To Jon Favreau and Dave Filloni, thank you so very much. The season finale of The Mandalorian was a dream come true. I never thought I would ever experience that same childhood delight I did 40 years ago. I was cheering and standing on my seat like it was 1980 all over again. TY!

My life is complete - Descript, the ultimate screencast/podcast/recording thingee - is now availble for BigSur. Time to get back to recording.

How many times can I watch the opening prologue to Tenet before Tuesday????!

Cloning repositories and cleaning up code on a morning walk, as you do.

Geez…Disney…😲

Cold, windy, overcast, and quarantined. It’s a Beethoven piano sonata day.

Spending the night catching up on tutorials while doing a ton of busy work (mindless data entry). I forgot what “work” was like…Bouncing between JS and Laravel, and will eventually end the night with Nuxt and Tailwind. I like the idea of keeping up with the latest and greatest

This Moment from the Waking Up app basically explains ALL you need to know about story structure and storytelling.

“Finding meaning in life is having a story to tell yourself.”

Those writing stories just want to share their meaning with everyone else.

The Mandalorian does it again!! 40-year dream come to life. 😀 THANK YOU!

Really happy with how things are turning out writing and re-writing The Manual for Subtext. Went back in and cleared up some examples I used from Raiders. The distance between an inequity and progressive complications is light-years away.

Story - The Manual for Subtext

Switching colors in Linear to match my app’s brand colors makes it all that much more real. 😊

My favorite Dr. Seuss book growing up was Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? Sa taps in on the same.

Somebody thought this would be really funny to put on my desk.

Dune and Matrix 4 same day release on HBOMax as in theaters?

Bye bye Arclight…(“When i was a kid I used to drive 35 miles to sit in a cramped seat next to total strangers just to see a new movie with decent quality”)

WB entire 21 release at home

The idea that I could build an interface—even if just for myself—so I could avoid my bank’s front-facing app, is mind-blowing 🤯

Stripe Treasury

On Elf: am I the only one who thinks all of James Caan’s scenes were shot in a totally different time and space from Will Ferrell? Even in scenes together, they don’t even look they’re in the same room.

Aaron Sorkin is incredible. Trial of the Chicago 7…great writing from beginning to end.

The best thing about 2020 is being able to skip past the B-52s when listening to the Top 100 on 80s on 8.

Can’t wait for Black Friday/Cyber Monday desperation to end. As someone who makes a living off selling apps and services, trust me—if you have a great product, I have no issue paying full price. If what you’re selling is good enough, you won’t need sales gimmicks. ✌️

So super excited when I finally figure something out after beating my head against the wall all day. I can sleep now.

Probably super obvious to everyone but me, but removing any padding/margin from transitioning elements (like opening boxes inline, etc.) got rid of any “clicks” I had. I can now put to rest ulginess that has been plaguing me. 🥳

In love with last night’s Mandalorian episode even more once I realized who was playing the General.

Absolute genius. The composer behind Succession discusses his themes for the show. Inspiring to hear how the series itself ended up dictating some of the melodies. Cannot wait for this show to return.

Home office vibes courtesy of Phillips, Vari, and Apple.

Recognizing thoughts as thoughts makes all the difference in the world. (And being able to share these Moments in Markdown is a GREAT idea).

Well that was easy. Told myself last week I wanted to start focusing on developing new apps with everything I’ve learned about Nuxt and Laravel over the past couple of years and less than one week later—someone hired me to do just that 😊

Fridays. The days I stay off Twitter because I don’t watch The Mandalorian until late at night, and I don’t want the experience spoiled the same way Jason Elliot did in 1980 when he told me who Luke’s father was before I saw Empire.

Stranger Things Season Three the second time around…65in screen instead of the 27in I used to have…😲… this looks like a real movie!!

Full circle. Now I’m animating transitions with VueJS using what I know about spacing and timing from my animation days.

New Divide utilities in Tailwind are awesome. Feel like I could spend a couple days catching up on all the new features (and find a bunch of things I don’t have to by hand anymore!) tailwindcss.com/docs/divi…

Probably one of my favorite pages from The Daily Stoic. And one of the hardest to pull off.

My essentials. Timepage, iAWriter, Subtext, and Superhuman.

Been using Tailwind for 2 years now, and just learned sm: is NOT for mobile devices, but SMALL screens. 🤯

Crazy tease

Today’s Conflict Corner class in Subtext was most encouraging. I think I found a way to test for conflict within a story - whether or not it’s working - and today’s workshop was most beneficial to all. Publishing it later if any writers want to check it out.

When you spend your usual writing time searching for “remote NuxtJS jobs” because it sounds WAY more fun, you know you’ve got a problem with app development.

