After Decades of Code, Here's What Excites Me Most

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Hey folks, I'm just headed to the office here. Um, it's been an interesting week because I have like a a double a double on call shift, but I'm back up, which is kind of weird. Um, so our on call shifts are currently 6 hours at a time and it's split in the middle of the day. So that means technically at 6:00 a.m. I start my shift. And usually it would end at noon except that I have it doubled up. So, uh, kind of weird cuz it's basically like a 60hour work week plus a Saturday. Uh, so, um, usually backup's not so bad, but given that it's a live service, the reality is I'd rather have my primary focused on like like actually like live site kind of investigations helping out partner teams and then if there's stuff that's just like pending questions for partners, then I'd rather take those on.

But it happens just so happens this week there's a lot of questions where uh because it's a very big reverse proxy and there's lots of partners like it's pretty complex, right? Especially for partner teams that don't want to have to worry about this kind of stuff when they have anything weird going on. They're like, "Hey, we don't we don't do this regularly. Can you help us out?" So, um got a bunch of those things going on. So, it's been a little bit more hectic uh than I than I've wanted it to be. Uh which is always kind of challenging. Uh I mean for anyone obviously uh for anyone I'm not trying to say that I I was about to say like as an engineering manager, but I mean obviously for anyone I just find it's difficult to catch up because um like I have like one-on-one meetings and other things like that and I don't want to cancel them.

But what ends up happening is if something comes up when I'm on call, I don't have a choice but to cancel, but I try to move it. And then if something comes up to the moved slot, then I'm like, I have to keep moving it. So, it's uh, you know, not not the way I like to operate, but I don't really have a choice when I'm on call. So anyway, this drive uh I wanted to talk about um I was trying to think about like what would be a good topic, but the thing that's actually top of mind for me is like uh is side projects. Um and it's kind of interesting, right? I think uh a lot of the stuff that I talk about for for people trying to get into the industry like uh people that are not yet employed or people that are junior and they're you know they're they're trying to apply to places and stuff and they're like I don't I feel like my resume is not that strong.

I'm always telling people like side projects, right? Uh I think that's a great way uh to help with your resume and also I think it's one of the best ways to learn is just to build things. And so, you know, 20 20 plus years into programming, 15 or so years into my career, I'm still building side projects. I love to build things. And so, I think for those of you that watch my stuff, like, you know that I build a platform called Brand Ghost, uh, which is my my main thing that I do on the side. Uh so much so that a lot of the time like a lot of a lot of the other side things that I'm interested in I will push them off because brand ghost is the more important thing. So for example I haven't done on my main YouTube channel I haven't been making videos for the for the past few months because there's enough going on with brand ghost that I'm like that's just more important.

I I only have so much time. So, um, so that's like where most of my time goes. But there's lots of other things that I'm like I'm interested in that I'm playing around with. Like I in some of the recent videos I've been talking about like hey on the side doing some agent orchestration and um, you know going from prompt to spec to to orchestrated workflows. But what I realize is like um I'm I'm at the point, and I'm not saying I'm I'm special for this reason, but at least for where I'm at in my career um and life, I guess, that if there's an opportunity where I can monetize things, like it probably makes sense that I should at least be open to it. So, um there's some things that I put online absolutely for free. So, for example, I talk about a uh a dependency injection and like uh scanning kind of library that I have called Needler.

That's like I'm not ever planning on selling that. I just like it's very opinionated. I'm like, "Hey, if you want to use it, use it. If you don't, then don't." But I I basically build all of my C stuff with plug-in frameworks. And uh that pattern is one that keeps coming up. So, I said, "Hey, like I'll make it a library and if people want to use it, great." Um, but there's like probably some other things that if I want to go build them as little side projects, I'm like, "Maybe I should monetize these things. I can at least build it for myself and then put a like a thin layer on the front that's like, "Hey, if you want to pay a couple bucks, then like great, like, pay for it." Um, and then that way I don't have to spend time like like turning trying to turn it into like a full-fledged business and whatever else.

It's just like it it it's almost like justifying building it because I think I have I think other people will relate to this. I have a bit of a problem where it's like, hey, I could go build this or I could go build that and uh if you've done the thing with side projects where you start dabbling for a bit and then you know there's something else that's shiny over there and you want to go do it. For me, this might be some incentive to be like, get it to a spot where it's usable for you. And by the way, like if you have it online and some people can pay for it, then that just might be a nice little thing on the side. So, I figured I'd talk through some of the the things, right? So, I'll start with some free things because if you didn't know, I have some of these free things.

