# Travis Fantina: Web Gardener Extraordinaire! 🪴 by [kirupa](https://www.kirupa.com/me/index.htm) | filed under [Interviews with Creative People](https://www.kirupa.com/podcast/index.htm) [Travis Fantina](https://www.travisfantina.com/) joins Kirupa for a wide-ranging conversation about tinkering, the old web, creative boredom, and why making things online has become harder than it needs to be. The episode moves from early HTML and PHP to libraries, Postal Box, and AI, but the core idea stays consistent: the best parts of the internet still come from curiosity, ownership, and small experiments that feel human. Watch the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY A conversation with **Travis Fantina** | 1h 18m ## About this conversation This interview has the warmth of two longtime web people catching up, but it is more than a nostalgia session. Travis Fantina comes across as the kind of builder who moves easily between code, design, side projects, and visual experimentation without trying to flatten those interests into a single label. That makes the conversation feel expansive in a good way. It keeps circling back to curiosity as a serious technical strength, not just a personality trait. A major theme is how much more intimidating the modern web can feel for beginners. Travis and Kirupa compare earlier workflows, where simple files, visible source, and small snippets could get you from idea to result quickly, with today's layers of tooling and abstraction. The argument is not that complexity is always bad. It is that too much hidden machinery can break the magic that gets people hooked in the first place. When cause and effect disappear, so does a lot of beginner momentum. The middle of the conversation opens into a broader defense of experimentation. They talk about boredom, tutorials, creator culture, performance, and why the internet feels different when every project is forced to justify itself as a product or content engine. Travis makes a strong case for weird little projects, for lighter pages, and for preserving the playful energy that once made publishing online feel open-ended and personal. That thread gives the episode a quiet edge beneath its friendly tone. Postal Box becomes a perfect example of that philosophy in action. It is not presented as a giant startup moonshot. It is a small, charming idea that connects the web to something physical and memorable. By the end, the discussion about libraries, personal websites, and AI all lands on the same point: the internet is healthiest when people can build things that feel like their own. That makes this episode especially resonant for anyone who still wants the web to be approachable, expressive, and worth caring about. ## What you'll hear about - Curiosity across design and code can be a real advantage, not a distraction. - Beginner-friendly tools matter because they preserve the magic of first success. - Too much abstraction can make web development feel harder than it needs to be. - Small playful projects are worth building even when they are not business plans. - Third places like libraries still matter for creative life. - Owning a piece of your online presence matters more as platforms get noisier. ## Jump to a topic - [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=0s) **A long web friendship**: Kirupa introduces Travis as a longtime builder whose interests stretch across design, code, and constant experimentation. - [8:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=480s) **Why the web got harder**: They compare the approachable file-based web of earlier years with today's stacks, pipelines, and hidden complexity. - [16:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=960s) **Boredom and exploration**: The conversation looks at how constant feeds and monetization pressure can crowd out the boredom that once fueled experimentation. - [24:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1440s) **First websites and early wonder**: Travis reflects on early computers, learning by tinkering, and the thrill of publishing something anyone in the world could find. - [32:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1920s) **Flash and creative tooling**: They revisit all-in-one creative tools and why those environments made visual experimentation feel more direct. - [40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2400s) **Performance still matters**: This stretch focuses on page weight, web fundamentals, and the value of shipping lighter, less wasteful experiences. - [48:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2880s) **Libraries and third places**: The episode widens into a conversation about local spaces, offline routines, and how creative work is shaped away from screens too. - [56:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3360s) **The idea behind Postal Box**: Travis explains the thinking behind Postal Box and why small strange projects can create a disproportionate amount of delight. - [1:10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=4200s) **Ownership in the AI era**: They close by talking about personal websites, AI, and why it still matters to keep some part of the web personal and self-directed. ## To learn more - [Travis's Website](https://www.travisfantina.com/) - [Travis's Postalbox](https://postalbox.xyz/) ## Transcript The automatically generated captions have been organized by speaker, lightly edited for clarity, and broken into paragraphs for readability. Names and wording may still contain errors. ### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=0s) - Kirupa Hi everybody. Today I talk with Travis fantina, someone who I've known for almost 20 years. He's built some really amazing projects, many of which I've had a front row seat in, watching him ideate, build and share his creations with everyone, leading all the way up to his most recent creation, postal box. We'll talk more about that: how we got started with tech, just how complicated Tech has become and how unapproachable it is for beginners, and a whole lot of other topics. So stick around, it's going to be a fun one. Travis, it's great to meet you. I feel like I've known you forever and technically I have known you forever. We talked about it beforehand, but 2006 is when we first crossed pads and we, of course, kept in touch. VI have various online meetups and so on since then on the forums, but it's great to have one-on-one time with you to kind of just chat about all the interesting things you've done in tech and in general since then. So before I go on, please introduce yourself. ### [0:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=53s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, so I'm, I'm Travis, I have a lot of interests and like a lot of little side things I'm I'm going on about but yeah, like, primarily, I like to just like build stuff and make stuff Tinker with things. I'm really interested in art and graphic design and I think that is probably originally what led me to the coup of forms back in 2006, I guess. And yeah, I mean go going back a little further like school and a couple of my friends, they were the ones who did the website for it and it was just like HTML in like notepad, like, probably just like live patching it on on probably like into like a text editor on the hosting provider. But I remember watching them do it and just like thinking it was so cool that they could like turn this into this thing that, like anyone in the world could see and the possibilities for like that distribution was just so cool. I felt so connected to anyone and- and it's like you know, like most people won't see my website but there might be like some random, like kid in, you know, like Italy or Spain, who who stumbles across it, and that was really cool, so I learned enough like HTML and, like you know, like a couple little PHP Snippets, just like throw together other website with like some partials and stuff, and that mixed with just like an interest in graphic design. It's what led me to your, your forms. Back in the day we spoke about core memories a little bit before we actually ended up, you know, hitting the record button. For me, one of my core memories of you was not actually the graphic design work and. ### [2:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=171s) - Kirupa Things like that. But it's your PHP stuff. You know you actually love PHP. You know and I remember you talking all the time about it and in many ways you got me hooked on to PHP as well, because I never did PHP before until I had to deal with it, because the forums were done in PHP but I had a surface level knowledge of it. But you would often ask questions about PHP and we end up actually creating a server side category on the forums, partly because you kept answering questions for people's PHP questions, because at first I was always going: this is not a place of PHP or service that questions people go somewhere else. But you know you were very eager to help. Others always had questions for it and so end up creting an entire Forum category, most so that PHP questions could go there. You were, of course, a huge contributor to it and I end up learning PHP and even today now PHP is still one my favorite languages. So whenever I look online and people are always figuring out how do I make these basic client service interactions go when they're coming with this very complicated technology? The lamp stack still works fine and there's no reason to reinvent it. I do sound like an odd person out when I mention that, but it works and so. So that's one of my, you know, strongest memories of you from back then is that you're a PHP person and you always did interesting things with like on more things like that you know like. Have no recollection, though, of the graphic and front and stuff that you did. ### [4:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=249s) - Travis Fantina Okay, yeah, I like I got a bunch of stuff that that triggers like in my mind: that's that's pretty funny because I- I wouldn't you know- to this day I like actually know very little PHP, like I've done it at work for certain things, but I've never really sat down and done like a full stack like PHP thing, that's, that's awesome, though I'm, I'm like glad that that has seeped into your core and if I help to like expand the forms in any way, like awesome,. ### [4:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=281s) - Kirupa Not just the forums. Even as part of my day job I work on I. I help work on a team that created a web-based developer environment and one of the templates we have is a PHP template. You know, purely a backend API template, PHP based entirely partly because of connecting the dots to back when I learned PHP and got excited about it from your content. So you know it's not, it's never going to go away. ### [5:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=303s) - Travis Fantina Well, thank you, I don't- I don't want to take too