Update for the week ending on Friday, Jun 10, 2022

TinyPilot

Management

• Reviewed TinyPilot’s EULA with a lawyer.
• Had postmortem meeting with design agency who did TinyPilot website.

Software development

• Switched over to the new Go-based service for validating user licenses when they request a download image.
• Added an option to the TinyPilot Ansible role for installing from a Debian package
• Created a scratch implementation of a TinyPilot Debian package
• Put my Shopify theme under source control.
  • I didn’t realize how easy it was to do this, but it only took about 15 minutes.
  • I always expected this to be a confusing, heavyweight process like almost everything else is on Shopify when you try to go outside the 80% usage case.
• Set up a storage bucket to support our new process of distributing TinyPilot updates
• Reviewed migration plans to upgrade the TinyPilot base OS to Debian Bullseye
• Fixed a build break in uStreamer Ansible Role
• Reviewed plans to adjust our git sync script between TinyPilot Community and TinyPilot Pro

Customer support

• Worked with a large customer on a custom order
• Adjusted wording on certificate install instructions based on customer feedback

Sales

• Worked with digital marketing freelancer to get several new ad campaigns running.
• Updated product comparison pages
• Removed an old TinyPilot job listing that Google was automagically including in my ads
• Continued jumping through ridiculous hoops with Amazon to get listed
  • They’re now claiming that in my photos, it’s not obvious enough that the word “TinyPilot” is permanently attached to my product. It’s embossed on there!

mtlynch.io

• Published my May retrospective
• Started blog post about the TinyPilot website redesign

WanderJest

WanderJest is a site I started in 2020 to find live comedy. I shelved it for a while, and now I’m rewriting it to replace Vue with Go templates and Firestore with SQLite.

• Implemented the edit performer page
  • Now at feature parity with the live version.
• Started the process of making a new user activation page.
  • When a user signs up, they have to declare whether they’re a fan or a performer.
  • The previous implementation was pretty hacky, so I’m rewriting backend and frontend parts for this.
• Created an admin page for adding a new performer.
• Refactored authentication logic

PicoShare

PicoShare is a minimalist web-based file sharing tool I’m working on. I’m often frustrated that I can’t just send someone a link directly to a file because every file-sharing service tries to re-encode images/video or wrap their own viewer around other files, so I’m making a simple self-hostable tool that lets you upload files and share them with other people.

• Add an option on the upload screen to select a custom expiration date
• Move the go build step from a pre-commit hook to a CI task
  • It was too slow to be a pre-commit hook

Talk to Stan

Talk to Stan is a tool I’m working on that will respond to templated emails I get from spammy marketers and recruiters with a sequence of templated responses to ask the spammers an endless series of dumb questions.

• Added a new response for guest posts

Misc

• Co-hosted Indie Founders Western Mass meetup
• Video call with another ex-Google Indie Founder.