Launching my newest AI product: RoomAI.com 🏠✨

Restyle your room and generate interior design ideas. Powerful AI with an intuitive interface that's easy-to-use for both home owners and interior design professionals.

Try for free: https://roomai.com

💅 Restyle you room with our cutting-edge AI model

Room AI will analyze your room, detect the structure of your room and existing furniture. Within seconds, it will restyle your interior into any design you can think of.

🖼️ 40+ Design Styles

Try out dozens of different styles with just a few clicks.

🎨 Smart Color Palettes

Get smart suggestions based on your chosen design styles. Or, choose your own colors.

🪵 Material Library

Fabrics, glasses, stones, Woods. They make all the difference when designing a cohesive interior design. Choose your favorites, or have the AI pick fitting materials for you.

👀 Visual editor

The newest AI models are powerful, but can be cumbersome to work with. Nobody wants to write long prompts hoping the AI understands what you want.

Room AI abstracts all of this away behind an easy-to-use, visual interface.

I took everything I learned from building interior.computer, along with all the customer feedback. The end result is a complete rewrite of the app, along with a complete rebranding.

Try the free demo at https://roomai.com and please let me know what you think!

A lot of work went into this release. I'll share all the interesting behind-the-scenes stuff like design decisions, clever hacks, etc, in the coming weeks 🙌

Also live on Product Hunt 😻
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/roomai-com

Introducing Room AI

Why I live a calendar-free lifestyle 📆🚫

🔋 Match my energy levels
🫥 Incomplete information
🥇 Priorities change
⚡️ Allows for spontaneity
🚦 Breaks my flow
🧐 Serves as a social filter
📞 Difficult to schedule calls
🌸 Live in the moment

🔋 Energy levels

Sometimes I'm in the zone and get a lot of work done in a short amount of time. Other times I feel unfocused and I'd rather socialize or hit the gym.

Being able to decide in the moment how to spend my time, let's me optimize for my current energy level.

👆 The same applies to whichever person I'd be scheduling something with.

Even if I'm in the right mood for a call/meeting/whatever, that doesn't mean the other person is too.

If possible, I prefer to do it asynchronously so each person can optimize for their own energy levels.

⏰ I'm bad at time management

This is a personal flaw that I've come to accept. I'm bad at time estimations which means I'm often late or, if I do my best not to be late, way too early.

Most practical solution is to avoid these situations altogether. 

🚦 Scheduled appointments break my flow

As Charles Dickens put it "…the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole day."

See @paulg's essay "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

🫥 Acting on incomplete information

Scheduling, which is a form of planning, by definition means you're making a decision with the limited information you have right now, about the future. 

Holding off on scheduling, means you'll have more complete data.

🥇 Priorities change

Related to the above. As new information comes to light or my values change, so will my priorities. As might yours.

🧠 It's easy to trick yourself

Studies have shown people are more likely to agree to something they don't really want to do if it's planned far into the future.

If you've ever asked yourself "why did I agree to do this?" you know what I'm talking about it.

I try to avoid this.

🦠 Scheduling is a self-reinforcing virus

It spreads quickly. Once you schedule one thing, you'll start having to schedule other things around it. Before you know it you've got a full calendar of things you decided were a good idea a month ago but you now regret.

🧐 Serves as a social filter

A downside of living calendar-free is that it's harder to meet new people. Especially those with a busy calendar.

However, I've found I tend to have a better rapport with people who live a similar lifestyle anyway so it serves as a good filter.

📞 Difficult to schedule business calls

This is a benefit disguised as a drawback. Most business calls can be replaced with an email. The calls that can't (open-ended calls, "exploring synergies", etc) often are a waste of time.

🌸 Live in the moment

To summarize, I prefer to live in the moment as much as possible. 

Calendar events force me to plan around them rather than pursuing the opportunities that present themselves in the moment.

I realize I'm in a super-privileged position to be able to do this, but it's also something I've worked hard to achieve.

Building my own business, intentionally keeping the team small, choosing to lose out on certain opportunities because they would require more scheduling, etc.

I don't live a completely calendar-free lifestyle however.

