoy the shooting the shit as much as I do talking about coding on this this thing, so maybe we just need a a entirely second show it or maybe A Tuesday show.

That's what it is. It's a Patreon show. We we put a Patreon show. If anybody actually cares to hear us shoot the shit, then they'll they They can pay us money to hear it hear that. Who knows? But code code goals. I think first and foremost, you know, if I'm looking at, like, the things that I like to do in code, primarily you know, like, yeah. Sure. I'm a JavaScript developer. I build applications. Right? But my favorite thing in code in general is CSS stuff. So, the thing I'm looking forward to most this year in terms of goals is is container queries.

I I feel like I would like to make container queries my default mode of working responsively this year. Yeah.

So I'm gonna be working, in container queries a lot. I want to feel Not only, like, very comfortable with them, but I wanna be able to do advanced techniques. I wanna be able to see like, I wanna push it to the limit. You know? I really wanna see, like, what's going on there. There's a lot of, like, really neat u new units and new features coming to CSS. So I think, like, with the ability to, continue queries and all these new things, Then I I'm I'd be excited to get some of that stuff in, especially now you can animate, like, grid properties and stuff. So You can? Yes. What? Yeah. I just saw some, like, really neat stuff about it. CSS grid animation.

Yeah. I I've seen some, like, really so I actually recently saw Wes. Somebody say, oh, I found out a way to animate height auto with CSS grid Being able to animate CSS grid rows or columns.

I need to dive into more of this because I just briefly saw it. CSS animated grid layouts. Is that the I saw Adam Argyle posted,

doing, like, isotope animation in CSS.

Was that what he was

using? No. He was using the browser transition stuff. Okay.

Yeah. But I'll I'll post The link to this, this blog post, from Bramas.

We know we see his posts all the time. Yeah. We need to have him on as well. Oh, we're going to the goat list. Yeah. Put them on the go list.

Where's the

I have I literally have the,

a go where did I put that? Pop open the go list. One of the examples for those of you who are into, like, you know, art, there's, like, an animated Mondrian, painting, and it's so cool. That's one of the examples in here. So if you wanna, like, look at that, this is like a Mondrian that's, like, breathing almost. It's it's like, Man, I I love this stuff. I'm very excited.

Other other code goals I have, I wanna ship something with Rust.

You know, I've built things in Rust, like, You know, I I have a contract generator that I wrote that's just like, you know, what are the terms of this contract? Blah blah blah. It's just like a prompt engine that spits out a PDF. Right? And that's a fun fun little project, but it's just for me. So I kinda wanna ship something with Rust. I want I also wanna ship Something with, machine learning in some regard as well.

I haven't ever done any kind of machine learning ever at all. I I have, like, ideas of it. I understand concepts, but I haven't written anything. I've never used TensorFlow. I've never used any of these types of libraries. So, that's gonna be a thing for me.

I have a a mobile app that I'm working on for my breakdancing stuff, my breakdancing app that I've been working on, And you know what is breaking is getting in closer to the Olympics here. I have to feel like there is a product here that I could actually turn this into an app that people will use Because I found it useful, and I'm a dancer. I know the audience. I've been in this, scene for, like, 20 years. So, you know, maybe there's a product here, and, I would really like to ship this this app that I've been working on, and and it's it's a Sveltekit and Supabase app, but I feel like it's most useful as a native application. So I don't wanna rewrite it in React Native. That's not something I'm going to do. So I would love to be able to ship this using Tori, Which right now, Tori, especially for mobile apps, is pretty immature.

So I've got this thing working as a Tori desk Top app, no problem. But, like, shipping it as a Tori mobile app, I think, is going to involve a bit of work on my end, but also, some evolution of the the Tori platform or the growth of that considering it's still an alpha for mobile apps. And and those If you don't know, we haven't, if we we haven't talked too much about Tori, but we have a little bit Tori is basically like an electron type of alternative.

It's using web views to deploy web apps as either native desktop apps or now even mobile apps. But even with mobile apps, it's still using a web view. Right? It's still using that web view, but, they they are promising mobile apps in Tori, and I think that's really exciting. I think it could be a great way to have a it. A lightweight native app that's written with web tech because as much as I love, native apps and, you know, I feel like native apps are are fun to work on, I I'm not a native app developer. I'm not a swift developer.

