Slightly Caffeinated

Chris Gmyr (00:00)
Hey, welcome back to the Slightly Caffeinated Podcast. I'm Chris Gmyr

TJ MIller (00:03)
I'm TJ Miller.

Chris Gmyr (00:05)
Yo, TJ, so what's new in your world over the last

couple of weeks?

TJ MIller (00:09)
yeah, geez, we had a we had a Lyricon break and

Chris Gmyr (00:12)
I know they're kinda.

TJ MIller (00:13)
yeah, geez, how you were so missed, man. I I really wish

Chris Gmyr (00:17)
I know.

TJ MIller (00:17)
we could have pulled that off.

Chris Gmyr (00:19)
It was it was very tough sitting on the sidelines and I had to mute our chat temporarily because I'm like, they're just having too much fun. I can't right now. I like checked in at the end of the night, like reacted to a bunch of things, like commented on some stuff. I'm like, okay, guys, go just have fun. I'll check back tomorrow.

TJ MIller (00:34)
Yeah. Yeah, it was definitely Yeah,

it was a it was a bummer, you couldn't make it. however, there's maybe some rumblings about some friends putting something together, you know, for for the Midwest. so we'll see what happens there. but but you should make that one for sure.

Chris Gmyr (00:52)
Nice.

I will I'll try my best for sure.

TJ MIller (00:54)
Yeah, yeah.

Just I mean I at the worst case, just an excuse to get us all together, even like outside of Laracon, you know. More more

Chris Gmyr (01:02)
Yeah, yeah.

TJ MIller (01:03)
opportunities. But yeah, man. So what have I been up to? Laracon. I've been building a lot and taking care of, you know, just like family stuff leading up to my wife has to have some surgery at the end of the month.

and she's gonna be out of commission for a few weeks after that. So, just kinda like trying to do a bunch of prep work and and leading up to that, you know, so that that goes smooth and that we feel like well prepared for that. But other than that, man, yeah, just building, working, hanging out with family. Like this is like the last couple of weeks before my son goes back to school.

So yeah. Yeah, I'm

Chris Gmyr (01:44)
I see.

TJ MIller (01:45)
going and and I'm I'm stoked for today in particular. I'm going to see like Foo Fighters tonight, like a big big old

Chris Gmyr (01:52)
sweet.

TJ MIller (01:53)
show taking both my wife and my son. So it'll be a really fun family event, I think.

Chris Gmyr (01:59)
Yeah, that's awesome. my wife is a big fan of Foo Fighters and we went to see them twice, I believe.

TJ MIller (02:06)
awesome.

Chris Gmyr (02:07)
and yeah, it's a good show for sure. So hope you guys have a good time.

TJ MIller (02:11)
Yeah, I'm really excited for it. It'll be good. Yeah, how about you, man?

Chris Gmyr (02:14)
And

well first and they'll probably like over. I don't know if you've heard anything about Foo Fighters shows, but he just keeps on going. So he's like, you guys want two more hours? Okay, let's go, let's do it. So Yeah,

TJ MIller (02:23)
Yeah. Sick. I mean I'm not gonna say no to that.

Chris Gmyr (02:31)
just like where your good comfy shoes for stand in or you know, get s get some extra snacks

before they go on and you'll be Yep, yep. but yeah,

TJ MIller (02:36)
we're we're old. We got seats.

Chris Gmyr (02:41)
if you guys have a good time.

but

TJ MIller (02:43)
Yeah, man.

Chris Gmyr (02:44)
yeah for me for me yeah more of the same just busy with work projects, tinkering on the side as well. So I'm not sure if we'll get a chance to talk about that today, but if not, next time.

TJ MIller (02:53)
Sure.

Chris Gmyr (02:55)
yeah, kids are doing a couple camps. they're off this week and they're both at different camps next week. So that'll be a little bit of a a challenge for sure. and then yeah.

my son is back at school the next week. So we're down to the last week and a half before

TJ MIller (03:11)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (03:12)
he starts school and back to the the school grind with him. But yeah, all all's going pretty good. Trying to I don't know, wrap a few things up. Got some like scout planning coming up. 'cause I haven't thought about it or done anything with it like all summer. So that was a nice break.

TJ MIller (03:26)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (03:27)
But this is gonna be a busy few months for them. 'cause they cross over into BSA and

February. So we have to cram basically like a whole year into like four or five months, maybe. So

TJ MIller (03:40)
Oof.

Chris Gmyr (03:42)
yeah, it's gonna be a lot. So we gotta sit down and do some planning for that. yeah, typical house projects, things like that. So yeah. Same all, same all.

TJ MIller (03:50)
Yeah, man.

Yeah, dude. man. I I can't believe we're already like coming around to back to school time. It's I you know, it's crazy that time flew that fast. and my son has been like all summer long, he's like, I can't wait for school to start and go hang out with my friends. And just in the last week, he's

Chris Gmyr (04:08)
Mm-hmm.

