Stetson Blake

On Building a Writing Habit

I've been really inconsistent with my writing habit online. I'm good at keeping this blog up and running. It is functional. I've known so many devs who start blogs and endlessly nerd out over tech, rewriting the website in some obscure language and never

Can I run a 5k?

On learning to enjoy running.

How Broken Should Your MVP Be?

Marc Louvion is Twitter / X's next Pieter Levels. He's shipped 24 products but has had the most success with ShipFast, which allegedly does $46k of revenue a month. That's pretty sweet. Good for Marc, I hope to get there one day. ShipFast is a

DALL-E won't Let Me Make Pics of Guy Fieri so I'm Self-Hosting Stable Diffusion

AI is the buzz-word of 2023. And rightfully so. New AI models are popping up every week, new research is coming out and the field is progressing quick. Last year, I threw Stable Diffusion on an old gaming laptop and let it rip. It was slow, the results were terrible,

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How to run a 5k with Strangers

This morning I attended my second "park run", a free event where you show up to a park and run a 5k. I've been getting into running for the past year or so. I was out-of-shape and didn't want to be. Being "in

Is AI going to replace Software Developers?

is AI going to take your job? Absolutely not! Well, maybe not. No? Yes? The answer is unclear to me and requires more thought. I recently mentored someone who was anxious about pursuing a career in Software Development because “AI would be taking all of those jobs anyway”. I think

I'm a recovering notification addict

I'm a recovering addict. Maybe you are too. My drugs of choice were short-form videos on the internet and little notification bell icons. My dealer was Facebook, Instagam and Snapchat. I haven't used TikTok lately. TikTok spies on you. And they're from China. I

Sorry haters, I was wrong.

If you're a sales or copywriting expert, close this tab and go for a walk instead. If you're not, read on. I want to share with you what I've learned about writing better copy. I've been on a boat for the last

What I learned launching my first successful e-book

Let's get meta. Today I'll write about writing Shell Samurai, which I officially launched yesterday. Enjoy. On February 10th, I pre-launched a book about Linux while on a flight from San Francisco to Cincinnati. I'd been thinking of launching some kind of technical course

Reflections on Midjourney

Last Thursday I paid $30 for a subscription to Midjourney, the AI image generation tool created by a team of 11 or so people. In return, I received access to unfettered AI image generation. Founded by David Holz, previous cofounder of Leap Motion, Midjourney is HUGE and getting bigger by

How to get a job in IT as a complete n00b

A friend reached out to me today because he wanted to get into IT. His current gig wasn't working out great and he'd heard the promises of YouTubers that 6 months is all it really takes to land a six figure job. (spoiler: wrong) This post

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Leverage - An Army Of Robots to Do Your Bidding

A few years back, I heard about this Naval Ravikant guy who had just published a "tweetstorm" on twitter about all of these crazy ideas on wealth, happiness, finding passion and a bunch of other things. Who? Naval? Like the orange? Why should I listen to Naval? Naval

Lessons in growing a Facebook Group to 100,000 members

Sometimes, I feel like I just got really lucky. Besides, all I did was accept and decline member requests nearly every day for 3 years, post memes and funny content often, build branding that fits my audience's niche, get verbally berated and not berate back, post useful career

books

Choose Yourself - James Altucher Book Takeaways

I first heard of James Altucher via Twitter. I wasn't really sure who he was, probably a quack – he's into cryptocurrency and has crazy hair. A few weeks ago, I listened to James' interview on the My First Million podcast and was blown away by

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I Tried to Buy 4 different (tiny) Startups and (mostly) Failed

Have you ever had a hobby that you're not good at? They can still be kind of fun. For me that has been acquiring online businesses or SaaS products. It is not easy, but it gets easier, I think. Ever since I took Ryan Kulp's MicroAcquisitions

Why Buying a House is like Buying a Startup 🏚

In the past few years, I've gotten very interested in online businesses and SaaS. I've tried to acquire a few SaaS businesses but all of my deals so far have fallen apart. (I'll write about that soon). I'll find one some day.

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What does number 6 on the HN Front Page look like?

I hit Number 6 on Hacker News today. It was...in short, fucking awesome. Seriously, this is a drug I didn't know I needed. I made my girlfriend take a picture to commemorate the moment. Then I ate some tacos and poured up a bourbon mule. This was

coding Featured

I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

In May of 2018 I decided I wanted to launch a SaaS product. There was only one problem. I'd never worked on, built, designed or even coded a fully fledged web app or SaaS product. y tho SaaS was to be the holy grail. A magic money machine

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How to Scrape Chipotle Store Locations

Introduction Web scraping has loads of interesting use cases. From financial forecasting to lead-gen, web scraping has several creative uses that you might not think about at first glance. For example, a burrito shop opening a new location might want to place their location further away from a Chipotle. What

coding

Building a Serverless Ecommerce Store

Yes, it's true! You can build a storefront in an hour without spinning up a server. WTF, how?! -- you, probably Gone are the days of paying expensive devs or fiddling with strange Wordpress extensions. I run a Facebook group, This is an IT Support Group, and I

Best Remote Job Boards

Remote work is becoming more and more common, especially for jobs that can sustain it. I work remotely and although there are some trade offs (not leaving the house for days, loneliness) I wouldn’t trade it for a traditional job. 37Signal’s book, Remote, praised the virtues of Remote