I'm not going to be this year, and I I don't think it's worth my time to invest that time into that. So I think the time is better Worth, you know, working in tools that work with things that I'm competent in and that I like to work in. Totally. Another code a goal I have here, you'll be happy to hear there's gonna be no rewrites of LevelUp tutorials. I'm not going to do that. You're not gonna do it in LiveWire? I'm not gonna do it in LiveWire.

I'm not going to I'm not even gonna get this, Wes. I'm not gonna rewrite any container queries because all of our Mobile stuff is fine. So even though I wanna get into mobile container queries and all that, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do any rewrites.

No, thank you.

Only features this year. I'm gonna style out on some features that we we have, we have a bunch of features in in the hopper. Is that is that a thing, the hopper? Yep. Oh, yeah. Okay. I know a little bit of hopper. Okay. I got some features in the hopper.

And so so when we designed the site and we rethought the site, Travis Nielsen, who designed it, he designed it from the ground up as if he was like rethinking our website.

But Then when it came time to build it, it's like we spend so much time just getting the rebuild of the site to be back to square one. When we launched It's almost like a reskin with some extra stuff of our old site, and that's fine.

But now it's time to add in these features that we've been, planning and that we've been working on. It's like, oh, these are all the things that I I'm really excited to work on and spend some serious time on And dive into. So that's gonna be a big thing.

Next step is I would love to ship on, something or just not maybe not ship Something but let's say explore and utilize web text to work in VR.

I personally I really like standalone VR.

You know, often, I don't I don't I don't understand sit at your desk with a cable tied to your computer VR. I don't understand that. But what I do understand is like playing miniature golf in my living room, walking around completely tether free, and I really love those experiences. I have the old, the 1st Quest headset.

And while I don't love that it's Facebook attached, I've had it for a long time and I really like those, really interesting types of experiences where you can explore things, or I'll put it on, on my kids and let them watch YouTube in 3 d where it's like flying around a mountain or visiting other countries or things, and they can see these Landmarks in in three d, and and it's so cool.

So I would love to experiment with web tech. There's some Svelte based 3 d libraries or even React 3 fiber, which I have a bit of experience in. I would love to build something using 3. Js That is VR. Maybe pass through VR, maybe just straight up VR. Who knows? But I would love to to dive into that a little bit because I think it's cool and it it's gonna be one of those things I think we'll just gonna see more and more as augmented reality becomes part of our lives. Heck, even Apple is probably gonna be launching a headset this year, so it's it's gonna be part of the the workflow at some point for everybody. Alright. My goal goes, container queries as well. I recently registered a domain name, for a container queries course. Because I've got the I've got the Flexbox course. I've got the grid course,

and like, I guess we're not talking about courses here, but let's go for it. I finally get to update my grid course with upgrade pretty soon. I'm pretty happy about that. And then container queries is gonna be another big one. So I can't imagine that would be a mass, of course, but it'd be nice to have, it. A couple, I don't know, 10, 15 videos on on container queries and how handy they can be and and grokking them because it's gonna be It's going to be another big thing everybody needs to learn, right? Totally. It's going to change the way we work. Yeah, totally. I am looking forward to building a larger app with Svelte.

So everything I've built assault so far has been, like, good enough, but, like, I've never built, like, a a a full production application was felt, and I'm I'm itching to do that. I have this website, uses.tech, which is, A listing of everybody who has a forward slash uses page, and it has gotten out of control like a 703, 703 pages on it, which is, unreal.

Yeah. That's not not super practical to navigate 730

pages. Oh, sorry. No. It's it's 1 page with 708 people on it. So, like, there's no I said it. There's no and, like, you can filter for the types of programming languages people use and and whatnot, but it's not good.

It it needs to be it needs to be better. And I think in, like both that in, like, Remix, I was like, do I wanna rebuild this in Svelte, or do I wanna build rebuild this and remix? And I think probably Svelte because, it's built in Gatsby right now, and I don't think I would use a whole lot of the remix kinda cool features, but I think I think I'm gonna do it in his fault. I think that would be fun. An excellent idea.

I'm not going to say anything else. Yeah. I think that'll be fun. I am already started converting BossMonster, which is my,

monorepo of all the apps that run my Course viewer, course checkout, marketing, webhooks, all that stuff. That's called the boss monster. And that Has I started that probably 10 years ago in jQuery and CoffeeScript, and now it is in React and Common JS.

