Live-coding, Creating, Living

Give yourself the gift of creativity

We folks at Infinite Red are pretty darn good. I'd say we're one of the best React Native shops, if not the best in the world. But our strength comes from our willingness to grow, experiment, and communicate. Let me give you an example.

I was chatting with the epic Michael Chan from the React Podcast, and we laughed that we sometimes join meetings and then check our appearance. I'm guilty of fixing my hair quickly as soon as I see myself 😅 . Michael said that he knows someone who has an app that is basically a mirror. So they can check their appearance from their toolbar. SO SIMPLE!

But why buy an app? Can't we do this faster, cross-platform, and easily in a website? How long would it take to buy a domain, build a website, and deploy it for this EXACT need? As it turns out... less than 30 minutes of coding and 30 minutes to package and deploy. I live-coded the whole thing.

Fun right? If you don't watch the whole video, feel free to skim-through and get the basics of what's happening. It's pretty simple, but lots of fun! I've updated/upgraded the code since.

What did you update after this video was made?

If you watch the video you can see I have a mistake where the website selects the wrong camera. I've added a dropdown to the site that lets you pick your camera and the website remembers. For the most part, that's all!

How the hell do I share a screenshot of this site?

QuickMirror.me The site works great!

You can access the source and send awesome pull-requests here:
infinitered/quickmirrorme

OR, just try it out live! https://quickmirror.me/

So Gant, what's the lesson here? - You

We fell in love with Opens Source Software, because we code in public, we share our knowledge, we fail, we grow, and we build connections. I still love creating Open Source code, but I think it's time to evolve. This year the pandemic has demanded social distancing, but in effect, I feel distanced socially. I miss my fellow humans, and my Twitter feed is filled with those who miss me. So I think it's a good time to level-up sharing, caring, and coding.

Try to build your whims, ideas, and dreams. It's up to you to stream it, record it, or share it. The world needs more useless websites, neat ideas, and high-bandwidth videos. We can learn together. Let me know what you're building.

Gant Laborde is a co-owner and Chief Innovation Officer at Infinite Red, published author, adjunct professor, worldwide public speaker, and mad scientist in training. Tweet or visit him at a conference.

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