Week 4: gaining speed

So here it is, another week down and another week in review post!

Thankfully, the past week has been far more engaging and active than many of those that preceded it. I got caught up in the whole Ireland SOPA/ACTA debate and wrote a letter which I sent to countless representatives. In retrospect, I feel that letter says a awful lot about how I feel about the way that the Internet benefits our modern lives and promotes culture, artistic expression and even entrepreneurism. Without any of which, we would be a much poorer nation. I'm not sure what impact, if any it had, especially considering the mostly form letter replies I received it response, but that is the way of things I suppose.

I attended two events recently: Dublin Unity3D Development Discussion and the Effective Fundraising Seminar. Ironically enough, they both took place near or at Tog and only a day apart from each other. The Fundraising seminar was particularly insightful, not least because I was the youngest person there by decent a margin. 

I left out that last week I purchased a Macbook Air to bring to these events, conferences and the like. iPads, I find are just too unwieldy for the task of accurate and quick note taking, particularly when what you want to transpose is the exact verbiage of the speaker and there's no hope of me doing that with paper and pen.

So I began using Evernote as my note taking implement of choice and it seems to be working quite well for me. In the past I have had notes summarily deleted or corrupted due to Evernote's synching so I'm still backing up my notes elsewhere until I feel like I can trust Evernote. In the meantime, however I am very much liking it for taking notes. I was able to very quickly take down points of interest from both events, which I think would've been impossible with a notepad and really difficult with an iPad, certainly given the speed at which people spoke.

The text editing leaves something to be desired, you cant edit line spacing and there are some weird bugs if you copy/paste blocks of text from other programs, but apart from that it's doing the job splendidly.

By the way, a Macbook Air 13" does in fact fit inside the iPad pocket of a Scottevest jacket. The zip wont close, but it's better than carrying a bag sometimes.

I also did a bit of investigating of one of the business ideas that's been floating around. Still waiting for a call back from the supplier(s) for that, but nothing really to say about it just yet. I've been working through some other ideas also and have recently come to something that I may be settling on, we'll see. Nothing I want to talk about publicly yet, but its a good sign.

Not much else to report other than that. My printer is playing up, I'm still working on the iOS/Web App from last year despite all efforts to complete that project with haste. 

Ireland's internet censorship

In response to this, "Ireland's SOPA",  I will be sending my representatives the following letter:

Dear duly elected representative of the peoples of Ireland,

I write to you today to call your attention to a matter of great importance and urgency to our nation. Before the months end, Minister of State for Research and Innovation Seán Sherlock is to publish an “order” which is understood to allow copyright holders to demand the censorship of Irish citizens access an open and democratic Internet.

The Internet represents the single most important economic, social, and cultural communications tool since mankind spake his first words. The Internet’s ability to promote the free exchange of artistic expression and encourage the discussion of revolutionary ideas such as democracy makes it to the modern world, what roads were to the Romans. The Internet is the road upon which we and our children and our children’s children will prosper. Any attempt at limiting its efficacy, at censoring the free exchange of ideas and expression should be considered an attack on our liberties and our future prosperity, I hope you’ll agree. Whether you recognise it or not, your constituents certainly do and I am in no doubt that they will make you aware of this fact in the coming days.

The Internet, spurred on by the incredible wealth of human talent on the Island of Ireland, promotes and takes an active role in the development of technologies of global significance. Its potential positive impact on our Island has yet to be fully realised; we are only now beginning to reap the rewards of our earlier labours of investing in resilient and wide spread broadband to the nation and other investments. 

Yahoo!, Twitter, Facebook, Google, AOL, FourSquare, LinkedIn, PayPal, Zynga, and many more US based companies came out to protest against similar legislation in their country (SOPA/PIPA) which aimed at addressing copyright holders concerns, by censoring the Internet. These companies and those much like them are the future lifeblood of Ireland’s knowledge economy. To believe we can summarily enact legislation that will censor the Internet and not severely detriment our economy and our democratic rights is foolhardy to say the least.

