Hello frens :)
Welcome to this new experiment I am starting to work on: a newsletter. I know, its a common thing that people try out from time to time. Honestly, this is not the first time I have attempted one. But this one is different.
Different because I am going to code the thing myself! Classic developer move...
Building a content platform
The last little while I have been slowly working on a "content platform" of sorts. The idea is for content creators, mainly writers, to publish their content to the masses and be able to do it in a "web3 way" (whether they know it or not). Think Medium-com, but using blockchain too (and eventually dark mode. seriously, how does Medium not have dark mode yet. shameful).
I started this project, called Authar, sometime in late January 2024 but with how busy the new year started out for me: progress was slow. I pushed forward with lots of progress during the Renaissance hackathon from Colosseum but was not able to get it into a MVP state I would be able to actually submit with. Other than some "sign in with Solana" support, there was not other Solana related features. So I did not submit it.
So far, I have only shared this idea of Authar with ~4 people (including my wife). And all the readers of this now add to that count. My suspicion is that with me talking about it to more people, it will also trick myself into having better accountability and drive to work on it more. Which I also realize sounds somewhat counterintuitive: "spend more time writing about the thing rather doing the thing".
Starting this newsletter
I know how it sounds. But the human brain works in weird ways. I find that not only is writing a cathartic practice for me, but it also greatly helps to convey what is in my brain. Formulating complete thoughts. Expressing these ideas and thoughts about implementation details about the projects I work on helps me to think through them (and maybe I will get some early feedback from you, who knows).
With all that said, thanks for being willing to join this stream of consciousness writing experiment that I shall call "my newsletter". My goal is to keep these relatively short. Readable in around 5-8 minutes. But they will largely remain similar to this style of writing: conversational with some whimsy. Its how I like to write.
Until next time, thanks for reading :)
PS: This email was sent with the initial, hacky version of a bunch of code I spent about 8 hours today on. All driven by normal markdown, rendered via MDX, and handled with React/Typescript. This is going to be a fun experiment!