You might want to check them out if you're interested. I mentioned Needler. That's very much a very hyper niche thing. Um, I have something that I called Homebase. And I built this out of frustration with for a a product called Linkree. And so if you're on social media, either as a someone who likes to create things or just because you're on Instagram and Tik Tok and whatever else is someone who likes to to watch stuff, um, you'll notice like everyone's like, "Oh, link in bio." and then you click the link in their bio and it brings you to like a landing page with a bunch of links. So, Linkree is one such platform that offers this kind of thing. And uh I use Linkree for a while. I use their paid for service that has a couple of little extras I think like some analytics and some other stuff.

And uh honestly, I just thought after a while when I was having some issues with like I don't know some of the previews not you can show like videos and stuff and the the thumbnails just were black and I'm like dude there's like there's literally no reason that a YouTube thumbnail should just not be showing. uh contacted support was open for like a month where they were just kind of giving me the runaround and I'm like I literally pay for this and I hate to break it to you like I could go build this myself. So I did in basically a weekend. Um and so it's on GitHub if you want you can basically just like you know clone the repo, fork it, whatever you want. And uh it's a more optimized version of Linkree. Uh, it is optimized for SEO, AEO, GEO. Um, you can have product links, you can have all sorts of stuff on there, completely free.

So, that's called Homebase. Um, you're welcome to go check that out if uh if you want your own free version of Linkree. And the cool thing is like it's all if you're like, "Okay, well, how do I set it up or whatever?" like literally clone it and you can point claude or co-pilot at it and there's just configuration files that you can say like put my stuff here. Don't worry about it. So you can check that out if you're interested. Um I have a few MCP servers that I'm just hoping that Google actually releases properly. Maybe by the time I'm saying this or the time you're watching this they already have it. like Google um search console, Google keyword planner, and Google Analytics. I think all three of those. Uh I think all three of them they didn't have an MCP server for. And like to me that makes no sense.

Like how does Google not have that? Um so I have if you check out my GitHub, which I think is just Nazantino, um you can get those MCP servers for free. Those are just vibe coded. They're in both C and I think I had them vibe coded in Go as well, just to play around. So, you can check those out. And I'm like, obviously I hope Google makes their own. And uh what else? That might be it that I have that's free right now so that we can talk about some of the other things that I want to build. Um I talked about this a long time ago. I think like last summer, so like a year ago. Um I want to get around to actually uh vibe coding it just so that I have it. But um I want to do So if you're familiar with uh MySQL, there's a a product they have called Workbench.

And apparently Workbench is just like deprecated or retired. And from what I read online, they're just planning to build the equivalent of like a less UIrich experience for Workbench into VS Code, which is kind of neat. Like you just kind of have it as an extension. But when I saw screenshots of it, I'm like I actually just want personally I want like a tool that is that's Workbench. But the problem with Workbench is I mean there's a lot of stuff, right? It's a It's like an enterprise product, but uh it just feels like it's pretty dated and like so what I really want to do is have something like Workbench where I can have uh like something like readonly access and give it to an LLM and then just have it optimize queries for me. So I thought that would be kind of cool so that you can be in something like workbench working with your database.

You have, you know, whatever access you want to have, whether that's admin, write, access, read only. So you can mess around and then if you're playing around with queries and trying to figure out how to optimize them, you can basically have like an agentic, you know, session back and forth. And uh I mean I already kind of do this with you know giving uh co-pilot read only access to my my database letting it run queries doing the explain query plan kind of thing looking for optimizations and that kind of stuff. So I just figured that would be kind of fun to have as like a as a product. So, I'm probably going to build that and uh yeah, I'll probably put it online or something and then have like a a cheap license where it's like you pay a couple bucks a month or something. Like I said, put a thin layer in front.

If people want to pay for it, then they can. Otherwise, I'll still use it. So, that's one thing. Um I'm I'm I'm thinking about doing this is probably a longer term thing. Uh I'm thinking about doing like a little personal finance kind of uh planning thing. And the spin on this is that and again you'll notice some of these things are super opinionated and you might be like why the hell would I ever pay for that? Like the whole point is I'm building it for me and if someone wants to buy it they can. I want to do a uh a personal finance planning kind of thing that is designed in a way that's uh for like you and your partner. So my my wife and I like we have separate accounts for everything, but we also like just have full transparency. Like there's we don't hide anything.

We talk about what we spend, whatever. With the exception of like if we're buying gifts for each other, that's supposed to be a surprise. But, you know, otherwise, like if she ever said like, "How much is in your 401k or whatever else?" Like, "Here you go." Like, "Oh, like here's the number. I don't care." Um, because like we we look at that stuff is like that's ours. And so that might not be how you operate. Totally cool. But I I thought what would be interesting is that if we had uh the ability to pull in financial data from different accounts. Um and this is a very much a readonly kind of thing. If we had that financial data coming in uh and especially if you're using like a local LLM, could we have it such that uh we have sort of like these shared views of finances and shared agentic sessions where we can talk to something like she loves using chat GBT now.