The means by which this legislation is proposed to work will not achieve its intended result of protecting the rights of copyright holders. Infringing sites will still be accessible by even the most minimally technologically literate persons. This legislation serves only to erode our rights and discourage international investment.

If we continue to let our rights be eroded at the whims of corporations, which place pressure on our leaders to create legislation that chips away at our ability to freely express ourselves, we will fade into insignificance on the world stage and we will have squandered the enormous potential that we, as a nation striving for a knowledge economy, have worked so hard to achieve. 

On the 11th of January, The European Commission recognised that the Internet “has enormous potential for boosting growth and creating jobs.” and that 20-25% of new jobs could come from growth in this area. Growth which will not be possible if the policies in place are more harmful than they are productive.

I ask, with all due respect, please do not let this legislation pass.

Week 3: Slow progress

The past week in review:

• Again, I am being hampered by outside activities that are distracting me from what I want to focus on. I am nearing the end of the early stages of an App I began working on last year and have put that as the main focus recently to ensure that I can get it completed and out of the way while I focus on new things.
• I bought a two week window of advertising on a podcast.
• I spent 4 days, or rather wasted 4 days banging my head against a virtual brick wall trying to fix iOS developer signature failures. Turns out Apple's provisioning portal was generating broken developer certificates. They eventually fixed it, but not after a lot of needless hair pulling and frustration.
• Started working with Parse and TestFlight betas.
• Discovered that my Mac Pro is on the brink of death, it's hard drive is on the verge of a complete meltdown. It literally takes 40-50 minutes to just boot up. So I'm going to have to replace it.
• Today I bought an iPhone 3G for development purposes. There aren't many users on older devices, but I think it warrants a small investment to buy a device to test on so as to avoid problems in the future. I am predicting the 3Gs will soon become the "lowest common denominator" on the iOS platform within the next year or so.
• I haven't made a dent in "The Lean Startup", being too pre-occupied. I will have to rectify that soon.
• I ordered more stationary from Viking Direct, it arrived fairly quickly so I'm already using it to take notes on. I will have to start getting used to the idea of always having a notepad on me. 

For the future:

• The new goal is to begin working on something substantial by 1st of February. In practice this means no more other projects or apps, but to dedicate my time to narrowing down ideas. I have a big stack in the filing cabinet that need to be sorted through.
• I am considering very seriously applying to incubators like the NDRC, DIT HotHouse etc. so will be investigating those opportunities in coming days and weeks.
• I am considering some supplemental education, perhaps some business/payroll type courses.

Week 2: a brief update and a view to planning

This past week was not very different from the last. It consisted mostly of:

• More organising, cleaning up and de-cluttering of the office. Donated a fair bit of our unnecessary items to St. Vincent de Paul this evening. It'll get rid of the clutter and maybe help in a small way.
• I have a plant spectra experiment I'm working on (more details to come) and have put it in it's own little room away from my work area.
• Organise bookmarks, folders & files and did a general clean-up of computer related stuff.
• Added a lot of tech events to my Google Calendar. I have little intention of attending them all, but I think in the coming year I should really be more present in local tech meetups.
• Did some preliminary research on advertising opportunities, mobile development platforms etc.
• Working on the last reminents of an app that has overflowed into this year, but I hope to finish soon. I know I keep saying it, but I mean it!
• Unsuccessful attempts to get my sleep habbit back on track. Its currently fixated at 6am-2pm, which is taking it's toll. This is becoming a priority for me as I honestly think its starting to wear me a bit thin, sleeping during the day and being awake during the night is no way to live.

Although I'm coming around to the fact that daily updates aren't necessary and are perhaps more of a distraction than warranted, I feel guilty for not updating this blog with something a little more substantial so I have pasted below a reply I gave on Reddit to a post to /r/gamedev asking about how other independant game developers plan themselves. I believe it gives an accurate account of my current approach to life as a one man startup.

Q. Every indie developer's dream: making it big and securing your position as an indie dev. What's your plan?

A. I am working on building up a business myself, starting from the 1st of this year I've been blogging about the process of getting started being an "one man startup".

