Adam Fortuna

Hey hey! I'm a full-stack product developer in Salt Lake City, UT. I love enlivening experiences, visualizing data, and making playful websites.

🧑‍💻 Formerly Course Director @ Code School.
📚 Currently founder @ https://hardcover.app

✏️ I write about personal growth, building websites (#ruby #nextjs #rubyonrails), #minimalism, #mindulness, #FIRE, recovering from an ACL tear, and awkwardly posting on TikTok (😂).

Public Key

npub1tnml2hta892eqc5g4hmysa60v3tv5thcugjge7c9e0yxk4c4h0gq33xvwd

NIP-05 Address

adam_at_ruby.social@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs9eal4t47nj4vsv2y2majgwa8kg4k29muwyfyvlvzuhjrt2u2mh5qnlv4r3

Author Public Key

npub1tnml2hta892eqc5g4hmysa60v3tv5thcugjge7c9e0yxk4c4h0gq33xvwd

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Last Notes

2024-11-07 05:27:36

I am giving BlueSky a try after seeing more programmers trying it out.
I'm unsure where I'll stay, but I enjoy exploring it. With my break from Reddit/TikTok, I need something to fill the time. 😂
If you're on Blue Sky, let's be friends:
https://bsky.app/profile/adamfortuna.com

2024-10-05 22:20:54

New updates on the Hardcover Book Page are looking good - and with nice caching for network activity.
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/113/257/142/778/894/110/original/ed9c847436963155.png

2024-08-18 19:36:21

Looks like the time has finally come for me to learn the basics of Kubernetes. 😂
The cost of hosting Hardcover on Vercel has climbed from $20 -> $350 in just 3 months.
I've tried hosting it on Heroku, but Next.js's caching balloons the RAM until the server needs to be restarted. Reminds me of the early days of Rails when we had to restart it every hour. 😂
Next stop: Kubernetes on DigitalOcean.

2024-08-14 14:09:45

A 3-year old tech decision finally bit me yesterday: making Hardcovers book cover images public in our Google Cloud Bucket.
Someone used this opening to download up to 10k covers a second… for 8 hours. We don’t even have that many images!
Luckily it was only a $300 mistake. Yesterday I quickly made all images private, switched to using signed URL, and created a way for API users to get access.
This is your periodic reminder to use signed URLs for all assets on GCP/S3. 😅

2024-07-16 15:26:09

Reading comments on StickerMule posts is my new Roman Empire.

2024-05-11 20:39:59

Simultaneously wanting to watch the Eurovision finals, on my way to see Belle & Sebastian, Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service at a music festival and seeing the most users ever to sign up to Hardcover on a single day.
Trying to take it one hour at a time. 😂 📈🎸
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/112/424/386/142/522/502/original/e75504c525a71f5a.jpeg

2024-05-01 23:20:34

I've been pretty quiet the last few months here, but I'm still around, usually just reading. 😂
Major things going on in my life include:
Spending two weeks in South Korea! I'm writing a big blog post with pictures.
Working with an online personal training and nutrition coach. The added accountability has been great.
Major update to Hardcover shipped today (finally) and we just hit 100 subscribers. 🥳
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/112/368/391/623/351/072/original/6c9ac5d883de8545.png

2024-02-13 22:34:37

The last few days I've been learning Supabase for a project I'm helping out on. I'm very impressed with it so far.
I've always been hesitant about putting logic in a database due to how tough it is to test.
But Supabase has an answer for that!
You can create tests that are SQL transactions. These tests can even create users, login as users, test what that user should be able to access, test triggers and more.
Since these tests are just SQL, they're fast.
https://usebasejump.com/blog/testing-on-supabase-with-pgtap

2024-02-01 17:25:08

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@npub1fhl…7yqu I’m reading this one now and thoroughly enjoying it. I wasn’t sure I’d connect with the motivation/energy/inspiration side, but it’s resonating with me.

2024-01-22 19:46:53

Last year I picked up some nifty Pomodoro hourglass timers. I could never get used to a 25 on, 5 off flow, so they've mostly gone unused.
I've started using them as 25 minutes standing and working, 25 minutes sitting and working, then a 5 minute break.
That's felt much more in line with my work flow.

2024-01-01 03:01:00

The more I do stuff, the more I want to make stuff.
The more I consume stuff, the more I want to consume stuff.