much credit. It sounds like you're remembering someone who, like knew more PHP or like. I can definitely see myself asking a lot of questions. I don't think I was answering a lot of questions, but I'm sure I was asking a ton of questions because I was, I was, yeah, usually lost in the woods trying to figure stuff out. But, yeah, I just want to shout out to PHP and actually that whole stack, like you said, like the ability to like, just write PHP, like in a, in a, like a PHP file with like inline HTML and stuff and just dump it on almost any server- is so powerful and I think that's like something that web development unfortunately has lost. With all this complexity layered on top, it's so hard to spin up like even just a basic website. Now, and not to say that PHP was simple, but I think it was approachable because a beginner like myself could just go in and find these little Snippets and get them to run just by like changing the file type to like. PHP, and it's like: oh, indexphp, oh, wow, now I have like this cool thing pulling in from another file and it. It's just like magic and I think that, like you have to have a little bit of that to get people who are, who have no experience with coding, like just to get them excited and interested. If I had to like, I think back in 2006, like rails was hot, and if I had to go through the headache of like installing Ruby on my machine and opening up the terminal, which, like at that time, I just thought was like a way to break my computer, you know, if I had to do all that, it's just not very approachable for a beginner. I think the approachability part is something we lost heavily. ### [6:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=417s) - Kirupa Because programming is still hard- has it always been- and understand the technical concepts of loops and data structures and things like that- still very important. But I do agree with you that what has happened in many ways since then is that it's not just good enough to know how to write the syn, understand the syntax, write the code and make your logic represent in whatever way the language expects you to do. It's also the setup and getting to that point as well, because back then notepad, paste a file, save, upload, you're done. Now it is a combination of more abstractions that you just have no concept over, because I feel like I could make sense of how what I'm making change here, how it contribut to seeing something in the browser much more easily back then, whereas today I run, npm run or npm build. I have no idea what exactly is happening. What exactly is all my code being transpiled into? Where's that one giant bundle going? I'm uploading it somewhere, but that's also being handled by a cicd pipeline of sorts that I may have set up or I'm paying a service to handle for me, and all of it is just completely magic and the amount of magic to decipher is just too much. And if I didn't know already the value of programming and how what I'm doing is going to be beneficial to what I'm trying to solve, I would have given up a long time ago. And I do think we see a lot of that where the kind of creative individuals who aren't convinced that it's going to be the thing they need to do but it's going to get them on the path to getting a web page up and running or getting an animation or something like that. I do think we lost a large for that audience because of the complexity of just what we're doing today. ### [8:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=509s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, and I one thing I think like. I think like there's this disservice that's been done in like, so many tutorials and I don't know about boot camps, but just like in like sort of the more approachable things like YouTube videos and tutorials. I think they're great and they're awesome, but so often, like the, they're chasing like, I would say, Enterprise level Concepts. So like you know, if there's like and in some ways like maybe that's good to help people get jobs, but if you just want to create something, if you just want to build something, it's like maybe you don't need this. This like massive, like over architected stack and stuff, and you know whatever it is like like setting up graphql. Graphql makes so much sense for like a large Enterprise. You know, like with all these microservices and stuff and where like little components need to be updating here and there and there's just like tons and tons of data. But I don't think any person ever needed like graphql for like their, their starter project. But when you look at all the tutorials and like what's like intros out there, like graphql, for a time- maybe not anymore, but for a time it was like, it seemed like it was required and you know, the same thing with mongod DB, like when the mean stack or M Stack was like so big that's. That's around the time I was like sort of seriously starting to get into actually programming, programming and it felt like if I didn't learn that I had no chance of building anything. But there's just so many layers of complication and it makes a lot of sense for Enterprises where you have, you know, dozens or hundreds of Engineers working on something. But for one person trying to learn or just trying to make a side project like I think there's more approachable ways to just get up and running. But they're they're, you know they're not really talked aboutmore. ### [10:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=634s) - Kirupa Why do you think that is? Why do you think that it got all so complicated? ### [10:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=640s) - Travis Fantina I think it's just people chasing, like the Fang companies, like you know, like what what's hot in Tech, is dictated by those companies, and those companies have, you know, very complex needs and massive teams, resources, and, like they do, they do a good job. Like, like these tools are good, for what they're supposed to do. They're awesome, but you are, you are you familiar with, like, the 37 signals guys? Dhh, yeah, yeah. So I think I think dhh said he's like you know, if you're trying, if you're trying to follow, if you like, as a solo developer or a small team of like five or 10 developers are trying to follow like Netflix's lead, like you're GNA fail, you just don't have the resources or the requirements that Netflix does. So, like don't build a stack based on, like what Netflix is doing, but you know they're, they're hot, like that's, that's, that's cool Tech, and so I think people, people, like, want to follow it, but like, deep down in your gut, it's like that's. ### [11:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=711s) - Kirupa Like that's, that's too much. Yeah, there's never going to be a world we you to send like a billion notifications and in like less than 10 milliseconds around the world. Most people never have run into that problem. Your to-do list does not require you to have the most complicated, you know, several degrees of 999 percentage uptime to make sure that you and your family can store information, text based information at that exactly and again, like I think it's. You know, if you like learning those things, that's that's a way to use your time, but it's like that's just that's a hobby and, like you know, it's good to have hobbies. So, you know, learn that. It'll be beneficial as a developer. But you don't have to, certainly to get started. ### [12:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=758s) - Travis Fantina And, in fact, my favorite. My favorite quote from developer docs is from the Ruby World: stimulus reflex, which I don't know if you're familiar with that at all, but it's like, it's kind of yeah, like server rendering HTML over the wire, one of those like early libraries, but right at the GetGo, right when it's getting started, they have a disclaimer, and I love it so much. It just says like, are you sure you need stimulus reflex in your project? Every minute you spend learning another library is time you could spend building something meaningful to the world, or with your family or out in nature. So think very carefully before you learn this library. And I just I love that. I love that they've had that in their docs for years. And because it's so true like it's a very valuable tool, but do, do you need it? ### [13:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=814s) - Kirupa Y, and I also partly think it's the complexities also caused by who exactly is writing the content these days. You know, back then I felt like it some sort of just fun environment where we all just kind of wrote stuff just because we were filling with it, we had fun. There was no end goal in sight, like when I was writing my tutorials on flash. I had no goal of like doing anything with that. I just did it because I enjoyed it. It was just purely a good hobby for me and I still do that, partly because I just enjoy doing animation and filling with technical things, whereas most of the content I see today is from people employed at companies whose main goal is to try to weave in how this company services can be used as part of doing something, and monetization in tools and Frameworks and so on is almost non-existent, unless you're cutting donations from GitHub or patreon. You have to WR way to monetize and the way you monetize is by having people pay for some kind of a service, and almost all the services are not. You're not paying for it because it's a notepad file. You're uploading a PHP file to a server. It has to be more things to make it, you know, viable. So I think incentive structure for making simple comp content in general, I think that is completely broken down. And I look at the next generation of people who are creating content. I think there in a the much more difficult environment that they're operating in is because they don't have Leisure Time quite as much, I feel like, as I may have had, you know, 20 years ago, because I didn't have Tik Tok, that was no social media, there was none of these things that would basically keep me distracted, so I wasn't consuming content as much as I was creating content. I think the that that equation has flipped a bit since then, where it's just so much easier to just consume content and the content is just so good and high quality and addictive in so many ways that I'm not going to spend what limited time I have creating the content when I can just relax, consume it and just have fun. ### [15:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=924s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. You mentioned the Flash tutorials. I think I think I found, your site from the falling snow animation CU. I was. I was doing some flash stuff back then, but, that's, that's just an side, but that was, that was a lot of fun back then. But you're totally right, I think. I think a lot has happened and I think, yeah, there's, there's more opportunities to consume content. People are