Emails from sender «Aaron Francis».
Source: Readwise Reader export, ingested 2026-10-29. Entries: 70. Summaries are truncated from frontmatter summary; absent ⇒ omitted.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - July 17, 2026 — 2026-07-17
I have a friend who was an English major before he went to law school. One of his stories from college is about having to write endless pape…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - July 10, 2026 — 2026-07-10
I was talking to a friend this week, trying to convince her to get more active on Twitter, and one of the things I kept coming back to is ho…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - July 3, 2026 — 2026-07-03
Most people never do. They wait to be picked.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - June 19, 2026 — 2026-06-20
My usual method is to kinda noodle on the idea early, and then let the brain work on it for a while.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - June 12, 2026 — 2026-06-13
I don’t watch any sports regularly. The only exception to that is every four years I watch as close to 100% of the World Cup as I can.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - June 5, 2026 — 2026-06-05
So if you have forgotten who I am, this is Aaron Francis from Try Hard Studios. And first, I have to beg a thousand apologies for letting th…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - March 13, 2026 — 2026-03-13
I hope you’re all doing quite well. It’s been another week in the Token Factory over here, ripping Codex and Claude all day, every day, maki…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - March 6, 2026 — 2026-03-06
Hello, my friends. I am back from a whirlwind trip to Europe where I went to Laracon EU, and my podcast co-host and I threw a party the firs…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - February 27, 2026 — 2026-02-27
A couple of weeks ago, I launched a desktop application called Solo. The original intention for Solo was to be a marketing effort for faster…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - January 30, 2026 — 2026-01-31
My kids had Monday through Thursday off of school, which means I wasn’t able to get a lot of work done, but I was able to have a lot of fun.…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - January 23, 2026 — 2026-01-23
Life sped up a lot over Thanksgiving, and unfortunately it hasn’t slowed down yet. Last week I was in San Francisco, meeting with some peopl…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - January 9, 2026 — 2026-01-09
This newsletter is going to be a little different. I don’t have any tweets to share right now because I am behind on literally everything.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - December 12, 2025 — 2025-12-12
This week has been a roller coaster, but mostly a good one. I’ve been doing Advent of SQL this week, which you can find at DatabaseSchool.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - December 5, 2025 — 2025-12-05
Well, we did it folks. DatabaseSchool.
- Database School Launch 🎉 — 2025-11-24
Big news! If you haven’t heard, we’re launching Database School, a new platform dedicated to practical, developer-focused database education…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - November 21, 2025 — 2025-11-21
This week has been a massive push on Database School. I have been coding my brains out and it’s been a lot of fun.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - November 14, 2025 — 2025-11-14
Fantastic news! All of the introduction to Postgres videos are completely finished, I’m putting the final touches on the website, and we’ll…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - November 7, 2025 — 2025-11-07
I am almost done with The Intellectual Life. I have one chapter left!
- This week at Try Hard Studios - October 30, 2025 — 2025-10-31
This week I’ve been busy recording the Intro to Postgres course that we’ll be releasing in the next few weeks.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - October 24, 2025 — 2025-10-24
Last Friday (after I sent the newsletter) I released a twitter thread last week about the behind the scenes build out of the apartment studi…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - October 17, 2025 — 2025-10-17
It seems like the online / tech world is speeding up and getting sloppier and less real. Lots of AI generated junk, lots of brainrot.
- The next chapter of Database School — 2025-10-16
Over the past few years, Database School has just been a podcast.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - October 10, 2025 — 2025-10-10
I’ve stuck to my new routine all week! I’ve set up my Brick to automatically go into focus mode at 6am every morning.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - October 3, 2025 — 2025-10-03
I’ve been here since Wednesday afternoon, and weirdly, haven’t looked at Twitter once since I’ve been here. To be honest, I’ve done next to…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - September 26, 2025 — 2025-09-26
This morning, I’m giving a keynote (I’m on stage at 9:15 AM CT) at Commit Your Code Conference, here in Dallas, TX. You can watch the YouTub…
- The future of Database School — 2025-09-22
The first is a channel just for the Database School podcast. If you’re not aware, I’ve done about 20 interviews with database professionals…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - September 19, 2025 — 2025-09-19
I’m preparing for the upcoming launch of Database School as a learning platform for all things database, and this is part of it.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - September 5, 2025 — 2025-09-05
This week I’ve been working a ton on building out an in-browser playground for the upcoming launch of Database School. In the next month or…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - August 29, 2025 — 2025-08-29
I can’t say what the video was or who it was for quite yet, but I went to Boise and me and my old business partner, Steve, gathered a crew o…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - August 15, 2025 — 2025-08-15
Well not for me, but for my kids. Our two four-year-olds started pre-K4 this week, and so far they’ve been enjoying it quite a bit.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - August 8, 2025 — 2025-08-08
My goal for my talk was to set the tone of the conference: this is a kind and friendly community and we’re all happy that you’re here. I thi…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - July 25, 2025 — 2025-07-25
Next week is Laracon! I’m flying to Denver on Sunday to MC a conference for the Laravel community.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - July 18, 2025 — 2025-07-18
If you haven’t listened to this week’s Mostly Technical, there is a segment in there about how I am automating a lot of my life.