Game development for me is just one of many possible roads which may bear fruit, I will also be working on a Web App and some more utilitarian mobile apps.

I suppose my "road plan" is exclusively not to tie myself down by notions of there being one best way. Experimenting with what works and what does not will be a crucial element of how I do business. I will be designing all the games I work on in Unity specifically because it broadens the potential customer base enormously (no platform dependance) and spreads the risk dramatically. When you are the sole person working on this kind of thing, reducing risk is an incredibly important factor.

One thing I have started doing that I could not recommend more highly is to accept that you never stop needing to learn. As much as possible, read all the advice you can, buy or loan books on entrepreneurism and business management (I am currently reading "The Lean Startup" by Eric Reiss). Never for once think to yourself that you know everything and take every opportunity as a potential to learn.

Arrogance is something that I've found is apparent throughout the software industry, it's an easy trap to fall into, thinking that because you know one thing that you know more than anyone else. I must admit I fall into it a fair bit, but I remind myself that humility is a much more important requirement to success than the drive one gets from thinking they know it all. because when you start thinking like that, you start blocking out the possibility of learning something vitally important.

My final little bit of advice is that if you really want to do this, if you want to see success, you must work hard and treat it like a serious occupation. I wasted a year by not taking it too seriously, I took on odd jobs and contracts that distracted me from what I really wanted to do. If what you really want to do with your life is be your own boss, don't do as I did and go for job interviews when you know deep down you'll never be satisfied until you are your own boss.

It's still early days for me too, but these are the things I try to keep in mind, always:

• Don't tie yourself down to one idea, process, or technology, it's all a means to an end. There is no one best way.

• Experiment with what works and what does not. Try to analyze and understand your successes and failures.

• Reduce risk wherever you can.

• Learn all you can, all the time. Never stop learning.

• Arrogance can be a driver and a motivator but humility is a much more important attribute.

• Make time for fun. It can be a hard slog working for yourself, so it's more important than ever to make time for you to chill out, relax. Try not to get too stressed out.

Week 1: A brief overview

I just want to spell out a couple of things that happened in the first week of this year long journey both for posterity and perhaps for suggestions for improvement.

The first few days went along just as I had expected it, I got a decent amount done and began to read like I had intended. Come day 4 or so, that pretty much ended to varying degrees. 

I had to replace my bed, which for the longest time has had it's springs digging into me as I sleep. I had learned in the past year or so to become somewhat accustomed to the idea that I had to sleep in the exact center of the bed and not move a bit, or else I'll get something poking me or I'd dislodge a spring and I'd hear that lovely sound... SPERUNGGGGGUNGUNGGG. 

So that ate up an entire day just purchasing the bed and then another day waiting for it to be delivered and then constructing it.

I could have or I should have rather been able to make a little more productive use of my time but I've also been feeling extraordinarily lethargic and tired lately. One of the personal goals I had set myself was to try if at all possible to completely cut out certain kinds of food, namely a small addiction I call Coca Cola and sugar.

There has always been something in Coke that was extra addictive for me, I don't know what it is. What's worse is I know the more I drink of it, the worse I feel. So I decided to give it up, once and for all. Unfortunately as time has shown over and over again in the past, every time I do so, I have to go through a withdrawal process which ranges from severe headaches/migranes and sinus blockage to lethargy and muscle aches. 

I know that it's definitely a combination of things at work: caffeine, sugar and whatever special ingredient in Coke that makes me yearn for it specifically. Whatever the case though, it plays a certain toll on the body and mind for about two weeks all in all on average if past experience is anything to go by. So I've been suffering, if you can even call it that, from sugar and Coke withdrawl symptoms for the past week.

I haven't made as much progress on setting up the home office, but I have managed to take away almost all of the toys and distractions. There is now no TV, Playstation 3 or cable tv. I will be keeping an Xbox 360 there however on the off-chance that I decide that Xbox development is a worthwhile pursuit.