just less bored today, like like less Bor. We've traded like real boredom for just sort of like a general Malay of, like you know, infinite scrolling where, like you know, everything's kind of interesting enough to go to the next one, but nothing is really profound, I think. And then, yeah, everything is monetized, which you know like like everyone has to make money. It's hard times and like I want to make money and anything I put on the internet, I of course hope there'd be some Financial return for in some way down the line, but that's kind of dangerous and there's just so much pressure on it. So it's like no one can just like write tutorials on flash because it's fun, like you were doing. Now it's like I'm going to write a tutorial because I want to, like, grow my audience so I can get you know, like a YouTube play button and they'll start monetizing my videos. Or you know, like, so I can just drive people to my course, which I'm selling on you to me. Or like, so I can drive people to my service. I'm selling whatever. Yeah, and that's that's different. There's, yeah, it attracts a different kind of person, person to create the kind of content you know, the type of things you create because it's just for fun. You can see from a mile away, it's like, oh, wow, this is very different, then, someone who has an angle of trying to upsell you something or another. But it is because, also, when it comes to creativity, there's so much being written that the way Master creativity and get more creative is by just having free time, letting your mind wander, not always being on, you know, high gear all the time trying to figure out what needs to be done or what am I going to be doing next. I think that is in some ways missing as well. And there's so much also written about just the- I think what is it called? I forget the exact phrasing- but just the lack of opportunities and Open Spaces where people can do something that doesn't require their phone. Those have also been slowly diminishing over the past, you know, several decades in many ways. And it doesn't help, of course, that our attention is probably the most monetizable thing that companies have these days, and so every second you're not doing something is a loss opportunity for a company to figure out how can you be, you know, having your eyeballs and your attension on their product or service, and they've gotten very good at that. Yeah for sure I. I actually just read a really good book called - how to do nothing: resisting the attention economy, by Jenny Odell. It's a really good book, and like I kind of like, just from the title and the way it was pitched to me it would sort of just be like: you know, get off social media. But it was a lot more than that. It was really Broad and she, she delves into, of course, like the incentive companies have to like, monetize your, your time and attention. But then she also like, takes another like angle and just talks about like getting back in touch with the world around us and our community and building communities, and like what, what works in a community, what doesn't what. What has traditionally held communities together the natural world like it was? It was kind of all over the place, but it was really interesting. ### [19:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1157s) - Kirupa Yeah, and I think there's another book, I think, by Michael hate I was reading recently- I'm probably butching his name as well, but it's really about how do you get kids to have more attention and not be focusing on cell phones and things like that. Like the decline of a lot of indicators of you know, good mental and social health was all being, you know, going on the downside because of it, and that was a very fascinating book as well. It, you know it, dealt a little bit more on just how much attention people are spending in aggregate on phones and just digital tools, which, when you count it's actually very, very high. You know, I, my phone, tells me how many hours I'm on the phone over a given week and it's like almost six, seven hours, even though I'm not consciously aware of six, seven hours I'm actually spending on the phone because I don't do a whole lot of social media, I don't use Tik Tok and all these things, but I do use email a lot, a lot of my work emails. I'm always, like you know, emailing on the phone because it's easier, and in many meetings I'm always emailing as well on my phone while the meeting is happening. And that by itself is a huge amount, because I'm on a computer at the same time and I'm also on a physical device- you know multitasking- and that eight hours could have meant eight hours could have spent doing like you mentioned, something more in you know, in nature, getting to understand the community more, and so on. ### [20:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1232s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, yeah, I like I'm totally with you and actually it's funny because I try and run like things into the ground. I had a SE that just cocked out like the first generation SE. I replace the screen twice, I replace the home button, I replace the battery, and then what is an SE? Like iPhone SE? Oh, iPhone SE, gotcha, gotcha, yeah, yeah,. So I had that for almost eight years. It's like an eight-year-old phone. I got it, you, in 2016 and I- I actually just it went through the washing machine like last week, and so I've I'm in the market for a new phone, but there's like part of me that's like I just I just shouldn't. But then the thing is like it's nice to always have a camera on you, it's nice to always like make a note of something, and then you know, when I'm at the grocery store, like I'm, I try and like I'm, I'm like a very like socially conscious consumer, so I'm always like looking up Brands and stuff. So it's nice to have like a research device, but it's really like it's a like a fan bargain, because, like it's nice to have like these five things, but you open yourself up to just like always being attached to the phone and it's hard. But just getting back to what you were saying about like the time you spend, like I think about the way I use my phone and like how much time I spend on it, and on the one hand, yeah, it's like it's too much time looking at a screen and just doing nothing, but on the other hand, it's not. It's not always replacing something good, like if you're, if you're in a meeting and you're multitasking, that's like work time, where, like you'd be working anyway, it's not really your free time on your own. Or like me, you know, if I'm, if I'm just like I mean you shouldn't look at your phone before bed. But like if I'm, if I'm lying in bed just scrolling through, checking a few things, like people have always just sort of like read the paper or read a book right before bed, so I'm sort of swapping that with another form of just like Mindless entertainment before bed. So I think that, like, definitely phones are a problem, but when you look at that number, it's like how many of those like six or eight hours that you're on the phone every week, how many of those are actual hours that you could say like: oh, I could have been in nature for that time, or I could have been with my family. ### [23:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1387s) - Kirupa Because that's a fair point. Yeah, that's a very fair point. I think the V diagram would be more at work than you know when I'm just like waiting to pick up my daughter from some program or something and I'm just checking my emails and doing those things which would have been sunk time anyway. But I guess I could also be, I could use that time to just, you know, just relax, let my mind wander a bit as well. So it does in slowly whenever you least expect it and that's that's actually- and again, like that's a really good example where it's like, yeah, it's sunk time. When you're just waiting for your daughter, or you're like at the DMV or something, it's like, yeah, that's that's like I don't have that time to do what I want. But, like you said earlier, you know, true creativity comes from like a place of boredom and just sitting, and so anytime you pick up the phone to quell that, it's like you're missing out on a chance to, just let your mind wander. So, yeah, I get what you're saying for sure. Yeah, so, getting back to your background, in how you got started, what was your first computer? What was the first thing you created? What was the first thing you built? ### [24:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1455s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, my first computer. Well, yeah, I remember we had a computer like from the time I was born, but it was it like. I think it was just like dos based. I don't know if it had like a real graphical user interface. I don't know what it was for, I only saw it on like once or twice, I don't know why we had it. Then, probably like in 96 or 97, we got Windows 95 with the just like the local computer store, built like a tower and everything, the beige box, and that was my first introduction to Computing. I mostly used it just for some games like, very like kids games. I was young, I was probably like seven or something at the time, six may, maybe six or seven. Had that for a couple years. When I was 10, I got a I don't know- Gateway, yeah, Gateway, and that was the first computer that I started making stuff on, doing like HTML. And, yeah, that was geoc cities, Geo cities. We, yeah, like I said, my friends, my friends, we're doing the school website. My friends and I, we started a clothing company. We're all into skateboarding and we started a company. We screen printed our own shirts and we sold them just to kids at school and friends and stuff. That was really cool, just making shirts and like selling them. Obviously we didn't- we didn't have any e-commerce, but we put together like a website with like photos from like our, our skate shoots and photos of our merchandise and stuff like that. So I don't even think we had a domain name, it was just like at geoc cities. ### [26:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1563s) - Kirupa But yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, my starting. I also got started in geoc cities. That was like the. He had like 500k, one megabyte of space, and he had to drag and drop things into it, or actually no, that's not Dragon drop, it was upload. He had a button and he had like actually upload F into it. Those are that's actually really fun. And Gateway: of course, most people are probably like what is Gateway? You know it's the. It was the thing back then, you know, was like people who were boring and needed, like you know, professional kind of things. Gateway was the quirky one. I think it had like the black and white cows, the Spotted Cow like their mascot, and then they're actually physical stores as well. Like you just go to a Gateway place and you can get by like you know your, your stores, you get the