Ramblings, 2 May 2008
I’ve got money jitters.
Logically, I know they’re irrational, at least in the short term. There are two contributing factors: I haven’t had a predictable paycheck for about six months now, and me putting up AdWords didn’t immediately make the phone ring.
Yup, that’s all.
I’m good for cash for probably two years yet. That’s actually a better prediction than my little thing on the right-hand side of this site, which places my starvation point at Feb 2010. I feel more like someone is tapping me on the shoulder every time I buy something: “Are you going to get that money from your long-term savings? From your index funds? Are you going to sell something? WHAT? You still owe GST/PAYG and the credit card and rent and Amazon and blah blah blah”.
I haven’t had any coffee yet today and it’s after 3pm. Bear with me.
In other news, I haven’t felt like blogging much. I’ve been busy writing content for the Mutex Labs website. My goal there was to get it to a point where it was good enough for me to start pimping it with AdWords, and it is, sort of. I’m spending pretty much the bare minimum - 25c/click, $5/day - and so am getting very few clicks. But that’s OK. I’m already getting good data on what people are interested in and how well the keywords are matching up.
Parts for my first run of Bluetooth sensors are due in any day now. I find that having physical artifacts really clears up how profits actually come about; you buy input parts for $x then sell them for $3x. While the input parts feel kinda expensive, they’ll sell for what appears to be a huge sum. I don’t feel the same way about it that I do about selling software, which is kinda like panhandling: “You like the app? Toss me some cash? Please? Help out a starving programmer?”. There’s physical (figurative) meat to manufacturing which is far more understandable to my hunter-gatherer brain.
And of course, Joel Spolsky’s recent post about how file synchronizers are a solved problem and how making fun things is the future. Well, I’m biased of course, working on a file synchronizer as I do, but I still disagree.
Everyone writes file synchronizers because they’re an interesting programming problem; yes, it is. I don’t believe that the market for it is sewn up just yet, though. Lots of people have multiple computers. Not many people use a synchronizer to keep files in sync between them. Why? The best that I can come up with is that they generally suck (as I have previously mentioned). There are a hundred of them and they all look alike. They all have the same annoyances and are generally not worth the effort. I’m using Unison right now and it’s alright, but it could be a whole lot better. Sadly, Unison is probably the best that I’ve seen, despite the hundreds that are out there.
Making fun things. I wrote a somewhat inflammatory rant on another blog a few weeks ago about how ‘fun’ things are basically the work of the devil. I still feel that way, and I worry that that’s where Joel has gone wrong. Fun things are fun, yes, but do they make my life better? Do I wake up in the morning and say “geez, I’m glad Twitter is around. It really enhances my life.”
These are exactly the sort of things that are interesting programming problems but not really consumer problems. Social networking sites. Yes, Facebook is popular. Yes, it’s valuation is beyond belief. But does it solve a problem? Does it enhance humankind? If fireballs rained down on the Earth and you could only pack a few things into a suitcase before retreating into your underground bunker, would you take the Facebook source code?
I guarantee that you would not.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m in this to create great things. My view is obviously not shared by everyone, but I’ve stated repeatedly that my goal in this is not to get fabulously rich. I want to work on fun stuff and be able to live comfortably. That’s it. I’d rather be building rocket ships than websites, even if the latter pays better.