Daily log

What do you mean there’s unlimited ice cream?

My sister and I giggled with glee as we poured heaps of rainbow sprinkles and caramel with chocolate chips on our second helping of ice cream. This was one of our first family dinners after immigrating to Canada, and the concept of an all-you-can-eat buffet was beyond marvellous. Uncle Willy’s delivered!! Well at least the dessert section was. My parents weren’t as thrilled, especially with the powdered mashed potatoes.

This week had the same type of energy. Never in my professional career have I had the joy and the ability to curiositymaxx. Even as I record this daily log, I have 9 agents working on various research projects. I’m gatekeeping those topics and findings; however there’s one particular pain point I’m curious if you’re facing.

Managing research projects across different companies, clients, models, and teammates isn’t working. While ideas and projects have some overlap, others require specific nuance that gets lost or over indexed.

The problem is context creep. While I want to share research findings across certain projects, there are others that I want to keep in a silo and avoid context pollution. How are you managing it?

Notion is still my home base for weekly and daily to-dos.

Notion Friday checklist. The top item reads WIND DOWN RESEARCH AGENTS. no more agent kickoffs.. stop by noon, still unchecked. Below it a kenny website block with daily log post unchecked and every other row blurred out, then a second blurred section underneath

Well it’s 1:27 and I promise myself after pushing this to production we’ll pause for the weekend.

Next week I plan to incorporate agents on daily + weekly schedules, which is going to bring a whole new set of challenges. They really excel with clear outcomes or goals. But the dynamic stuff that takes shape as you go, especially with other collaborators in the mix and new info coming in, needs humans and agents working it out together.. and that doesn’t feel scalable.. and very messy.

Overall, this was one of those weeks for me. The ground shifted.. like a holy crap ai is insane. What a brilliant time to be a curious internet explorer! who cares if this AI Uncle Willy’s doesn’t deliver the best quality? It’s expanding my horizons.

Unlimited soft serve ice cream and sprinkles for all

all you can eat

Evan Spiegel dropped the new specs hardware. Snap is my fav social media consumer company that’s been trying to transition to hardware for the last 12 years.

Evan is incredibly likeable. There were several moments that felt very Steve Jobs-ish, which didn’t feel cheap or disrespectful. If anything it felt almost wholesome. a builder that gives a shit, a team that gives a shit, and a market that wants Evan out, to maximise profit. Not to mention a competitor that literally steals everything they make.

Congratulations. Hardware is a different beast, especially on the frontier.

As I was watching the keynote I captured a few notes that I’ll share candidly.

  • This feels like an Apple keynote with a younger Steve. But wait a second. Evan isn’t that young anymore. Anyway he looks great up there
  • Thank God for real product-focused founders. We need more of this and less of slop cannons.
  • There’s actually vision and privacy…and soul.
  • I need to send this to my product friends ASAP. (literally sent to over 10 people)
  • Okay this is cool. How do I work with specs? Hardware looks fun
  • hmnn. It’s kind of strange they picked that use case.
  • I wish I’d been a fly on the wall for those internal conversations. Where’s the backup, or the other use cases they were debating showcasing? I want to see those.
  • What are the lessons from Quest and Apple Cinema and how is this thing different?
  • This product is 100p single-player mode, why are they leaning into physical board games
  • If I’m outside, ya sure, this technology is incredibly useful but it’s a me-and-a-single-player experience, which is all fine and good. When I see the dominoes example I’d much prefer to play the real-life dominos: to touch the table, the game pieces, my opponent, give him a high five, shake their hand, poke them, trash talk without any technology
  • The workplace or enterprise angle is awesome. I got to send this to Campbell.
  • Oh I’m so fired up! I love product.
  • how the heck are these glasses going to improve my basketball or golf game? Camera math isn’t adding up? How can it see my swing, my body, the shot? Do I have to use my smartphone in tandem? This doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s more about playing a game versus learning or improving your basketball game or your golf game.

