Life after Automattic: Week 9
Last October, I took what's called an "alignment offer" - a severance package offered when an employee and company's values no longer align. With six months of runway, I decided to take a sabbatical to work on personal projects and explore what's next. If you're curious about the journey, check out parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.
This will be a quick one, since I've been putting way too much time in writing these updates 😄
📋 Lijsje
My social wishlist platform Lijsje.be (pronounced "lay-sha") kept me busy this week as our user base continues to grow. With Christmas approaching, I launched a major new feature: sublists. This lets you create one master list containing multiple smaller lists - perfect for managing different gift lists for various occasions or groups. Instead of sending out five separate wishlists, you can now manage everything in one place.
The sublist feature development led me to some unexpected technical improvements. While working through various challenges, I ended up rewriting significant portions of the views and logic. Everything now runs on Livewire Volt functional components now – a bit of technical debt paid off that should make future development smoother.
I've also been keeping an eye on what works well elsewhere in the wishlist space and added some quality-of-life improvements:
- Shopping links now display website favicons, making them more recognizable at a glance
- A new "lock" feature prevents items from being marked as purchased – especially useful for gift cards and similar items
The best surprise? Affiliate revenue is starting to pick up, which should make for an interesting conversation with my accountant!
🏁 Endgame
Endgame launched on Product Hunt on Tuesday, and ... it didn't do too well. I was already kind of expecting this, since Endgame probably isn't that well suited to the audience of Product Hunt.
I'm going to pause development on the project for a while so I can properly think about how (and if) to better market it.
🎨 PixooAlbumArt
I started a tiny new project. I have this Divoom Pixo64 pixel art display hanging on my wall. It's a 64x64 LED display, that's capable of showing short GIF animations and some very basic dashboards.
It's okay hardware, but the app to control it is so bad that I rarely use it.
Until I discovered you can "hack" it, and display whatever you want on it, without having to use the terrible app.
Some months ago, I wrote a Node.js script to update it with whatever I was playing on Apple Music.
Wouldn't it be nice to turn that into a menu bar app for macOS I wondered last week? I then spent way too much time in making it:
Compared to the script it adds some features:
- It can scan your network to find the Divoom device.
- It supports both Pixoo32 & 64.
- There's a slider to make it more/less pixelated.
- It works with whatever audio/video you have playing.
It still needs some work, I hope I can finish it before the New Year.
Misc
- I've switched second-brain app again. I started out on Notion, then moved to Obsidian, and I'm now trying out Craft 3. It's really beautiful and simple.
- I'm very much looking forward to playing the new Indiana Jones game tonight. The reviews are raving, it's created by top-notch MachineGames and well ... it's Indiana Jones.
- We started watching Say Nothing, a miniseries about The Troubles in Northern Ireland on Disney+. It's so good, I highly recommend it.
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