And I am in the process now of actually we have for maybe a couple of months. CS. I've had a little bit of TypeScript in there around the models, because that's, like, the most probably the most helpful thing to have TypeScript for is Being able to autocomplete your your actual database queries. Right? Yeah. But now on just last week, I started, Writing a whole bunch of new types, generating them based off of existing code, and now I'm at the point now where I wanna convert it From both CommonJS to ESM as well as JavaScript to TypeScript, like all of it, not just the models, But literally everything inside of it. So, I've been keeping notes for a show on converting existing app to TypeScript Just to kind of all the gotchas and whatnot. And a little spoiler alert, man, am I glad I'm using TypeScript, Not from a TypeScript point of view, but like a straight node.

Common JS DSM is is not fun, but TypeScript makes it all interoperable and does a whole bunch of

special sauce on top, which makes it so much better. Yeah. I converted an app from common to Yes. And boy, are my arms tired? That was a lot of work. I ended up getting a code mod,

which will do it all for you. But Even then, there there's a lot of gotchas around top top level. We'll save it for the show. Yeah. There's a lot. There's a lot of gotcha. It's not just changing the word import and exports and require. You know, there's a there's a lot more gotchas. I want to rewrite my checkout. I'm not sure if I'm going to do this this year or not. I've been sort of like I've been talking to the folks from Stripe for a while, and there's there's kind of 2 things at Stripe.

I want to rewrite my entire checkout so that I can accept more forms of payment. Like right now, I just take Credit cards and I take PayPal. But, like, wouldn't it be nice to be able to take literally every other form of payment, bank drafts or whatever. Like, every country has their own way that they, they do payments. Right? So wouldn't it be nice? So I'm kinda between, Stripe Checkout is nice because, like, they do it all, but then, like, I can't I can't drop PayPal ever. As much as I hate PayPal, I'm not dropping them. So that's kinda until Stripe checkout supports PayPal, you still have to write your own checkout thing. And then Stripe Elements is another good thing that's been getting really, really good.

So there's that. And I'm I'm trying to I'm kind of thinking, like, what should I write it in? Because my the checkout Only goes on the marketing websites, and the marketing websites are just vanilla JavaScript. So, like, I'm trying to think, like, Probably not React because I don't want to load a whole React library. So maybe Svelte, maybe maybe web components.

What do you think? It. I mean, maybe just vanilla JavaScript? Wait. Well, I mean I know the obvious.

I have a hard time saying I mean, I wrote my course platform in Svelte and SvelteKit and I like it. Yeah.

It works well And it works well with web components.

So like if you're looking for something that has like a base that gives you those Features, the routing, the server side. Right? And then you can use web components to your heart content as well, you know, then then, you know, maybe that's a a thing to to look at. Have you Checked out Shoelace at all? No.

Shoelace at shoelace.style is basically a library Full of, like, commonly used components that are all web components.

Yeah. I would really like to maybe I should put this on my list of stuff that I would want to build with this year because it. I I look and I do I build so many of these things on every single project.

An avatar, breadcrumb, a bread Breadcrumb, or, you know, any of these sort of things, tabs. And I just maybe I should be using something like this. Maybe this is why web components are here.

So Yeah. Yeah. I I feel like we are turning a page with web components over the last, like, 6 months.

I think so as well. Yeah. So that's I'm going to check this out as well. Let me know because like the thing with the checkout is that it just needs to be a pop up That takes your info and it kicks you off to whatever payment processor comes back.

So I don't need routing. I don't really need a state management library.

Yeah. Like, I might, but I'll use one of those like lightweight ones c s or or the Svelte one that's built in. I don't maybe need a form library. Our checkout is so much more Intense than that. So it's it's funny to hear you say that because, like, when I our checkout has to has to manage it. If it's a subscription or an individual product,

you can have multiple products in your cart. You can have multiple different subscription variations. You have a whole couponing system. Like, for us, there's a lot there. Yeah. I have a couponing system. I do I do want to do multiple products. So maybe, it. Yeah. Maybe maybe I should be doing it in a in a full blown framework because then I can make it do more. Then that's another thing I wanna do is that, Oh, that's the other thing is I I wanna do gifts. People are always like, how do I buy a course as a gift for somebody? And we have to, like, kinda do manually. That's on our list too. I wanna manually do it and, like, it would be nice to you're right. There's there's a lot of edge cases in in that type of stuff. And if I look look at all the stuff I would love to do, Then maybe it makes more sense to to do it in a different framework.