I still have a monthly call with my team mate because we work remotely and we want to keep a human touch.

I usually book flights/hotels a month in advance to ensure availability and reasonable prices. Etc.

When I do schedule something, I try not to do too far in advance. Especially when it comes to meetings I schedule to follow up on an exact date and time closer to the date we want to meet.

Anyway I'm ending this thread… I feel like going to the gym now 😄

P.S. thanks to @levelsio for helping me become aware of this trait. I never thought much about it, until he mentioned it. He also recently coined the #NoCalendar movement 😄

Why I live a calendar-free lifestyle

🔐PSA: Enable Registry Lock on your domains

If you own an online business or host your email on a custom domain, you should enable Registry Lock.

Employees at registrars like GoDaddy and Namecheap often have access to customer domains to help with support issues. They can modify nameservers or even transfer away your domain.

It's more common than you think. They get hacked, socially engineered, etc.

Once your domain falls into the wrong hands, you're screwed.

All your emails can be rerouted. Consequently all your online accounts can be hijacked.

If it's a domain for an online business, all your customers are at risk due to your negligence. (Hope you have a good lawyer!)

Your only defense is to enable Registry Lock which will require manual identity verification by Verisign before even your registrar can transfer your domain.

More info here: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/01/does-your-domain-have-a-registry-lock/

Note that "Registry Lock" and "Registrar Lock" are two different things. The latter also helps secure your domain, but your registrar still has full control and remains a liability.

Registry Lock isn't free. By design, it cannot be automated. So it requires manual labor from your registrar. Manual labor is costly. So you'll need to pay for it. But it's worth it.

Namecheap: Offers Registry Lock for $20/mo as part of their Domain Vault option. https://www.namecheap.com/security/domain-vault/

Cloudflare: Offers it to customers on the Enterprise plan. https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/products/registrar/custom-domain-protection/

GoDaddy: lol

You should enable Registry Lock

I asked DALL·E (artifical intelligence program) to reimagine popular NFT projects. The results are absolutely stunning 😱

Which NFTs would you like me to try next? Leave a reply 

Doodles

🔗 https://doodles.app
🔌 http://traits.xyz/doodles

Left: Original (@doodles) / Right: DALL·E

Regulars

🔗 https://regular.world
🔌 https://traits.xyz/regulars

Left: Original (@Regulars_NFT) / Right: DALL·E

Cryptopunks

🔗 http://cryptopunks.app
🔌 https://traits.xyz/cryptopunks

Left: Original (@larvalabs) / Right: DALL·E

XCOPY

🔗 https://xcopy.art
🔌 https://traits.xyz/max-pain-and-frens-by-xcopy

Left: Original (@XCOPYART) / Right: DALL·E

Bored Apes Yacht Club

🔗 https://boredapeyachtclub.com
🔌 https://traits.xyz/bayc

Left: Original (@BoredApeYC) / Right: DALL·E

Meebits 

🔗 https://meebits.app
🔌 https://traits.xyz/meebits

Left: Original (@larvalabs) / Right: DALL·E

Autoglyphs

🔗 https://www.larvalabs.com/autoglyphs
🔌 https://traits.xyz/autoglyphs

Left: Original (@larvalabs) / Right: DALL·E

Moonbirds

🔗 https://moonbirds.xyz
🔌 https://traits.xyz/moonbirds

Left: Original (@proof_xyz) / Right: DALL·E

Ringers

🔗 https://www.artblocks.io/project/13
🔌 http://traits.xyz/ringers

Left: Original (@dmitricherniak) / Right: DALL·E

Waveblocks

🔗 https://www.waveblocks.com
🔌 https://traits.xyz/waveblocks

Left: Original (@waveblocks) / Right: DALL·E

CrypToadz

🔗 https://www.cryptoadz.io
🔌 http://traits.xyz/cryptoadz

Left: Original (@gremplin) / Right: DALL·E


Cool Cats

🔗 https://www.coolcatsnft.com
🔌 http://traits.xyz/coolcats

Left: Original (@coolcatsnft) / Right: DALL·E

Chromie Squiggle

🔗 https://www.artblocks.io/project/0
🔌 http://traits.xyz/chromie-squiggle

Left: Original (@ArtOnBlockchain) / Right: DALL·E

Fidenza

🔗 https://tylerxhobbs.com/fidenza
🔌 https://traits.xyz/fidenza

Left: Original (@tylerxhobbs) / Right: DALL·E

Beeple

🔗 http://www.beeple-crap.com

Left: Original (@beeple) / Right: DALL·E

⚠️ Before you get any ideas, DALL·E expressly forbids creating and selling NFTs using their technology.