2023-12-27 06:03:44

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@npub1nw5…eygn You’re welcome! It’s been such a fun project. At my reading pace it’ll take most of next year to get through the books I added too. 😅

2023-12-26 22:56:19

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And that's a wrap! That was every author I was able to find who has a Mastodon account and was featured in The Hardcover Year in Books.
With Threads starting to federate, and Bluesky possibly joining as well, I'm optimistic that 2024's Year in Books will include many more authors, as well as others who decide to make a home here on Mastodon.
https://hardcover.app/2023

2023-12-26 21:22:15

Yesterday we published The Hardcover 2023 Year in Books. It's a look at the most popular books of the year across genres, trends, months and more.
A number of the authors featured have a presence here on Mastodon! I wanted to create a thread to callout a few of them that have released news books that were popular with the Hardcover community.
https://hardcover.app/2023
1/x
@npub1kt3…5004
#books #book #hardcoverapp

2023-12-10 19:05:22

I deployed the new search experience I've been building on Hardcover yesterday 🥳
This will lower our search costs from $400/month (Algolia) to $70/month (Typesense Cloud)!
There's still more to clean it up and improve results, but this was a huge change. Trying to optimize the React to prevent re-renders has been a little tough too 😅
Any feedback on search is welcome!
https://hardcover.app
#rails #react #nextjs #search
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/111/557/666/096/522/363/original/95e29ba23414c8e9.png
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/111/557/666/414/257/726/original/5a8c1746c7dea8b8.png

2023-12-05 21:53:48

For all of this search work one of my favorite things I've done so far is creating a rake task that syncs data for all books I've read to Typesense (for local testing).
rake typsense:adam
It syncs book data, authors, series, lists, prompts and users to a dev instance.
It's made testing a lot more fun because every book I'd consider searching for it already in the index. 😂

2023-12-01 18:56:27

Just experienced the first moment when using GitHub Copilot where the recommendation solved a more important problem than the one I was solving.
I'm cleaning up the 220 gb Hardcover database and seeing how I can reduce it's size.
One way is to delete old match percentages - cached book prediction scores.
My plan way to delete ones from users w/o activity for 3 months. Copilot recommended deleting _any_ recommendations older than 3 months.
Since these are rebuilt daily it makes sense. 🤷

2023-11-23 22:26:14

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@npub19kd…4jdw I like "Product Engineer" for those roles where the engineer is making product-facing decisions. Maybe "Frontend Product Engineer"?

2023-11-12 23:29:12

New blog post!
For each month of 2023 I'm choosing a single word as a theme.
This months word: Stop
Read more about what I'm stopping this month and why.
https://adamfortuna.com/2023-11-stop
#blog #journal

2023-11-06 19:17:27

Jumping on this trend both for fun, and to find new apps from other people:
What Apps I Use In 2023
https://adamfortuna.com/my-apps
I'd very much like to remove big tech from a number of these.
#blog #AppsIUse

2023-10-18 17:31:42

Dark Academia is one of my favorite book genres. I just finished “Fourth Wing” and loved it. Right up there with “The Will of the Many” for my favorite fantasy read of the year.
https://hardcover.app/books/fourth-wing/reviews/@adam?referrer_id=1

2023-10-16 17:35:19

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@npub12cd…a2pa Thanks! The sections I have in it are:
Reflect - Look over my current goals and themes to remind me what's important.
Review - Look over my previous weeks goals, answer a few questions about it.
Plan - Set some goals for the week, schedule things on my calendar, add items to my todo list.
I haven't seen Make.md, but I was using templates on Obsidian for a while. It was still the usual markdown though.

2023-10-06 00:30:04

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@npub10ra…f2mw thanks John!

2023-10-03 23:30:41

After two years of getting 1-5 signups a day, the amount of feedback we're getting now from higher numbers takes some getting used to.
Luckily things aren't completely falling over. Just the occasional bugs. Mostly it's people finding issues I knew about but hoped no one would notice. 🙈
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/111/173/674/051/802/118/original/0e2093a14c5f69b3.png

2023-09-10 21:52:56

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@npub12cd…a2pa Ah cool. It's been a while since I've used PHP, but that would work for sure. The Hardcover API is effectively a POST request to a specific URL with params for what you want to get back.
Now writing up actual documentation about the API is another story. 😅

2023-09-10 21:35:24

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@npub1tlv…nl8m A bunch of here I've never heard of. Contemporary fiction isn't a genre I've explored too much.
Any recommendations for someone who usually reads sci fi/fantasy into that genre?