So, could we have something like that where you're talking with the agent and because it can see information across your financials um talk about like hey like there's a lot of spend in this kind of category of things or like investments look like X or Y or Z and um that way it's like a central brain that uh that we can kind of use to to talk about these things. So, I don't know how that UX or whatever that form factor will look, but that's something I'm thinking about. And of course, if I have that working, I'll I'll build it in a way that's like, you know, you can use a local LLM if you want to hook up your financial stuff to whatever else you want for your own provider, like do whatever you want to do, but um it'll be configurable. So, we'll do that.

Another one I want to do, and this one I'm a little bit more actively trying to explore, is a um it's a mobile app. And the idea there's there's like a million voice companion type of things. I get it. But one that I want to do is uh sort of like very specific to working in GitHub and uh being uh like audio controlled. I have to pass someone here. This is crazy. One second. I got to figure out if people are No one's leaving. They're just all going slow. Okay. Um the idea and I I checked online and I I feel like feel like the GitHub app should do this and it probably will, but it doesn't right now. At least the time I'm recording this. What I would like to be able to do if uh if you realize what I'm doing right now is I'm using my time and my my commute to make content, right?

So, I hate the idea of spending time on things that has uh has no other value, right? Like me driving to work there. There's literally zero value in the commute time. The point is like I need to get from from home to work. And if I could make that time zero, then I would do that. That would be perfect if I could teleport, but can't do that yet. So, um I have to spend time and that time is to me it's 100% wasted. I don't like commuting. So, I that's why I have code commuting, right? So, I can create content and then hopefully it adds some value. So, um, one of the things I want to be able to do is be is because I don't make a video every single time I'm driving, uh, I want to make sure that I have the ability to find other ways to be productive.

And I figured, especially given, um, how I get a bunch of work done is through making GitHub issues, getting them assigned to agents, things like that. Um, I figured what would be super helpful is Man, there's that guy's speeding past. There's literally a cop that was radaring people. So, I don't know what this guy's doing. It's not It's not very smart. Whatever it is. Um, I want to basically have an app uh that's like a voice companion literally like when you're in chat GBT or whatever other app you like to use. You know, you push to talk kind of thing. Um, and then it talks back to you. I want to have a a voice companion that lets me kind of navigate my uh my things that I'm doing in GitHub. And that way I'm I'm still haven't fully figured out exactly how it would look and feel.

Um, but that way I could, you know, be driving and say like, hey, you know, for for this project I have like what open issues are there for today? because I have some agentic stuff that will scan uh say brand ghost right and look for error logs and it will automatically create some issues. So, I could, as an example, drive to CrossFit and I could say, "Hey, what were the the new issues that came up today?" And then it could uh give me a brief summary of them and then I could say, "Cool, for issue, you know, 1 2 3 um like give me some more details about about that." And then it would open the issue like talk to me about it and then I could do things like cool like I want you to assign it to an agent blah blah blah kind

of just have this conversation like I'm doing right now and uh as I have that work assigned out and going to agents I can also check in on stuff right I could say hey like say overnight I was uh running some agent session I could say hey can you check in on you know the agent that is doing this work and let me know like you know that did that PR complete um you know I can ask it questions like did it did it add proper test did it do blah blah blah um and just see if I can get to a point where uh I can without having to like read code I can have these types of conversations and uh and be a little bit more productive Um, I realize that one maybe sounds kind of sketchy to people, like what do you mean you're just going to like let the AI go do your work for you kind of thing?

But, uh, there's there's at least enough examples that I can think of where I I trust the AI almost fully to go do things end to end. Um, come on, buddy. Let me in. Um, and especially there's some of the other stuff I'm doing with like uh, you know, uh, file-based instructions, uh, Roslin analyzers, like just a lot of gates to keep the LLMs on track. Um, there's things I'm just like very confident in. There might be things where I'll give you the exact opposite end of the spectrum, right? Where I know like I'm not going to ever trust shouldn't say ever at this point. I'm not going to trust an agent to take it through to completion. Something like a big uh big feature change or architectural change or refactor or whatever.

I might go assign it to an agent, have it crank through it, and uh like I said, my expectation is not that it gets it perfect, but um I've definitely had some examples where it's been helpful to see how it thinks through things and the approach it takes. Uh because sometimes sometimes there's some, you know, some gold nuggets there and other times there's patterns where once I see it, I'm like, "Oh, I definitely don't want that." Right? I might not have had a strong opinion at first. And then once I see it, I go, "Okay, that that's definitely not it." So like that's a yes, it costs tokens. Yes, it costs someone else's time. Um, but I didn't have to personally spend my time doing it. And so getting an answer, getting an answer that's basically like I don't like that is actually sometimes like a good learning exercise.

