Slightly Caffeinated

TJ (00:00)
Yo, welcome back to the Slightly Caffeinated Podcast. I'm TJ Miller. Yo, man, so long time. What's new in your world?

Chris Gmyr (00:04)
and I'm Chris Gmyr

I know

it's been man about a month I think since we last talked because a couple things came up on the schedule and you've been like crazy Laravel Prism gnome traveler around the world and yeah just how it works out sometimes but yeah it's been a month it's good to be back yeah a lot has been going on let's see a quick recap

TJ (00:26)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (00:31)
For me, took the kids to Virginia Beach to visit my family. My oldest has been in and out of summer camps. We just started school this week on Monday, so we're almost through the full week. Everything is going pretty well. But that project we're working on at work is getting close to launch and final testing and compliance with the third party. So that'll be really exciting to push that into.

prod and get some traffic and See all the things that we need to see with that But yeah, everything's been going, you know pretty well and Yeah, just feels like the month has flown by

TJ (01:13)
Yeah, I'll tell you what, it sure has. No, man, it's nice to hear that you are shipping, you know, it's got to feel good.

Chris Gmyr (01:21)
Yeah, yeah, it's been really nice and the team has been great. Everyone has been chipping in, even people who are not directly connected to the project when we needed all hands to take care of some issues or last minute tweaks, changes, things like that. Everyone's been jumping in, so it's been great. And we've gotten a bunch of extras and nice to haves in there too, waiting for the next steps for compliance and the next things that we need to do moving forward into.

So yeah, couldn't be any happier with how it's gone and the team and the progress that we made and just the ownership that some of the people on the team have taken to kind of push this thing through. And yeah, it's been great to see.

TJ (02:05)
Yeah, that's sick,

Chris Gmyr (02:06)
Yeah. So, I mean, I feel like my month has been relatively boring compared to what you've been going through the past month. So yeah, what has been going on? Give us the full run through of the full last month of conference talks and traveling and vacations and all that.

TJ (02:19)
She's

Ahem.

Yeah, it's, ⁓ it's wild. It's been so much. It's even like, it's hard to remember everything that's happened. It's been, crazy. So, we'll work kind of like backwards, I guess. So, yeah, same here with the kiddo started school this week. And so bunch of, kind of getting into like new morning routines for everyone. Cause now his school starts like way earlier. Like they started, like doors open at like seven 40.

So it's like, yeah, it's early, man. So new morning routine for me and the homie. And then while I was gone in Denmark, my wife started her semester back up. And so like, she's got in-person class. She normally has had virtual classes, but she's got like in-person classes, like five days a week now. ⁓ So like just new routines across the board for everyone. ⁓

Chris Gmyr (02:52)
Wow, that's early.

wow.

Yeah, big

changes.

TJ (03:18)
Yeah, but you I'll tell you what,

it's having the the homie back in school has made for a nice quiet house. It's been kind of nice.

Chris Gmyr (03:30)
Yeah, get the house to yourself for a couple hours a day, it sounds like. So yeah, not too bad.

TJ (03:33)
Yeah, yeah,

not too bad. And so far, this is his first year in middle school and so far he loves it. ⁓ yeah, hopefully we keep that going. So continuing to work in reverse, I Lerville Live Denmark. That was such a cool experience. First trip out of North America for me.

Chris Gmyr (03:41)
Nice.

TJ (03:54)
What a riot. Like the conference was so cool. It was in this like old industrial building. So it just had like immaculate vibes. Uh, and then like behind it, um, have you been to like a food truck rally before? Yeah. Yeah. So like it's, it's kind of like that where it's like a huge variety of stuff, but it's in like these little restaurants.

Chris Gmyr (04:10)
Yeah, we have a bunch of those around here.

TJ (04:22)
things are like in like old shipping containers and little like shacks and like, but it's like all sorts of varieties of food from all over the world. So good. Like everything I ate was just amazing. Um, and so that was cool to have as like lunch. like, as a conference attendee, you get like a little gift card and that like is loaded with enough cash for you to buy lunch for two days. So you can, instead of like,

Chris Gmyr (04:27)
cool.

