It is at this time of year that I plan out the goals that I want to achieve for the coming year.
I usually set quite a few goals for myself in areas such as health, finances, business, and relationships.
In my 2023 Year Review I mentioned some of the goals that I set out to achieve in 2024:
- ❌ Read 12 non-fiction books and write up notes about them — I failed at this one and only read 6 non-fiction books and only wrote notes for 1 of them.
- ❌ Be able to do 100 push-ups — I let this one slip as well and can only do 40 push-ups in one go. I also found it hurts my wrists doing pushups which then affects my guitar playing. I have since been doing them on my fists which helps but isn't overly comfortable, so I have ordered my self some push up bar stands (affiliate link) which should help a lot.
- ✅ More conscious spending — Finance wise this year has been pretty good. I use Actual Budget every month to track my spending and that has helped us save quite a bit as well.
- ✅ Release my course on SOLID — My course on SOLID has been well received with a 4.5-star rating on Dometrain. I want to make a new course this year, but I am going to host it myself as I want more control on pricing.
- ✅ Move off of Substack — I successfully moved my newsletter to be self-hosted on Ghost and then soon moved to Buttondown when I saw how much it was costing me. I have been quite happy with Buttondown so far.
- ❌ Set up my own PeerTube instance — I didn't get round to this one, but I plan to this year. I still very much believe in “Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms” and think that social media should be used for distribution only. I did however manage to set up my own Git server to host my code ✅, so I am not as reliant on GitHub. There is still have some housekeeping being done though to point people in the correct place.
- ✅ Donation only platform — I ditched the Ethical Ads on my website although the amount I receive in donations ($11 / month) doesn't quite cover my newsletter and hosting costs yet. Thank you to those that do support me though.
- ✅ Website redesign — I managed to complete my redesign, I still have some things I would like to add this year, but I am happy with Eleventy.
Goals for 2025 #
Apart from finishing my first online course I didn't do anything else towards my creator business last year other than write this newsletter each week.
This is mostly down to working 4 days a week at my job and then not having much time (or energy) for anything else on my other days.
This newsletter has grown though from 1,314 subscribers at the end of 2023 to 2,655.
My original plan was to remove all adverts (including affiliate links) and sponsorships and make most of my income from donations. This doesn't really seem viable given I only have 4 sponsors (thank you again!).
I still plan to keep this newsletter and my website advert free and corporate sponsorship free, but I will be including the odd affiliate link for products that I am using to help with the costs. These will all be clearly labelled as “(affiliate link)” as I did above.
So far, most of my revenue is still coming from my SOLID course but given that is only low 3 figures I need to make more courses if I want to make this a viable business.
Once my next course is done I will then do some more YouTube videos to help promote the course. If I can ever make a full-time income from this then I will be able to make courses and make regular YouTube tutorials, that's the dream.
For this newsletter, it is going to become more tech focussed compared to the eclectic mix of topics I currently write about. There will still be some of that, but I want to introduce shorter articles and topics on software engineering and careers in tech.
If I want to write this newsletter, make courses and YouTube videos then I need to systemize this newsletter a bit more.
I will be keeping the “Picks of the Week” as I suspect that is what most of you enjoy looking at (and I enjoy collecting).
I saw Julia Evans introduced a TIL (Today I Learned) page on her website and I plan to do the same this year. If there is anything worth sharing I will add it in here as well.
In short, this newsletter will likely be more made up of multiple short sections rather than my long rambling articles.
Other than my business, I plan to make this a year of health and try to get myself in shape. I am acutely aware that I am rapidly approaching 40, and I need to get my geeky butt in gear before it becomes too difficult 💪!
❤️ Picks of the Week #
📝 Article — The era of open voice assistants — This is really cool. I dream of having my own J.A.R.V.I.S and hate the fact my voice is sent off to a third party. I won't be buying this year as it is not quite ready for prime time yet, but it is exciting to see.