TJ MIller (04:09)
like, I don't don't know, I don't really want to go back to school. It's like a lot of work. I'm like, Yeah, I know.

Chris Gmyr (04:12)
Yep. Yep.

TJ MIller (04:15)
But at the same time, Bud, as much as I've loved hanging out with you all day, every day during the summer, I'm kind of ready for a little bit of a break.

Chris Gmyr (04:23)
Yeah,

yeah, totally. Let's get back to our routine. We'll walk you to school. I'll have my day during the day and we'll

TJ MIller (04:29)
Yup.

Chris Gmyr (04:30)
see you later.

TJ MIller (04:30)
Yeah. Yeah. But I I will. I I think there'll be like a bunch of relief for him to be back at school and get some some time and personal space back. But I know I'm gonna end up like missing hanging out with him, you know, and him just being around and you know, being able to goof off whenever, you know.

Chris Gmyr (04:49)
Yep. Yeah. Totally. so yeah. Any any good coffee when you were out about

TJ MIller (04:54)
yeah.

Chris Gmyr (04:54)
at Laracon?

TJ MIller (04:55)
Yeah. So on a couple fronts, we so let's talk about Laracon. Laracon, the coffee, I didn't have any coffee at Laricon. so I don't know how the coffee was for the conference, but within walking distance of the hotel, there was a really nice bakery. And I got coffee there a couple of times. Coffee was really pretty good. The pastries were phenomenal.

And that was pretty sweet. And then one of the other days we went and did breakfast at some other cafe and the coffee was like even better there. It was wild. And then they did like donuts and breakfast sandwiches. It was all delicious.

Chris Gmyr (05:31)
Sweet.

TJ MIller (05:31)
so Boston's coffee game was like pretty great. but on the home front,

Friend of the show, Michael Dorinda, brought some. Well, him and his wife had put together some gift bags for the crew, and included in that was some whole bean coffee, and I was dying because it smelled so good. I came home and it tastes even better. and so I was talking to

Chris Gmyr (05:58)
Nice. That's awesome.

TJ MIller (06:00)
Michael about it afterwards, and he he's like, Yeah, they roast like

super regularly and he's able to like you know get he's gotten a good like flow with you know getting fresh orders from them so now I've got to figure out how to get more of it because it was like really good.

Chris Gmyr (06:15)
Yeah, that's great. I love those types of beans where even if they smell amazing, it tastes amazing or even better. So it's great.

TJ MIller (06:22)
Yeah.

Yeah. It was really good. so I I'm yeah, I'm gonna have to figure out how to get get some more of that around here.

Chris Gmyr (06:29)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well yeah, it sounds like a

TJ MIller (06:31)
Yeah, they're

Chris Gmyr (06:31)
nice coffee related trip. So glad everything

TJ MIller (06:34)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (06:35)
was good.

TJ MIller (06:36)
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely like tried to like suss out some good spots to go and like, you know, the the bakery's coffee was good enough that I went back the next day for it, you know. So it was

Chris Gmyr (06:46)
Nice. Yeah.

TJ MIller (06:47)
yeah, it was solid.

Chris Gmyr (06:49)
Very cool.

TJ MIller (06:50)
Yeah, how about you, man? Any any news on the coffee front?

Chris Gmyr (06:53)
yeah, trying a couple different bags. I know I mentioned a different one last time, a couple weeks ago. So went through a different one already. It's different roaster from Charlotte, North Carolina, called Elderly Coffee Company. and it was a Brazil roast or bean. so medium. but yeah, really, really good. A little bit more like nutty, which was nice.

A little bit of a change compared to what we usually get. but yeah, super solid. I'll put it

TJ MIller (07:18)
Mm. Nice.

Chris Gmyr (07:20)
in the the show notes. But yeah, and it looks like you can order online and and all that stuff too directly from them. So yeah, it's good. I enjoyed it.

TJ MIller (07:28)
Sick

man. Yeah, that was awesome. It was it was funny. We Wilbur Wilbur made it up from Costa Rica to Laricon. so we were

Chris Gmyr (07:38)
nice.

TJ MIller (07:38)
like chatting some coffee too, and got super envious of you know being able to just

Chris Gmyr (07:41)
Ha ha ha.

TJ MIller (07:43)
you know have an incredible coffee all the time. Like I'm I'm a big fan of like Costa Rican coffees, like those are some of my my favorites, so

Chris Gmyr (07:51)
Yeah. Yeah, they're really good.

TJ MIller (07:53)
Yeah, cool man. moving on from coffee, like you wanna talk a little bit LarCon stuff?