Yeah.

TJ (04:52)
Laracon where you kind of get like a pre-packed whatever for lunch. This was like, yeah, go eat your heart out. Like all sorts of varieties of food.

Chris Gmyr (04:58)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's a really great idea. Cause even though like the Laracon lunches have been really good and I've been to a couple other conferences where they do very similar things. Um, it's, I think super cool to have like those small businesses as the food trucks and the little like mom and pop cafes and just go out. even if you want to like blow the whole gift card on the first day and use your own money on the second day, it's like, you're still just supporting the local business.

there wherever you are at the conference. And I think that's really cool. And you could just switch up the food choices all the time.

TJ (05:38)
Yep. Yeah. And that's basically what I did. Like, you know, when just tried a bunch of different things and everything was so amazing. But the speaker list at the conference was just bonkers. Somebody, Dan did a talk where he was presenting on his like his package for controlling like hardware, like Arduinos and like pinout stuff.

And he like built a little web app where like he had blenders on stage and we like controlled through the web app, like those blenders. Like it was, it was nuts. It was crazy. so ⁓ just awesome talks. I was definitely, I was the last talk of the last day. felt like kind of a tough slot, but,

Chris Gmyr (06:13)
That's awesome.

TJ (06:24)
I feel like it went great. Like I enjoyed giving the talk. I dropped some sneak peeks of like, it was basically my Laracon talk, but I like added a couple sections. and then added like a sneak peek on some of the new streaming stuff that I've been working on. and so it changed up a few things, but I think it went over great. I loved the conference. Copenhagen was so cool. Like.

Chris Gmyr (06:52)
Nice.

TJ (06:52)
So

I flew out on Tuesday, which put me there like Wednesday morning.

Mattias like was in the area and so like he picked me up from the airport and we went to the venue and like kind of helped set up a little bit which was cool kind of getting to like check the place out beforehand.

And then, so like that was like Wednesday, we had like speaker dinner. Then like Thursday, Friday was the conference. And then I took Saturday as just like a day to go like sightseeing, explore the city. Man, I put in like close to 40,000 steps, wandering around Copenhagen. Like I'm, still feeling it in my legs, but like it was, uh, it was.

Chris Gmyr (07:28)
That's awesome. That's a lot of steps.

TJ (07:36)
So cool. I got up like extra early because I figured it was going to be the weekend. It was going to be like touristy. So I wanted to like see the city without having to deal with too many tourists. So I got up and like out pretty early in the morning and just kind of like picked a direction and started wandering and then like wandered all over the place. like later in the day, I mentioned to somebody who lives there,

who was at the conference. And I'm like, man, these like tourists are crazy. And they're like, oh yeah, like go check out this part of town. It should be like mostly locals and there'll be like nice coffee shop. Um, and so I pull it up on the map and I happened to be in that area already, like, and just wandered my way into it. Um, but yeah, like spent time, like found, uh, like this area called like the Kings garden. Um,

where there's like a castle and I guess that's where like the crown jewels are of Denmark. It was gorgeous. Hang out there a big chunk of the day too.

Yeah, super cool. Flights were... it's a long flight. I know Dorinda was laughing at me about saying it's a long flight when he's got like at least double the amount of flights when he comes out. But it was pretty chill.

Chris Gmyr (08:42)
awesome.

Yeah.

TJ (09:02)
Yeah, lifetime experience for sure.

Chris Gmyr (09:07)
Yeah, that's awesome. I saw a couple of the pictures that you shared and it just looked beautiful there. I've never been on an international trip yet, but have seen like a bunch of shows about like Denmark and Sweden and a bunch of other places in the EU and just it looks amazing to go there and visit and just pop around to a bunch of different cities and countries and explore and see what there is to see. Looks awesome.

