Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. We recently refreshed the Geocodio website, and it was really helpful how Oh Dear alerted us to broken links and made it clear what we needed to fix. Broken links are bad for SEO, and so I really appreciate those alerts from Oh Dear. You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

Colleen Schnettler  00:28

Good morning, Michele.

Michele Hansen  00:30

Hey, how are you?

Colleen Schnettler  00:32

Good. How are things in Denmark today?

Michele Hansen  00:36

Well, this week was kind of a challenge, um, because on, I had a super productive writing day on Monday. So I read Kathy Sierra's Badass over the weekend.

Colleen Schnettler  00:52

Oh yeah, I've heard of that book.

Michele Hansen  00:53

I don't know, have you read that? 

Colleen Schnettler  00:54

I have not.

Michele Hansen  00:54

Okay, you've read that. Oh, you have not read that. 

Colleen Schnettler  00:56

I've not read that. 

Michele Hansen  00:57

It's really good. So in so many ways, it's, I think of it as, like, jobs to be done for people who don't know what Jobs To Be Done is and have never heard of that. Like, it's basically like figuring out like, you're not just building a thing for the sake of it. You're building it because somebody wants to do something, and they don't buy it for the sake of it. Like, they want to do something better. And so it's, it's kind of aligned with StoryBrand in that regard. It's like, you know, your user is the hero, not the product. But it's a little bit more, um, it's, I think it's just a different perspective than StoreBrand. It's very, very practical. And it, the whole thing is kind of written like a PowerPoint. There's like, lots of like pictures and comics. Actually my seven year old, like, while I was reading it, she came over and she was like, oh, what are you reading? Like, pictures. So, you know, she wants to learn how to make a product. I'll leave that one laying around. Um, it's really good. Um, but, so I was reading it because some people had mentioned it in the interviews I did as a book that they liked. 

Colleen Schnettler  02:05

Okay, great. 

Michele Hansen  02:06

And yeah, and, and so I read it just sort of as like, reference material. Um, but actually, it ended up like, helping me kind of have a breakthrough with the book on Monday. Um, and so I spent like, the whole day. Uh, yeah, no, all day Tuesday, actually. I spent the whole day Tuesday writing. I didn't get any writing time on Monday, really. And then Tuesday, at like, four o'clock, I was, um, like, signing on to a Zoom, and then my computer crashed. 

Colleen Schnettler  02:35

Oh, no.

Michele Hansen  02:36

Like, died, and crashed and like, gone to join the choir invisible like, is now an ex-laptop, like, just totally got like, it was just restarting itself for like, three days. And, 

Colleen Schnettler  02:51

Oh.

Michele Hansen  02:51

So, it is now embarking on a lovely journey to the Czech Republic to be repaired, um, and I did not get a lot done the rest of the week, because it was like, trying to figure stuff out with using the, like, the iPad. Like, it was just, yeah. So, you know, but that's real life, right?

Colleen Schnettler  03:15

Yes, that is real life. So true.

Michele Hansen  03:19

Oh, so how's it, how's it going for you?

Colleen Schnettler  03:23

So I got a lot of time, I blocked out a lot of time this week to work on Simple File Upload, and it gave me great joy. Like, I have to say, you know, it's funny because people are always talking about self-care, and in the mom space, like you always see things like go get a pedicure, and I'm like, my self care is like, six hours alone with my laptop with no one to bother me. Is that weird? 

Michele Hansen  03:44

Heck yes.

Colleen Schnettler  03:45

Like, I love that. So like, on Monday, such a weirdo. 

Michele Hansen  03:50

It's so true. Like, it's so true. Like, so much of self-care is like, people just wanting to sell you stuff, and like, reality is it's sometimes it's just leave me alone.

Colleen Schnettler  04:01

Right? Just leave me alone. So it was, I really had a great week. I got to spend a good chunk of time implementing this feature request, which was something that I thought would be easy, and ended up taking way longer than I thought. So basically, my uploader uses the default styling that comes with drop zone, DropzoneJS, and so I got a request to allow it to be smaller, like 50 pixels by 50 pixels, which I thought would be no big deal. But it turns out once I started digging into the source, the styles are all pinned to 120 pixels by 120 pixels. So it was like, a huge thing to change this because I basically had to rip out all of the static, you know, statically defined CSS and put in, um, flexible CSS, and it was fun. I mean, it was, it was so cool because it was something I enjoy doing, um, something I don't do a lot. I think one of the huge benefits to building your own product is you get exposed to things you wouldn't do in your day job. Like, every job I've had, I have a front end guy, and I have a CSS guy, and I don't really do that very much. Um, it's not a core skill set of mind. So it was kind of fun to get to dive into it and like, learn some new stuff and, and uh, and to ship it. So that made me happy. That brought me great joy.

Michele Hansen  05:27

It sounds like it did, despite the, the frustration. I'm curious, why did the person need it to be 50 by 50? 

Colleen Schnettler  05:35

Avatars. So, so many people are using it as avatars, and using it for avatars, and it's pinned to 140 by one, or 120 by 120, which is big. I mean, you look at it, and you're like uh, it's kind of big for a, um, um, a form factor. So, yeah, that's what that was for

Michele Hansen  05:56

So are we talking about when someone uploads a file, it's turned into that size, or the actual size of the upload, or when they put it on their site?

Colleen Schnettler  06:05

The actual size of the uploader to fit into, so he actually sent me his form, like, sent me a video of his form, which is really coo...