Having conquered my PWA splash screen issues, I basically just open and close my app all day. Both for validation and amazement that it actually works 😆

Amazingly productive day. Such a difference when you fully commit. 😃

Figured it out. I incorrectly assumed the @2 and @3 settings in Figma were supposed to match pixel density of device. Nope! Just export at 1x and custom splash screens come up as expected.

Wrangling PWA support in my Nuxt app today. Not super happy with the splashscreen support in the official module. Playing around with different options today to see what works best.

Starting to write again after two months of not writing is not easy. Feel wobbly and uncoordinated, riding a bike for the first time up a hill. Even though I’ve done this a million times before.

“You are identical to what is perhaps the greatest mystery in the universe.”

Thanks, Sam Harris.

Just read the Forward to “Greenlights” by Matthew McConaughey using my best impression of him. I really should have been asked to do the audiobook.

I have great users. 😊

Witness the power of this fully-operational, fully-optimized app (thank you Nuxt :))

First week of work with the M1 MBA: def sticking with the Air for my mobile future. LOVE the lack of a fan and the ultra light design. Totally different creative choices with a computer this small. A sizable difference in my art.

Raycast now opens GitHub repos in a flash…🥰

Ah, much better. DankMono re-installed in new VSCode.

Highlighted is such a great app. Anytime I mark something in Kindle, I add it here as well. Nice to be reminded of it later when swiping between screens—a good interruption in the day’s routine.

In one of the Moments from the Waking Up app, Sam talks about sharing from want vs sharing to help. I struggle with this all time, where almost everything I post is an implicit plea to “buy my product.” Impressed with those who avoid this duplicitous route.

Upgrading to TailwindCSS 2.0 and praying for easy DarkMode/Typography integration (so people can read my app at night). This promo video is ridiculous.

And by ridiculous, I mean wonderful.

blog.tailwindcss.com/tailwindc…

This week marks the 3 year anniversary of my writing app Subtext. 3 ½ years ago I had no idea what Laravel was, or Vue, or Nuxt, or MySQL, or GitHub, Netlify, Tailwind, or the JAMstack. Now, I use these every day to deliver an amazing app across the entire world. 😃

What used to take a minute to build in Nuxt now only takes 9 seconds on an M1 MBA. I have a feeling this might have an impact on my productivity.

I can’t stop laughing about how much faster this M1 is 🤣 and my own app I built? Ridiculous. I never realized how good it was until now. All the self-hating inner dialogue can now stop!

Really surprised at how much I can run my entire business off my iPad Pro. Previous Mac died 3 hours after last week’s keynote, new M1 its way. Last 7 days has been surprisingly productive…only thing is rebuilding app, but Netlify builds filled in the gap nicely while I wait…

Never underestimate the power of the Batman soundtrack during your morning run on a ridge high above your city.

“It’s not the story in my head,” said everyone. Of course it isn’t, your head can switch contexts in a flash—the Audience OTOH is not inside your head, so you need to make choices and keep context consistent which is going to CHANGE your story. #Writers

100% sure that the @Superhuman app is responsible for a 200% improvement in reaching out to customers and answering support questions. My current streaks below (new feature)

Time is art. Today kicks off the 5th month of the 13 month 28 day calendar. This month is the Overtone month and is all about scheduling life around creativity. Spent the whole day making little changes here and there to Subtext, delightful touches that fulfill my curiosity.

Really enjoying Moments in the @WakingUp app from Sam Harris. I have it set to 1-3 times a day, & regardless of when it pops up, as soon as I see the notification I listen to the 1-min. meditation. Significant impact on the rest of the day 😊

This popped up on iTunes Listen Now playlist and has promptly been played 532 times in a row just today. music.apple.com/us/album/…

Just realized, yesterday marked my 3rd year of daily meditation (1095 consecutive days). Best upgrade ever.

Am I the only one who claps for themselves out-loud before entering a commit?

So amazing watching row after row created of users trying out a new feature 😃

Perhaps one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written for film… music.apple.com

I wonder what happens tomorrow with the counter. 😊 @calm

Subscribing to Moretex is a no-brainer. First podcast I’m willing to sponsor without a second thought. Quality conversation for years.

Your daily does of inspiration to feel epic whilst trapped inside your house. music.youtube.com/watch

My theme song when I finally get local and prod servers to work nice in Nuxt after months and months of beating my head against the wall in regards to proxy, SSL, axios, etc.

music.youtube.com/watch

2 hours from idea to deploy, Nuxt to Netlify, and now there’s an app out in the wild that perfectly encapsulates my imagination.

What a world. 🌍

Updating a 1200+ page site/app that serves thousands across the world with my phone while kicking back on a couch is my Independence Day. Thanks to WorkingCopy, Netlify, and Vue 😃🚀☕️

In case you wanted to know the lyrics to Star Wars:

The key to a great day of writing—Hans Zimmer essentials.