Chris Gmyr (07:59)
Yeah,

love to hear all about the the Laricon happenings. It seemed like a lot of fun from a distance. this was the first year that I did not get a chance to tune into like any of the live streams. I haven't really had time to like look at socials or anything like that. So, besides a few podcast announcements with Aaron Francis, getting added to the Laravel

team and VP of like marketing and all that, which is awesome. Yeah, yeah.

TJ MIller (08:24)
VP of marketing and community, like could you not

have landed a more perfect person for that position? Like,

Chris Gmyr (08:30)
Exactly. Right.

TJ MIller (08:32)
geez.

Chris Gmyr (08:33)
Yeah. So congrats to Aaron. That's amazing. so it's been awesome to listen to his journey over all the years, all the different podcasts and things that he's done and leading into the Laravel space and now like firmly planted, you know, in Laravel. And it's just been just a a crazy cool journey to to listen to him for all the years and see seeing where he's ended up. So yeah, congrats, Aaron. That's awesome.

TJ MIller (08:57)
Yeah. And I feel

and I feel like it's so like on the latest episode of Mostly Technical, they kind of like talked about everything and like the the story leading up to it and how it all kind of came about. And it is just such it's it's how it all went down and like the trajectory that it happened is just

Such a perfect example of like his like ethos of just doing things and putting yourself out there. yeah, I I I think it's fantastic. so that that was a huge, really cool announcement. I mean, so the conference, I this was the first year I

This is the first year I like watched almost every single talk. I think I only missed like part of one talk. normally for I mean, this is just me at conferences, right? Like I the talks are nice and they're interesting. but for me, it's about people in community, you know? So I I would absolutely take.

prioritize social engagement and like having conversations with people over sitting down and watching a talk. but this year like I watched like every single talk and they were all really, really good. one thing that I was shocked by was like everybody's decks seemed so good. Like just everyone's like style, like

What was on the slide versus what they were talking about, like the balance between like just everyone's decks were incredible. and I think there was a lot of kind of addressing some of the like AI doom and gloom, like threaded through a lot of these talks of like really kind of like instilling more hope and inspiration inside of all of that, which was good. And there was, I mean, you could kind of tell there was like a little bit of like a

an AI looming like dark cloud, you know, you could you could tell it was like around in the murmurings, you know. But I think that there's I mean it's just it's the the Larabelle community is special and I think we're we're really set to do well in the future, you know. couple big like breakout talks, like Matt Matt Stauffer's talk was really good.

His slides I think were maybe my favorite. and they talk he talked about like the like sort of Minecraft virtual world they built for for Laracon, like at the venue. and it had like a screen that would stream like the talk so you could like virtually be in this game world watching like the conference. of course Taylor's talk was was really good.

One of the more interesting talks that I didn't think I would take a lot away from was a talk on jujitsu, the like the the git alternative. I and the talk really kind of focused on atomic commits and thinking about atomic commits, like I always felt like they were more work than it was worth. but

As I've noticed my pull requests getting larger and larger and larger, being able to step through really clean atomic commits as part of the review process, is I I I think that could be really valuable. So that's something I'm kind of playing with. And like, you know, I can alleviate the pain of doing that by, you know, having Claude or something handle, you know, cutting commits and and navigating all of that stuff. So

That talk was I kind of I kind of went in going like, don't need this, walked away with it. Like, this is something

Chris Gmyr (12:26)
Mm-hmm.

TJ MIller (12:27)
I like, might want to look a little bit closer at. so I guess let's take like a couple steps back. talks were incredible. I think all of them are worthwhile watching.

So leading up to Laracon, right? Like, I even like up to a few weeks ago, like I was like a few weeks before the conference, like I was kind of debating whether to like go or not. kind of like facing, like I was getting like really anxious facing the community after like not spending time working on Prism. the fact that like

four or so months ago, like after I started at Luma, like I fell off the face of the earth. Like I didn't check socials up until the day before Laracon, for like four months. So like I was out of the loop on everything. I didn't even know who was like I only knew like maybe one or two speakers for Laracon. So like it was a total surprise to me finding out like who was speaking like the day of because like I didn't I I hadn't logged into any socials at all. I had just like kind of put my head in the ground.

So I was sitting in the airport in Detroit. I mean, and so like I was saying, I I was even like I was debating on whether to go to the conference at all because it was just I was really anxious about everything. and my wife really was like, No, you you need to go. Like this is your time of year to be with your friends, your people. Like you don't really have in-person friends and like

This is the time that you get to do that. So like you really, really should go. So I was sitting in the airport waiting for my plane. And I'm like, you know, let me, let me just get this like off my chest. So I put together a blog post and also sent it out to my my mailing list and like went around on all the socials and kind of like just posted like

Hey, I've been gone for four months. Like I feel like I owe you an explanation and then had the post. I

I was blown away by the community's response. Like lots of people on you know, Twitter were being very encouraging. I had some people reach out on LinkedIn that had very encouraging words, but there were like

People who just like came up to me and were like, yeah, I read your post. Like, can I just give you a hug? You know? Like it was

Chris Gmyr (14:42)
That's awesome.

