The Identity of The Sanctimonious Kid
ajxs.me
Exploring the historic background of Jack Black's 'You Can't Win', and investigating the identity of The Sanctimonious Kid.
non-technical
anatomy of a HN hit
Alec Barrett-Wilsdon
tl;dr: screenshots of data from HN traffic read time: 8 minutes This past Sunday, I posted an article to Hacker News They seemed to like it. It got 554 points, 194 comments, and stayed on the front page for about a day and a half. It drove 24,000¹ …
scraping tweets for fun and profit
Alec Barrett-Wilsdon
tl;dr: find spontaenous interactions by scraping tweets with given keywords cost: $0 build time: 5 minutes (MVP) Twitter can be a great way to connect with alike minds. But if you're here, you're (probably) not yet a Thought Leader™. Let's walk through a quick way to speed that up …
talk the talk (a tech glossary)
Alec Barrett-Wilsdon
tl;dr: learn the language of tech niches read time: 10m (skim), closer to an hour top to bottom Below is a condensed glossary from my time working in early stage VC, growth, and software engineering. It is designed to approachable for everyone, especially those without a prior background in …
make your own personal CRM (for free in 20 minutes)
Alec Barrett-Wilsdon
tl;dr: don't miss important personal moments with your own personal CRM cost: $0 build time: 20 minutes (MVP) Update August 2020: the trick that enabled easy data import has been disabled. you can still use this build, but it will be more manual to set up Hey friends, if …
how to make Alfred Workflows (& the ones I use)
Alec Barrett-Wilsdon
tl;dr: create automations and workflows in Alfred cost: $0 after one-time $31 cost build time: 2 minutes (download existing) / 20-60 minutes (build your own) you may remember me raving about Alfred in my SaaS stack article. (If not, it's a cool software that has a bunch of neat features …
my personal SaaS stack
Alec Barrett-Wilsdon
tl;dr: Use free & free-ish software and save lots of time cost: (generally $0; in-line for each item) read time: 10 minutes All listed softwares have (at minimum) a free trial. All recommendations are products I use and have not been incentivized to promote. productivity Alfred ($31 onetime)...
set up Google Tag Manager (and track anything in Google Analytics)
Alec Barrett-Wilsdon
tl;dr: Manage your website events and pixels easily in one place cost: $0 time: 15 minutes Google Tag Manager is the most approachable¹, most scalable², and most commonly used 'event' management system for a budding website/webapp. It is free and can be easily³ shared with non-technical...
dorking (how to find anything on the Internet)
Alec Barrett-Wilsdon
tl;dr: Use advanced Google Search to find any webpage, emails, info, or secrets cost: $0 time: 2 minutes Software engineers have long joked about how much of their job is simply Googling things Now you can do the same, but for free Below, I'll cover dorking, the use of …
vocab
Alec Barrett-Wilsdon
tl;dr: write down words you don't know I started a mental exercise some time ago: write down every word I came across and didn't understand (within reason; no floccinaucinihilipilification) The below list is provided only to keep myself accountable. I'll update this page periodically. vocab...