service, you all these things. Like before the Apple Store was the thing, there was always the Gateway store you could always go to. Yeah, I don't, I don't think I like ever went to the store. I just I remember like I got that computer from for Christmas and for the next several years that was. That was like a primary thing. And you know I was also into film and so I would like make home movies and stuff and edit them on that with some real like really crappy early like just I don't know, editing software and stuff. Later on, as a teenager, I got into. ### [27:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1640s) - Travis Fantina Like I. I got a apple, and got final cut studio when I was like 17 or 18, and that was. ### [27:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1648s) - Kirupa Was like real powerful editing, but it's a huge step up in terms of like what people had on Windows back then and what Apple was able to provide. Because people often go, why were creatives so much into Apple devices and things back then? Because there was no good alternative. You know, Final Cut Pro did not have anything that competed with it on Windows. Even they had tools and of course, Premiere is good. They had various things that could make various things work properly, but the ease of use and like the very targeted thing that solv for was almost like unheard of, and that's those are some of the things that I think people always don't realize I what Apple was able to provide to the ecosystem back then. ### [28:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1689s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, yeah, for sure that. Yeah, that was incredible. Like Final Cut was such a breath of fresh air. Even iMovie with you know, just the free stuff it. It was very different from Final Cup Pro, but it fed into it and, yeah, it really boggles my mind, cuz I feel I feel like about, like 2011, Apple decided to like tank all their video editing and like all their software. Just got bad, and I mean fortunately. I don't know if you do that much, but like Da Vinci, I think is pretty good, that's what I use, but I don't really use it for anything, but it's on my computer, but. ### [28:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1731s) - Kirupa No, I primarily use Camtasia for doing able to do screen recordings, for tutorials, to record. And then I Ed premiere for only one thing, which is to get captions. It has a nice Auto caption generator that you can put it in there. People use like online services these days that can do all these things for me, but for me it's a. I already pay for the Adobe subscription, so I already have Premiere. Why would I pay extra to some other service when I do this? And also aspirationally, I'm like I can do a lot more with Premiere than just use it for captions. I can do all kinds of video color editing and things like that. Of course, I've done none of it. It's aspirational. It's like I like having the idea that those things exist, but that I'm haven't learned it yet. It's just one of those things that you know will just never be learned, I guess. ### [29:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1779s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, I had a job where I was doing Premiere. All the time I was I was on Windows, I was using Premiere and it was really nice. It was kind of like it was at the time final cut studio was like disappearing and being really bad but like, but I wasn't using it at all so I didn't know that was happening. So I, like I had frustrations with premiere in some ways. I was like I could do this better in Final Cut, not knowing that, like that feature might not even exist in Final Cut anymore. But then you know, premere, Premiere was like actually pretty nice to use. It felt like really strange to be working at this job where I was editing videos on Windows. But you know, it worked and it was. It was a nice experience, yep. ### [30:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1821s) - Kirupa It. It's very powerful because my primary experience with, like just graphic Tools in general was Flash, that the only to used my- and even used flash for a long time- for graphic editing, like I would create vector graphics and Export, like you know, 200 DPI, 3 DPI and so on, just so you can get it, like you know, large size and look good on all these screens. And so whenever I went to any of the traditional Adobe products which I didn't realize at the time that Mac media had a very distinctive visual style- you know fireworks and Flash and dream were had a, you know, interesting panel design and so on- and Adobe had their own various ways of doing it. Premier is my first month and I always felt overwhelmed by all these like why, why it? Why is there a timeline within my timeline with my property inspector within a timeline? And it always never made sense to me that how many levels of inception style editing you had, I was like all I want to do is move this text from one side to another and then, oh, use after effects for that. I load up after effects and I'm like, wait, this is even more complicated, at least in that one was like constrained to things that make it sense for film and video. This is like a full-fledged animation system where the output is going to be video formats or gifts or something like that, so not anything interactive, which means that there's no constraints anymore- at least it flash. With some constraints, you could only technically do these things with the browser good and render these other kind of things, so you always had a little bit of a ceiling in how complicated things could be, whereas the premier and after effects- because everything's going be mushed down into pixels and Frames anyway- that it was just like horrifically complex and horrifically Powerful as well, because I've seeing now all the designers today are creating really impressive things using after effects, for example, and it and looking at the screenshots of it where I just see like motion paths in multiple colors and 3D lines and so on- overwhelming because, again, I don't know anything about it at this point. But it's just great to see that there are still tools out there that people have ended up using to kind of continue translating ideas into things that can be seen on screen. ### [32:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=1937s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, yeah, although getting back to like, Simplicity versus like, you know, like we talked about with PHP, how simple that was. That was what was great about Flash. You know, you could, you could do like graphic design, you could make games and websites and animate them and just do all this incredible stuff just in one program. I think it was like, you know, if you wanted to buy it outright, like the MX 2004, whatever, I think it was a couple hundred dollars, and that was just that was so approachable and so easy to like. You know, and that's why there was so much of it. Like that flash animation was so ubiquitous. Back in the days of like new grounds and stuff, like that homestarrunner, everyone was doing it, and it was, it was very easy, and now it's, I think it's very hard, like I don't know how you really would make that kind of Animation, or like those kind of interactive websites. You know, it's all been. There's there's programmatic tools, like there's JavaScript libraries, there's there's After Effects and things like L animations and stuff, but yeah, there's there's not one like kind of full stack tool that will will get you there. ### [33:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2017s) - Kirupa Unfortunately no, but flash actually still has life now among game developers. There's a plugin called ruffle- not a plug-in, technically, it's just a web assembly based compiler where it takes Swift files and it turns it into things that your browser can understand. I'm seeing a lot of people- not a lot of people, you know it's all relative- but I'm seeing more people than ever actually using again to create these animations or interactive content and having be viewed on a ruffle player which works on iPhone, for example, without any of these complications. That's that is really cool. ### [34:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2049s) - Travis Fantina I've I've seen the ruffle screen, but I always assumed it was Legacy flash stuff. But that's that's neat. ### [34:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2058s) - Kirupa So are they using like the last version of their, the old, like creative sweet 3 or whatever the last version of flash was, or is there a? I think so, I think so. I think even today, if I were to use noi animate, which is the replacement and basically rebranding of Flash in many ways, and I publish a swift file, I can actually open that in the ruffle player and be able to do all these things. And there's another app that people speak highly of. It's called r r I v. It uses the flutter runtime behind the scenes to. It's a web assembly and web JL based, but that has actually been really promising as well. I've seen a lot of really cool animation Feld have created using that and I'd say that spiritually looks more like flash from its hey than any other tool I've actually seen like it actually has really good timeline tools. It looks a bit like after effects, simplified down for a modern world where the output is going to be animation and interactive animation, and that might be something to kind of look into as well. But it's definitely not like it was back in the day, because I like lahi a lot. But the challenge with lah, of course, is that if my After Effects, composition is more complicated and you don't know what that complicated actually means. L just falls apart, doesn't quite know what to do in these situations. So you have no idea of. Am I going too far? Are there things that could be exploring, pushing the boundaries a bit, because L supports it. I don't know how to enable that, so there's a little bit of a mystery there, because the runtime and the tool aren't nicely integrated in that sense and it's hard to know what is and isn't going to work. ### [35:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2146s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, that yeah, I've never produced a lot. I've like, I've like taken the files and gotten like little events happening on people's on on one client's website, but, yeah, I don't know much about the production side of it. That makes that makes sense, though. But RVE- you mentioned RVE. I have checked out RVE. I've never like I've gone to the site and, like you said, aspirationally, it's like I want to learn this, I want to do something with this, and it's cool like it looks like in their, in their portfolio, I think they even have like some of the DU lingo animations. I don't know if they made that or if that's actually part of du lingo stack, but it's pretty