TJ MIller (14:46)
it was, it was such an incredible response from the community. You know, I've every time I talk about it, I start getting like really emotional because it's

It's so much of what I needed. Like I just I I don't I don't have in-person friends. Like I don't do a lot around here outside of just like with my immediate family. So to go into this community and like feeling like guilty and like

shame and just weird, you know, like I like I let people down. man, the community just like sh really showed up. And that was so incredible. I also couldn't believe like the number of people that like read it and like you know had had had something to say. It was

It was really sweet and it's it's exactly what I needed. And like part of what I said in that that post too is like I wanna come back to, you know, Prism and really dive back in and you know, but but wanting to do it in a sustainable way and there's just so much support for that. So that was I that was huge for me.

Yeah, it was wild.

Chris Gmyr (15:55)
Yeah.

That's that's awesome. I I read the newsletter when it came through, and I thought it was very well written, just yeah, like you from the heart and just putting it out there. And I saw some of the reactions and comments to either like Twitter or Blue Sky. but yeah, same same thing, like all all great, positive feedback, encouragement, just general love toward you. So yeah,

TJ MIller (16:19)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (16:20)
that's

Amazing to see in all the the mess of today's world and you know,

TJ MIller (16:26)
Right.

Chris Gmyr (16:27)
actually showing people some love and compassion and you know, space.

TJ MIller (16:30)
Yeah, yeah. And

Chris Gmyr (16:32)
So

TJ MIller (16:33)
and part of it too is like wanting to use Laracon is like kind of this slingshot of like cause you always leave like I don't know I I've always walked away from Laracon and and even like PHP tech, but like absolutely at Laracon. come away with just this like super inspired.

creative energy and like drive to do things. and so I I I absolutely walked away with that, like a renewed like energy, interest and passion in what I was doing with Prism. And like one of the cool things that I I sort of realized as I was talking to people there about it all is I

I didn't want to take the time away that I did. life kind of forced me to, but having that time away, I've got some fresh perspective and some like new ideas that I don't think I would have had without having to take that break away from it. So yeah, I'm I'm stoked to dive back into that too. Yeah,

Chris Gmyr (17:32)
Nice. Yeah.

TJ MIller (17:33)
yeah. So I I mean

Getting back to to the conference proper, it was I think one of my like more favorite Lyricons. Like it was the venue was great. like the after like the the prom was so they had dodgeball. Dodgeball was really cool. I didn't play because of my back. and and you know, I I

didn't want to be away from home and like risk like pinching the nerve. Cause like it it can be anything. Like I don't have

Chris Gmyr (18:00)
Yeah, yeah, totally.

TJ MIller (18:01)
to be even doing something strenuous for it to become a problem. So I'm like, yeah, the last thing I need to do is like put myself in a position where I'm like going to be like, you know, risking it. So I didn't play dodgeball, but like our whole crew did. and they actually ended up winning. So like that was that was crazy. yeah, like Michael, Jake, Hemphill, like the whole the whole crew.

was on the same team and they and they won, which was which was fun. And it was really cool just like seeing a bunch of

It was just really cool seeing a bunch people play, like Kent, Kent C Dodd's he his son came with him and like so like they were playing dodgeball together on a team.

Chris Gmyr (18:39)
that's cool.

TJ MIller (18:39)
so it was really cool to see like you know, a kid there playing along too. And then prom was really I didn't know what to expect.

But it was really cool. I think it was like a great mix of like way to like meet people and like hang out. Margot from Vehicle had a made a custom prom dress with like Laravel and vehicle logos all over it. that was insane.

Chris Gmyr (19:04)
Well it's impressive.

TJ MIller (19:06)
there were two sets of Dumb and Dumber. like the the

baby blue like orange tuxes. There were two sets and like often seen conversing together. So it's really funny. yeah, that was that was such a cool idea. so that was that was great. The the after part like the official layer of the after party on day two was at a great venue outdoors, food was great, weather was perfect.

that was really cool. And then like the other highlight was we went we went golfing at like a like golf simulator place that had like a whole bunch of different like golf simulator bays. and so we showed up, we had one bay. There was definitely way more people than like

really could like play reasonably. so another bae I like ended up freeing up about like halfway through the night. And so we got the other bae too. And so it was really funny how it was kind of separated of like there was like a group that was like really doing very well and playing golf. Like they clearly they all play a bit. some of them were very good. And our group, none of us could get the ball on the green. So we decided to switch it up to

just like smash mode of like everyone has eight tries whoever hits it the longest and straight like whoever hits it the longest within like certain guidelines you know would win. and so we were all just like smashing it but we were all awful like just whiffing the ball like it was it was just

Chris Gmyr (20:36)
That's awesome.

