Side Hustle School

Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup, has started a daily podcast showcasing real-life stories of people who’ve found creative ways to make a few extra bucks on the side. It’s brief, and lacks the layer of smarm that tends to turn me off from other shows on the topic. I’ve already come up with a few ideas of my own from listening to it.

Things

I should make a list sometime of all the task list applications and ecosystems I’ve tried and jettisoned, only to come back to Cultured Code’s Things. I’ve used it off and on (mostly on) for about as long as it’s been around, and after a recent, brief dalliance with Todoist, am back again. I’m hoping to write a more detailed article about how my use of Things over time has evolved.

Let’s Encrypt

Security certificates for web apps and sites used to be expensive, a hassle to acquire and install, and a performance bottleneck once they were in place. These downsides have largely been mitigated, thanks in part to great services like Let’s Encrypt. If you host a website, shouldn’t you help protect your visitors’ privacy by encrypting their visit end-to-end? It doesn’t get much easier than Let’s Encrypt–download a small utility to your server, and you’re on your way. I wrote up my experience with Let’s Encrypt on my technical blog.