TLDR: Evan killed it. The specs look like a huge upgrade on anything else out there. Wishing them success, and slightly jealous! I know the team had a blast bringing this to life. Personally so fired up. Long product-focused builders. <3

Two weeks left in the quarter. What will you ship?

go snap

that $3.98 .fun domain stops being fun at renewal 🫠

farewell

Domain registrar expiring list showing rollerskate.fun in grace period, renewal price $33.48, down from $48.98
dot fun

built a browser studio for making my own brand assets.

somehow already on phase 4 with dither + a bunch of efx that absolutely didn’t need to exist

junastar studio running on localhost, a pink 3D "yes" on a cream 1080 by 1920 canvas with pose and light controls in the side panel

Square export, orange 3D "yes" on diagonal cream and blue stripes, allbombs at the bottom Dithered square export, dark 3D "can't stop" on a warm yellow gradient, allbombs at the bottom
small design tools

Junastar, my new baby that I’m purposely leaving unshaped as a lab, is trying to take some public shape. Working late nights, hoping to push the new HP later this week and find time this weekend to burn some late-night token oil and find out where this goes

Film still of two people talking by the sea, subtitle reads "Let's look together."
burning midnight token oil

sage advice from steve, maybe more so now more than ever:

Seek out new dimensions of yourself, especially those that carry a romantic scent.

spent too much time last night experimenting with 3D renders, recreating the sparkly mj glove just for fun.. safe to say, we have a ways to go with 3D animation

romantic scent

dabbling with fable 5.1 today: cad renders, making sounds, cleaning up sounds, some heavier animation work. it’s incredibly easy to fall into “idea plussing” rabbit holes. and across this, which is outside my typical day to day, idea to 80% takes just minutes. a few hours in and it feels 85% done. that last 15% is days, maybe weeks. it’s the same curve every time with ai regardless of the medium.

having a ton of fun though!

pushing 3d and sound experiments
A breakdown of where software project effort goes: a long Design bar, a thin Dev sliver, and a long Manage/Marketing bar

I shared this screen capture with a few founders earlier this morning. It sums up what i’ve been seeing and feeling in regards to the future of websites and marketing. The middle is moving towards high craft, or sales/marketing.

The rest of the day includes building + sending a few proposals, then rebuilding a folio, and pushing new website designs

the future of web

Checking out Armaan’s set from Dec. He was the lead designer at Properlot back when we were trying to make it a huge thing with Andy Josuweit. So far, loving the indo house sound.. go dj kahani !!

indo house

only 8 months until May

how the 6am fitness trainer starts the class

tysm 🫠

Squashing various website bugs today, re-enabled RB2B (sorta expensive for current traffic needs) and will continue writing themes for 2027. Going to circulate these (via deck?) with a few trusted builder friends for all the feedbacks, I hope to come up with an alternate term versus a group theses. Trends, digital outlook, digital forecasts, ai antenna cast, future cast, ai almanac? Need an anti ai slop name, send help ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

is this build or marketing week for you?
after today, it’s all sales and marketing

only 8 months until may

4 agents running updates on this website as i type. today i’ll continue through minor website edits.. mostly design focused, whatever is most hideous, and general polish. guessing we’ll reach a point over the next week where i’ll say forget this mess, clone the repo, and redesign the whole website from scratch. blah blah. portfolio websites are time consuming and it’s far easier to PMM something or someone else.

once those agents wrap, i’ll work through a new blog post draft on missionaries. it’s a collaborative piece, so fingers crossed the respondents (mostly founder friends) answer honestly instead of performative, it doesn’t trigger, and that founders actually give it some real thought.

update 2 - 9:51am

got lost in the ghostty sauce. heading over to a coffee shop to collect thoughts and v1 draft on missionaries.

at a cafe and the dude beside me is on google hangouts call talking about gtm.. he just dropped

how can we be like a hot girl, but in an ai world

whatever is most hideous

things i’ve been doing daily, and hoping to continue through September:

  • gh streak, pushing daily design improvements to this website
  • daily deep dive research projects using different models (last few days = betaworks, product studios, social commerce startups, walt disney)
  • 1 new connector per day
  • creation. tweets, daily log posts, mini decks, idea maxxing (5 new ideas outside of my day to day industries)
  • visiting a new font foundry
  • cold emailing an artist, creative, or someone that I find interesting
streaking
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