It's nice to be in a spot where I don't I can choose literally anything because there's no On the marketing website, it's like the whole course viewers react. And I probably never not going to move away from that in a long time. But the checkout is just JavaScript, so I can I can literally use anything I want? Yeah. Let's talk about, tooling is is I'm getting more into tooling. I Spent a bunch of time, over the last week upgrading my ESLint config.

Now it no longer needs Dev dependencies, which is really nice. I built a really cool Vite plug in that does like, it's called Vite Plug in list directory contents, which basically, will create a index dot HTML file that lists all of your files and folders.

And the reason you would want to do that is for my courses, we do multiple projects in a single course.

And Vite has the ability to serve up Every every HTML file in Vite is an app, and then you include your CSS and your your your JavaScript from there.

And I love that, but I didn't like the the thing where, like, you have to tell someone type in this exact path to your directory. And if you get it wrong, You just get a four zero four or whatever the v error page is. So I built this, thing that will, like, intercept the requests on the dev server and, and list out all the files, and you can just navigate through it like like we did in in PHP and Apache, like 15 years ago.

And then I built an n p x script for that, which is pretty cool. So if, like, If you just want to try something out really quickly and you you need this plug in, you can just run npx v dir and it will Spin it up for you without having to package JSON or anything. I tried it. It worked. I'm pretty happy with that. The only thing I'm not happy about it is it has to create an index. Html file Just to serve it up. And I've been digging into the way that Vite does that.

And I'm, I'm as deep as I pulled out the middleware, via like literally modify the Veed internal middleware object. I took it out. There's no API for that. And then I put my own in and I don't know if I'm I'm going to go through with that. I don't I don't like the idea of, like,

like, what's that? Is that monkey patching? You're literally monkey patching. Yeah. I use patch package for stuff like that. I have patched, several libraries in my day, and it never feels good. You do it, and you're like, yeah, is this the right choice? I guess it's the only choice. It's the choice I'm making right now. So Yeah. Luckily, I don't have to overwrite any v code,

but you can I'm literally just you know how, like, Connect has middleware stacks I'm literally finding the 1 middleware that does what I want, and I'm removing it and replacing it with the same a middleware, but modified to do what I want. And I was like, this is not not not amazing. You're hooking in even though there's no hook there. Yeah. 1st, Although, let me while we're talking about this, first time I've ever had to use function dot to string.

I didn't even know because If you have a function and you literally want the code that's inside that function, you can reference the function and run dot to string on it, And it will give you the code in the function. I thought that was really cool because,

I needed to, like, match the function name to know which one to take out. It's one of those things that I've always said, like, it's cool that you can do that, but I have no use case in my mind where that would or want to do that.

So It's fun to hear about those. Yeah. Alright. Go ahead on the next category. Yeah. The next category is our courses and course platforms.

You know, I have level up dot video as my course platform, and it's it's something that I've been working on for, like, 10 years now. So it's a big part of me, it. Big part of my life. So for me in working in courses and working on the course platform itself, as I mentioned before, I'm gonna be shipping features. I'm gonna be improving the platform, Perving reliability overall, getting into some of those stuff. But I I I think the thing for me is just constantly improving the platform. And in the past, Improving the platform meant, oh, what is it that I think I need to work on? Okay. Let me just start working on that and maybe kind of working ping pong in those directions until you get to where you're going, but now it's not like that. I have a road map. I have features. I have, a massive amount of to dos, And I know where I'm going. So for me, the the constant improvements to the course platform are just gonna keep coming, and I always have something. If I need to work on the platform or have time to work on the platform, there's always the next thing up for me to work on. And so I I'm excited for that. This is like The first for me in in a long time of it being like that, you know, building a platform like this, there's always a lot to do. It. I'm also gonna improve the quality of our content overall. When you do course content creation for 10 years, you learn a lot, but it's important to not, Like, have learned a bunch of lessons and then be like, alright. I've done this for 10 years. I know what I'm doing. Yeah. So For for me, it's always important to watch a lot of other people's content, consume a lot of content, like understand what some people are doing that I might not be doing, things that I do well and things that I do not so well. So I I'd like to take those lessons and really strongly learn from them. I think even when we created this podcast, it. We created it off of the idea that there's podcast things that we like and there's podcast things that we don't like. What can we, take and leave, and what can we do to produce something that we want? But, also, like, when we're improving this podcast, like, what can we do to improve it? And I'm the same way with my courses and, course platform. So, Yeah. I'm gonna be doing what I can to make my video content better all the time, and, listening to feedback and improving it that way. And, also, you know, one thing that I've had a trouble within the past is I I get into things really early, which is good, But then I do a video course on Astro before it's on version 1, or I do a video course on Svelte cubed when there's a s spell renderer for 3 d that comes out a month later.