I'm honestly not sure if I will though, everything I know of Xbox development says that the indie store is utterly pointless from a business perspective and that the Xbox Live Arcade application process is incredibly long, requiring fairly high production values.

I also haven't kept up my promise to stay off Reddit or other time sinks quite as much as I had hoped. I had blocked them all by router without realising that other people may in fact want to use them while I'm working, so I am going to have to find some sort of middle ground approach which literally bars myself (and only myself) from these sites until I'm used to it.

I am still working on an app with someone else from last year, which I had sincerely hoped to have been wrapped up as early as mid to late December but in any case, I hope to have that completed and sorted very soon so I can begin to focus on other projects.

On the positive side however, I have started planning for advertising for future apps. I will be purchasing a block of advertising from a very well known podcaster for approximately 2 weeks worth of sponsorship. It's early days of course, so I could see why some would consider this a premature action. However I feel pretty confident that if I haven't built something worth advertising within the next few months, the failure will be greater than the cost of a few hundred Euros worth of advertising budget. Besides which, I'm of the type that prefers to plan things well in advance, so I will be working on an online advertising plan to get the word out.

Overall I'd say last week was neither a success nor entirely a failure but definitely a damp squib.

Book 1: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.

Kicking off this book tour of sorts is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. A book, I expect, about and codifying the growing trend of leaner, smarter and perhaps more importantly, agile startups.

I recall waiting patiently for this book to finally be available on Amazon's UK website, even going so far as watching (or at least beginning to) a live stream event at The NDRC while Barack Obama was visiting Ireland. The live streamed event turned out (to my estimation at least) to be little more than a thinly veneered advertisement for this book, at no fault of The NDRC, but leaving early I felt tricked and certainly not inspired.

In any case, the book ended up unceremoniously on my to-do pile along with the rest, so time to find out if it was worth the wait.

I hope to keep this blog somewhat regularly updated on how I feel about these books as I go through them, perhaps one or two updates per book would suffice, maybe a summary of my opinion at the end also, I'm not sure just yet. I do plan on taking notes while reading so perhaps I can share some of those.

Day 2: on being organised

Organisation is key, we are told and of course it's true but it's also easier said than done. Simple to-do lists are one thing, but to really be organised in a way the is ubiquitous is a mountain of its own to climb.

It is going to be an experiment of what works and what does not to find what method or techniques really help me to keep organised.

So, take the rest of this post with a pinch of salt as I will revisit the topic at a later date with a discussion on what has worked out for me and what has not but in the meantime these are solutions I thus far believe will work for me:

Apps

The todo app on iOS 5 is entirely inappropriate for the level of detail required to organise business and projects, so we're going to have to reach into the realm of third party apps. In this arena Cultured Code's Things reigns supreme in a number of ways but most importantly for the attention to detail. User experience is all too often misunderstood or brushed away with overwhelming features.

Of all applications for smart devices these days supplanting analog ways of doing things like todo lists, user experience is of critical importance. If you are not offering a better user experience than pen and paper, then your app has failed at the most basic level. Things is far from the most feature packed of apps, but what it lacks in superfluous features it makes up for it with a polish so fine you can see your reflection.

With apps on iOS and OSX, we have the beginnings of a work flow. There is no point in working with a system that locks you into working on your tasks either mobile or desktop but not both.

In the Cloud

I've always found Google's apps to be mostly adequate for my needs and so I don't feel there will be any change here. For over a year now I've used Google Calendar for my scheduling needs. It synchronises well with iCal, iOS and pretty much anything else you might need.

Google Docs are somewhat lacking but are to my best knowledge the best and most free (as in beer) solution available right now. iWork may start to overcome that, I haven't made much if any use of it's cloud features yet to comment, although no doubt the mobile experience would be vastly superior.

Old faithful

A4 notepad and pen. Really not something for regular use, there is no promise that either will be with you when inspiration strikes and it makes editing ungainly. Moreover as a dyed in the wool devotee of the art of chicken scratch calligraphy I find writing notes like this to be tiring and stressful and it should be anything but.