🗺️ Map — City Roads: A tool to draw all roads in a city at once — I am not entirely sure of the point of this if there is one, but it makes some really cool looking maps. This would look cool as picture on your wall.
📝 Article — Can a programming language implement time travel? — This is an interesting concept. I can't think of a scenario where this would be useful, but anything related to time travel is cool, right?
📝 Article — Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32 — I really like what is being done with these ESP modules. I have some in the smart plugs at home. The fact that you can make a drone with one is pretty cool.
💻 Terminal — Ghostty 1.0 — I haven't tried this one yet, but it has a cute ghost so it has got to be worth a look 😂.
📱 Apps — My favorite weird little apps — There are some good ones on this list and a few I haven't tried. I am currently using Phanpy and Tailscale on this list, and they are fantastic.
📁 Crafts — Scale Model of Boeing 777-300ER, Made from Manila Folders — The amount of detail that has gone into this is crazy. Who knew you could do so much with manila folders?
🌊 Simulation — WebGL Fluid Simulation — It is probably my age, but I am always shocked with what can be rendered in the browser now.
📝 Article — Trying to use Bluesky without getting burned again — This matches my own thinking when it comes to social media. The doom-scrolling isn't helpful but social media can be a powerful tool for promotion. You just have redirect people to your own email lists and products. You never know which social media platform is going to die out next.
🖌️ Digital Painting — Pigment Mixing into Digital Painting — This always bothered me about digital painting. Colours just don't mix the same as real paints. If you are used to traditional painting it can be difficult to transfer your skills. This looks really cool. If only it was available as standard.
📝 Article — I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps — If you are creating a small application for yourself or your family why not use Google Sheets as a database! It has good API support and by using Glide it looks really easy to make a slick app. Sure it isn't going to scale well for lots of users but for personal projects or even small internal company projects it will do.
📝 Article — Curl-Impersonate — I can see this being useful if you are trying to curl something, but it is being blocked due to user agent and other browser checks.
📝 Article — My Favorite Self-Hosted Apps Launched In 2024 — I love self-hosting, and I am always on the lookout for new apps. After reading this I installed Beaver Habit Tracker and Hoarder. Beaver has been great for keeping track of some of the habits that I am trying to start such as doing pushups or going for a walk. Hoarder is my Omnivore replacement since it shut down.
📝 Article — 10 Productivity Tips for Creators — There are some great tips in here even if you aren't a creator. I always have to remember the “what's obvious to your is amazing to others”. I end up holding back on sharing things as it just seems obvious.
👾 City Generator — Arnis: Generate cities in Minecraft from OpenStreetMap — I never really got into Minecraft in a big way, but I have played it a few times. This looks really cool. I may get back into it just to see what my hometown would look like.
🛠️ Tool — Zasper: A Modern and Efficient Alternative to JupyterLab, Built in Go — I am likely to get into Data Science a bit more this year with work, this tool looks like it could be useful.
📝 Article — Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet — This is one of the reasons why I want to set up PeerTube to host my videos. At the moment they only exist on YouTube but as it is my content I want it on my own website as well.
💭 Thought — Cognitive load is what matters — I never understood programmers who try to reduce code to as few lines as possible. Yes you can reduce 20 lines of code down to 1, but should you? The compiler doesn't care but the person that has to understand what you code is doing will.
📝 Article — What is Sustainable Productivity and How You Can Achieve It — This is my goal for this year as I want to make some more courses and start doing YouTube videos again. I need to come up with some systems to make these things a little easier.
📝 Article — Relatively New Things You Should Know about HTML Heading Into 2025 - I always look for ways on my personal website to do things without resorting to frameworks or JavaScript. There are some cool things on this list that I didn't realise you could do natively with HTML.
💬 Quote of the Week #
Unless you’re using social media to earn a living, drive traffic to something more meaningful, build a brand, or effect real change in the world, you should ask yourself what social media is doing for you.
From the book Someday is Today by Matthew Dicks.
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