David Locke’s Post

Sidecade lets you play video games on any website. Its just so much fun. I literally use this app every day when I have a few minutes of downtime. It uses a neat window system to load games. The game collection exists as a sidebar that can expand or collapse. Disclaimer: I made this. #html5games #webgames #games #indiegames #sidecade #davidlocke

I've been stuck on some code for the past few days and slowly but surely I've been making progress. When i'm stuck on code I take the following steps: - Seek to deeply understand the problem. - Follow data through the system. - Carefully review my logic. - Review documentation. - Google/GPT stuff. - Take a break. - Repeat. Typically 1 or two cycles of this get me through it. This particular one has been about 5 cycles. #buildinpublic #software #development #debugging #persist #davidlocke #postpup

I let my kid fail today and I would do it again. Today both of my kids were late for school, because one of them overslept their alarm. I give my children a decent amount of freedom and I treat them like young adults rather than teenagers. I have made it clear what success looks like. Success = 1. Up and ready. 2. Breakfast eaten. 3. Lunches packed. 4. Kitchen cleaned. 5. In car by 7:45am. By 7:15 my son was not downstairs doing his normal routine. I thought, maybe he is just taking a little longer. It's not 7:45am yet. By 7:30am I could tell he was going to miss. There was no way he could do the things he needed to in 15 mins. I did not hustle him along. I did not give him a hard time about it. I waited until he failed. At 7:46am, I went upstairs and found him still asleep. I informed him of the time and that we are now late. He was like "oh crap, my alarm didn't go off". I said "Alright, your sister and I will be downstairs waiting." He rushed around getting his stuff together. We ended up leaving about 10 minutes late. His breakfast was a granola bar. He didn't do his morning kitchen chore. And on the drive to school I asked him "what happened?" He replied with "My alarm didn't go off." I let him know that was not what happened. That was why it happened. What happened was "He was late." We engaged in a dialog about the alarm situation. I asked him questions like "If this were a job do you think your employer would accept, my alarm didn't go off as a reason for you not showing up?" I asked him questions like "How can you prevent this from happening in the future?" In the car on the fly HE made a plan to make sure he was never late again because of his alarm. We ended the conversation with him having to take kitchen duty for the rest of the week. Not once was I mad. I treated him with respect. He responded well and I believe he will improve. I responded this way because of all my time managing people in the workplace. This situation is so close to so many work scenarios. Moral of the story: If you as a manager swoop in and prevent people from failing you 1. Rob them of valuable learning opportunities 2. You constantly have to monitor and micromanage them 3. You create an environment nobody wants to work. #leadership #learning #management #postpup #davidlocke

When ChatGPT first came out I used it ALL the time. Pretty quickly I had built up a set of standard prompts. I would use it for things like: “making my bad emails more professional” and “summarizing my development notes” I found myself jumping back and forth between the ChatGPT window and whatever I was working on. I was also not satisfied with how slow it was to make a query. Because I'm an engineer who solves my own problems, I set out to build an embedded ChatGPT chrome extension that remembers my sessions and that I can pull up on any website with a single click or some hotkeys. I tossed it up on a website and shared with a few friends and they all really enjoyed it. These days this type of functionality is coming built into the browsers themselves, but it was still a pretty fun project. The project has potential if anyone wants to talk about taking over it and building into something more. What do you think of it? #chatgpt #popboxgpt #chrome #extensions #buildinpublic #davidlocke

Social media scheduling software sucks. I tried Buffer, I tried hootsuite, I tried like 3 others. I have two main issues: There are too many unnecessary features. It takes to long to actually accomplish the task. I was looking for a solution because if I leave my posting to the last minute I wont do it. My goal was to spend an hour or two on the weekend writing a bunch and then quickly slice, format, and post all my content for the week. After trying unsuccessfully with several tools. I made my own and I use it every day. It's called PostPup (Link in the comments) #socialmedia #scheduling #writing #planning #batchwriting #davidlocke #postpup

This might seem small to some but it's big for me. About a month ago I finally got around to adding some SEO to Sidecade and I'm starting to see some results. I'm up above 125 installs of the Chrome extension and I just crossed 50 clicks in the last 28 days. Enjoy the journey and make sure you celebrate your small wins. For those of you who don't know Sidecade is a free chrome extension that lets you play web games on any website. Link in the comments. #celebrate #seo #googlesearch #sidecade #chromeextension #buildinpublic #sidecade #davidlocke

You know what sucks. Bugs that are difficult to reproduce. They strike down your users randomly but you cannot make it happen. It's easy to lose empathy for your user if you don't use the product yourself daily. What's even more maddening is when you do use your product daily and you yourself encounter a hard to reproduce bug. As a software engineer this drives me mad. There is something about knowing it exists but not knowing how it happens or when it will happen. If you don't use the software you build daily you are doing your users a disservice. #buildinpublic #davidlocke #software #bugs

A year and a half ago I left my job. I was unhappy. I could not deal with the politics anymore. I had saved up a nice little safety net and cut my expenses as much as I could. Since leaving I've filled my time with small contract jobs here and there. I have been thankful that the income from those contract jobs has been enough to fund my life. I'm happier than I've been in a long time. I spend my days writing more code. I have the time to write code for myself that solve my own problems. I have the time to be more engaged with my kids. Sometimes you just need a change. Everyone's path is different but don't lose sight of what matters. Best wishes to anyone out there who needs a change but is struggling to get there. I'm rooting for you. #davidlocke #postpup #sidecade #inspiration #lifechange #nextstep #motivation

I solve my own problems by writing software. LinkedIn ads annoyed me so I did something about it. I would get an advertisement every 3rd post. I could have used an ad-blocker extension, but I didn't. I built my own. Why? Because I didn't like the way the various ad-blocker systems worked. 1️⃣ I wanted something that only worked on LinkedIn. 2️⃣ I didn't want to fully remove the ad but made it smaller and transparent. 3️⃣ I wanted to be able to click to reveal the ad. 4️⃣ I only wanted the option to customize it should my needs change. So I built a chrome extension for myself that does exactly this. I did not publish this extension. I use it for myself. As a #soloprenuer with a software-engineering background, I often build tools like this that help streamline my day-to-day. =========== Follow me to hear more about my daily adventures as a and my journey of to solve my own problems in public. ===========

Soooo…I built an entire blog website because I wanted a blog. When I tell people this they look at me like I'm insane. They ask: “Why? There are so many free options!” The answer is: simplicity and control. [Simplicity] Many solutions are bloated with features. (I wrote a post about this yesterday.) I don't need a blog that moonlights as an e-commerce store with the right plugin. [Control] I wanted my blog to be a foundational component of my content operating system. (I plan to write more about my content operating system soon.) [Today] It started out as just a blog but it has evolved into so much more. I now use my blog site to drive the content for all of my various web projects. I've built in automations that help me streamline my content process. I'm a software engineer, and when I have  a problem I solve it with software.  (Even this post was scheduled using a tool I created) If this sorta thing interests you connect with  me I'd love to chat about it with you! =========== Follow me to hear more about my daily adventures as a #soloprenuer and my journey of #building #software to solve my own problems in public. #buildinpublic #davidlocke ===========