All Play w/ Ryan Hefner

Trying to keep the spirits high in this otherwise kind of low week, littered with some Summer sickness and a lot of client work. As much as I had hoped to work some more on Transmits , I ended up getting wrapped up in a lot of client work, along with some maintenance work to clean up some spillage from last weeks publishing of the Transmits Podcast . With that said, here’s what I was able to get d...

As I have been working on building Transmits , I started reading Rob Walling’s ( @robwalling ) book, Start Small, Stay Small . I was originally reading his latest book, The SaaS Playbook , but like he suggests in there, if your business is not at a certain monthly recurring revenue (MRR) you might be better off going back and reading his first book, so I did. While reading it I realized I was brea...

After recording the last episode via Transmits , I mentioned that I needed to test recording on playback on mobile, specifically Mobile Safari (since I am an iPhone user), and Chrome on Android. My goal for Transmits is that I can launch the initial version as a progressive web app (PWA) , so it’s crucial for it to work when added to the home screen on either iOS or Android devices. Well, in class...

A milestone has been reached! This is the first episode to be recorded in Transmits !! Obviously, these are early days (the official second recording made in the app was this episode), but recordings are being captured via the web app and stored locally via the File System API in the OPFS (Origin private file system) . The goal is to get this early version of Transmits out so people can start play...

I have finally settled on the project that I will be documenting on this podcast. I would like to introduce you to, Transmits. transmits.io is domain I have been sitting on for the past 4 years. When I had originally registered it I was working on a React Native prototype of an app that I was exploring, which was essentially an iOS Voice Memos app that was going to be platform agnostic. That proto...

Just a quick one on a mindset that I have been trying to apply to the things that I have been working on, or committing to, in 2024. The concept revolves around two requirements to meet when committing to a project/client/etc. Those two requirements are, the project either has to be interesting, whether that is interesting to work on, an interesting topic, or potentially an interesting technical c...

Reflecting on Laravel vs. React debate that went down a few weeks back, got me thinking about Context. Context switching. The context that influences the decisions we make. Really, just about context in general. My focus has been to try to minimize the amount of context switching that I am doing, which is already difficult while managing multiple clients and trying to focus on my personal stuff. I...

The struggle is real-ish. In this episode I get into the tension I have been feeling as I am in my -1 to 0 phase, trying to figure out which project/product I want to place my energy towards (first), and some of the technical stuff I plan on incorporating in the projects I am planning on taking on. Some of those core technology areas include: Event Sourcing Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) Push Notific...

In this episode I reflect on officially hitting publish on this podcast. The steps that lead up to the release, along with all the excitement and anxiety that builds up before pressing that button. From creating the cover art, to settling on the format—or lack there of—to writing descriptions, and deciding whether or not to pay the extra $5/month to Transistor for the AI Transcriptions feature vs....

In this episode I dig into why I decided to build a custom site for this podcast vs. using one of the templated sites that TransistorFM offers. Part of it is based on some of my ideas about utilizing platforms to push traffic back to sites that you own. The other part of it was I just had an idea of what I wanted the site to look like, and how I wanted it to function, and I couldn’t suppress the u...

tl;dr I am not going to be editing these episodes, so please bare with me. Although, if you want me to reflect on it a bit more, there’s a reason for making the active choice to not edit these episodes. Part of that decision is based on efficiency, as I work through these episodes I am trying to take all the ideas swirling around in my head and pluck a single one that I can try to break down and p...

CSS and component libraries, where to begin? Over the years I have used a bunch of different flavors including, css-modules , styled-components , CSS + Sass and a few other things. But, over the last 3 years or so, I have been primarily using ChakraUI , which is a component library that offers a really nice way to setup your theme—based on styled-system —as well as control the styles and defaults...

On this episodes I dig into getting back into action and picking a stack to base the action on. In the past, I have built my products and prototypes in Laravel , using an SPA—typically built in React —for the majority of stuff, and I go into all the pros, and a few of the cons, I have experienced with that setup along the way. Well, now the year is 2024 and as easy as it would be go back to that t...

Hey, I’m Ryan Hefner and I’d like to welcome you to the All Play podcast. On this show I will be sharing my experiences as I build products and open-source software, sharing the highs and lows that go into building a solid product, and hopefully leading to a successful launch and growth of customers. In this episode I share a bit of my background, moving from Ohio to New York to work at Fantasy ....