Tidbits from Brian - Issue #29
Eyestrain in the evenings? Maybe you need more focused light. š”
Itās no surprise that I spend a lot of time in front of my computer. Lately, in the evenings, Iāve been encountering some eye strain. I think some of it is also a combination of dry eye, running my heater a lot in the winter, and simply getting older. But I knew some of the problem was simply my setup. Iāve always liked more ambient lighting, but that means my desk area isnāt very well-lit.
Iāve seen YouTubers using what they call ālightbarsā on their monitors for years. I always thought they were a little strange, but now I know why. š So I decided to go down that rabbit hole. And am super glad I did!
I work on a 16ā MacBook Pro and ended up purchasing the BenQ LaptopBar. Iāve been using it for about a month, and itās amazing how just a little more focused light on a screen can help your eyes. My night-time eyestrain pretty much disappeared!
Here are a few reasons I went with this specific product.
You attach a small pad on the back of your laptop (two different colors), and the brick itself is magnetic. So itās super easy to travel with and comes with a handy bag.
It has decent battery life. But another bonus is that you can use it while itās charging over USB-C. So I just leave it plugged in a while at my desk.
You can turn it on or off by just waving your hand over the top. Thatās always fun!
You can change the light from white to yellow. I always prefer warm and ambient lightning.
It has two different modes: sitting right above the screen or an extended arm mode where it sits higher.
Itās bright enough to fully light up your keyboard.
Updates āļø
We pushed out an update for our Novashare WordPress plugin. Here are a few of the changes:
Added new option to add a custom button in the follow block. Add any SVG code for the icon, change the color, etc. The choices are now endless. š„
Added new Pinterest option to always show image pin buttons instead of only on hover.
Added additional Pinterest image pin styles to help with compatibility when placed inside aligned containers.
Fixed an issue with image pin button links not working with relative URLs.
Fixed an issue in the plugin settings UI where textarea inputs were not sizing down correctly.
Had a lot of fun chatting with Gaƫl Breton from AuthorityHacker about site speed. We dive into WordPress hosting, caching, JS/CSS optimizations, theme and page builders, INP, and more!
Interesting things š
Misc.
Raycast is still one of my favorite Mac apps. I use it hundreds of times a day. Hereās an awesome thread with some tricks.
Zillow launches individual room rental feature. While this might be handy, itās also a sign of the times weāre living in. š
If you're using Authy, a heads up. They are discontinuing their desktop apps on March 19, 2024.
Apple announces groundbreaking new security protocol for iMessage.
WordPress
We donāt change WordPress plugins very often in our business, but recently made the move to WS Form. Very happy with it! Here are my thoughts.
For anyone who hasn't played around with WordPress core blocks lately, I encourage you to watch this video from Jamie. šŗ He recreates the NASA home page with WordPress blocks in 30 minutes using no plugins or custom CSS. š„
Not happy with your current hosting provider? InstaWP just launched its hosting option. It might be worth checking out. Itās powered by Automattic's infrastructure.
Easy Digital Downloads pushed out a lot of fixes and improvements over the last month. I love the new report, and an annoying PHP 8.2 bug is finally fixed.
SiteSaga wrote up an impressive overview of our Novashare social sharing plugin.
Katie started an insightful thread about WordPress, especially Woocommerce, possibly having a maintenance overhead problem. I 100% agree. WordPress needs to be simpler and easier to use. We have a lot of work to do still.
Performance
INP, the new Google Core Web Vitals metric, is right around the corner. ā” This INP debugger tool from DebugBear can come in handy.
Iāll be releasing a post about INP soon! In the meantime, here is an INP megathread.
Max Jacobs has written an excellent post on how to speed up WordPress. Definitely some great tips.
Interesting read on why WordPressā use of polyfill.min.js is irresponsible.
Kinstaās South African data center in Johannesburg is live! Really cool. šæš¦ Also excited to create a Slackbot now that their API has more access.
If youāre a data junky, this look into the traffic trends through Cloudflare during the Superbowl is really interesting. š
Marketing
Bluesky is officially open to the public. No more private invites are needed. Feel free to sign up and connect with me on there.
Signal has launched the ability to keep your phone number private with their new username feature.
AI
Introducing Sora, OpenAIās text-to-video model. Honestly, this might be the most impressive thing Iāve seen since ChatGPT was released. š®
Bard has now been rebranded to Gemini.
BitcoinĀ (not financial advice)
Strike has moved away from the bigger spreads and now has more transparent fees. I definitely prefer this model.
In just 31 trading days, the bitcoin ETFs are almost half of the gold ETFs. Just think about that for a second. The first gold ETF was launched in 2004.
āIf it was a store of value, it would stay one price.ā š¤¦ Itās mind-boggling what some people in mainstream media are saying.
If you're in the Scottsdale, AZ area, hit me up, and we can grab lunch! š„š