Lab Notes - May 7th, 2023

Hi Everyone,

Here is the latest edition of my weekly lab notes. Feel free to forward this along to friends.

Flowcharts and More with Mermaid.js

I’ve been updating a bunch of documents for work, and was looking into ways I could add flowcharts along with other documentation within a project’s repository on Github. I happened across Mermaid.js a javascript based, markdown-inspired diagramming tool. It is exactly what I was looking for, because it allows me to create diagrams and update them as needed, without another external diagram tool or service. It’s taken a bit to get use to, but you get the hang of it pretty quickly. There are also a bunch of plugins for previewing and rendering in popular IDEs, and I’ve also seen (not tested) a draw.io Mermaid extension which should help speed up initial diagram creation. Below is a simple flowchart I created for the newsletter.

flowchart TD
    A(Write) --> B(Review)
    B --> C(Post)
    C --> D(Beehiiv)
    C --> E(Twitter)
    C --> F(Facebook)

YouTube Video of the Week

This week is going to be a little different. I watched a bunch of videos and wanted to share a list of those. One has me pondering a Chrome Extension. Can you figure out which one?

• How To Influence People: Marketing Secrets Behind The World’s Biggest Brands - Rory Sutherland

• I learned a productivity system for organizing life

• Immigrant’s Perspective, Creation Drives Value, & Medicare Tech | The Really Rich Podcast - Ep.17

• We Interviewed Deepfake Tom Cruise

• THE BEST BREAKFAST SMASHBURGER...OH SNAP! | SAM THE COOKING GUY

Quote I’m Pondering

This quote stood out to me because it helps frame decision making and longterm thinking. I was behind on this post today, and the easy decision would be to put off writing it until tomorrow. But, will I have time tomorrow, or will this lead me to pushing it further? Knowing me, I would probably get busy with something tomorrow and push it off again. In the longterm, that’s not helping me keep this newsletter flowing. Rather, I chose to sit down, and write. It’s not perfect this week, but I accomplished what I set out to do, which was to publish Lab Notes once a week. Some may say, “But David, missing one week isn’t going to matter much in the longterm.” Yes, that’s true, but I’m trying to build a routine and the discipline to write, which is hard for me.

This week I chose the hard choice. What hard choices are you going to make?

Margin Notes

• I’ve been enjoying Audible so far. Had a road trip this week and listened to a couple of books on the way. Still working out note taking while listening, but I’m sure I’m not the only one and there are some good services that may help.

• Book I’m listening to RANGE: WHY GENERALISTS TRIUMPH IN A SPECIALIZED WORLD

• No personal project updates, been steadily helping my friend with his.

AI Art of the Week