So I'm going to do less things too early And more things right on time and more things that will not go out of date as soon.

You know, pinning things to major versions and thinking about things in in that sort of way, to both improve the lifespan of my content, but also to improve its it. Practicality for the people taking the courses. So, those are big goals of mine. Awesome. For me, I'm I'm keeping it pretty simple. I

want to double down on, creating and updating courses. Like 2020 2 was a crazy year for me. Just moving, and we had some family stuff and and whatnot and just, like, it. Very distracting.

And I I thought of a pretty productive year, but, my main thing is updating and creating courses, And I'm excited to do that. So I've got the TypeScript course almost out. That's been taken forever for me, not because I'm distracted, but it's just a It's a big course, and I want to get it right because, like you said, like, I want this to be, like, evergreen, the course. You know? Like, I want it just to be Good forever.

Not not forever, but you know what I mean. Like, I don't wanna just rip something out or and then in in a year, it's, like, out of date or it's it's Relying on something that nobody uses anymore, you know, so

pretty excited about that forever in web world.

So, like, 6 months.

Yeah. Exactly.

Updating my rec course, and then I'm hoping to launch another course after that. I have a whole list of ideas, but, I would love to hear I I have, like, ideas in terms of, like, what I think I'm excited about, what I think would sell well, what people are asking for. But, If you, the listener, have any ideas of things you would like to see for me, please please hit me up at West Boss on Twitter. I'd love to hear what you want. Alright. So is that that's it for your classes? Yeah. Just just focusing on and getting good. Yeah. Good.

Health and fitness.

This is maybe, like, little more, but, like, personal part. You know, we used to do a whole fitness episode. So I I think it's probably, like, Maybe better off to just, you know, have our health and fitness goals here. And for me, like, one thing I've always neglected is cardio. You know, I used To do dancing 3 times a week, and and that's, like, very cardio intensive. But the moment that I stopped doing that was, like, the moment I Got married and had kids and all those things. It's like, I can't go to dance practice 3 days a week. That's not gonna happen. And instead, I just spent that time lifting weights, And that's cool.

You know, I I I got strong and stuff, but I'm not like man, I had no cardio health. So I I get into dance practice and I go once a week, And I'm huffing and puffing the entire time, and that's, like, really what's holding me back more than anything else.

So I'm gonna be putting a lot of effort into cardio without losing my strength, but also just like focusing on and, you know, I said I in the last episode or the last HD we recorded, I got a Peloton, so I'm going to be doing That I'm gonna be hitting goals. I'm gonna be doing cardio regularly and outside of a one day of a week thing. I'm gonna be entering, dance competitions this year, dance battles.

You know what? This is a thing for me that, like, I got my concussion and then I entered a few more battles and then I kinda just, like, said, alright, I'm good with battling. And then, I entered a battle in Denver here with, like, a student from the the the b boy factory. And my My set was awesome, man. It was like one of the single best sets I've ever done in my life. And I was like, this is this is so good. It feels so good. And then my partner who is like A 14 year old kid who had just started dancing didn't like nothing. And I was just thinking like, yeah, maybe I should battle in, like, a real capacity, like an actual capacity because I think I can handle it. Like, I think I'm okay to handle it.

So, you know, I'm used to competing a lot. My my crew's to win a bunch of stuff. So, like, I'm in a crew out here now, with a bunch of 35 and up. We're a bunch of, like, old folks.

The breaking scene And in breaking, if you're 30 over over 35, you're basically geriatric. So, we are the old folks crew and, and that's not what we're called. But, I I think I'm gonna enter some stuff with them. They've invited me to enter some competitions with them. And I've kind of put it off because I'm, like, a little nervous about it. And that's hard for me to be nervous about that kind of thing they used to be really confident in. So I'm going to I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna make it an effort to enter at least something into I'm I'm not gonna win anything because the competition's really steep. But I'm gonna enter it and have some fun. I'm gonna continue my, Peloton goal. I'm gonna do a 52 week streak of using the Peloton, which isn't going to be hard for me, but I'm going to do it.