Today’s cookie looks like the Millennium Falcon (original universe version 😝)

‪Trying out @CremaCo and now I have a coffee “playlist” 😋 ☕️ ‬

The wider iPhone is a no-brainer. When reading, I always wish there was just slightly more room on either side.

Same with Navy Blue. (With matching Watch of course)

Very much looking forward to utilizing new Render functions in Vue 3. Evan does a great job of explaining them on VueMastery.

2020 theme song for the next 7 days in the U.S.

We’re moving into a new area of narrative focus, a shift away from Learning and into Obtaining (control and conquest). Read about all in this article on Identifying Types of Plot in a Story.

#screenwriting #writingtips #amwriting

Upgraded the Discuss Dramatica forums to the latest and greatest version of Discourse, still my all-time favorite forum platform.

Going to tinker around this weekend with color schemes and logos 🤓

And at 5:40, here’s the soundtrack for Glory (Horner really liked Prokofiev)

And here’s the original soundtrack for Braveheart from 1939.

The original soundtrack for Aliens—first premiered in 1942.

Two minutes into using @linear_app and I already know it will stick. Super slick app development and built for speed. A joy to use so far.

The best kind of breakfast is the kind you don’t make yourself.

After reading this review/marketing blog about Sonos’ new soundbar Arc, I’m sold. Especially since it doesn’t look like I’ll be back in the Cineramadome until July 2021.

Super sad to hear about Kelly Asbury passing away. He was my director on Spirit and Shrek 2. So nice. I loved working for him—humble and talented. 😢

My iTunes 2019 Replay list is 90% Tony Robbins hype-music and 10% Blink 182. Totally different vibe from 2020 😁

Glad I had a chance to walk across hot coals with 10,000 before that disappeared forever.

Stopping a timer in Timery is a frequent action for me, but a pain to set in motion.

With the new Accessibility features, it’s a simple double-tap on the back of my phone. 😊

Even more on this

Our group analysis of the Blacklist spec script, Don’t Worry, Darling went great. It was such a simple story, that I’m thinking of making it free so everyone can check it out. Great introduction to Dramatica 😃

First pull request merged! 😊 Not at all as difficult as I thought it would be. This one a simple request to not force uppercase in a Remark plugin (Markdown stuff).

Helps make Narrative First look great.

Ok. So apparently I’ve been washing my hands for a lot longer than 20 seconds for most of my adult life.

Hand washing is probably my most favorite new app! 😃

Spatial audio on AirPods Pro is mind-blowing.

Livestream the solar eclipse if you’re not lucky enough to wake up in India ☀️ 🌙

m.youtube.com/watch

Super happy with development on the latest version of Subtext. A preview of what’s coming next. narrativefirst.com/blog/the-…

C’mon man. Now earthquakes too?!

Launch scrubbed! 😕

Those touchscreens! 😍

Driving to the launchpad in style!

Participating in the LIVE JAMStack Conference, put on by Netlify. It’s out of control what these guys are doing. If you want to hook up with those who are as annoyed with the recent bout of anti-JS sentiment as I am, definitely check it out.

Spent the holiday weekend conforming 1235 pieces of content to Nuxt’s new Content module. Not having to manually update index files meant I could publish three new pieces in the time it used to take me to do one.

Having been inside for three months, this is truly spectacular (Elsmere Canyon in CA, USA).

Love is the General. Seinfeld and Stern on what it takes to be great.

Cleaning up Narrative First, this post from 2015 on how “great” Editorial is compared to iAWriter is hilarious to me now…especially since I write everything in iAWriter and can’t imagine using anything else!

I cannot wait to see this movie!

Modern Trailer for Empire

Over and over again, I am reminded of how smart it was to convert my entire ecosystem over to Nuxt. Today’s release of their Content module (Markdown in Vue Components) is just another in this endless developer-Groundhog Day of mine.

The ease with which I can now integrate bits of my app with over 15 years of content…my entire Friday just flew out the window 😃

My favorite writing platform, iAWriter (favorite for over ten years now) works with my personal blog now. Could be reason enough to pick it up again.

It is wonderfully windy out today.

Reading The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and I don’t think I’ve ever laughed this much reading a spec script.

Quarantine essentials.

And we end the night with Molossus from Mr. Zimmer…what could be better?!

I feel like I should win some sort of prize. Just ran a new article through Grammarly and found ZERO grammatical errors within it. 😃

Why is Max Richter so incredibly good? Seriously, I can’t think of another composer who so perfectly captures emotion.

You can’t help but write to it.

The Mandalorian was everything the last three Star Wars films were not: funny, light-hearted, touching in places, and super super simple. The last two episodes were phenomenal.

30 years ago I spent New Year’s Eve drawing Jiminy Cricket and ended up drawing for Disney five years later. Tonight, I deployed the latest version of my app on the JAMStack. 12-31 is for dreamers, not wistful regret.