Craftsmanship, AI UI Tools, Sci-Fi Musings, and AI Customer Service

April is past - more AI tools, resources, and media consumed. New things to learn and build. Treating these "10 things" style write-ups as an experiment. We'll get the cadence dialed in one of these days.

1. The topic of mastering a craft and pursuing passion is something I spend a lot of time thinking about. Michael Simmons wrote a newsletter issue titled So Passionate You Never Stop Improving. In his 6500-word article (well worth every word) he talks about the difference between doing something finitely to achieve a goal and doing something infinitely out of devotion for the sheer enjoyment of doing that thing. Complete with examples of real people who are/were devoted to their callings. A good reminder to stay curious and to continue working on that thing that gets us out of bed in the morning where we find our fulfillment.

2. I recently watched the Netflix adaptation of The Three Body Problem based on Cixin Liu's book series. Hard science fiction is something I enjoy spending time reading and this book series had me thinking hard about our universe, time and space, and even questioning whether we're living in a simulation. Sadly I must say Netflix did not do the books justice. I think AvenueX did a good job giving an opinion on the Netflix series. For those interested in hard science fiction and enjoy nerding out over game theory, the Fermi paradox, and quantum physics, this is the series to read. I've gone down the rabbit hole and have been watching Quinn's Ideas talk about it. Here's 5 minute summary on The Three Body Problem to get you started.

3. I discovered UX Pilot. Basically ChatGPT in the Figma file or Figjam. About to level up my UX game with this. Maybe it will help me figure out that $300 million revenue pattern.

4. Free stock photos? Yes, please. If I'm not creating artwork for my projects in Mid Journey I'm pulling it off of lummi.ai. A lot of great pieces in there.

5. Retro desktop sites are pretty cool. Digging the 8-bit cursor in this Figma article. As a bonus Pool Suite is one of my favorite websites using the retro concept.
6. Tailwind is a big part of my daily work. Tailscan just elevated my dev tools experience + that new productivity unlock is a bonus.

7. Diving into learning what I can about agentic AI and how I can leverage it to do much of the leg work my tasks require. One open-source tool I'm tinkering with is Crew AI. There are already so many use cases. One that jumped out at me is the landing page generator. David Ondrej's YouTube video does an excellent job explaining AI Agents and includes actionable steps on how to get started.

8. As a web developer I think it's imperative to stay on top of what's happening here in the AI revolution. Just joined the waitlist for A Practical Introduction to AI for Developers. Thinking this may be the right place to learn how to use LangChain.

9. Playing with DALL-E to create images, it's neat I can edit specific parts of the images and update the prompt to get the output I really want. Try it out. Here's a breakdown of how to edit.

10. My mind is full of ideas - especially building stuff with AI right now. Ironically The Startup Ideas Podcast hosted by Greg Isenberg got me thinking about what I could build next. In this episode Isenberg talks about profitable AI business ideas, some of which include AI customer service agencies and more. I had to keep my notes app open for this one.
    And that's a wrap. If you read this far, thanks for reading.