We have the tonal device, which is My whole gym is powered by magnets now. We have the cardio device but we also have the tonal which is like the weight lifting system.

Yeah. And it. I have right now going I think I have, like, a 60 week streak going where I've used it every single week for 60 weeks And way more than that. I've done, like, over 300 workouts with that thing already.

So I'm going to continue that going. I'm gonna try to hit a whole another 2nd year streak on that thing. So I'm gonna, it's gonna be more than a 104 weeks. So I think it's, like, a 117 weeks is what it's gonna be. I'm gonna have a 117 week streak on that thing, and I'm very excited about that. I'm just gonna keep keep up my fitness goals. Also, lastly is, we're doing a a dry January, which I've never done before. You know, I'm not a big drinker.

You know, we'll have a beer or 2 on on Fridays Saturdays and and Thursdays, you know, now.

So it's like, what I what I noticed, especially towards the end of the year or towards hard parts of the year, is that, like, that that Thursday night beer or that Friday night beer Or or or wine or whatever we were drinking, that was, like, seeming really, really exciting to me. Like, okay, the kids are down. I'm so good. Yeah. A glass of wine. I'm so excited to drink this whiskey. Whatever. Yeah. And, like, I can't thinking about that, I'm like, I don't know if I really like how Excited I was getting for that part of the evening. So, for me, we're gonna do a dry January. What we're we're, 8 days, 7 days, 9 days into the to January. And so so far, it's it hasn't been hard or anything. Like I said, I don't drink that much, but, it. You know, I'll take I'll take January off and then evaluate if we wanna do a dry February or whatever. I don't have, like, a a weird I don't have a it. A strained relationship with alcohol or or control issues there. So I'm going to just take the take the time off and and see if I want to introduce it back into my life, or if I don't. Who knows? Beautiful.

For me, I am definitely looking to get back. What is it? Get back on the horse. I'm hoping to lose about £20.

If they save a horse ride a cowboy is what they say. That is what they say. That is what they say.

I open to lose probably about £20 since I remember very clearly at the pandemic When the pandemic hit, I was, like, at the gym and then it closed. And then I looked. I've never went back. And it's I know that a lot of it is just diet, but I don't have the motivation to do the diet if I'm not actively working out.

So, stoked to get back in on that. Part of that will be, working on a home gym. We're getting that going in probably a month or 2,

which I'm pretty excited about. If you need any consulting there, I you know, I've this is I've I've done a couple of home gyms now. Definitely going to be,

it. Ask you for some some information on that.

One kind of thing related to health is after our show With Courtney on HD.

She basically I was just like the whole show. I was like, I have that. I do that. I do that. And then I was just like, that's suspicious.

So, Gordon is like, yeah. You maybe should go to the doctor, and and, like, it's probably worth getting checked out. So I I went to the doctor, and I have both forms of ADHD, which is hilarious.

It it was is a crazy process. So many questions about your when you're in school and how you grow up and how you manage things and all kinds of stuff.

So I it's kind of interesting now I'm in a spot where, Oh, that is the reason why, like, obviously, I'm doing okay in my life, but there are a lot of There were a lot of aspects in my life that were harder than they had to be because of it and also just, like, general mood and and whatnot has has much improved. So I'm I'm still, like, Trying to figure out the medication route of everything.

So I I won't say too much about that because I'm not gonna go start recommending Yeah. Sorry to people. Last month. Recommends. Yeah, but I'm sure I'll update this podcast on how that goes, but, It's going amazing so far. I'm very, very happy about it. So, I just I feel like I'm so much more productive than I previously was,

So excited about that, which is crazy because you're already productive.

You know,

it's kind of interesting, but I feel like I I've always been like I feel like I've always been productive, but I feel like doing the things I have to do are a lot easier Now, like, the things that I don't like, I've always just done what I want to do, and sometimes that is not what I should be doing. Right? So and my Focus is just unreal. It's being able to like like, not like a, oh my gosh. Amazing. But, like, I can definitely make a noticeable difference, and life is Noticeably easier,

since I've done it. You're going from like a rapid fire to like a targeted rapid fire. You're you're like able to like really More control that energy or whatever.

Now I'm interested to see what a fully operational West Boss Battle Station looks like. Yeah. It's it's it's kind of funny. They talk about that, like, hyperfixation.