For these reasons and some level of OCD I am extremely picky about the kinds of paper and pen I like to use. A pen must be inky and smooth to write with unlike your typical dirt cheap ball point pens but not overly so and if at all possible lying somewhere between a little blunt and not so sharp as it'd pierce the paper.

Pads I am much less picky about. While working for Decisions for Heroes we got stock of some really nice A4 pads that I have since bought for myself. There's something about it being yellow and fairly nice paper that makes it a good combination. I am however, forever flip-flop'ing between thicker and lighter stock. Mostly because I really am so obsessive about these things that I will tear a page out of a pad and start again if I don't deem the handwriting satisfactory.

The thicker stock makes it feel more real and so tearing a page off feels even more offensive than tearing a lighter/cheap paper stock page. It wouldn't matter so much but I do it way too often. I'm sure theres some psychology to that which as yet eludes me. 

I am aware by the way, that these are just neuroses and make practically no logical sense to most people. Welcome to my brain.

Perfectionism aside, I do tend to take down spontaneous ideas or thoughts, or the odd note while watching videos using just a standard pad and pen. I do actually like the idea of taking down physical notes, it makes the idea seem more real by a sheer matter of fact of its tangibility. I would just rather not sacrifice an entire forest to do so.

That should be enough to keep me organised for the time being.

I'll be spending the rest of today cleaning up this den of inequity and/or squalor. I brought a bed into the office a while back in the hopes that'd help with long coding sessions but it turns out, shock horror, that the blurring of lines between home and work aren't nearly as much of a positive as I had once envisaged so that's going out, along with any tv, game console or other shiny distraction. 

Day 1: A laundry list of things to do

A new year demands a new start and so it is with this blog. Starting everything afresh from day one, I will be regularly writing about what I'm working on, the books I'm reading and to some degree or another the successes, failures and the journey betwixt the two, of being a one man startup.

The aim of this post is to mark 2012 as a sea change from how I treated this entrepreneurial adventure in the past. During the past year I have been altogether too willingly and sometimes unwillingly distracted from the main task at hand by job interviews, contracts and frankly lethargy and all-around disinterest. Add Reddit and a healthy dose of late night to early morning video games and you have a recipe ripe for being unproductive.

Reading between the lines here is not much of a task: I consider most of 2011 pretty much a white-wash as far as achieving my intended goals, or much of anything for that matter.

 So, what are those goals specifically? Well, it's hard to quantize ambition but here's my best attempt at codifying what I want to achieve before 2012 is out:

1. Establish a company in name or function, which has high potential.
2. Develop at bare minimum one successful mobile application.
3. Begin work in earnest on a much larger project.
4. Read, comprehend and make notes on every book I bought in 2011.
5. Keep a personal journal of notes, thoughts and ideas.
6. Regularly update this blog with how things are progressing.

 Wishful thinking notwithstanding, it would be really nice to:

1. Earn enough through software sales to legitimately call this my full time job.
2. Develop a simple but useful app which deploys to all major mobile platforms.

The above wish lists aside, the main goal of the year will be to begin working towards making the one man startup a realistic and achievable goal. I am currently lucky in that I can live and work at home at little to no cost, but living with your parents is not a long term ideal, far from it.

Being financially independent while still being your own boss is the real goal here. So achievement or no of that goal will be the true measure of the success or failure of 2012 for me personally.

All that said, I'll be spending the next few days to a week organising things, clearing out the office of distractions, working on a schedule, making up predictable to do lists and basically just getting on with the matter at hand. So I'm not sure what I'll be able to come up with to talk about on the blog, but I'm sure I find something.

Today however, being Sunday is a day-off. Not the best start, but a promise I have made to myself is to never allow the lines between home and work become as muddied as they have been in the past. That means no working weekends and work day ends at 6pm no matter what. We'll see how well that progresses in the coming year, I fear it may be somewhat too wishful. 

More to come as it happens.

Almost there

This blog will be starting 1st January 2012.