I code, therefore I am... a software engineer.

Jonathan Franzone

How to Focus for 12+ Hours a Day Like a Millionaire

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In a world buzzing with distractions—notifications, social feeds, pings, podcasts, and a constant carousel of content—focus is a dying art. But it is also one of the most profitable skills you can master.

Charlie Morgan, a young entrepreneur who built a multi-million dollar business by age 25, argues that your ability to sit down and work deeply, uninterrupted, for 10 to 14 hours a day, is the most overlooked leverage point in modern success. Not because working longer hours is the answer, but because most people never learn how to actually focus.

If you can master this, he says, you gain an asymmetric advantage in life and business. Why? Because no one else can.

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Overview of the Quantum Financial System (QFS)

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The Quantum Financial System (QFS) is a proposed next-generation financial framework that combines advanced technologies (notably quantum computing) with financial networks. It is often described as a theoretical or futuristic system aimed at addressing flaws in the current banking infrastructure. According to various proponents, QFS could potentially rival or replace existing international payment networks (like SWIFT) and eliminate issues such as corruption, fraud, and inefficiencies in the global financial system 1 2. Importantly, QFS is largely speculative – there is no publicly proven implementation of such a system to date, and experts note that it remains more of a concept or “conspiracy theory” than a reality 1. Below is a general overview of QFS, its purpose and technology, its possible impact on global finance, and its speculated relationship to the cryptocurrency XRP.

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Footnotes
  1. (What Is Quantum Financial System? | CoinCodex) [↩][↩]
  2. (All set for a quantum financial system? – 11Onze) [↩]

The Art of Communication: Why I Sent a Shakespearean Email for a Software Release

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In the world of software development, effective communication is just as crucial as well-written code. A poorly worded email can cause unnecessary friction, delay a release, or create misunderstandings that ripple across an entire project. That’s why, when it came time to send a routine request to stage a web services deployment, I decided to take an unconventional approach—I sent it in Shakespearean English.

Why?

Because I knew my audience.

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Zero to WordPress Plugin: AI-Powered Coding with Grok3

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Today, I want to walk you through a cool project I recently tackled: creating a custom WordPress plugin for my WritingOnCaffeine podcast. With the help of xAI’s Grok, I went from zero code to a fully functional plugin in a matter of hours—most of the code generated in minutes! But, as with any project, the real time was spent fine-tuning the details. Here’s how it all came together, step by step.

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Master the Zettelkasten Method in Evernote: A Step-by-Step Guide for Organized Note-Taking

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What is the Zettelkasten Method? Imagine having a personal knowledge network at your fingertips, where every idea, insight, and discovery is perfectly linked, allowing you to easily navigate through a labyrinth of thoughts with the click of a button. That’s the power of the Zettelkasten method—a revolutionary approach to note-taking that has transformed the way …

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The Art of Writing Beautiful Programming Code

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In the vast landscape of art and design, beauty often dwells in the intersection of form and function. Philosophers and artists alike have long debated the definition of beauty, with many concluding that it’s an amalgamation of unity, proportion, and harmony. But can this classical definition of beauty be applied to the more structured and logical domain of programming? The answer is a resounding ‘yes’.

In programming, “beauty” transcends mere aesthetics. It encompasses the clarity of expression, the simplicity of design, and the elegance of solutions. When code is beautiful, it not only works flawlessly but also communicates its intent clearly to its readers. This duality of purpose—to serve both machines and humans—is what elevates programming to an art. Beautiful code is that which is efficient in execution yet remains accessible and maintainable for fellow developers.

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What is Information? And What are ITs Metaphysical Consequences?

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“The I.T. Crowd” is a British sitcom that revolves around the comedic escapades of the socially awkward IT department located in the basement of Reynholm Industries. The series follows the misadventures of tech geeks Moss and Roy, and their computer-illiterate manager, Jen, as they navigate both the technical and social challenges of their daily lives.

In Season 3 Episode 3 (Tramps Like Us), Jen interviews for a new job at another company. During the interview she is asked the meaning of “I.T.” She has no answer so she excuses herself to the “loo” in order to call Moss or Roy for the answer. The following conversation ensues.

Jen: [On the phone] What does IT mean?
Moss: What?
Jen: IT. What does it mean? Someone just asked me.
Moss: You don’t know what it means?
Jen: No, I never thought to ask.
Moss: This must be Jen!

The answer to the question, of course, is “information technology.” That raises an even more interesting question.

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How to Deploy Web Applications to IIS Using Powershell

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NASA Shuttle Takeoff w/ Powershell Icon

My development team utilizes the old school zip-and-deploy method for building, packaging, and deploying web applications. Our typical web application runs on the Microsoft .NET Framework on a Windows server running IIS (Internet Information Services).

Our deployment strategy going to production servers is much more complex and involves an IT operations team. However, for our test and development servers, we have liberty on how we deploy. I was formerly pushing across all of the files in the build to the webserver from our build server. As the number of files in our web applications has grown, this became quite time-consuming. I needed a way to push over a ZIP archive of the web application, which we are already building, and then deploy it on the webserver.

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How to Prevent Data Loss in the Subversion Cleanup Cycle

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Subversion is an open source version control system. It uses local directories and files as metadata in order to keep track of synchronizing your local copy of a project with the copy that is on the Subversion server. Sometimes these local files get “hosed” (that’s a technical term meaning really messed up). This is usually because there was a connection issue that occurred during the time that you were performing an SVN action with the server.

In such cases, the software will inform you that something went wrong and that you need to perform the Cleanup action. And in some cases, this Cleanup action also fails, leaving you with a project that can no longer commit code changes back to the server. What to do?

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