Wondering about all those 🔌 links in the tweets? That's me *plugging* my new project TRAITS.XYZ – a better way to browse NFT collections by traits. 


NFTs reimagined by DALL·E

🔐🚨 There's a common misconception about MetaMask and security:

After interacting with a malicious website merely disconnecting your MetaMask wallet WILL NOT protect you.

It's a popular recommendation, but it hardly does anything and provides a false sense of security.

Connecting your Metamask to a site simply allows it to see your public address (and all the public blockchain data related to it), and suggest transactions (each of which you still need to approve)

Yes, you should disconnect your Metamask wallet so the site cannot initiate further transactions you don't want to approve anyway.

But there's a protential bigger threat that's way more important go after:

Any contract can request permission to transfer your NFTs on your behalf. This is how market places like OpenSea function.

A malicious contract might request permission to transfer your most valuable NFTs. Once granted, this permission (or "allowance") is stored on-chain.

Disconnecting Metamask (or whatever wallet you use) doesn't change this. That's the common misconception. The permission is still granted until revoked!

This is where https://revoke.cash comes in

The site makes it easy to see which contracts you've granted access to manage your NFTs on your behalf. And easily revoke those privileges.

This is the only thing that will have any effect once you've interacted with a malicious contract.

Of course there's a decent chance it's already too late.

A smart scammer would automatically transfer the NFTs away the moment you grant permission to do so. But not all of them are smart and sometimes quickly revoking these permissions will prevent your NFTs from getting stolen

Hope that clears things up. I often see people repeating the advice to disconnect MetaMask, but the first advice should be to revoke any on-chain permissions.

Stay safe!

MetaMask & Security

I'm dealing with a ton of database records for traits.xyz

Over 100,000 records for an average collection. Some are in the millions.

Here's some Rails/Postgres tricks I've learned to deal with:

✂️ Split up data processing into small, separate background jobs

This helps prevent running out of memory. It also makes it easier to see which parts are slow (i.e. which jobs)

🎟 But be careful making the jobs too small

It's usually faster to SELECT say 100 records at once, than doing 100 individual SELECTs in separate jobs.

♻️ Don't be afraid to duplicate some data

It's a best practice to have no duplicate data. But going through a has_many association over and over again can be slow. Sometimes it's better to just duplicate foreign key on those nested records.

3️⃣ Be careful with counter caches

Counter caches are great way to increase SELECT performance, as you can get an association count without additional SELECTs.

But be aware it runs an UPDATE after each INSERT. If you insert 10,000 records, that's 10,000 additional UPDATEs.

The solution is to create your own counter cache that you only calculate _after_ all the rows have been inserted.

⛏ Select only what you need

Sometimes it's okay to be picky. When dealing with a lot of data leverage ActiveRecord's `select` to only SELECT the columns you actually need to get the job done. This is especially helpful when dealing with large records that have lots of data.

🪶 Pluck it, we'll do it live

Related to the above: If you only need a few columns, it's often better to use .pluck(:column_name) which will return an array rather than instantiating a bunch of objects.

You do lose some of the niceties of working with an object however.

🙌 Use upsert_all

If you can get away with do a big INSERT over many many small ones.

https://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2020-04-09-speed-up-your-rails-app-with-upsert_all/#notes--caveats

🫗 Use ;nil in Rails console

SSH'ing into your server and processing data? Often returning the results to your computer is the slowest part.

When running a command that returns a bunch of records, add ;nil at the end of it to prevent all that data from being sent back to you.

🚚 Use Sidekiq's push_bulk

Pushing lots of small jobs to Sidekiq is great. But pushing stuff to Redis does require a full network round-trip.

