How is it going? I hope you have been well this week, that you are making good progress in the directions you wish to be making, and that you’re resolving the obstacles that come, one at a time.

You know, I find it incredibly funny to write these newsletters now.

There was a period of time when I was like a random-internet-stranger who was hell-bent on giving (dumping, actually) information onto you, hoping that you would buy something from me.

But today, I feel like a pen pal (or even a Grandpa) who’s concerned about you as a person, so I’m genuinely asking how you’re doing above instead of it being a trite greeting.

This feeling is similar to what I had when I first started writing and communicating through my newsletter - it’s warm, kind, and lovable. Something I sorely missed and I’m glad I’m starting to regain it again.

Moving on, I have one article and two news for you today.

A useful Svelte Pattern

I’ve just released an article that talks about a useful Svelte Pattern that I always use when creating client components with Astro.

It’s a pattern to break reactive statements (so you can use them even for DOM-related actions).

​Here’s the article​

I hope this information didn’t come too late since Svelte 5 seems to be around the corner now. (This is about Svelte 4, and this article had sat in the drafts for many months).

Hope you have fun with it!

Stripe + Astro Course

Unfortunately, there have not been enough preorders for this course, so I’m shutting it down and refunding everyone as we speak.

To those who have purchased the preorder: Thank you for investing in this resource. And thank you for your trust. It’s just unfortunate that I won’t be able to work on this product.

(That might be a good thing because I’m also severely overstretched with Splendid Labz at this point).

I might create another preorder for this course next year when I’ve gained back some momentum in my blogging (and, along with it, some credibility and stability). But no promises.

In the meantime, I’m happy to answer any questions you may have about Stripe and Astro — and how to integrate them.

Just let me know your questions through email or the Magical Dev School Community (which will become public to everyone later this year, hopefully!)

Splendid Labz

I’ve been sucked into Splendid Labz for the last couple of months — trying to write the perfect documentation resource for what I’ve created.

Here’s a sneak peek of the Splendid Labz Svelte library (that contains Svelte components built for Svelte and Astro).

I hope to be able to release this soon, but — like any of my writing projects — progress has been slower than what I love it to. Maybe I’m just not great at writing at a high speed.

Or perhaps (I’d like to believe) I’m putting more quality into the writing so you can read fewer words while getting more out of that experience.

The official v1 release (of the website) is around the corner — I just need to write the documentation for a couple more components and utilities and we should be good to launch.

Extra shoutout: Learn UI Design and Learn UX Design

It looks like Erik Kennedy (his Twitter profile) has opened up enrollments for his design courses this week. This includes:

• ​Learn UI Design​
• ​Learn UX Design​
• ​Landing Page Academy​

I’ve taken both Learn UI Design and Learn UX Design and I’ve benefitted a ton from them — they’ve helped me create better designs and interfaces over time. (Though I still don’t think I’m great yet!)

I did not take Landing Page Academy (which shows you how to create nice-looking landing pages that convert) but I have confidence in recommending it with what I’ve seen from Erik’s work so far.

In general, what you’ll get from Erik is:

• Theory on why things look good
• Tactics and strategies on how to create things that look good.
• Step-by-step instructions to get good at design — without needing a designer's eye

There’s an impressive list of testimonials from well-known people on Erik’s page as well, so don’t just take my word for it.

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Since I benefitted from these, I thought I’d recommend them to you too. (By the way, I do get a cut if you purchased any of Erik’s courses mentioned above).

That’s it from me this week!