neat. It wouldn't be surprising, because if the output is something that works on ly on multiple devices- and you know Android and iPhones primarily- it wouldn't surprise me if they actually are using it. Because what's the alternative? Embedding MP4 files, essentially, or Avis. ### [36:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2200s) - Kirupa Yeah, but the thing about Flash also or this back in the day it's- and I still carried this with me- is this an emphasis on low page sizes. You don't want your pages to be bloated or very large and so on. And when you add lah, for example, I think the core runtime is about 300K and your animation that adds more to it, and so for basically having a you know a simple hello world, swipe or something like that, you're downloading about a one megabyte of data that could be a webp animation. You know give file, convert to web, you know webp, and then you're good to go. And then you go to like Apple's website and you're just scrolling on any product page. You're like this whole page is about 100 megabytes and each little animation like 20 megabytes each and you're like probably living in a bizarre world where like wait, what's going on? Why does nobody care anymore about that level of performance and fundamentals and things like that. Where it also seems like kind of like the old person, you get the cloud. I feel like that person, like old man, young cloud is GNA. Be like my you know Tombstone picture one day, where I'm just like complaining about things that no one cares about anymore, like who cares. The pages are like: you have fiber, I have fiber, gigabit down, gigabit up, nobody cares. You know it take longer. Our CPUs are more powerful than it ever have been. Our graphics cards and RAM is plentiful. It doesn't matter. You know what it's going to take to render some of these things, because our computers can easily handle it. ### [38:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2281s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, yeah, no, I. It's funny because, like I did work for a client just a few weeks ago or a couple months back now and he they were actually like a development firm and they just wanted a website made. And yeah, they're like just like make it so simple and like just keep it small, page loads like, don't do any Frameworks, don't bring anything in. And so I got really mindful about it to like I converted like all the images like webp and stuff and I was just like keeping it small and that, like that actually made me really think about a lot of these things and I agree with you in a lot of ways. Like there there's like Apple's website is so cool and going to a website that, like I know people hate squirrel jacking, but I think it's cool when there's like some kind of like wild experience going on, that's really cool in a way. But more recently I've like I've just been thinking about the internet and like the idea of like you know, you can put something out there for anyone in the world to see and accessibility is important to that like if, if you're making it for everyone, well, like, you have to think obvious, obviously, like just basic accessible elements, like you know, color contrast and then also Al, proper labeling on buttons. You know visual impairments, other things like that. But part of accessibility, I think, is Page size, because you know the people on like 3G Connections in the mountains. You know, I always heard that there's like there's so many developing nations that just like jumped over desktops and are just using phones. I think about people like that and you know can, can you save that money by not, you know, using like 100 megabytes of data to load your page? Yeah, Al, also just like efficiency. So, yeah, I think I might be in your boat a little bit. I the whole, just, it's a right thing to do. It doesn't matter. It's a right thing to do is to not have unnecessary data being sent if it's not needed. Like I go to react. I build a hello world. I, you know, use the bundler and I publish it. Why is that paid 300K like? Why is what is possibly going on to your hello world in just plain text: no custom fonts, nothing embedded. Need to say that much, and that's the world we're going into now, though it's almost like you and I learned assembly and machine code back then and we're telling all the people using like C++ and C, like you know, you're too much abstraction here there, too much blo. You can optimize it further and go all the way back and meanwhile all the kids are learning, like you know, managed language like Java and Python and so on, where God knows how much abstraction and blo being added behind the scenes to just be a simple, you know, couple of like bit flips behind the scenes. Yeah, no, that makes sense. My cat decided to pay us a visit. Oh, hey, it's pixel. You know he's a regular in a lot of these videos that I do. Pixel, say hi to Travis. My daughter loves cats. We don't- we don't have one yet, but oh, cats are, cats are great. I grew up with cats but my parents took care of them so I never really appreciated that. But when you know, wife, I got a cat. You know he's the. He's the oldest. We have two cats. He's about 7 years old now, one year older than our daughter. It's a, it's a lot of fun, they're very, they take care of themselves, they're pretty much plug-and-play, just like back in the day. It's like buying a Mac almost. You know, you take a video camera, put, plug the fire wire port in, it just works, whereas on the PC I'm like: what driver am I installing? Is a driver correct and all? Cats are pretty much like a Mac: they just work and all that stuff. They have other quirks, of course, but they are litter trained. They don't require walking or constant attention, and if they are, you know, chill, like he is, for example, they'll just greet you in the morning, greet you when you come into the house, sit in your lap, and basically just enjoy being in your company. Yeah, that's the ideal. Like, you know, dogs are great companions, but they're high maintenance, and to do it right, you really need to spend a lot of time with them. ### [42:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2549s) - Kirupa Exactly. You know, it's great in the summer when you're like walking. You're like, oh, look at that, people like walking their dogs. And it's great when it's like middle of winter and freezing cold and you know, at 500 am. You know they're like walking their dogs. They're like I'm so happy that I don't have a dog right now. But yeah, my daughter has been asking for a dog for quite some time so when she's like, you know, a little bit older, she can help take care of it. You know, I know we're saying that, but I was older when my parents got a cat. I not take care of it at all and so most a case where we're g be know, wife be taking care of the dog, you know, and doing all that and, of course, dog walk or some things like that to kind of make some of these things more easy. But yeah, it's a it's a crazy time with pets and kids. ### [43:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2589s) - Travis Fantina They actually have a lot of fun. I think my daughter, yeah, has been like crazy about cats since she could talk, even even before, probably just just loved cats so much. And you know, even now, like we'll go out, like after work, we'll go on catwalks because, like you know, we just moved to into this neighborhood. It's quiet and so we just wander around and yesterday we just like a cat just wandered- I was like skateboarding, she was on her scooter and like a cat just wandered up to us and we're just petting it and that made her day. But about a week ago she's like, oh, cats aren't my favorite anymore, they're dogs. And I think, like we went to the fire station, we're just wandering by and the fireman like, or the firefighter like, let us in. And he's like, oh, do you, do you want? Like a little dog stuffy? And so she got this little stuffed. She's like, oh, I love dogs, I really want to get a dog. I like, okay, like, just like with a cat, like we want to think about it for a while, we're not going to jump into it, we're gonna spend some time. And so for about a week it was dogs, dogs, dogs,. But then, like two days ago. She's like: actually I like cats more, I want a cat. So I guess, what's what's? What's preventing you from getting a cat? ### [44:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2661s) - Kirupa It's funny you mention that. There there's. You know, just like, like right now we're pretty unencumbered. I mean, we have a daughter and we have another child on the way, so congratulations. ### [44:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2677s) - Travis Fantina Thank you, thanks. So, yeah, so like that is encumbered in a big way, but in another way, like we've been able to do a lot of traveling and just sort of living in different places for six weeks, or you know, just like travel whenever we want, because I work remotely. With a cat, you know, we'd be more anchored, less so than with a dog, obviously, but that so that's a big pause. And then just, you know, like pet ownership in general, it's like you know, are we going to be able to like give it the attention it needs? I know cats are pretty hands off, but still we don't want to neglect it. And then also, like I, we're all vegetarian, so it's just weird to me to think about like getting an animal that I'm gonna have to feed meat too for like the next 15 years. Yeah, so oh. ### [45:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2727s) - Kirupa Very fair points. I love it. Very reasonable. But, yeah, yeah, I feel like one of those. You know Cloud providers now, you know writing complicated tutorials, just so I can self a like cat. You know, wouldn't it be great for you to have, like you, let your mind wander and you know what helps your mind wander: the purring of a cat. Yeah, click here, buy the cat you know, shipped to you in 24 hours could start a cat business on the side. Yeah, no, that's a, yeah, it is, it's a. It's a. It's an industry in its own, because, you know, we talked earlier about just like time flying and growing up and like how much things have changed. I never realized until, you know, my wife and I had a daughter- how much of the places we walked by normally catered to children and kids and daycare, like for me it's just like a building. But I'm like, wait, this, the building where you go and like you buy, you know, things for kids or this is a daycare facility and all these things and similar to pets as well. In many ways you're like this entire block of buildings here is designed to cater to like dogs, like dog walking, dog sitting, dog washing and dog grooming, and I always wondered: if my hobbies and interest were, you know, slightly different, would I discover more parts of the city and the place I go by day in and day out for years on end, where I would discover something new about them that I just completely