Use bulk queing to push many jobs to Sidekiq all at once.

https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/wiki/Bulk-Queueing

👉 Use Sidekiq batches

Batches let you run a bunch of jobs and a callback when the jobs are finished. I often use these callbacks to instantiate the next job to further process the data.

https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/wiki/Batches

They also provide a nice overview of the progress.

⚡️ Use .find_each over .each

Post.all.each loads all posts into memory before it starts iterating. To reduce memory usage you'll want to use .find_each instead which loads the records in smaller batches.

That wraps it up for now!

I'll be looking into using Redis a bit more as well. As it's obviously a lot faster than Postgres in many scenarios.

Please give it a RT if it was helpful and post your own tips below. Thanks!

Processing lots of data in your Rails

🛌👌 How I (mostly) fixed my sleep schedule

I used to go to bed very late (~4am) and whenever I tried to change my schedule to a more sane time I'd fail. After talking to a physician (altho initially for other reasons) I've found an approach that works for me…

⛔️ Here's what DIDN'T work to adjust my sleep schedule and wake up earlier:

🛌❌  Go to bed early. Not tired, leads to insomnia

⏰❌ Wake up early with alarm. Didn't change time when I'd fall asleep

⏭❌ Skip nights to fix cycle. Can't fix your bio-clock in one day

✅ Here's what DID work for me:

1️⃣ Create the right conditions for sleeping earlier
2️⃣ Ensure a good night's sleep
3️⃣ Create the right conditions for waking up

Yes I know this is overly abstract and obvious 😅 Going into details below…

1️⃣ Before 💤

☕️ No late caffeine (for me max 2 cups a day, last before 5pm)

🥗 No late dinner/snacks

🧠 No active brain stuff few hours before bed (for me no work after dinner, which is hard but doable)

👨‍💻 No bright screen 2 hrs before bed (TV at distance still ok for me)

💡 No bright lights. Especially lights that are high (e.g. ceiling) or cold tone (e.g. white/blue)

💪 No intense exercise before sleep

🚶‍♂️ Brief walk to calm down my mind if still active (no podcast/audiobook)

🛁 Nice bath to calm down my mind if still active 

💊 Melatonin to help get into new schedule (I took it for 1-2 weeks)

Do your own research on this. AFAIK it's harmless as long as you build off gradually and don't suddenly stop taking it.

Research suggests you need a very small quantity and more isn't better.

2️⃣ During 💤

🌚 Dark room (but with curtains open, see next tweet why)

❄️ Cold room

🎭 Comfortable sleeping mask

⏳ Enough sleep (7-9 hours for me depending on exercise)

(I already got this covered pretty well)

3️⃣ Waking up

☀️ Use sunlight to wake me up (take off mask)

⏰ Alarm only as back-up (if you consistently wake up because alarm, then you might need more sleep so set it to later time)

🚶‍♂️Go outside early in day and get early sunlight (helps set biological clock)

📅 Try to keep somewhat consistent schedule also during weekends

🎯 Results?

🩺 Feel healthier waking up earlier (I think some science around this about getting plenty of early daylight)

👍 My productivity shifted from nights to midday

👌 Generally more practical (e.g. hotel breakfast closes at 10.30am)

👎 Downsides?

👥 Harder to socialize with other night owls. Be aware of peer pressure pulling you back into old habits.

😢 I do sometimes miss the late-night hacking vibe

I think that's about it. It's pretty straight forward. Just need to have some discipline in the evenings/nights and your body will start adjusting naturally.

I intentionally didn't include the reasons to shift to a more regular sleeping schedule or say that waking up earlier is better. 

You should do whatever works for you. We're all different.

I will say however, that I used to rationalize my sleep schedule with reasons like being a night owl or having a circadian rhythm sleep disorder. 

But those are easy outs.

Looking back at it, the reality is that looking at bright screens all night, eating late, and stimulating my brain was what really keeping me awake for much longer than my body naturally would.

If you struggle with your sleep schedule. Give changing it a try.

How I (mostly) fixed my sleep schedule

If you’re new to NFTs and considering jumping in I highly recommend checking out the upcoming @moonbirds_xyz drop.

