Hi! I'm Christian Genco. I'm the founder of Fileinbox, author of the Microconf Recap, and creator of several smaller projects.
I'm into minimalism and keep a list of everything I own. I vlog and write and take book notes to work on being a better human.
What I'm excited about right now (updated 2020-11-07)
More regularly publishing monthly review videos and posts, making Fileinbox serverless which will let me squash about two dozen bugs at once, publishing more episodes of the weekly makers.dev podcast with Chris Achard to keep me on track with Fileinbox goals, getting my wisdom teeth taken out, the new Apple Silicon MacBooks coming out on the 10th, reevaluating diet and exercise, taking Ali Abdaal's Part Time YouTuber course, and refreshing this website.
Contact info
- christian@gen.co
- facebook.com/cgenco
- twitter.com/cgenco
- github.com/christiangenco
- linkedin.com/in/cgenco
-
HN/christiangenco
Videos
Projects
- Fileinbox (previously called DBinbox): receive files from your clients to your Dropbox
- Your Thoughts Script Generator: a tool for more efficiently making and publishing episodes of my very serious daily podcast Your Thoughts.
- textbooks please: textbook search engine
- Export History: Chrome plugin to export your history
- Expense Tracker: simple graph of your expenses from an Airtable spreadsheet
- All the Music Player: browse every pop melody that has ever existed and ever will exist
- Pixel Art Creator: a simple programming IDE to draw pixel art
- Bonus Birthdays: Calculate your bonus birthdays, like when you turn 20,000 days old, or when you're the same age George Washington was when he became president.
- Dr. Dog: ask your Amazon Echo or Google Home if it's safe for your dog to eat certain foods
- Email Drafter: a markdown email editor that renders as plaintext and HTML
- DnDice: Dungeons and Dragons dice roller
- qgen: query generator for hunting for 30x500 audiences
- PastCam: iOS app to take "then and now" style pictures
- QR reader/writer: QR code reader that works offline, like on an air gapped computer
- Secrets: split up a secret into N pieces so you can recover it with any M of the pieces
- Mosaic Web Dev: a platform for hosting lessons that students can go through at their own pace
- HumanSort: sort a list based on whatever you want by comparing two things at a time
- Markdown to MLA and Markdown to APA: generate perfect MLA and APA documents from plain text markdown
- Timecard App: timecard calculator (a rewrite of my oldest useful program)
- Timer: a simple timer with alarm for teaching in poms
- Icon Dice: a ~900 sided dice with icons instead of numbers
- Clear Decoder: decode links from the Clear iOS list making app to markdown
- Profile Flags: add a country flag over your Facebook profile picture
- autorunner: command line tool to run a command when a file is saved
- t_time_tracker: simple command line time tracking
- Email Tip Bot: send/receive bitcoin through email. Shut down (and coins returned) in 2017.
Podcasts
- OK Productive 023: 3 Hat Productivity with Christian Genco2019-06-23
- The Business Design Podcast #10: "Many people dream of a job where they can travel all over the world while they work remotely. Christian Genco lives this dream."2018-01-16
- Hello TechPros #58: Get Perfect Memory and Always Know What to Do Next – Productivity Tuesday with Christian Genco2016-05-31
- RV Entrepreneur Podcast #0011: How Christian & Elisa Genco Plan to Retire by 30 Years Old2016-04-07
Book Notes
- Just Fucking Ship 2018-09-24
- 12 Rules for Life 2018-08-27
- How to Win Friends and Influence People 2018-08-09
- Relationships 2017-10-25
- Food Rules - An Eater's Manual 2016-06-22
Posts
- Octoberish, 2020: VR, makers.dev, social responsibility, active listening, and channeling surgery anxiety
- Improving Surgery Discharge Instructions: My doctor gave me terrible and confusing instructions that I didn't understand, so I rewrote them.
- Septemberish, 2020: Updates on adventures, projects, productivity, making friends and dating, and my goals for next month.
- Augustish, 2020: Augustish update: Genco.School, Clips.Marketing, Magic, Flying, Harry Potter, and Dating
- 2019 Review: My 2019 year in review
- 2018 Review: My 2018 year in review
- Big Five Aspects Personality Scale: My results from a really interesting personality test that doesn’t pretend to sort people into n-categories.
- World Domination Summit 2018 Notes: I was really disappointed with the 2018 World Domination Summit speakers.
- 2017 Review: My 2017 year in review
- 2018: Goal tracking for 2018
- Magic Pill: If you had a magic pill that would let you live the life of your dreams, what would your life look like?
- Gmail Log: Track how well you do email
- Your Number: How much money is enough?
- Introducing Timecard App: a rewrite of my oldest useful program
- Microconf 2016 Notes: my notes from the 2016 microconf
- MCT oil vs. Coconut Oil for Ketogenic Diets: Notes on which fats are better for the ketogenic diet
- $100 3D Printed Engagement Ring: How to make a beautiful custom wedding ring for barely more than the cost of the metal.
- MacBook Developer Setup: My old software productivity setup
- Go to college for free: How to get a fantastic college education for exactly 0 dollars.
- The Remote Control Person: A design for a remote control you can use on people
- The Walkie Sockie: An Arduino project for a walkie talkie you use with your feet
- The Conversation Monitor: College project to measure how much each person In a group speaks
- Redesign the Wallet: My personal design process that led to a novel wallet prototype
- You Should Learn to Program: Why? It makes you smarter, computers are improving faster than you are, and - if you're like me - you want to maximize your laziness.
- Musical Eating: A useless talent made possible by the MaKey MaKey.
- Human Centered Design at SMU: A review of my favorite class at SMU
- Virtual Shadow Dance: A Microsoft Kinect project to manipulate your shadow
- TI Innovation Competition: A winning hackathon idea for a nightstand projector
- Walk on the Grass: A piece I wrote for my undergraduate newspaper
Blog Recommendations
If you like the stuff on my blog, you'll probably like the stuff on these other blogs too. In no particular order:
- Patrick Collison: thoughts, advice, and recommendations from the co-founder of Stripe. I especially like his questions. This dude knows how to think.
- Paul Graham's Essays: founder of Y Combinator and Hacker News.
- Better Explained: intuitive explanations of math concepts that schools sucks at teaching.
- Mr. Money Mustache: learn how to earn enough money to retire within 10 years without winning the lottery.
- More To That: don't be fooled by the entertaining colorful illustrations—this shit gets deep.
- Patio11's blog: founder of Bingo Card Creator and a superstar in the Microconf community. Patrick is the reason I'm currently running my own company. He taught me how to make money on the internet, and teaches people every day to Charge More™️.
- Wait But Why: mathy big-picture cartoons about life and technology. He has a great series on Elon Musk. I especially love Your Life in Weeks.
- xkcd: hilarious and clever comics about science, math, and life. Chances are there's a relevant xkcd for your last conversation.
- Gwern: I imagine this blog is what it would look like to pry open a rigorous scientist's brain and see how they've optimized their life. I love his approach to optimizing sleep. He calculates the freakin' p-values for how correlated taking melatonin is to his sleep quality and randomly A/B tested two different mattresses. Who does that?!
- Derek Sivers: founder of CDBaby.com and one of the few humans I feel like has life figured out. His articles are short and sweet. I especially like Hell Yeah or no.
- Guzey: Another Gwern-like blog. I like his article on productivity.