Let's Buy Some Shit
I’m laying it all out: what I use, why I link to it, and how I plan to make a buck without selling out—because if we’re being honest, we’re all buying some shit.
I buy a lot of shit. I don't have a shopping addiction, I just happen to buy a lot of shit. I'm going to start telling you about the shit I buy.
I'm not going to tell you to buy the shit I've bought, but I am going to tell you why I bought the shit, and maybe, you'll buy that same shit.
If you buy the shit that I buy, I might get paid. That's the point of this practice. I want to get paid for telling you about the shit that I buy.
There's a lofty phrase used by the people in the "tell people about the shit you've bought or haven't bought" industry, they call it "affiliate marketing", and, my god, it's a terrible name.
There's no trust in "affiliate marketing". The phrase, let's be honest, engenders the side eye. If you told me that you were an affiliate marketer, I'd laugh in your face.
The only job title worse than affiliate marketer? Influencer.
What's the difference? An affiliate marketer is an influencer without influence.
That's me. I don't have any influence, and honestly, I don't want to have any influence over other people. I just want to tell people about shit that I like.
I'm also, gulp, going to tell people about shit that I don't like, but it's evident that there's no money in telling people about shit I don't like.
What, then, is the reason to tell people about shit I don't like? It builds trust.
If I don't have the loyalty and trust of people who want to buy shit, then I'm shit.
Download App Store Icons
Discover how I leveraged iPadOS Shortcuts and ChatGPT to create a tool that fetches App Store icons, enhancing organization in Contacts and 1Password.
I've created a shortcut using the iPadOS Shortcuts app, and I'm so damned proud of myself. Shortcuts is ridiculously finicky. In reality, it needs a lot of work.
I'll be honest, I didn't create the shortcut. I stole the shortcut from RoutineHub and cleaned it up using ChatGPT, but wow, I had to learn that I don't understand Shortcuts before I decided to steal an existing shortcut.
I've been trying to learn Shortcuts for years. When I was a kid, I'd type BASIC programs into my Radio Shack TRS-80 in an effort to get some simple program to run, but I'd always make a mistake and have to parse through thousands of characters before giving up.
ChatGPT has been a game changer. I fed it screenshots of my stolen shortcut, and it did a great job of answering my questions with solid advice. I feel as though I'm ready to take on the world of productivity with the newly found power of artificial intelligence.
My shortcut doesn't do much. It grabs app icons from the App Store and saves them to either iCloud or the Photos app. In reality, I add those icons to my Contacts app, which allows me to easily visually identify emails in my Mail app from companies with which I do business.
I also add those icons to all types of items within my 1Password app.
I've added the shortcut to RoutineHub as Download App Store Icons (Clean Version), which makes me feel like a big shot.
If you'd like to download the shortcut directly, without feeling like a big shot, I've created an iCloud link directly to the shortcut.
If you find the shortcut useful, let me know.