I definitely still have that, but I it's like Like, I follow through and I finish things and, like, I've I've published more npm modules this year than I have all last year.

You know, I would love to know what finishing something feels like. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. What else? Oh, I've been thinking about this for forever.

I kinda wanna get an Apple Watch.

I've every now and then, I'm like, I should get an Apple Watch, and then I go, I don't feel like it. You know? I don't I don't want it. That's so do you do you run 1? Yeah.

I wear it every day. I've had Oh, yeah. For, what, like, 2 years now or whatever. I've had it for a while now. And, honestly, the best parts about it are the fitness stuff, you know, being able to track it. All of your your calorie goals and your exercise and your heart rates and things like that. I mean, I use it all the time for all that stuff. And then I I've mentioned before that I'm, like, Extremely motivated by badges in in, you know, flashing lights that say you win. So I, I I like it for that. You know what? I don't I don't use it For, like, controlling my audio, I don't use it for, a lot of a lot of, like I don't know. I don't use it for a ton of things beyond it. The health stuff.

One thing that it is really nice is, like, the walkie talkie aspects of it. You know, Courtney's upstairs Doing the giving the kids a bath while I'm doing dishes. You know, let's say one of the kids has a problem. She just beeps under her her watch, Clicks, like, the button to do the walkie talkie. Hey. I need help. Oh, that's cool. My watch buzzes. Oh, she needs help. Let me run up there. You know, I don't have to, like, Get a phone call or a text message or something like that. There's, like, little things like that or just in general, like, getting the buzzes on my wrist instead instead of having to look at my phone for notifications makes me check my phone a little slightly less. I'm still on my phone too much, but, you know,

that's that's good. Actually, that's That's one thing, with going back to the ADHD is my, like, screen time has gone down significantly.

So I don't feel like I need to it. Constantly fill every 20 seconds free with a Twitter check or something like that.

I wish I had that. Yeah. I I, you know, I don't want to go too much into my medication, but I'm unable to take medication for any of my ADHD stuff, it. Just because of, after getting a caution concussion, I had to be on antidepressants. I've been on them since. So it's like, those those medications, fight with each other. So I was like, well, I can't I can't do both. And which ones do I choose? I'm gonna choose the one that makes me, live each live every day of not, You know, not feeling depressed. So that Yeah. Good for me. Yeah.

Let's get into syntax goals. You know, for me, it. I I think, you know, we started doing interviews halfway through or, you know, a little bit of way through last year.

And we're taking 2 guys Who have primarily spent our career teaching other people web stuff.

And now we have an interview show. And some people spend their entire career Polishing their interview skills and becoming a good interviewer.

And I am not a good interviewer. I I am want I want to be. And I I feel like That's a goal for mine is to improve my interview skills.

One thing that I have trouble with in life is not making everything about me.

So, obviously, interviewing somebody else is is difficult when you want to make everything about you. So one of the goals for me is to it. Insert myself less into interviews and to, work on my interview skills and and and work on those things in a way. And and there are people that I I follow that, You know, I'd really admire their interview skills. Like, I I don't know. Have you ever heard of Ariel Helwani? He's, no. He's an MMA journalist, but, he does a podcast and he he's he's just like a exquisite interviewer and every time I listen to his podcast I'm thinking, Man, this guy, has really tuned to this skill and not like you could ever be that good but, like, I wanna be better. And listening to those types of things makes me feel like, you know, if if I could take a a few lessons here or there or read some books or whatever, Right. I think that could improve some of those episodes. I also like to do less umbs and less, you know, you knows, Less those types of things. Yeah.

That the everlasting goal in speaking.

Yeah, that's I honestly think that Is something the AI will take care of.

There. I just did it right there.

Yeah. But processing your Umms and Nas through AI to take it out makes you sound a lot smarter than Yakshara. But is it gonna do it in real time during live shows? No. No. That's that's the thing. Yeah. This is true. Sometimes you listen to people talk, and they have such good and Nazis like, I was watching it. I haven't watched the Bon Appetit YouTube channel in a long time, and I I went back to it the other day, and they have a whole slew of new hosts. And I was like, They've these all these people know how to talk. Like, I don't know how they if they train them or they hire them based on their ability to talk, but They are very good at getting their thoughts through and being able to just finish off a sentence and and be done with it. I started making what's called the goat list. So the guests on syntax are interesting.

I don't necessarily just want The people that are the popular people in web development that are on every podcast or everyone here