Hey, friend!

For starters: I'm writing you from a different email provider!


I discovered my former provider, CampaignMonitor, had disabled my signup form months ago without telling me. Whoops. So, I've moved over to friend-of-the-Laravel-world Bento, and so far it's been a great experience!


On to the content.


Remember that project I mentioned I was building for the last few months? My top secret ambitious puzzle that's also a watch party?


Well, it's alive! And you can use it right now!


https://voxacon.laravel.cloud/


I'm calling it Voxacon: a Voxel world for Laracon. If you're not familiar, voxels really just means Minecraft-shaped.


I wrote a whole big article on the Tighten blog about what it is and what it was like to build it, and I'll get into even more detail during my talk at Laracon US next week.


I'm so proud of this project, y'all. I spent months working on this, frequently convinced I was totally crazy and no one would care about this at all. But the response has been everything I could've hoped for! I threw my heart into building this, I tried several new programming practices and tools, and I kept iterating and improving on it over and over and over.. and now it's in the hands of the general public, and they love it, and this is just such an incredible feeling. It feels so good to ship.


So that's it for this month. I hope you check out Voxacon, or my blog post about it. It's a Laracon watch party, sure, but it's also a suite of really fun puzzles that anyone can check out. They're more like video games than puzzles, honestly--think mazes and escape rooms, not coding puzzles.


Next week I'll have Tighten's onsite, the utter insanity of LaraProm and Laracon, then we rush back home to celebrate one of my children's birthdays before the kids go back to school the first week of August. Then it's school, and soccer practice, and Laracon AU prep! Phew. Sounds intense, but I think it'll still be a bit more peaceful than this summer was. So.. maybe I'll write a bit more then.


Until then, if you want more Matt content, please do check out the links below. I'm still going strong with the podcasts! And on social media!


What Else?


Laravel Podcast

Tighten Blog

Matt Stauffer YouTube

Pragmatic AI Podcast


Popular Tweets

  • Y'all I've been working on this year's Tighten Laracon Puzzle for actual months at this point We have backrooms We have an escape room There's a freaking labyrinth, there's parkour We got DIY puzzle making This thing is nuts. I definitely have gone overboard. (Tweet)

  • Yah we watched almost the entire World Cup on Telemundo via Peacock. I don’t understand what they’re saying but hell I hardly understand what the English people are talking about, but the Spanish announcers have so much better energy. (Quote Tweet)

  • This was one of the first time my friends or family outside of tech shared something with me and I went, wait, my friend made that (Quote Tweet)

  • About to wrap up the current seasons of both @LaravelPodcast and @pragmaticaifm and I already have big plans for next season of each. I love that seasonal podcasts give me space to keep adapting! (Tweet)

  • AI loves to talk about "the belt and suspenders" approach; it feels like they just made it up. Just watched a home improvement video where a guy used that same phrase! But I can't figure out: Is that something outside code say normally? or.. Did that guy script his video w/AI? (Tweet)

  • MCP may the future for un-silo-ing the Internet. I spent the weekend integrating Claude Cowork, Granola, my personal CRM, Notion, Todoist, and some custom helper apps. And... the magic that made it work? MCP. I was skeptical that its Just Another API Format, but it's amazing. (Tweet)

  • It's heeeeere!! Three months of work has led to this: Introducing Voxacon! A multiplayer 3D virtual Laracon watch party, together with @TightenCo's annual puzzle (with prizes!) Check out a writeup and a quick video preview: (Tweet)

That's it for now!


Until next time...


Your friend,
Matt Stauffer