Mar 21, 2021

Should you quit your job to work full time on projects?

By Ian Wootten • Issue #4 • View online

Hey,

Being independent, I’m able to make my own choices about how much client work I take on. I’ve straddled a path of being able to work both full time and part time on side projects in the past. So today I highlight a number of articles on whether makers should quit their jobs to free up time to work on side projects. Read the stories below to decide for yourself and let me know your thoughts.

It is Census day here in the UK, which means if you haven’t before you read this email you need to complete the census as soon as possible! While you’re doing it, take your time to marvel at the online experience of the questionnaire system which I played a part in developing.

This week also marked the welcome re-opening of primary schools in Wales, which meant neither of my children needed homeschooling any more. This now gives me much more flexibility around producing video content for my channel which I’m looking forward to. It’s likely to include lots of M1 Mac videos.

As always, if you have any comments or suggestions for future issues, please feel free to reply to this email and let me know.

Until next time, keep on shipping!

Ian

Full Time or Part Time Indie Making?

One year indie making: from $125K to $164

A story from Antonio Ufano which may make you think twice before quitting your job to work on your own projects. Given these numbers, I can’t help but wonder what it would take for Antonio to return to work!

antonioufano.com • Share

The Part Time Creator Manifesto

A nice juxtaposition with the last story - Shaun advocates that actually we shouldn’t always be calling for people to leave their jobs for their side projects. This is definitely more in line with my own thoughts, I’d like to know I’m not going to starve if my ideas don’t work out.

www.swyx.io • Share

Emoji Email Addresses

A great story from Ben Stokes on how he bought 300 emoji domain names from Kazakhstan and built an emoji email address service. Ben is from Bristol and building a great little collection of novel projects by himself - take your time to look over all of them.

tinyprojects.dev • Share

Code

ChartsCSS

If you’re fed up with always using JS for your data visualisations, then you may want to consider this framework designed to replace it. It’s so impressive what you’re able to accomplish with only CSS these days.

github.com • Share

Sounds of the Pub

Did you miss your local this St Patrick’s Day? This site is an attempt at recreating some of that atmosphere. You have control of each of the audio elements - something that can’t often be said about the pub. Really well made fun little website.

soundsofthepub.com • Share

paulfitz/daff: align and compare tables

A nice tool to compare the differences between csv files. Also includes a git integration which should make pooling over csv changes in diffs a thing of the past.

github.com • Share

My Favourite Video

Spotify Streaming on my 17-year-old iPod Classic (via Raspberry Pi)

I love this video by Guy Dupont on how he made a spotify streaming app within of the shell of an iPod classic. The amount of work involved with this is crazy. Hardware and software projects like this always turn my head.

www.youtube.com • Share

My Favourite Tweet

My wife is incredibly positive about all of my current endeavours 😂.