TJ (09:32)
Yeah, no, it was, it was so cool. And just like all the international tidbits of like, you know, being in a place where it's like, you don't know the language. it's a, I mean, almost everybody I ran into spoke, you know, like perfect English, but, you know, it's still a risk. and

I didn't know that was, that was, it was neat kind of like just being tossed into that. Um, so very cool. Uh, and then kind of working back from that, uh, I spent, um, so a week before that trip, I had like spent like three weeks, like three weeks, like in all over the place. like we can, before that I went and, uh, Eric van Johnson of PHP architect, um, and PHP tech.

He was gracious enough to host my family and we went out to San Diego for a long weekend. and that was just.

also an incredible trip. Like, Kido got to go like bodyboarding in the ocean. I got to hang out in the ocean. We did some sightseeing. It was just, the past few months have just been like with prepping for talks and like, especially Laracon and working on Prism and work and just like other life stressors and everything. Like,

It, life has been a lot this year. maybe one of the toughest years I've ever had. And that trip was just such a nice, like reset for the family. so yeah, I can't, I, there's, there's no way I could ever thank Eric enough, ⁓ for like providing that trip and making it happen. So that was, dude.

Chris Gmyr (11:05)
Yeah, that sounded like an awesome trip. And you

guys went to like the zoo and fed like a rhino or something like that, right?

TJ (11:10)
Yeah.

So the zoo is crazy. we, like we had before, when we scheduled the trip, we like right away bought tickets for a day at the zoo. And then we also bought like a, an animal encounter package. And I figured it would just be like meet and greet with an animal or something. Cause it's kind of how it, what it talked about. We know it was this like whole ass show.

and like presentation, but then like you have all these interactive pieces too. like, yeah, I got to feed a rhino, ⁓ which is just crazy. Just something that I will remember that experience for the rest of my life. Like that was so special to me. I got to feed a rhino. We got to see a cheetah up like very close, which was cool. We also got to feed flamingos.

Chris Gmyr (11:41)
That's awesome.

TJ (11:57)
Um, and that was such a wild experience because you go like back behind the enclosure and they give you like a cup of food. And then they just like open the enclosure up and all of the flamingos come like flooding in. It is just this like flood of flamingos and they are so loud, so loud. Um, but that was cool. Also got to pet a zebra, which was, which was fun. Uh,

Yeah, what a cool experience. like, the zoo itself was so cool. Like we got one of the, we did like the bus tour right when we got in. So we got to see like all different parts of the zoo and everything kind of off the rip. And then one of my personal favorites, we hung out with the elephants for a while. You know, so that was, that was pretty dope.

Chris Gmyr (12:42)
Yeah, that sounds like an awesome ZOO package. That's pretty cool.

TJ (12:45)
Yeah, for sure. we're, think next time we go, we're gonna like go again, because they also have, they got the zoo, but like the zoo also runs this like Safari park. And we want to go do that as well. So next time we head out there, we're gonna hit up the Safari park next time. And I'm sure do another animal encounter package, because that was like such a cool experience.

Chris Gmyr (13:07)
Yeah.

Totally. Yeah, the San Diego Zoo is pretty awesome. It's been a while since we've been out there, but my brother-in-law lives not too far away from San Diego. So we've been trying to figure out when we can get out there. Just hard with the littles. And he has littles, too, and works a bunch. So it's hard to coordinate times for that. But yeah, have to look into that whenever we decide to go back out there.

TJ (13:24)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (13:34)
do one of those experiences. That sounds awesome. All the kids would like.

TJ (13:36)
Yeah, it was,

it was an absolute riot. And then just getting to hang out at the beach too is really nice and watching, watching Ellis just have the most fun bodyboarding. Like that was, like he, by the end he was like getting the hang of catching waves. Like it was, was fun to watch him kind of like go from not understanding it to like kind of figuring it out on his own. And at the end, like catch some waves, which was, ⁓

Yeah, just exactly what we needed as a family,

Chris Gmyr (14:06)
That's awesome.