TJ MIller (20:36)
pure comedy. because I don't

Chris Gmyr (20:39)
So Dodgeball

went really well, golf, nah, not so much.

TJ MIller (20:43)
I mean golf was a blast. that was that was so much fun, but that was that was not

Yeah, no no one was playing like real golf. Like I d I haven't swung a golf club since my senior year in high school. so it was it was one side was like, yeah, very competitive, and then the R side, which was also competitive, but like just absolute comedy. so yeah, that was that was really cool. I didn't I had

thought the entire conference about moving my flight from late Thursday to late Friday so I could have, you know, more time. the native PHP guys threw on like the vibes after party or like the day after. So like another like half day of a conference. and so I knew I was gonna go check that out. But then I was like, I kind of want to like go explore Boston, you know, because I've never really been, but

looking at changing my flights and then looking at the weather. It was supposed to rain the entire time. So I was like, I don't really feel like trying to explore Boston in the rain. So I I didn't move my I didn't end up moving my flight, but it worked out fine. and so the the the vibes was the native PHP guys like extra conference after LarCon. And that was super cool. they announced some really cool stuff they're doing with native PHP

they had a couple like lightning talks that were really cool. and it was actually just like a really nice chill thing. And I liked I really appreciated that they did like kind of like a half day thing with supplied lunch so that it wasn't like a whole nother day commitment of things. that like basically after lunch it was like, Look, we've got the space for the rest of the day, you can hang out, you can chill, you can co-work, like

whatever from there. And so I thought that was a really nice addition to to Laracon. I hope I hope they do it again next year. because that was cool. And like I I walked away with, you know, other builder energy coming out of that too, which was which was really nice. so yeah, like all in all, man, like I one of

For me personally, I think this was like one of the more impactful Laracons, like probably top three for me. I mean, I've I this was my sixth Laracon, so top three is like, you know, whatever, but like it was it.

It's up there. it's up there for me for sure. So really, really, really good one. yeah.

Chris Gmyr (23:01)
That's awesome. Well it sounds like a a great time. I'm sad that I missed it. But I don't know. Hopefully hopefully be able to make it out one of the next times or I don't know, who knows? Eventually

TJ MIller (23:11)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (23:12)
come back to the Lairville world a little bit more besides just side projects and things.

TJ MIller (23:17)
If

you don't, man, I think we're all gonna have to like chip in and get you a ticket because yeah, gotta you gotta come hang out, man.

Chris Gmyr (23:25)
Yeah, I know. it was it

it's been like interesting, like on this side of the the web world in node type script land. and still listening to like all the the Larivell related podcasts and I think they were talking about it on the Larval podcast, I think with Matt and Aaron. and again talking about like that

Laravel is the best way to utilize like AI and have all the you know, bells and whistles and batteries included for everything. I'm like, yeah, that is 100% true, at least from from like my experience, and having to deal with wiring all this stuff up and finding the right package and then all the you know attack vectors with especially like NPM.

And all the the random

TJ MIller (24:14)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (24:14)
packages that, you know, spread out, you know, through there, is like this is just not as big of a problem in the PHP and like especially Laravel space. And because Laravel has like tried and true ways of doing things, guidelines, standards now with the like AI more like harness and tools and MCPs and boost and skills and whatnot, like it's even easier to do it now. And

I it my brain cannot compute why people just won't give up that like, you know, BHP, especially with Laravel, is like good and a viable way to build things, very big things and scalable things, as well as just a small like side project or whatever. Like it can do all the things.

TJ MIller (25:03)
Yeah,

especially with cloud like

I there's no excuses. Like it cloud just makes it so stupid easy to do all of this. And one of the cool things was we'll talk about this in a little bit, but like I've been building and putting a bunch of stuff up on cloud and what's been really cool is they have the cloud CLI and I've had Claude like configuring the app in cloud, like setting up the the background processes, the Q jobs, like

attaching databases and yeah it basically like did it all on its own too. So like it's even like there there is no excuse for like not using Laravel. Like I can't and and it it makes me like think of your situation working in like the JavaScript world. Even like looking at like vendoring like implementing cues. Like that is something so simple to do in Laravel.

Like I can imagine that being a gigantic spaghetti mess in JavaScript land.

Chris Gmyr (26:07)
Yeah, it is. And there's like multiple ways to do it. There's multiple technologies in our stack, depending on how we want to process things, how we can possibly share things. Like I mentioned, like we use Kafka for certain things,

TJ MIller (26:20)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gmyr (26:21)
SQS for others, like internal, you know, cues, some are written vanilla, some are trying other packages, and it's just

TJ MIller (26:29)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (26:30)
like and then you have like

Me and my team right now trying to build the rig CLI, which is for like our local testing and stuff like that. And like it's just putting a huge, even like a bigger spotlight on the mess of like lack of standards, guidance, just ways to do things because it's like, well, we are able to spin up, you know, project one and like some of its dependencies without issue. But we go to project two, it's like,

Now nothing works because all this stuff is completely different, different packages to

TJ MIller (27:01)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (27:02)
slightly different tech stack database versions, hard coding things, stuff like that. It's like this is a challenge just to get through like any amount of repos like in our system because like everyone can just do kind of whatever. yeah. So not great. Not to do rail, but just use layer bottle. That is the answer to

TJ MIller (27:20)
No, it's true. Yeah. Basically that's

the answer. Like I

Chris Gmyr (27:24)
The majority of like

anything is just like just use it.