So, um, I want to build an app that lets me kind of do that. So instead, like I said, instead of filming some code videos, there might be times where I'm just like, "Walk me through what we got going on." The other part to that that I forgot to mention is that I don't know who else is like this, but um I often find that when I'm not at a computer and it's like it's almost exclusively like when I'm unable to actually sit down and do something, I seem to have better ideas. So, if I say I'm not filming a code commute video and I'm driving, I go, "Oh, shit." Like, you know what would be a really cool like feature or a thing that I should try exploring or um I was stuck on something and I think this is a like a maybe a good solution for it.

It always happens when I'm not at a computer. So, driving is a really good example. And it would be really awesome just to be like, you know, uh, hey, hey, my app, you know, open up a GitHub issue or just start talking with basically the equivalent to, you know, uh, a voice agent to go back and forth on something and then when I'm done, cuz I've done this with chat GBT, then when I'm done, say like, I want you to go open up a GitHub issue on this repo. um you know maybe maybe one of the answers here and I could go check he's like maybe it's just as simple is that I don't even need a whole app for it. I just need a uh I don't know like an integration with with chat GPT just to you know let it access my repositories through an MCP server something like that.

Um, so I don't know. I have to I have to play around with that, but it's one I'm interested in building. If it's a if it ends up being a dedicated mobile app, I'll put it on the app stores and stuff. Um, but we'll see. So, I think those are a few things I'm thinking of. Uh, I have thought about a couple other flavors of things. cuz I'm like less I don't know less uh motivated or interested but like I I've told people like I used to work in digital forensics um since leaving digital forensics there has been instances where people have said hey like lost uh can't access files like you know things are I think they're deleted can't find them can you help and so it's funny because like spent like a decade building tools to help with that and uh and I don't have access to any of them.

So it used to be a matter of like hey lost something and I'm like no problem like I can literally just run something on my computer that I can get you what you need. Uh and yeah clearly don't have access to that kind of stuff now but like I can build it like it takes me time obviously but I can I know how to build those things. So, I figured like cool, like I could do there there's I know there's a million examples of this, but like I could do, you know, a picture recovery tool. Um, is that market saturated? Sure. But like I could go build something like that. I have example code like that because I've had to help people with that. So, you know, why not just put it on a website and charge a couple bucks for it? So, um, yeah, I think I'll I'll do a handful of things like that.

And I I'm helping a few people out on the side with like, you know, web like some non-technical people, just trying to get them their own websites and things like that. I feel like that's especially some close friends, right? Like that's something I can it's a value ad that I can give them kind of for free. Like, you know, they have their own businesses and stuff. Uh I have like a really really good buddy of mine who uh who works in the trades like he does a lot of drywalling and restoration stuff and uh he's like he's a he's reasonably technical but like not from a a programming perspective, right? Like he doesn't if I said, "Hey, could you build your own website?" I think that he could he could probably figure it out, but I I don't think he'd ever be motivated enough to go spend the time having to go learn it to go do it.

Um, so this is one of those things where like for him I'm like, "Hey, like if I were to make you a website, I think that you get a lot of value out of it and then at least I could give it to you in a way that you could maintain it." So, um, I did I actually did that for my my video editor on my main YouTube channel. He had a little uh he had a business that he was starting on the side of that. And so I said, "Yeah, no problem." Like, you know, he's he's done he's been pretty amazing for like, you know, timing of things where I'm like, "Hey, man. Like, I'm sorry I'm late, like to get you uh videos. Like, can you can you get this to me pretty quick?" and like he's just done a super awesome job turning things around.

Uh really like working with them and so like hey like hey I'll put together website for you for free and by the way it's structured in a way that like you could literally point chat GBT at some of the files right like copy this file into chat GBT ask it to change stuff and copy it back and boom your website's good to go. Um, so done that for him, doing it kind of for a buddy on the side. And I'll probably I don't know, I could probably advertise that on the side. Anyway, all of that just to say, like kind of looking at some side things. Um, because I spend time doing this stuff on the side already. Might as well, uh, you know, turn. I'm at the point now where it's like if I can turn, you know, side fun experiments into a couple of extra dollars, like why not?

Um, it's not going to stop me from playing around and trying to learn anyway. So, I got to go this way. Pick a side. Okay. Just like deer in headlights. I don't know if you could see the guy once I passed him, but he got out of his car and he just stood in front of me, but there's only so much room. He has to walk around me. I can't continue to pull into the the parking garage. Anyway, that's that. Just a different uh different video for today, but that's what I'm thinking about. So, yeah. I don't know. What are you guys building? I'd be curious to hear. Um, especially, you know, if you're leaning on AI to crank out some interesting stuff, it'd be fun to hear. So, let me know in the comments and I will see you in the next one. Take care.