TJ (14:07)
And then, yeah, continuing to work backwards, Laracon in Colorado. That was also just surreal.

huge stage, super intimidating. But I feel great about how the talk went. I put a ton into it and...

I'm so thankful that I was early in the conference and like was able to kind of like kick back and enjoy the rest of the conference afterwards. but I feel like the talk went great. I put a ton of practice into it and so all of that paid off. think, other talks were incredible. Getting to like see everybody was awesome. You were so missed.

Chris Gmyr (14:34)
Yeah.

some poem that I missed it.

TJ (14:49)
Yeah, it was really cool getting to hang out with Geocodeo too, because that was the first time we've all been together as a team, because everyone's distributed. We got an Airbnb together, so was like some awesome team building and bonding and hanging out with them. And then we also, Geocodeo had a booth this year too, so we all hung out at the booth a whole bunch and that was neat.

For me, getting to like, so many people came up to me and told me that they're like using Prism already, which blew my mind. A couple people came up talking about the podcast, which was pretty cool. So someone was like, yeah, like I listened to the podcast. Just like automatic response was why?

that was pretty funny. but I think one of the coolest experiences was I was after my talk, I was walking like, so for Leracon, there was the main conference area, but then there was like a separate building where all the sponsors were. like after my talk, after I like cooled down and let the adrenaline burn off a bit, I, was walking to like the expo area to go hang out at the GeoCodeo booth. And, ⁓ someone ran up to me and they're like,

Hey, hold on, look, I gotta show you what I built with Prism.

just like the wildest experience to me that like someone built something with Prism and like took the time to like show me what they put together and had a whole bunch of plans for it. it was.

just so surreal, like firsthand hearing people that are like using Prism.

Chris Gmyr (16:17)
That's awesome. Because I'm sure it's totally different between seeing GitHub issues, discussions, things like that, even interactions on Twitter or Blue Sky. But when you're physically in the same room and looking at someone else's laptop and they're excited about something that you built that you're helping them implement their own thing in their own way, that's just probably a totally different feeling. ⁓

TJ (16:18)
Yeah

⁓ yeah.

Chris Gmyr (16:43)
Awesome to see that everyone has been using it and adopting it and liking it for all their projects that they're working on. It's been super cool to hear about.

TJ (16:53)
Yeah, it's just this like surreal thing that like I hack on Prism because it's like just something I'm passionate about and like really enjoy building and I...

I didn't know it was such a labor of love and to hear other people actually using it blows my mind. I get super emotional about it. I don't know.

Chris Gmyr (17:14)
Yeah, I mean, it's been your baby for a while. Even pre-prism with Sparkle before I changed. I've been working on this for a long time. And I've been one of the first small group of people in the Laravel space doing new AI stuff, which has been awesome. So yeah, it's been a great project. it's

TJ (17:20)
Right.

Chris Gmyr (17:38)
really good to see how it's progressed and then making a positive impact on people in the community as well. So I love it. I'm glad that I'm somewhat connected to it through you. I haven't developed with it or anything like that yet, but I keep an eye on it. And obviously talking to you on a weekly basis, keeping up to date with it, but yeah, it's just awesome to be a part of it.

TJ (17:49)
Hahaha

Yeah, dude. And I came back from all these trips so fired up. Like I've been just cooking on the streaming output refactor that is like it's it's the last thing that's holding up 1.0. And I was really kind of struggling with it, but like came out of some conversations at the conference and I'm like all fired up and I'm like got got the ideas and I've just been

work and I think I'm on my like fifth iteration of the I think my fifth and probably the final iteration of like reimagining streaming output and uh I'm super hype on it like I've been dropping some like teaser videos um I I posted one yesterday uh and I've got another one like a little teaser video going out today of uh some of the new functionality and like the reception's been awesome so uh

But yeah, coming out like super, super fired up, super inspired to like keep cracking on it. So yeah.