TJ MIller (27:27)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I just I I spun up a fairly static website and the only thing that it handles on the back end is like signing up for a mailing list and like it handles that and then like doing double opt-in with resend. So but like it's basically a static site and I still just built it with Laravel and put it on cloud. Like,

Chris Gmyr (27:49)
Yeah. Why not?

TJ MIller (27:50)
you know, it's it's

even for static stuff, I'm finding myself reaching for it at this point. So yeah, just just do it. before

Chris Gmyr (27:58)
Yeah. And I hope

I hope cloud does add static site handling 'cause that would be

TJ MIller (28:03)
So that was

an announcement at Laracon that

Chris Gmyr (28:08)
Amazing.

TJ MIller (28:08)
they are expanding into being able to host just about everything. Like you got a Flask app, a Rails app, a Go app. Like, yeah, you can put it on cloud now. so

Chris Gmyr (28:21)
I want to check that.

TJ MIller (28:22)
yeah, there I don't

I don't think that's available yet. It might actually be available now, but I don't think it was available like day of conference. Like that was like a feature that they had coming up. so I don't know when that was gonna release, but yeah, they basically are adding like support for hosting all sorts of different frameworks now. So that's super cool. I don't so I don't

Chris Gmyr (28:41)
Nice. Yeah, I'll have to check out the the static site handling 'cause I still have like

TJ MIller (28:46)
so I don't know for sure if they have.

static site handling. I mean he showed off the Taylor had showed off like a bunch of other frameworks like Rails, Flask, like Hano, like whatever. but I d I don't know if I saw static site. but honestly, for static stuff, I've been reaching for Cloudflare pages, and that is ultra painless. they have like pre-configured for like everything. Like I just stood up a

a documentation website, with VPress and that super easy to hook up on Cloudflare. So for s for like purely static stuff, I I would just reach for like Cloudflare pages for sure.

Chris Gmyr (29:28)
Yeah, totally. I have one up there, and it worked pretty well. but I still have like a a super small forge box for a handful of other small

TJ MIller (29:38)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (29:39)
landing pages. So I just gotta d make the move. But yeah, I'll check out cloud or just move on web pages.

TJ MIller (29:42)
Yeah, and like one of the

one of the other big things from Cloud 2 was that they really hammered in on scale to zero and like near instant spin up time from sleep. So that's super advantageous, you know, as well of like, yeah, I'm not I'm not paying for anything if no one's looking at it. and they like made startup time like in the milliseconds. So

Chris Gmyr (30:07)
Nice.

That's crazy.

TJ MIller (30:08)
yeah, yeah,

like true scale to zero and millisecond startup time. Wild. so yeah, and and before we move on from Lyricon, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention like one of one of the number one highlights for me was finally getting to meet Pushpack after two years of working on Prism together. and

his watching his journey from like working on Prism to working at Laravel on the AI stuff. we we linked up at at Larom like first thing. and so that was that was something that was really special for me was like getting getting to meet him all the way from India. you know, so that was a really big highlight.

Chris Gmyr (30:51)
Yeah, that's amazing. 'Cause he's done a a bunch of work. So it's awesome that he moved into the Lairval proper space as well. And yeah,

TJ MIller (30:59)
Yeah, yep.

Chris Gmyr (31:01)
that's awesome for him. Congrats.

TJ MIller (31:02)
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, really cool stuff there. so moving on from Lyricon, I started a new project. I know I really shouldn't have.

Chris Gmyr (31:11)
We're well new.

TJ MIller (31:12)
Yeah, yeah. I I I've been wanting to scratch this it for a while and like I just got super fired up at the the vibes, like day after conference and

I found myself wanting to take notes. and I'm just like, you know what? I'm sick of not having the notes app that I've always wanted. And so I I just started building it. and part of the inspiration came from talking to Aaron Francis a little bit, and like some inspiration from Matt Stauffer's talk.

Of you know, just kind of the one thing that kind of held me back from this is like I haven't built native before. but it's easier than ever to do that. So I know solo term was built with Tori and React. And I'm like, that's a stack I could probably, you know, get into. And kind of the the takeaway from Matt Stouffer's talk was like working at the edge of your experience. and so it's like look, I know React fairly well.

