Conversations with My Night Brain

I explore the concept of a digital garden and its difference from traditional blogs. I discuss the abundance of digital tools and opportunities today, the overemphasis of AI in modern products, and the challenge of maintaining creative momentum. Lastly, I highlight the upcoming season of 'Slow Horses' on Apple TV+.

Here are this episode's 5 quick things:
  • 00:04 1) Building a digital garden
  • 00:50 2) Too many interesting things
  • 01:40 3) AI in All the Things
  • 02:24 4) Forcing 5 Quick Things
  • 02:49 5) Slow Horses Season 5
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Creators and Guests

Host
Chris
I try to get a good 2 - 8 hours of sleep per night. Sometimes I record a podcast instead.

What is Conversations with My Night Brain?

Talking with myself - or sometimes a guest - about the things that keep us up at night. New episodes released whenever there's something to talk about. As of 2025, this podcast is still under construction. I'm building the plane while flying. You've been warned.

welcome to Five Quick Things
for September 4th, 2025.

Number one, building a digital garden.

Every few months or years, I
stumble back to an article or post

mentioning someone's digital garden.

Digital Garden.

Being a home online for thoughts and
ideas, not unlike a blog, but more

in of a wiki style approach where
webpages are planted, grown, watered,

researched, weeded, sometimes composted,
but rarely ever finished or done.

Unlike a blog, which is a chronological
list of posts that you publish, and

outside of grammatical errors, it's
rarely updated once a post is published.

So I proceed to set up a, some sort
of digital garden of my own using a

tool that I find or people recommend.

Right now my garden is using
Notion, which I'm back on again,

sort of, and can be viewed at
Lemon Productions dot notion site.

But be warned, it's probably in need of
weeding by the time you're hearing this.

Number two, too many things riffing
off the digital garden thought.

There's just too many cool and interesting
things to try out and play with on

computers and on the web these days.

The barrier to entry for usage of so many
apps and websites is basically nothing.

Thanks to the overemphasis
on collecting users and data

and exchange for advertising.

Which makes all the
things easy to try out.

And right now, with even the cheapest
computer, I could create a new

website, record a song, add a new
podcast, start a new email newsletter,

live stream 4K video to the world.

Post my thoughts on any number
of social media platforms.

Record a video for YouTube.

Learn how to build a
pergola from a backyard.

Read Ted Lasso fan fiction,
create yet another digital garden.

Write an app with AI or not play
a video game, or three and a

thousand other options that I'm
not even aware of on the internet.

What I should do though is go edit up
a client's podcast or respond to email

since that actually makes me money to
put food on the table for my family.

Number three, I'm tired of
AI being in all the things.

Every product or service has to add
AI to their feature set in some way.

Even if in the past we'd just call
it automation or magic editing,

and yet I was able to use Claude AI
to make a rough idea for a podcast

including artwork in 20 minutes.

Not this one, something different.

And I won't actually use the artwork it
made or the exact descriptions, but it

was very helpful in helping my brain move
forward rather than just spin on itself.

In an ideal world, I'd have people around
me to bounce ideas like these off of

rather than typing at a computer, which
is why AI is also tremendously dangerous.

It's one thing to use it for ideas
and brainstorming, but when people,

and especially kids are using it
as their counselor friend or more,

it gets very scary very quickly.

Number four, forcing five quick things.

This is the trouble with these
kinds of projects that I start.

I have a rush of ideas for the first two
or three episodes and then stall out.

So now as I record this, I feel like I'm
forcing it because the original one or two

ideas, I started on this list for five.

Things are almost starting to get stale
and new thoughts haven't arrived yet.

So then I have to do meta
commentary on the idea itself,

which isn't very interesting.

Is it?

Number five Slow Horses.

Season five arrives on September 24th.

If you've never watched Slow Horses,
you really ought to, it's on Apple TV

plus, you'll have to subscribe to it.

It's got a phenomenal cast, really
well written, detective cops, bad guys,

good guys series based in England.

You've got 20 days to catch up on
the first four season, which is

easy enough to binge since it's in
perfect British television fashion.

There's only six episodes per season,
Kinda like watching two movies per season.

Plus Gary Oldman farting.

What more could you want?

Five Quick Things is a mini episode
of Conversations with My Night Brain.

I'm doing so that I can just put stuff
out into the world without having to

have it all figured out quite yet.

If you'd like to be on a full episode
of Conversations with My Night

Brain, please get in touch with me.

I'd love to chat with you.

And that was five Quick Things
for September 4th, 2025.

Thanks for listening or watching.