Week 24 of 2020 brings Slack buddies, 10K run, useless link-sharing, F1 locales, drop-shipping, 4K TV, runny grout and the original Simon Evans.
- Monday, we launched #drink-buddies using Donut in our On The Side Slack community - a way to connect members on a weekly basis to attempt improve engagement. We've had a wonderful growth recently thanks to the Creative Bloq feature but I'm keen to get people supporting each other with more regular comms. Early stages look promising: many members arranged video calls for a chat, DM's became the dominant message type with 300% increase in message count across the board and I've enjoyed getting to know one of our new members quite well. #sides #community
- Monday evening, I managed to smash my running goal of 10km after missing it in May. It was such a sense of achievement to make the distance plus my pace was better than I expected. My feet have taken a beating in my footwear though so I need to take a break before setting the next goal. #life #health
- Thursday, I was educating my wife on link-sharing with social media; something I realised might be straight-forward to techies but not to the average person. She was trying to share job postings on Facebook and Twitter but the native "share" feature seemed to lose deep-links on a SPA. Why is the Web getting so messy? #life #tech
- This weekend, I was impressed to see Andy keep up with endless PR's providing extra translations for F1 Calendar. It was all thanks to a well-placed Reddit post which spurred 5 extra languages on top of the original request from the previous week. An inspiration for anyone who's struggling to keep motivated through lockdown. #sides #f1
- Back on my own sides, I've now worked out how to configure drop-shipping on Hearables.store - it's not as automatic as I originally suspected but the Chrome extension certainly speeds up the process. I've got a current order in progress to understand typical delivery times then I'll work on some content. #sides #dropshipping
- My latest birthday lockdown indulgence arrived on Sunday; a new 50" Samsung 4K TV. Our trusty old Samsung 42" plasma has served us well for the past 11 years (and still works fine) but I was keen to upgrade on the picture quality and simplify all the on-demand services with a number of additional boxes getting messy. Unfortunately, Mrs J wasn't convinced but she's coming round. #life #tech
- The bathroom tiling continued this weekend but we came up against a few challenges with dodgy light wiring in the ceiling of our old house and terribly runny grout from Homebase (don't buy!). #life #diy
- One thing I've enjoyed watching this week is Staged on BBC iPlayer; a brilliant comedy with Michael Sheen and David Tenant focusing on a real-world challenge with entertainment being on hold. (It was also entertaining to get a message from the wrong Simon Evans after my tweet)
- Even though we had the new TV, we tried to setup an outdoor cinema in the garden Sunday evening using the projector and screen. In theory, it all works great but this isn't the best time of the year for a dusky evening movie with Summer Solstice approaching. #life #entertainment #tech