So I know like the front-end portion of this. I don't know Tori is a framework and I don't know Rust, but I bet I could like get by with it. And so I spun up a a new native project. so and we've we've talked a lot on this podcast about like our note-taking systems and kind of like our tools. and so

For me, like obsidian, while while relatively simple, like obsidian gets I feel like it gets really complicated really quick. Like you just start tacking on a ton of bells and whistles, and everyone's got a starter vault, and like there's just a million theories for like how to take notes, how to organize your notes. And I found with obsidian, like more often than not, I end up spending

More time tinkering with the system than I do being productive with it.

Chris Gmyr (33:12)
Yeah, I can see that.

TJ MIller (33:13)
and so I just kind of I I've always felt that pull with Obsidian. I've always liked Bear Notes, gorgeous application, love it. and

The downside with BARE is like they don't support folder structure, which is just kind of how my brain organization works. they do tags, which not a big fan of. And then furthermore, they're like there's no Vim support, which sucks. Cause like at least the Vim plugin for Obsidian is like pretty decent. Like there's just nothing in BARE. And honestly.

I could probably get over the tags versus folders if it had like even basic Vim navigation support. Like I'd be so on board with that.

And Notion Notion feels like sort of similar to Obsidian, where there's just like a million ways to do things. it's also not Markdown, which sucks. and being kind of like locked into their content blocks, it also felt like sort of restricted in a way too.

So I've never really had anything I wanted. I want something like super lightweight, works on markdown files that is like a full-on editor, but also for like launching a vault, right?

so having like a vault and being able to like search inside of that vault and have like links and navigation inside of that vault. Like I wanted all of that, but I also wanted a way to like easily view and just like read markdown files that Claude spits out in a beautiful way instead of like having you just look at like raw markdown or or something else like.

I wanted an app that I could also just like pop open a single markdown file and like view it in a beautiful way, have Vim navigation, still be able to like drop into the editor to do things. So I yeah, I just went for it and started building it. and so it's that's where I'm kind of hoping it to land. Like ultimately I'm building it for myself, but I've decided to turn it into a product.

You know, and and kinda have my first, you know, like iris kind of

Charging for iris kind of got me over the hump of like charging for my work, you know, outside of a like contracting type of thing, right? So I I don't I don't know the the business model yet. I've I've been torn on I've been torn between like charging for the app, right?

I'm also gonna do an iOS app. So like charging for the app or the app being free but charging for sync, like having like EDE encrypted sync between the desktop app, the mobile app, other desktop apps, you know, so you could have like these shared vaults across your workspaces. so I I did

I had Claude do like pair up with Codex and do there's a whole bunch of like vibe code things that have like come out of this too. that 'cause I've been trying like different tech some newer and different techniques with this. but

I had Claude do a bunch of market research on it. And I think everything's pointing to apps gonna be free to use with local files and everything, and then pay for sync. Because that's essentially the same model of like bear and obsidian. so yeah. I'm yeah, so I'm I'm building that out.

I'm probably gonna announce it like tomorrow on socials and just kind of get get it out there. I'm I'm still doing like invite-only like alphas for like friends to start playing with. but I've got Claude now digging in on the iOS app. I've got I've got sync working. yeah.

So I got like a whole bunch of other ideas to like go with it too, but I'm kind of just trying to nail down the like core experience right now of like, yeah, editing things, being able to like navigate vaults in like a pretty beautiful way. considering plug-in ecosystem, probably as just a way for me to extend functionality for people who want to go further with it, like maybe a data view kind of plug-in.

Chris Gmyr (37:21)
Mm-hmm.

TJ MIller (37:23)
I I've talked to I know I know you use it. I've talked to a couple other people who would be prospective customers of Obsidian that also heavily use DataView. For those who don't know, DataView like a plug-in for Obsidian that allows you to do like queries and output like different types of tables and stuff of like other documents. so I've I've thought about like an LLM angle too.

Of maybe shipping the app with a embedded embeddings model. And then you'd just like bring your own key for provider and like you'd be able to just like chat your vault and like we'd be able to handle all the like rag queries and everything for that. so that could be like a really interesting way to go too, but I don't want to like shove AI AI down everyone's throat. So like that would

be a good excuse to make that as like a plugin too, right?

Chris Gmyr (38:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

TJ MIller (38:12)
and that gives me potentially additional monetization avenues down the road too. Like I could have like, this like data view plugins free, but like the AI plugin is like an additional cost. so I could do like premium plugins at that point too. so I've got some ideas. Like I I don't I I have been spending

Only a little bit of time with Prism, a lot of time working on this. but that's gonna shift here pretty soon as I kind of get over the hump of things, with like kind of the initial development. So, like, so far we've built the Mac OS app, I've built the back-end sync service in Laravel, built a docs site, built the marketing website, got that hooked up to resend for

like newsletter update signups. so I've been cranking on it. But like it's I I've I've I've had Claude doing most of it. So like kind of kind of doing the thing, like getting Claude like set up at night and like letting it crank overnight and waking up in the morning and checking in on things. So

Chris Gmyr (39:14)
Yep.