glossed over, because to me they just like background characters or NPCs in like a video game lingo. It's like, okay, it's just there and I keep driving by. But then, as I've got older and my interests and responsibilities changed, those places aren't just places, they actually are doing something that's now critical to me being able to function, which is really bizarre in terms of, like, just how time has evolved, in how our perception of things change. ### [47:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2830s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, that's. It's really interesting you bring that up, because I am in that same boat 100%. I think the two biggest things, like having a daughter at least, is like parks and libraries. Like I didn't think about parks at all, really, certainly not playgrounds,. And then like have a daughter and it's like hugely important. Like how close is the nearest playground? Is it good? Like just because there's slides there doesn't mean it's good, like there's all kinds of different playgrounds, that's big. And then we've been going to the library with my daughter since she was little. Any anywhere we live like Library getting tons of books, and libraries provide such a Val, valuable service- not not just for kids, obviously- like there's tons of stuff happening at the library that was just like out of my world. And even if I didn't have a daughter, like I would still take advantage of stuff at the library. I just I might not have discovered it though. ### [48:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2893s) - Kirupa Yeah, it just something about just having books that are there on so many topics. You're like there's no distractions so you're kind of forced to just take a book, look at it, flip through a few pages and then you're might be hooked, you learning a new topic about something you never have done before. ### [48:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2907s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, I mean tot, like just from that perspective, reading, yeah, absolutely, and like I still like Librarians are great for reference and stuff. I mean you know, like a lot of that, like the internet and stuff is like has replaced that functionality. But I think, like the internet is as we talked about earlier, I think things are really degrading on the internet and like the quality of search results aren't as good. You have to filter through a lot more to find really what you're looking for and against that backdrop it just goes back to the library. It's like, well, that's not degrading, like that's still a great experience. So if, if you're really looking for something- maybe not like programming stuff, but almost anything else that doesn't change so fast- like yeah, the library is a great resource and there's there's a lot more to it than that. Like, you know, just there's, there's often times really interesting, like meetups and speakers. Some liaries, like you know, have like other things you can take out, like the libraries here. Like they have Parks passes, so like if you want to get into like the national parks or whatever, you can get like a pass for the weekend and like just take it out a couple libraries. I've been to have 3D printers, just you know. So there's all kinds of interesting things, equipment and stuff you don't really think about. ### [49:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=2993s) - Kirupa But a human connection angle as well- because I often talk about this frequently- is that I feel like growing up and all of that I run into new people all the time. I have a conversation with new people all the time. With the convenience of the internet, you are having conversations, but it's more superficial. In the grand schema thing, there's no like Beyond you know. All you can see is the text or whatever you're being spoke speaking to at the time, nothing Beyond it, whereas the serendipitous conver, the magical hallway conversations we always joke about, about return to office and so on. I do see huge value in that and that's something I really like about the live or doing things in general, like when you go to a physical location and you're outside the house, you're doing something differently, just put in a different mindset, where you're more open to both observing things around you but also having social interactions as well, like the conversation with the, with the librarian, or if someone's reading a book that you were also reading. You're probably more inclined to go and, just like you know, make small talk, even if it's, like you know, smallest of small talks, which would otherwise be completely non-existent in our digital world. ### [50:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3054s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean just to give like some weird examples of stuff that's happened at the library recently. Like, I went into the washroom and I was just like washing my hands- a librarian- I- I hope this isn't their job description, but like someone, some staff member, came in and was just like checking like the Stalls and stuff to make sure like no one had ODed in there. Because, like you know, libraries attract people. Like that's a place where, like, if you're unhoused or like kind of rough sleeping, whatever like you can, you can connect to the internet, which, like resources there's also just like other resources. So, you know, I think that, especially as, like the housing crisis has like kind of persisted, Librarians have taken on a different role in that regard. So that's one thing. My daughter was able to just like 3D print a couple small things at the library, just for free, and then also we took my daughter to like this big festival for hooy, just at the library. So, like three things like nothing to do with books, but just like three Community Services very like different, that I never would have expected to be at a library. ### [52:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3133s) - Kirupa Yeah, no, I think these are all like just things that if you never went to it, You' have never found out, and one of the big reason they found out is just like accidentally stumbling upon things you know, as you're trying to discover what, what can do in the area. But yeah, you know, I do want to sh gear a little bit to talk about something you created recently which kind of got: you know, bring me to start chatting with you. Is you created postal boy or postal box? Sorry, postal box XYZ, postal box XYZ? Tell me. So you know I we're chatting right now, but in the video, you know, for people watching it, I'll have like a screenshot of it and you know you can see what's going on. But sure, it basically is a way for you to write some text, put a physical address down and then you print the message and you mail it to the address there. What got you interested in? It's a very fascinating idea. I actually filled it out. I don't know if you ever saw it, but I actually did actually put my information down. So I'm looking. I never check my physical mail ever, but now I'm actually like, let me go check the mailbox, because the mailbox is, like you know, half a block down and like it's like subdivision that we're in and it's 100% spam. Like I, it's 100% spam. But for now I'm actually like I sign up for usps's like delivery notification thing, where it sends me, S me a picture of all it's coming in, and so I'm like, okay, this from Travis, nope, nope, okay, not going to check it today, not going to Che today, but so you've actually rekindled my love of like checking the mail at some point, which I never knew I had. But yeah, tell me more about the project. What got you started in it? How do you build it? As well, I'm. ### [53:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3223s) - Travis Fantina Okay, yeah, yeah. So first of all, yeah, I got it. I've sent your. Your letter is there, I think it's. You're on the other side of the continent from where I'm mailing these letters now, so it might take a little while. I'm in Canada, you're in the states. Sometimes that takes a while as well. ### [53:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3239s) - Kirupa Where in Canada you are, because Seattle and Vancouver, Canada, are literally about two hours away by driving, but you, I think you're further east, I, so I. ### [54:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3247s) - Travis Fantina Actually didn't realize you were in Seattle. I lived in Vancouver, for like a year and a half and we just moved back to like kind of closer to Niagara Falls area, so that's where we're living right now. But, man, like, next time I'm in Vancouver because I love Vancouver, I love the Pacific Northwest, which in Canada, I guess, would be called the Pacific Southwest- but I love that, that region, I love that region. And you, next time I'm well, you know, like next time I'm there for any length of time, I'd love to come down and visit you because, oh, absolutely know, sound, sounds like a plan, but yeah, so that's, that's, you know, another life, hopefully a future life, I can move back out to BC again, but yeah, yeah, keep looking for that, keep looking for that, but yeah, so postal box is just it. It sort of grew out of like I don't know, I come from a family of like letter writers. My dad's a big letter writer. My, his side of the family a lot of like birthday cards and then also longer form letters as well, and so, even if it was just like sort of social responsibility or pressure like that kind of got drilled into me. I'm like very technical and like I sort of went through a long time where I like had no use for paper. I was like this pointless, but there was always still like I gotta write a birthday card for someone or a thank you note or something which involves like writing it and then the hardly the hardest part was like chasing down their dress and a stamp and like getting those things together and then mailing it. And I was like that like I don't like searching for addresses and I don't like searching for stamps. So like I don't, I wish I could just like kind of use my phone's, a dress book, but not like not like have to like write it down because my handwriting is pretty bad. So I had this thought for a long time and then it just kind of intersected with the idea of like you know you're talking about just like making the internet sort of fun again and like weird and like back in the day people just made stuff for like just the heck of it and put it on the internet. And I was like I just want some like weirdness on the internet and the idea that like maybe I could like get people to write letters to a friend and, instead of like an email, get a like a physical letter. That's really cool. So I was like, well, let's just try it. Put a text box out there, you enter an address and you know, you just see, like a week later, your friend gets a letter. And it's kind of bizarre, but it's also like