Chris Gmyr (19:04)
And I think it's awesome that you met some live podcast listeners too.

TJ (19:08)
Right? Yeah. I thought that was so cool.

Yeah. Big time. Yeah. I'm sure I'm missing like all sorts of details, but it's been a wild few weeks with like tons of travel. I'm so jet lagged. Like I am so jet lagged, but my heart is so full. Like just these experiences and meeting people and

being able to do what I've just done over the last few weeks is like,

accumulation of like life's work like I've worked really hard to be able to do it. So it was like really kind of cool to be able to Experience the payoff of like all the work

Chris Gmyr (19:44)
And it's good to get out there and fill your cup and be a part of these different communities or larger singular like Laravel community. And just be with your people and see the outcome of all of your work for the last handful of years. it's hard to just stay in your own space and put your head down and go through the process for.

you know, months and years. And yeah, it sounds like you really needed it to get out and just be a part of everything and everyone. And it sounds like it filled your cup. So I'm glad that everything went as well as it did. And of course it did. And that it really gave you a good recharge and a little boost moving forward too.

TJ (20:16)
Yeah.

Yeah, Yeah. Feels, ⁓ feels good. I'm tired. we'll, we'll recover and keep on plugging away at it. man. so kind of moving on from like a big recap, in our like coffee segment, you had mentioned in here, any good coffee on my travels. ⁓ so.

Chris Gmyr (20:33)
Yep. Totally.

Yes, that's what we

all want to really hear about is good coffee and travels.

TJ (20:50)
I know the coffee.

lots of terrible coffee, like definitely consumed lots of terrible coffee. but I did have some really nice coffee too. in Denver, there was, ended up like finding a hotel, like one of the hotels had like pretty decent coffee. And so had like a really nice iced coffee in Colorado.

The conference coffee was so terrible and I drank a pretty fair amount of it. And then in...

In California, I didn't really have anything, anything super special. But in Denmark, there were a couple of coffee shops that I had like pretty bangin' coffee. Didn't do anything crazy, like mostly got like, I got on like an espresso kick, especially if it was like one of the places I stopped at.

They were like, they also roast their own stuff, which was great. I'm like, I walked in and I'm like, Ooh, you guys like roast your own stuff and like, not a drip machine in sight. They had like pour overs and French presses and, a really nice espresso machine. So I was like, all right, we're, going straight for the good stuff and got a, a double espresso. And it, it may have been some of the smoothest espresso I've ever had.

Chris Gmyr (21:46)
Mm-hmm.

TJ (22:09)
Just not a hint of bitterness anywhere. It was so smooth and creamy.

Yeah, I would love some more of that.

Chris Gmyr (22:16)
I'd definitely take one of those right now.

TJ (22:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

And it was, it was in that spot that, um, was recommended to me. They're like, yeah, I go to this like local area that I found myself in and was just like walking down the street and we're like, saw this coffee shop and popped in and was like, it was the spot to be. Um, that was so good. And just like happenstance of picking a direction in wandering for a while. Dude, I, yeah.

Chris Gmyr (22:35)
is.

I don't know what you're going to find. Maybe some goodness.

TJ (22:47)
That's and and yeah, it was it was pretty good. But so much terrible coffee.

Chris Gmyr (22:52)
Yeah, definitely like traveling and airports and hotels and all those things. It's like, ⁓ guess I'll drink it, but I'm not going to enjoy it.

TJ (22:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, tons

of terrible airport coffee. brutal.

Chris Gmyr (23:04)
man.

TJ (23:06)
So cool, dude, you wanna wrap on that?

Chris Gmyr (23:08)
Yeah, we can wrap on that. And I think we're back to our regularly scheduled podcast schedule going forward. So keep an ear here.

TJ (23:16)
care.

Yep. Sick. All right. So thank you all for listening to the slightly caffeinated podcast show notes and all the links of things we've talked about as well as social channels will be down below and they're also available at slightly caffeinated.fm. Thank you all so much for listening. We will catch you next week.