Note: This site is currently "Under construction". I'm migrating to a new version of my site building software. Lots of things are in a state of disrepair as a result (for example, footnote links aren't working). It's all part of the process of building in public. Most things should still be readable though.

Streaming and Stream Notes

ahhhhh. feels good to have slept good.

Not that I don't usually sleep good, but this was one of those nights where it worked out just right.

It was a bit of a late night last night. I spent over three hours live streaming. After that, I wrote up a blog post with notes and posted the video to YouTube. Throw in some messing around and discording with friends and I was up until a little after midnight. Not awful, but I shoot for closer to 11:30. (If you happen to be talking to my therapist, you should say I said 11.)

I feel well rested though, and I don't feel the sedation I had going on a few days ago. That's _very_ nice. It would have been unpleasant if that was a thing every morning.

With the stream stuff, I wrote some code to make a little gif display page that makes it easier to find ones I want to use. I was hoping I could just make a web page and then drag the images straight out of it onto discord or twitter to send them. That didn't work. So, I wrote some code to copy the file to a folder and then pop it open so I can grab it. I'm really happy with the way it works.

I'm going to work on it some more tonight. Need to add some cacheing and see about getting the thumbnails to animate (they don't right now). I've got a list of other enhancements to consider too.

It's a lot of fun doing the streams. It also gets me to work on things more. I wouldn't have spent three straight hours working on the gif page if I hadn't been streaming. Something about the live aspect and the teaching aspect keeps me focused and going. I want to stream a lot more, but, you know, can't really do that with work stuff. At least, not most of it. There are some things that are generic like an Alteryx MFA process I'm working on that I can. (Especially since I'm going to write up a blog post about it when I'm done to share the code with others who are running into the same problems my team is.)

Oh, yeah. The other thing that was a change last night was writing up the stream notes. I'd been kicking around on @shelbyspees](https://twitter.com/shelbyspees)'s [site](https://shelbyspees.com) and saw that she makes [notes](https://notes.shelbyspees.com) in [GitBook. That got me thinking about making notes for my streams. It hadn't occurred to me that I could throw code samples out for folks to copy easily. They can obviously see them in the stream or VOD, but that's not something you can copy and you can't search for it. 

I almost started using GitBook. It looks awesome, but I just don't like the idea of having something besides my site. Sure, I could alias it to notes.alanwsmith.com like @shelbyspees does, but that's still putting things in a separate place. Also, I keep my stuff in nvAlt and I don't want to have notes in two places. nvAlt is just so fast and I've got so much stuff in it that it that the idea of moving is a non-starter.

I do really like the idea of publishing my notes though. Not just stream stuff, but notes in general. I've added a note to my Twitch Ideas list to create process that publishes select nvAlt notes. Though, as I sit here, two thoughts occur to me. First, most of what I'm going to do, I'm going to do on stream so I can just use show/stream notes. Second, instead of publishing to my site, I could write up an API connection with GitBook and publish to it. That way, I keep my source material in nvAlt, but the stuff I want to make public is copied to GitBook. (The reasons I'm thinking about that is because it might make it easier to organize and navigate... Of course, I'd have to program for that, so it might make just as much sense to post to my site??? Who knows, I'll figure that out when I start messing with it.)

But, yeah, I'm really happy with the work I did and I'm really happy I'm doing work. This streaming stuff is awesome.

And, yes. The idea has also been floating around my head about how awesome it would be to do this full time. Ask me again in 6 months if I'm still thinking that, and check back in 5 years to see if I'm any closer.