the most normal thing in the world. Like you know, we people sent letters for hundreds of years, and that's sort of a Dying art, but it doesn't have to be and, like you said, there's an excitement to getting a letter. So, if I can facilitate that or make it like easier for people with Like A busy life, all the better. And that's that's really where it came from. And you know I have I have like a hundred ideas, of course, of like how to make it better. You know, like I've already I've been working on like Auto completion for the addresses. Long term, my idea would be like you sign in, you actually save the address and then, like you have like an address book. You could like maybe buy like like 10 stamps or whatever, so you don't have to like check out every time you just kind of have a tab you like these are features that will come later. Right now it's really just like: does anyone want to send a letter through the internet? ### [58:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3490s) - Kirupa No, I think that's actually really cool, and I've always seen ideas like this people talking about, but you actually built it, though, which I thought was actually really, really fascinating. Ah, thank you. So is your goal to essentially go big with this at some point?? ### [58:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3507s) - Travis Fantina Yeah, like as big as possible. I think, like I said, you know, I would like to add better features, and I'm I'm kind of going to continue to toy with it and play with it, but, it really depends on if people use it, if if I start making enough where, because right now I charge basically for a stamp plus like a dollar that you know I get, so we need a lot of people to invest in it. But I've thought about, like you know, the prospect of developing some of these other features. I've also thought about, you know, like maybe partnering down the road with like a paper company or like graphic designers to make cards, and it's like you can get like a really nice card and choose like your card stock, something like that kind of like it just as an upsell, but a unique little feature. So I have a lot of ideas and I'd love to go, you know, as big as as those ideas get and what whatever people want, like if, if this takes off. ### [59:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3575s) - Kirupa Yeah, if you want like more unsolicited feature requests. One of the things I've seen recently is that a lot of AI tools now where you just give a snippet of like handwritten text, it can create a font or it can be extrapolate how other letters would look like if you did it. So it would even be cool to kind of say, like how it be in my own writing style, where I upload, like you know, to some like I write like maybe like a few letters and numbers on this accend screenshot of it- or not a screenshot, but an actual photo along with the message I want to send, and you can use that to then use like the actual message to be in the same handwriting style that I would have actually written it in, so that it adds a little bit of extra personalization to it. That's yeah. ### [1:00:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3611s) - Travis Fantina That's really cool. I actually wasn't familiar with that, and that's a very, very cool idea. ### [1:00:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3617s) - Kirupa Yeah, yeah, because I think you know I always like been because I work at Google it's I work in, like the intersection of tooling and AI. I spent a lot of time just like being, you know, inundated with cool things. People were working on again like: have you seen this, what are you doing here? And all these things. And so I run across really interesting things all the time. And you know the one about like you give it a snippet of your voice and it can create, like, extrapolate, like how you would actually sound and generate Dynamic audio things. That's that's one extreme, but the other extreme that gets less attention is actually this case where your handwriting can then be extrapolated into a, basically a type set that can be used to create anything you want in that same style, because it's not new, that's existed for a long time. There were a lot of tools that kind of said: like: draw an A, draw capital A, and each letter could then be mapped into its own little slot and then you go basically be able to write from that accordingly. But this one of the first few times where you just write a few letters or just like: give it a sample of like things you've written already and it'll extrapolate all the missing characters, all the missing glyphs and so on, which is extremely cool. That that is, yeah, that's extremely cool. So people like how you know, how did Abraham Lincoln sound like? And they're able to like kind of you know, actually they can't- but you know other people who, like, have like very limited recordings of their voice they can extrapolate and be like here's how they would have spoken. You know some famous thing? Or here, a rap song by Einstein would actually sound like using his voice, and but it hasn't been done too much for letters and words quite as much yet, and so I think we're going to see a lot more things like this in the future. Yeah, that's, that's really exciting, and but I love the Simplicity of it, though. I think, like the Simplicity of what you have right now is actually what I like a lot in many ways, and that's the. That's always a challenge is that the more features you add, it gets more complicated, and then someone else comes back and you know what I'm going to create a more simple version of postal box, and then there you go. The whole process- I always use the example and I talk about all the time- is the idea of not taking apps. You know all not taking apps start off great because I'm like it's fantastic, I can take notes and do all these things. And they slowly start adding features to it and I'm like nope, I can't do it anymore. I go to simple note taking app and around the same time, someone would have created a simple not taking app like notion thing for a long time. But it do all these things. You know, simple, I, you take notes very effectively. Now notion a fullon CMS platform in some ways and now creating like probably another version of basically notion light. That is what notion was five years ago, or same with what was the, what was the other one that's actually really popular, Evernote, every thing like for a longest time. And then that became more complicated, more bloated and people went to: you know notion, and then notion is GNA have his own cycle where someone's going to come in and use some other tool for it. Are you in the windows Android world world or the. ### [1:02:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3778s) - Travis Fantina I'm in the Mac OS iPhone world, oh okay, so you know, bare notes. I really like bear, not bear is like they've kept it simple and you know they get a lot of feature requests, but they're, I mean they're. Their development pace is Glacier slow, but like that as like a markdown Notes app. ### [1:03:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3799s) - Kirupa Oh man, I've been using that for- yeah, I have actually seen this before and it does AB look really nice and for the most part now I just use. There's a tool of Quip. I know when work at Salesforce, quip was a tool that they had bought to basically get their- their co-founder at the time, Brett Taylor, to join them and it's a very simple, not taking app, has simple collaboration features you can share with people, but it works in the browser, works on any device, and that's been pretty convenient. But I use Apple notes for the most part in many cases. Well, you know, especially when I'm just like just need to jot some ideas down very quickly, I use that a long time is a pretty good one. It's free work for your Gmail account and you're good to go on that. ### [1:03:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3836s) - Travis Fantina Okay, I'll check it out. Yeah, because it's been a long time since I've actually even Apple notes. I haven't looked at it. I've been using bear for so long but yeah, I'm always interested in like what's Chang, how the landscape of these things changes, and I just I also really appreciate the craft of things and, like you know, a well-designed app, a well functioning app, so yeah, you know, and of course, pencil and paper and notepad, so works really well. Also, you know, and I do have like so many posted notes are just thre around my desk on like various things that just jotted down ideas for. So it's like, yeah, it's not a cohesive Story by any means, my note taking world. You, I have notes, I have quip, I have physical notes as well and I'm sure when I want to look for something, I can never really find it anymore. ### [1:04:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3882s) - Kirupa Yeah, yeah, I started. I actually started carrying like little like field notes or just like like tiny little bo, like pocket size notebooks. I started doing that a couple months ago, just again to like be on the phone less and have something I could pull out and like doodle on rather than like using my phone. So I'm in the same boat like fragmented note landscape notes everywhere. Yeah, and I've see a lot of people using like a stylus on like an iPad or like a Chromebook to like take notes and I've got- I haven't kind of gotten into that yet, you know, because I will say the apple pencil with the iPad, extremely nice in many ways, like little little design touches. They've added little details they have. And there, responsiveness where when I'm actually writing there's no lag between my finger and like I mean my stylist and then like what's actually being seen. Yeah, but I think if they ever make it a phone thing, I might consider using it, but I don't want to carry another iPad along with my phone place when I might need to just take notes. Yeah, exactly, because people just say your retention, your memory is, you know better if you actually physically write things down as opposed to like typing it, and I don't know how true that is, but if if that is the case, then there may be something to be said about being able to have the- you know, the physical form of writing things down. Yeah, I've heard that as well. Yeah, but getting back to postal box, yeah, and so are you seeing Tailwind? Partially in a way, I think so. I looked at a view source and looked at some of the column names and things like that, which is really cool actually, because most example of tail I've seen are like extremely complicated things and you made very simple with this. ### [1:06:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=3986s) - Travis Fantina Actually yeah. So, yeah, I'll tell you a little bit about the tech stack. This is this: is you know what I think, I'm I'm really excited about, not because it's different, I just, you know, love