🦉 https://moonbirds.xyz

I’d generally avoid hyped up projects (I got burned a few times), but this team is phenomenal and has already proven itself in many ways. (Look up @kevinrose @ryancarson @justinmezzell)

Besides a nice profile picture (PFP) you’ll get to join a community and participate in a bunch of novel web3 projects like an upcomign metaverse play (codename: Project Highrise)

The main downside here is that the entry price will probably be quite high. It’s a Dutch Auction starting at 2.5 ETH and decreasing from there.

Hard to predict what it will mint out at, but I expect it’s in the 1.5-2.5 ETH range.

If that’s a high amount for you, don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose. But if you’ve got a decent budget this one will definitely be a great way to get familiar with NFTs.

Moonbirds

Shipped my first web3 project! 🚀✨

http://PAY.GAME is the worst way to spend your ETH. Pay-to-play on the Ethereum blockchain.

Enter your name, URL, and your desired score in ETH. Pay me and you'll be added to the leaderboard! All on-chain.

👉 http://pay.game

Besides the dubious honor of being in the leaderboard, you can also win some NFTs (of course!)

Every player gets one coin NFT. You only get one per wallet. You can top up your existing score, but you won't get additional coin NFTs.

There are also NFTs for 1st/2nd/3rd place… 

🏆 NFTs for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place are a bit more interesting. Once you lose your spot, you'll also lose your NFT. It will automatically be transfered away to the new winner!

⚠️ These NFTs cannot be sold/bought/transferred. 

There's a consolation prize for anyone who ever reached first place but lost it. This is a regular NFT that can be sold/transfered/etc.

It will get progressively harder to win, as getting the first place (and then losing it) will get harder over time as the top score increases. 

Wait, this all doesn't make any sense whatsoever?! 🤔

You're right. This is just me learning about web3 and hopefully some people wanting to be part of something ridiculous.

DON'T PLAY IF YOUR GOAL IS TO GET A RETURN ON YOUR "INVESTMENT".

This all sounds very familiar?! 🤔

Yes! I launched http://highscore.money 5 years ago. A few weeks ago I wanted to learn what it takes to build a web3 app, so I decided to re-implement this old idea but on the blockchain.

I learned a ton building this. I taught myself the following technologies:

Solidity (programming language for Ethereum)
React (never used it before)
ethers.js (JS library for interacting with blockchain)
Pixelmator (to create pixel art)
After Effects (to create the NFT videos)

Hardhat (development environment for Solidity)
Remix (online IDE)
Chai (JS library for writing automated tests)
ERC1155 (NFT standard I chose, more on that later)
web3modal (JS library for connecting different wallets)

I jumped in knowing basically nothing. It was quite a painful experience at times as I'm used to knowing what I'm doing 😅

But it taught me humility and gave me a new found appreciation for the kindness of other developers willing to help. Too many to list, but I'll try:

Thank you @mhaas_eth @yhdesai @jsjoeio @mikker @andreyazimov @levelsio @rameerez @daniellockyer @lenilsonjr_ @aoxborrow @opryshok @linfluence @calebwright and everybody else who provided feedback, helped testing, etc. 👏

Some of the resources I used to learn about all this:

https://cryptozombies.io
https://buildspace.so
https://hardhat.org/tutorial/

Best way is to just dive right in!

Later today I will share more details on the contracts (I wrote two, one for the game and one for the NFTs), and how it all works together.

In the mean time you're welcome to join my Discord where I'll be sharing more behind the scenes stuff as well: https://discord.gg/TcSzbhVy

Let me know any questions you might have! Happy to answer. Thanks for checking out http://PAY.GAME and sorry for the gas fees 😂

P.S. gas fees vary based on where you'll end up in the leaderboard. If you're in the top 3 it will need to move the trophy NFTs around which is rather costly.

But if you're outside of the top 3 it only mint your own coin NFT.

Launching my first web3 project

Built a new little prototype today:
https://buildinpublic.com

Real-time tweets of people building in public. Use #buildinpublic to get included.

Still super beta. Next step is to expand the https://t.co links and make them clickable.