Yep. A hundred percent. Yeah. It's it's looking real good. so I got signed up for it this morning, so gotta you know, start moving some notes over there, see how it functions and give you some feedback and whatnot. But yeah, I think it looks fantastic and I'll put it in the show notes for our launch on Saturday morning. So

TJ MIller (39:33)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (39:34)
one will know it from the social posts and whatever you're putting out tomorrow and should be good to go. But yeah, it looks super slick, so

Excited to dive in and start trailing it out.

TJ MIller (39:44)
Yeah, it is like very very keyboard shortcut heavy. Like there's shortcuts for everything. There's a command palette bar. the editor is got like lots of different Vim bindings and tech like text manipulation stuff built in. So it's it's above like Vim navigation, like it actually like has registers and and does a lot of things.

So and you can opt out of that too. If you don't want Vim bindings, you can disable them. but it's that's definitely like something I really wanted out of it. and I'm just like I haven't having fun building, man. Like I it's that was that was something kind of the takeaway from from Laracon, right? Is and I I found myself having conversations like this too, lawyers. Like I I've spent so long obsessed with the craft.

and the quality that that has always gotten in the way of me building. and now, especially with where AIs come and where a lot of it is where my my harnessing has come into play with like my the skills I use and workflows I have, that

I'm able to just build and I'm having so much fun building, like actually building for once, you know, right? And like that's been that's that was a shift that was kind of talked about, you know, and that that

The Laravel community is not only artisans, but we're also builders, right? And like that artisan and that craftsmanship is like in service of building, right? So if you take a step back, we're builders. And so that's what you know we're doing now with AI, right? I'm spending a little bit less time with the craft and a lot more time on like architecture and what and thinking about what features this thing needs to have. And

You know, it's it's it's definitely a shift, but like it's been so fun just like building, you know.

Chris Gmyr (41:40)
Yeah,

yeah, hundred percent. And now we're a little bit out of time today, but I've been doing something similar on my side too. So

TJ MIller (41:47)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (41:49)
stay tuned for next episode. but yeah, I'm super excited to jump into the no taking app, and seeing your continued journey on that. And yeah, it just looks amazing. And so glad that you were fired up after Lyricon. I know like

Yeah, every time that I've gone and like come back and it's like just buzzing for weeks of like, like this and that and it's like it's it's hard to always get that when you're just at home doing your own thing.

TJ MIller (42:15)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (42:16)
but like just even chatting with more people or seeing what their you know, projects are, it's like, well, maybe maybe I'm not interested in that, but it tweaked, you know, this little thing and I

TJ MIller (42:26)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gmyr (42:27)
like jumping over here, just like with your note taking app. It's like stepping out of the the comfort zone, the routine, the day to day life. It's like,

Like, this new little thing

TJ MIller (42:35)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gmyr (42:36)
came up. And then now with AI, it's like, well, let's let's throw some tokens at it. Let's see what happens. And you know, even if you just build it for yourself, for any of these things, it's like that's that's still a win because you're like flexing that and building that muscle to build things and make those like product decisions or even architectures or just try a new thing, like the Mac app for the No Taker for

the iOS app that you're working on right now, it's like, that's all like net new stuff for, you know, us. And it's like, well, trying to dig through that yourself

TJ MIller (43:08)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (43:09)
by hand the old way a couple of years ago, it's a lot harder to do that. But now it's just a prompt into club code or whatever else and just tinkering with it yourself and kind of directing the AI to do the heavy left hand. So yeah, it's it's kind of like the fun part about building is seeing the stuff happen. And it's like

more back end tooling builders like us, it's like we don't always get to see the the front end, you know, product of stuff.

TJ MIller (43:37)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gmyr (43:38)
we didn't have that like avenue. So this is just a a nice way to scratch that itch and I don't know, just build cool stuff.

TJ MIller (43:46)
Yeah, it's definitely been a different mindset. Like I there there have always been people in the Laravel community that are like, you know, builders, right? Like they're they're constantly building things. They've got like, you know, a product here, a product there. and I've I've never I've never been on that side of things. I've always been like craft, craft, craft. Like, you know,

And so it's it's it's a new space, it's a new energy. and yeah, it's super exciting, man.

Chris Gmyr (44:16)
Yeah. Sweet. So yeah, we'll up there. All

TJ MIller (44:17)
Cool dude. Yeah, let's wrap up.

Chris Gmyr (44:21)
right. Thanks for listening to the Slightly Caffeinated podcast. Show notes and all the links and social channels are down below and also available at slightly caffeinated dot fm. If you have any questions for us or content suggestion, go to Ask a Question page on our site and we'll feature it in an upcoming episode. Thank you all for listening and we'll catch you next week.