talking about this stack, but, so it's actually Elixir and Phoenix, and that's what I do everything in now, because I've actually I've been developing with Elixir professionally for the past five years, so I just know it very well and I don't, you know, we talked about learning new things earlier and I love to learn new stuff. I've got like like five languages I want to learn and 10 Frameworks I want to learn, but I'd rather build things, I'd rather just like make stuff than learn stuff, at this point, so the learning usually takes the backseat and I just make stuff with what I know, and that's elixir and Phoenix. Phoenix comes now with like Tailwind, sort of out of the box. So actually, you know, there there are some very nice flourishes. I think, like the Phoenix, whoever is doing design for the framework just has a really good eye, so there's a lot of like sensible, like nice defaults, with the install, but I'm not like a huge Tailwind fan and so a lot of the custom CSS is just me like I. I sort of have my own system that I created and have worked off of.. Have you heard of Utopia? Utopia is it a CMS? No, it's like a. If you type in Utopia CSS, utopia. FYI is their website, utopia. FYI, and it's like fluid mod type scales and so like. Basically, instead of having like responsive break points, they use clamps to basically like dynamically change the size of everything compated. Sorry, I clicked the video but that's okay. But yeah, like Utopia it actually, because I'm looking at your markup, I do see that a clamp you know like mentions in the attributes and yeah, yeah, never heard of this. Really cool. So I kind of yeah. So I've been using Utopia for a little while and it's not, it's not like a framework, it's just. It's just a system and they have you can generate different sizes on their site. You could do it yourself as well, just CSS and math. But it's a little complicated, so I just use their inputs, and copy the CSS over. But it's funny, like, because this is a personal project, it's actually like maybe like the worst example of my work because, you know, are there a lot of tests written. No, not really is. Is like all the markup perfect? No, not really are. Like some things half big, yeah, but it's like. It's just like how can I get this done as fast as possible so that people can start using it? And I've had so many projects that I like overdeveloped or spent years on, literally in some cases that never went anywhere. And now I just want to say like I have an idea. I want to try and do it in like a couple of weeks and put it out almost as like just a standalone single page. How far can we get with that? Because I don't want to keep wasting time on things no one's going to use and so, even like postal box, like if you know no one continues to like send letters with it, just let it die. You know the domain can expire in a year and that's, that's fine. I like the idea, I'm glad I did it, but if it's not, if it's not going to go anywhere, I don't want to keep spending time on it. ### [1:10:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=4237s) - Kirupa So, yeah, and I think that so many people get caught up in just building and building and building without actually shipping something and seeing if it actually tracks. So I like how you have it where you talked about have it very simple. Here's the simple ideas that I have and then in the future I'll enhance it with more things, whereas I think less experience or less season developers would probably not sh even the first version until they got everything up, this like, figured out first. You know, which is often a huge Miss in so many ways, because you learned so much from the initial feedback get from people and you might even be taking a direction you never thought you would have gone because of the initial ideas you other people have for it are interesting enough where you want to Pivot which you would have never been able to do if you spent too much time on it. Yeah, yeah, it's really cool. I also like how you're the classic red and blue envelope style design. It's a gradient and not an actual gift or PNG. That has been a background you Loop. Yeah, yeah, that was. I. I love those. Like those CSS gradients. It's so cool what you can do with them- exactly it's. These are some of those times where I'm always like, you know, if only we had tools that made these things like just easier to do. But there a lot of grading generators that help you create this on its own. But this is where it kind of gets back to. If you are not a, you know, if you weren't familiar with building websites and building some of these things, that even doing something like this would be almost impossible for someone to get started and to get up and running doing some of this. Yeah, yeah,. ### [1:12:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=4331s) - Travis Fantina Sorry I was just. ### [1:12:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=4334s) - Kirupa You find a bug while you're chatting with me about something. ### [1:12:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=4338s) - Travis Fantina No, I didn't, but I actually, I can't even I'm not positive how I did it, but I have on my personal website, which is Travis fanam, I've got buttons and if you hover the buttons, I don't remember if it's a gradient, but there's a really like. I don't think the design is great on this site, but I'm so proud of these buttons I'll never let them die. Oh, I like it a lot. Oh, that is great. Do you remember like the O style of many of The Flash sites from back in the day where you had, like you know, shapes and then you had like lines like that to IND, simulate depth of various sorts? Mhm, yeah, I love that. It was it PR station that has something like this. Oh, I like the theme picker you have on your oh, yeah, thanks, that's that's called like not being able to commit to a color scheme. Yeah, you had like a pretty cool theme. Actually, you still do right, okay, yeah, yeah, I have a theme picker. I have like so many colors. Again, I couldn't figure out what color teams to use as well. I think I have like one, two, 3, four, five, eight and then light and dark versions of all eight of them. Yeah, it's no, I like, I think, like definitely your site, and there's a couple other like designers who, like they just had like a couple palettes you could choose. I always thought that was really cool, even actually like before light and dark was a thing back in the day, like even when Facebook was new, I always thought it'd be a cool feature if, like, right up on the, that blue bar at the top back- I don't what it looks like now, but back there was like just like a blue bar, I like I'd love to have essentially what you have on your site, just like a couple color squares and you could just like just change the color of that bar and like the accents and that's it. I always wish they had that, you know, small amount of personalization to make it your own, but that you know that goes completely against, I think, what all these companies in many ways stand for, because it's really about how do you take the individual out of all the things you're doing, how you take personality out completely and just have the content and be the only brand you see, be that of the surface you're currently in and is often talk about. You know why I'm like, why is important for Content creators, who are content creators, to own their content and not be dependent on other platforms is partly because, at the end of the day, there's no incentive from them to actually make your content be better than either content if it doesn't serve their very unique interest, which is like kind of sell more ads can of get more eyeballs on it. So the algorithms, everything is tweaked to basically make it seem like you're, you know you're on LinkedIn, you're on Twitter, you're on Facebook, you're on, you know all these on YouTube. You're not on Travis's- you know profile. You're not on Travis's thing, you're in LinkedIn, and Linkedin has a link to it. The top level umbrella brand, cannot ever be you. You can never be bigger than that. It has to always be the overarching you know company you're on. And that's something I've always been worried about and always, like you know, if I had a pet peeve, it would really be. That is, how do we just keep all of the information we're doing from completely siphoned off? And I think with AI it's getting even worse in so many ways, because this is like the holy grail for these companies, because they finally found a way where they can completely bypass you as a in a brand and or a, you know, Creator, and be able to regurgitate the same content in a way where it's only through open AI or only through, you know, Gemini, only through any other AI system. Yeah, no, I agree completely and like I think the truth is, think Society is like going to split. I was thinking about this a lot a couple years ago when they first started like talking about Ai and movies, AI, screenwriters, AI, you know, character Generation, all this stuff. I was like, you know, like Disney, the big companies, they're going to go after that because it's a very effective way to make a lot of money. Yeah, but there's people are always going to want to tell stories and some people will always want to go to the stories that people are telling and so, just like, indie films haven't taken over the market, like you know, it's still. It's still just like the big, the big studios, it's their world, but there's still a niche of, you know, Indie movies that make good money and I think, like with AI, that's kind of almost happened in society, where it's like the flow of everything is going towards like the AI generation. It's just it's too easy to get caught and that. But if you look you can find like the weird, wonderful, like human Alternatives out there, and some of them will be, you know, like utilizing the best bits of AI. Some won't be, but that's it's. It's just like finding those weird places and it's on the internet especially. It's about breaking out of the silos and like finding sites like cacom, where it's just, you know, it's fun and it's whimsical and it's so unlike. You know just like a news feed or something, or you know like postal box, just like a weird project. One person did, I. I love finding sites like that and I think that the internet is pretty saturated with big social networks and like monoliths, siloed sites. But if you break out of that you can find some really neat things. It just takes a little effort. ### [1:17:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVswfWL8AY&t=4671s) - Kirupa And that is very true, and it's probably one of the best POS positive ways we can end our conversation here, Travis. So you know it was a blast talking with you and can't wait to see more cool projects you create, and we'll chat more about it when that happens. [Browse all Interviews with Creative People](https://www.kirupa.com/podcast/index.htm).