2023-09-10 21:16:18

Sunday funday project: Add a simple reading page to my blog! 📚
I wanted something simple that would showcase what I've recently read and highlight 5 ⭐ reads (The Will of the Many by James Islington is my most recent).
I used the Hardcover GraphQL API, fetching the last 100 books I finished.
There are soooo many things I could do, but this was a good start.
https://adamfortuna.com/reading
Side note: If you have a book page on your blog I'd love to see it. 🤙
@npub1kt3…5004
#books #bookstodon #blog

2023-09-08 20:17:00

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@npub1nxt…055a not just yet. We’re currently researching “Discussions” as our next big project, and want to build it with authors in mind. We think when that releases is when we’ll really start courting authors.

2023-08-27 14:50:09

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@npub17re…t0hg Too true. 😂 We always used to use Keynote for making courses at a past job of mine, but I wanted to try something more interactive and native for front-end focused content.
Months later we just went back to Keynote. 😅 I’ll have to check out that library next time.

2023-08-24 01:10:36

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@npub1jvt…60nj sometimes the simplest solution can be the most impactful!

2023-08-19 15:27:47

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@npub1afx…hjan I used quite a bit of this template on my own site then customized on top of it: https://tailwindui.com/templates/spotlight
It’s a paid template. If you’re doing a lot of UI work then buying the entire library can help speed up learning. The templates are in React, but the components are react/Vue or html.
Not sure how tricky it’d be to migrate to 11ty. Some parts that use a lot of js would be harder than others (theme selector for example).

2023-08-15 19:28:14

That Hardcover release is going well so far.
✅ Rails Updated
✅ API Updated (Hasura)
✅ Next.js 12 -> 13 with the App Router
✅ SQL like queries -> Algolia for search
✅ React providers for current user -> Redux
✅ Passing props -> Apollo Client's useFragment hook
✅ Migrations and counter columns updated
Still in progress:
⌛ Updating search index on Algolia (365k/650k books updated)
I'm working my way through bugs now, and will have an official release soon after bugfixes.
https://hardcover.app/books/the-way-of-kings?referrer_id=1

2023-08-14 20:37:37

We're finishing up the last few things before releasing a major update to Hardcover (hopefully tomorrow 🤞).
One of the things I absolutely wanted to get in was OpenGraph images for sharing reviews. I think these are looking 🔥
https://staging.hardcover.app/books/galatea/reviews/@adam?referrer_id=1
(side note: don't join this site. It's on staging).

2023-08-14 16:35:01

Yesterday I implemented the simplest data export on Hardcover: a button that makes a single GraphQL query to get all of the users data and outputs the result in a textarea.
It doesn’t use Rails, CSV or anything except Postgres, Hasura and the users browser.
Later on readers will want other exports in different formats I’m sure - CSVs, RSS feeds, json representations, maybe a Google Sheet sync - but for an MVP this will hopefully get people asking for what they want specifically.

2023-08-11 15:26:28

I spent a few hours e yesterday attempting to speed up Hardcover by changing FontAwesome to straight SVGs.
My hypothesis was that it would speed up performance - and it did! …some. Loading solid, duo and regular icons took 50ms each & some bandwidth. Not loading the library cut it down to just bw.
Unfortunately my Google Page Speed didn’t budge, and even went down 😭
I’m at 54 performance in mobile, 75 in desktop now. Next step to try is inlining critical CSS.
#JavaScript #css #WebDev
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/110/871/680/178/958/840/original/5babea3fa04df8bd.png
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/110/871/680/360/442/707/original/52818d83e067de99.png

2023-08-10 02:37:29

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@npub1uvh…8dl9 I can’t wait for software patents to get a legistative overhaul (once we have a tech-smart group). Have you heard of Nintendo using thier patents?

2023-08-04 14:36:08

One of the best data visualizations I’ve ever seen is The Histomap.
https://www.thehistomap.com
It condenses 4,000 years of history into a single poster.
I remember seeing it on the wall of a used bookstore when I was a kid. I spent an hour just staring at it - exploring each part in detail.
I’ve been thinking about making a “Social Media Histomap” detailing the rise and fall of social media over the last 30 years.
Anyone interested in working together on this?
#dataviz #creativecoding #sciart