Daily Note - January 06, 2022

Business

• In Middleman, you can’t have the date in the filename be different from the one in the fronmatter: The date in posts/2022-01-06-daily-note-december-23-2021.html's filename doesn't match the date in its frontmatter (RuntimeError).

• Something to keep in mind when I write the script to generate the backlog of daily notes.

• Published 1/5 and 12/23 daily notes

• Continued drafting newsletter broadcast. Improved it by organizing it using some of the advice in the Ship 30 for 30 free writing course.

• Updated Ruby script README with note about known incompatibility between Ruby 3.1.0 and Rails 7; upgraded Node to 16.13.1

• Updated blurb on this site’s homepage, added Coaching page.

• Updated my SavvyCal events.

• Updated README for Keyboard Maestro macros repo.

• Had my first paid consulting session! I helped someone fix Ruby-related errors that showed up every time they launched their terminal. It was due to a chruby line in their .zshrc. Not knowing how to identify and fix recurring terminal errors is a common issue. I need to write a tutorial for this. I added it to my Trello board.

• My client also wasn’t able to create a new Rails 7 app with Ruby 3.1.0. They got an error while running rails new: [WARNING] Could not load command "rails/commands/server/server_command". Error: Rails::Engine is abstract, you cannot instantiate it directly..

• I was able to reproduce this. It turns out it’s a known issue that was recently fixed but not yet available in a new release. Update: Rails 7.0.1 was released later in the day, and I confirm it fixes the issue.

• Looked into whether or not live 1:1 or group consulting sessions are subject to tax, and it looks like for the most part, they are not. Here are some great resources I found about this:

  • What is a digital good, anyway? - Quaderno
  • Digital Consultant’s Guide to Sales Tax, VAT, and GST - Quaderno
  • What’s up with digital tax for online courses? - Quaderno
  • “As of now, one-on-one digital consulting is not explicitly included in digital tax laws. But much like group coaching, your 1:1 consulting might be considered “business services” or “personal services”. These categories have their own tax laws in most jurisdictions.”
  • “Generally, automated online courses are subject to digital tax, whereas courses with human interaction are not.” This might be why some people are doing live cohorts.
  • “Finally, some countries require consumption tax on any online course, regardless of whether it’s live or automated! For example, Australia and New Zealand’s tax policies say that GST applies to “webinars or distance learning courses”; it doesn’t name any exemptions.”

• I signed up for Sahil Bloom’s Curiosity Chronicle newsletter. The way he confirms your subscription is by asking you to reply to the confirmation email, as opposed to clicking a link/button that most newsletters use. I wonder if that’s a Substack feature and if I can do the same thing with ConvertKit.

• I’m assuming the benefit is that by replying to the email, it trains the email service provider to not treat it as spam.

To Look Into

First Look: Announcing API Authentication on Netlify

To Do

• Update macOS shortcut to dynamically add weather to daily note template. It’s nice to see when it was unseasonably warm. #todo/dailynote

• Add link to Trello board to daily note #todo/dailynote

Home

• Updated my dotfiles with chezmoi. Updated the fish config to a template so I can have different versions for my Intel iMac versus my M1 MacBook Air.

• Made Trader Joe’s Gnocchi stuffed with tomato sauce and mozzarella, and Costco spanakopitas. Served them with Rao’s Homemade marinara sauce on the side. Kids liked them.