- Final hours to get Mastering Postgres 20% off — 2025-07-13
If you’ve been on the fence, now’s the moment to get confidence, speed, and sanity back in your database. 👉 Yes, I want in.
- Last day to get 20% off Mastering Postgres — 2025-07-13
- Heads up: Mastering Postgres discount ends tomorrow — 2025-07-12
One day left. The Mastering Postgres offer expires July 13 at 11:59 PM CT.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - July 11, 2025 — 2025-07-11
I hope it’s been a good week for you. This has been a complicated week for me, as you’ll see in my thoughts down below.
- What people are saying about Mastering Postgres — 2025-07-11
“Mastering Postgres is such a crisp way to learn this subject.
- Imagine if Postgres felt easy — 2025-07-10
What would you build if Postgres didn’t slow you down? If you actually understood what was happening under the hood?
- Slow queries always come due… — 2025-07-09
- You ship your app2.
- Postgres doesn’t have to feel confusing… — 2025-07-08
- The fastest way to feel confident with Postgres — 2025-07-07
Mastering Postgres distills what I’ve learned from years of building apps, debugging query plans, and helping folks level up with Postgres i…
- Learn the art of adding indexes — 2025-07-05
- This week at Try Hard Studios - July 4, 2025 — 2025-07-04
We will probably be just doing sparklers because my oldest kids are only four and I can’t imagine trying to do actual fireworks with them, b…
- Indexes: the part nobody warns you about — 2025-07-03
You can’t just stare at your tables and magically know where to add indexes.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - June 27, 2025 — 2025-06-27
If you didn’t catch the bombshell on this week’s Mostly Technical, Steve has decided to move on from Try Hard Studios. It’s a very amicable…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - June 20, 2025 — 2025-06-20
I hope you all have had a good week! Things are starting to move over here at Try Hard Studios.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - June 13, 2025 — 2025-06-13
This weekend is Father’s Day (at least here in the US) so I have been gifted a Saturday morning of freedom!
- This week at Try Hard Studios - June 6, 2025 — 2025-06-06
I received so much helpful and positive feedback from y’all here and from people on Twitter. I’m feeling very grateful for all the support a…
- Our launch was a failure. Try Hard Studios - May 30, 2025 — 2025-05-30
Not like, “Oh, this could maybe be spun as a win still. ” There’s no way to spin this as a win.
- The updated Screencasting.com is live! — 2025-05-27
We refreshed the How to Screencast course and added step-by-step editing courses for Premiere, Final Cut, DaVinci, and Screenflow.
- Something big I’ve been working on 🎥 — 2025-05-22
Next week, we’re re-launching Screencasting. com.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - May 16, 2025 — 2025-05-16
We’ve done affiliates in the past and each affiliate has sold like one or two courses. In that regard, it’s not even worth doing.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - May 9, 2025 — 2025-05-09
But, way more importantly and way more fun, I took my oldest daughter out to lunch.
- We switched to Stripe (and you get 25% off 🎉) — 2025-05-09
Big update over here—we just migrated our entire course platform to use Stripe for payments! This might not sound like a big deal, but trust…
- A couple of really good Postgres conversations — 2025-05-08
Postgres on Bare Metal with Prisma’s CEOI sat down with Søren Bramer Schmidt, CEO of Prisma, to talk about their move from a GraphQL backend…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - May 2, 2025 — 2025-05-02
I hope y’all have had a great week.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - April 25, 2025 — 2025-04-25
I hope y’all had a good week. I’m back in the office this week after React Miami last week.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - April 18, 2025 — 2025-04-18
This week has been a strange mix of endings and beginnings.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - April 4th 2025 — 2025-04-04
We’re trying to build the number one destination for people looking to level up their screencasting skills.
- I was a kid once too — 2025-03-31
Every now and then, something small happens that sticks with you. I had one of those moments last week — nothing big, but it made me pause.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - March 28, 2025 — 2025-03-28
I spent most of this week in Salt Lake City at Kent C. Dodds’ Epic Web Conference.
- Sneak peek: JSON from Mastering Postgres (full video) — 2025-03-27
For the next 48 hours, you’ll get free access to one of the videos from the full course—no strings attached.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - March 21, 2025 — 2025-03-21
If you didn’t catch this week’s Mostly Technical, it was with a guest named Jordan Gal.
- This week at Try Hard Studios - March 14, 2025 — 2025-03-14
This has been a very productive week at Try Hard Studios. I’ve recorded probably 30 to 40 videos as we’re prepping for the relaunch of scree…
- This week at Try Hard Studios - March 7, 2025 — 2025-03-07
As always, Steve was right (as usual), so here we are.
- A Postgres trick to simplify queries & clean up your schema — 2025-02-25
One of my favorite Postgres features—one that can clean up queries, simplify data access, and even help fix a messy schema—is generated colu…
- Thinking about Mastering Postgres? See what others are saying! — 2025-02-11
If you haven’t had a chance to dive into any of the free Mastering Postgres videos yet, I wanted to share a few thoughts from folks who’ve a…
- I built a way to seamlessly unite PHP with your frontend — 2025-02-04
I’ve been working on something that I’m beyond excited to finally share with you. It’s called Fusion, and it lets you seamlessly integrate P…
- Expanding the luck surface area in 2025 — 2025-01-24
One of the best ways to create opportunities is to share your work. It’s not magic—it’s about increasing your “Luck Surface Area.