Issue 002 -- The Motivation for indie Development

This photo was taken near Lianglukou in Chongqing. It’s a snapshot that coincidentally relates to motivation, which is the topic of this issue.

>> Topics to Discuss

How to maintain the motivation for indie development?

This week, I came across an article discussing how to maintain the motivation for indie development. Previously, I briefly talked about the four basic motivations of human beings as described by the Indian philosopher Bhaktivinoda Thakura.

1. Fear: Driven by "fear of disease, poverty, hell, or death."
2. Desire: Seeking personal satisfaction through success, wealth, and happiness.
3. Responsibility: Driven by gratitude, duty, and the willingness to do the right thing.
4. Love: Driven by the impulse to care for and help others.

However, these are too general. To keep moving forward, we need a constant source of motivation. One of my favorite sayings is, "Winning lies in execution, and the value lies in persistence." Both the initial motivation to execute and the sustained motivation to persist are crucial, but obtaining a constant source of motivation is very challenging.

In indie development, besides having to develop, maintain, and market your product all by yourself, it's even more important to maintain the corresponding motivation, which is often more difficult than working a job. The aforementioned article shares some very practical points on how to maintain motivation:

1. External motivation: Notifications of subscriptions, notifications of paid conversions;
2. Leaving unfinished tasks to quickly complete the next morning for a quick win, which can maintain motivation for the day;
3. Using your own product as much as possible;
4. Fixing the bad parts instead of enduring them. Unlike in a company, you have full control and don’t need to endure things; complete them as you envision;
5. Doing nothing and sitting down to think for a while;
6. Reviewing progress and summarizing, like writing a weekly journal, which is a form of review;
7. Finding like-minded partners;
8. Avoiding the guilt of idleness;

Of course, some sources of motivation are not recommended for frequent use, such as fear. Overstimulation can be harmful; it’s more like a stress response, and too much stimulation can easily break you down, making you a machine driven by fear, losing that indefinable creativity.

Receiving an AI-generated email from a friend?

Using AI to polish some wording is no longer a novelty, but how would you feel if you discovered the person you're chatting with isn't your friend but AI answering on their behalf?

For me:

• If a new friend sends an AI-polished email, I wouldn’t mind as long as the email content is clear. Of course, the premise is that the email was reviewed by them.
• If it’s an old friend, an AI-generated email would make me feel disoriented. AI would erase the personal characteristics I recognize in them, like their usual mannerisms, making it feel like the email is from a stranger.

>> Must Read

Chrome Browser Now Has Built-in AI Models

The obvious advantage of local AI models over online ones is locality. Running something locally in the browser has many benefits, just like tensorflow.js, which allows running APIs like face recognition locally in the browser. Specifically, the advantages include:

• Reducing network transmission and improving response speed;
• Reducing server pressure;
• Protecting user privacy in certain situations.

In short, it’s very promising!

ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity Went Down

Perplexity relies on OpenAI. When OpenAI's services went down, it’s understandable that Perplexity couldn’t be used. However, it’s interesting that Claude also went down at the same time.

Large language models are gradually becoming a foundational infrastructure for applications. We can foresee that almost all applications will integrate AI capabilities in the future. Most applications do not have the capability to develop, deploy, and maintain a large language model on their own, and many rely on APIs from a few leading companies. If such a situation occurs, many applications’ AI capabilities will be unavailable, which is quite terrifying.

Another interesting comment is:

V2EX - Blog Aggregator VXNA

V2EX claims to be a community for creative workers, with a lot of exciting content and enthusiastic OPs. It maintains a daily active user count of around 5000, making it a great community.

VXNA is a dedicated node for reading blogs. Blog owners can apply to display their blogs on V2EX, which can bring good traffic to personal blogs. Blog owners can give it a try.

>> Useful Tools

3D Parallax Hover Effects for Landing Pages

If you’re designing a landing page, check this out. It easily achieves 3D parallax hover effects and is compatible with almost all front-end frameworks (React, Vue, Solid...). It only requires 2KB to import and has zero dependencies, making it unbeatable (you can secretly use Atropos and amaze everyone 😂).

The effect is indeed very impressive. You can experience it on the Atroposjs official website.

Awesome Cheat Sheets for Various Languages and Frameworks

I found a project with 38k stars on GitHub that includes cheat sheets for JS, Node, HTML, Django, Bash, Redis, Docker, K8S, Bash, Vim, and more!

Each type contains a single file with the essential APIs you need to know. The framework APIs might be slightly outdated, but the language APIs are still worth a look. They are well-organized and great for review before interviews or for consolidating into your own notes.

Coolify - Open-source Self-hosted Alternative to Vercel

For me, anything open-source and self-hostable is good! After all, I like to tinker with things myself. If there are issues, I can contribute to PRs, which is nice.

