What I'm Doing (March 2017)

I'm back in Perth, Australia, and investing my time into:

Making & selling software products
Exercising
Learning German & Swedish
Tracking conferences for Indie Conference
Reading

What I'm Working On

I'm feeling way more enthusiastic about product development than I have in ages. My several projects in beta for namesuppressed:
- Softener 2.20 (64-bit) is nearly ready for release. I've spent a couple of months improving the installer and rewriting the 64-bit version to fix lots of small bugs. The code is done, just working on marketing / release planning now.
- DashPlan, my planning & project scoping app for solo software developers is in early alpha testing. It's inspired by Joel Spolsky's Painless Software Schedules essay. There's a Mac update and now a Windows version too. (I have a Linux prototype as well.)
- My Plaid Lite Photoshop plugin for macOS is still in private beta.
- My macOS Photoshop plugin framework is at minimal viable product status. It works. Want to port FilterMeister Photoshop plugins from Windows to macOS with almost zero code changes? I'll be able to help you with that really soon.
Secret exercise project! After a 4 month hiatus, I'm back with a new approach. I did a 30-day experiment in breaking all the rules, and it's worked so well that I'm still going at 60 days. (Spoiler: walking works, even on a 100% junk food diet & 500 calorie Starbucks drinks every day. My Pebble Time Steel is one of my best ever tech purchases....)
Learning German. I've completed the German Duolingo tree, reached Level 25 and 50% fluency (the Duolingo maximums). I still struggle with writing & conversation though, so I'll need to try something new soon, maybe iTalki lessons. In the meantime, I've started learning Swedish at Duolingo as well.
Tracking the tech & creative conferences monthly at Indie Conference. I'm behind schedule on this, while I research conference videos to feature in the newsletter throughout 2017.
Reading. I read Create Or Hate, Turning Pro and Do The Work a while ago. Next on my list is Zero To One by Peter Thiel, and I've been re-reading How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy) a lot. The "systems vs goals" section of that book is just brilliant.

Things I'm Not Doing

Eurovision: I'm not doing ESC work at the moment. For Eurovision interviews with an Australian perspective, I highly recommend Jasmin Bear from Eurovision By Jaz and ESC Insight, or Renee Pozzi (@rpoz on Twitter), founder of ESC Daily.

Facebook and Instagram: I've deactivated my accounts and have no plans to return. (I've been off Facebook over a year now.) LinkedIn might be next to go. You can still reach me on Twitter and email.

Starfighter / Stockfighter: This was a programming talent/hiring startup that ran stock market challenges. I'm proud of how I scored on their coding challenges, I was in the top 1% - 3% of programmers on several challenge levels and in the top 250 overall (out of about 50,000 total players, 10,000 active). But Starfighter have ceased operations. At least I learned some Go coding along the way & renewed confidence in my skills.

When my activities or priorities change, I'll update this page.

Recent Listening List

Melodifestivalen! It's national finals season for Eurovision, and I am shocked that Loreen didn't make the Swedish final, with maybe the greatest performance in Eurovision history. I literally had Statements on repeat for days afterwards.

Meanwhile my friend Lina Sandén just released After You, her song for the Romanian Eurovision national selection. And my exercise playlist is otherwise almost 100% German metal.

Statements by Loreen
Ich Will by Rammstein
Wir Sind Die Gipfelsturmer by Unheilig
Mein Schatz by Oomph!
Verrückt by Eisbrecher
After You by Lina Sandén

This page was inspired by Derek Sivers' Now page idea.

Last Updated: 8 March 2017.
Links Updated: 31 March 2024.