Five Links Friday

By Matt Spear

Five Links Friday #1: Startups, Screenshots, Web3 and Awe

#1・ Apr 15, 2022

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Matt Spear

@matthew_spear

Hey 👋

My name is Matt – I’m a recovering link hoarder / tab collector… never wanting to loose the cool things I find and new topics I want to explore.

Each week I’ll throw together 5 links I’ve found from around the web, so hopefully they’ll be something for everyone who reads it.

Loosely I’ll cover the things I love: startups, coding, learning, education, augmented reality, machine learning, productivity, you name it and we’ll find some links for it.

Thanks for subscribing and giving this a go!

1. Startups

Slidebean

Are you starting a business? Are you raising money? Or just curious about the entrepreneur world? You came to the right place.

www.youtube.com

I found this channel through a YouTube video about the dark side of Digital Nomads, expecting to find a travel vlogger channel, it turned out to be mostly about Entrepreneurship / Startups.

The quality of the channel is high with a mix of case studies (How Boosted Board failed) to startups 101 (How to write a pitch deck).

Plus I’ve also finally got my head around how startup funding works (seed vs Series A vs B vs C)!

2. NFTs and Art

You're Wrong About NFTs

NFTs have attracted quite a bit of heat lately, and only some of that is deserved. It’s not about getting rich, but it is about money.

www.youtube.com

A nice explainer by Andrew (Blender Guru) about what art, digital ownership and fairer payments for artists means.

For more from Andrew check out his infamous Blender Donut Tutorial to try your hand at 3D rendering.

3. Tool for beautiful screenshots

Pika – Create screenshots and browser mockups quickly

Quickly generate browser mockups and screenshots with Pika, a free and open-source app. You can add gradient backgrounds, add browser frame, rounded corners and more.

pika.style

I recently used the Pika app to create a tweet image to show off my new site Progress. I think the tool make screenshots look more polished / visually appealing.

Matt Spear

@matthew_spear

Still early on / WIP but I'm building a tool called Progress = https://t.co/IWf3HVDdJL https://t.co/dn7oDmpNTA

4:26 PM - 22 Mar 2022

If you are a developer there is a similar tool for code called Carbon, to show off all your fancy functions!

4. Web3 Learnings

This week I ventured further down the web3 rabbit hole writing my own Solidity / Ethereum contract and deploying it to Rinkeby testnet following this Egghead tutorial:

Build a Practical NFT Ticketing Service with Solidity and React | egghead.io

In this course you will be building a ticketing and proof-of-attendance service complete with wallet QR code scanning. Very useful indeed!

egghead.io

A few connected resources I found were Scaffold-ETH, Speed Run Ethereum and ETH.build which give me a clear direction on learning more and some further experimentation.

I’m far from convinced about web3 but enjoying the conceptual idea of contracts / blockchain based interactions… so watch this space!

5. Jason Silva

Hat tip to Julian Shapiro, who mentioned Jason Silva in a recent Newsletter and I couldn’t help but re-share this video.

It snapped me out of my own busy-ness and got me out away from the screen, in nature, seeking adventure and present. Love this guys energy / passion!

HOW I FIND HAPPINESS

HOW I FIND MY BLISS. This is a very honest video. In it I offer a glimpse into my mind… a look at how I find my bliss… how I evoke ecstasy and creativit…

www.youtube.com

Fin.

You made it through – I hope at least one of the links this week was interesting, It’s early days for this newsletter and I’m certain it will take a few weeks (or months) to hone my curation / commentary / style.

Thanks for coming along on the ride!

Matt

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Matt Spear @matthew_spear

A collection of links, resources I've discovered this week!

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