Coolify is an open-source, self-hosted alternative to Heroku / Netlify / Vercel. It now has nearly 20k stars on GitHub. The Coolify official website mentions the following features:

• Any Language: Coolify supports various programming languages and frameworks, allowing you to launch static websites, APIs, backends, databases, services, and other types of applications.
• Any Server: You can deploy resources to any server, including your own server, VPS, Raspberry Pi, EC2, DigitalOcean, Linode, Hetzner, and more. You just need an SSH connection.
• Any Use Case: Depending on your needs, you can deploy resources to a single server, multiple servers, or a Docker Swarm cluster (Kubernetes support is in progress!).
• Push Deployments: Provides integration with hosted and self-hosted platforms like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Gitea, etc.
• Free SSL Certificates: Coolify automatically sets up and updates Let's Encrypt SSL certificates to secure your custom domains, giving you peace of mind.
• No Vendor Lock-in: You have full control over your data. All configurations are stored on your server, so even if you stop using Coolify, you retain control.
• Automatic Database Backups: Your data is automatically backed up to any S3-compatible solution, and you can easily restore it with a few clicks if needed.
• Webhooks: Integrate into your CI/CD pipeline or create custom integrations using Github Actions, Gitlab CI, Bitbucket Pipelines, or any other CI/CD tool of your choice.
• Powerful API: Automate deployments, manage resources, and integrate with your current tools, offering limitless possibilities.
• Collaboration: Share your projects with team members and collaborate. You can also control permissions and roles for each member.
• PR Deployments: Automatically deploy new commits and pull requests for quick review and faster teamwork!
• Server Automation: Once your server is successfully connected, Coolify will automatically handle many tasks, allowing you to focus on your code.
• Monitoring: Coolify monitors your deployments, servers, disk usage, and more, notifying you of any issues.
• Notifications: Coolify notifies you of any events related to servers or deployments through your chosen channels (like Discord, Telegram, and email).

2024 Front-end Developer Handbook

I looked at the table of contents, and it’s quite comprehensive. I'll bookmark it first, though I might not read it...

Beautiful Website Backgrounds

This post shares a website with preset backgrounds, and the comments mention some other sites:

• uvcanvas.com
• magicpattern.design

You can try these when designing websites; they look great!

Open-source AI Content Search Engine Supporting Images and Videos

There are already many AI search engines, and many are open-source, but most only handle text. This one mainly handles images and short videos. Its features include but are not limited to:

• Search for image and short video materials.
• Efficiently analyze image and short video content, integrating scattered information.
• Provide content sources and breakdowns of image and short video information, presenting information through content cards.
• Generate customized search results based on user interests and needs from image and short video content.
• Local deployment, enabling offline content search and Q&A for private data.

>> Interesting Finds

The Stone Meme 🏸

1. Shi Yuqi starts off poorly
2. Shi Yuqi loses rhythm
3. Shi Yuqi runs out of stamina
4. Shi Yuqi is in a desperate situation
5. Shi Yuqi delivers his victory speech

Shi Yuqi is China's number one male singles player in the national badminton team. Watching his matches recently, I often see such situations, and netizens have summarized the above phrases 😂.

The Olympics are coming soon, and I am really looking forward to exciting matches from the Chinese badminton team!

CEO Jensen Huang’s Chest Signature

NVIDIA’s market value soared, and CEO Jensen Huang was so happy that he signed on a female fan’s chest. The following picture has gone viral recently!

This post includes the corresponding video.

VSCode’s Copilot Now Supports Voice

Recently, VSCode was updated, including this feature. Now, developers won’t feel lonely; they can even chat while coding! 😂

>> Worth Reading

The Explainability of GPT4

As we all know, AI has always been more about engineering practice than theory, which is why it’s often mocked as alchemy, because you don’t know why the parameters you adjust work better. This article from OpenAI attempts to explain GPT4.

The Most Convenient Donation Collection Method in China

WeChat Appreciation Code is the most convenient method for collecting donations in China. It allows setting 6 fixed donation amounts and supports user-defined donation amounts. Additionally, it is interconnected with international WeChat donations and is fee-free. It is suitable for websites targeting Chinese users for donation collection.

Some Notes on Influencing

The main points are as follows:

1. The road is long and difficult.
2. There are many trolls.
3. Don’t waste too much of your breath.
4. The number of followers does not equate to influence.
5. Monetizing content.

Tips for Handling Sports Injuries

Sharing my experiences of recovering from three sports-related ankle sprains.

• The first time, I didn’t know how to handle it, so I bought Yunnan Baiyao and sprayed it. As a result, it took more than a month to fully recover!
• The second and third times, I immediately applied ice to the injury, and after 24 hours, applied heat. I recovered in a week.

When you’re tired, stop exercising. When you’re not focused, your movements are more likely to be off during confrontations, such as dragging your feet, which can lead to sprains.

Finally, strengthen your muscles!