400 Posts

Or just over, as I notice I have 403 published posts, that crept up on me, as I still thought I was mid 350’s.

I’ve started to look in my Draft posts, I have 30 of them. Some started with an idea that went no further, or started to use a program that I ended up not pursuing, a few were near completion so I’ve tidied them up and published them. Now I need to do some house cleaning and get rid of the ones I’m not going to explore further. A few little side branches like IP addresses based on AHK A_IPAddress function, that was a side issue when I was looking at Licensing a program and using IP Address to associate the License.

I faded for a while and things slowed and I think I’ve had audience drop off, but I don’t have regular visitors, they come to the site, find something useful and move on .

OpenMaint seems to still be the most popular topic for people visiting.

States seem to be main place, in the last year 20% of visitors from there, then 4-5% India, UK, Aus & Indonesia

Starting from around mid 2018 I seem to have had over 61,000 views on the site. Not a massive amount.

An interesting drop off recently

A big drop off in Nov 2021. Not the server, I don’t think, as I have Cloudflare still running as CNS? for the site.

I just realised, someone has looked at my website from every country in the world apart from a small percentage, a couple of countries in West Africa and a few Island states, Greenland & Antarctica. So I’m a global phenomena, a very insignificant one, but global nevertheless.

Overall, big population countries, China, India & US first, then English speaking US, UK, Aus & Canada. Germany I’d take with a pinch of salt as that is where my server is located.

Drifting into other topics

I’ve moved away from the whole AM/FM as there doesn’t seem to be too much activity there.

My main thrust has been with AutoHotKey of late, its quite a practical tool to use and more low level, and although its only windows based its pretty useful. I’ve found I’ve got a lot more apps on my PC for productivity and feel confident about building more.

So more productivity tools and how to do and a bit of Honeycode as a comparison for GlideApps and stuff about eScooter, totally off other topics on this website.

The Honeycode I wasn’t too impressed with. I did have a stab at a PWA Progressive Web App but that was a bit difficult and in the end I backed away from it as it was breaking all over the place. I think they are quite smart but the project I tried to do was too complicated for my skill level.

The posts slowed a lot because I was doing videos instead. I’ve now about 190 videos and over 79,000 views so that is pleasing.

Also I’ve dropped off on my recipe site but have been maintaining my Covid Diary site, so all in all my online stuff has been moving along.

I think I’d got as far as I wanted to explore with GlideApps, although they have now updated the backend with A Database table instead of using the Google Sheets table to do more smart stuff at the back end.

I should revisit it to see if I can develop another idea, the Lost & Found for items on the Lyall Bay beach to explore the new features of GlideApps. That is still about 70% of my video views. The AHK stuff is very little, although I’m pleased the Free Productivity tools are being viewed more.

Still a couple of vids on Revit, but I’m not doing much with that at the moment. Zoe & Karl don’t seem to have much demand for my services there.

Peripherals NFC tags, Barcode Scanner, Stream Deck, Bone conducting headphones

I’ve been playing a bit with NFC tags, barcode scanner and Stream Deck & gaming mice. All of these attached or removed from the main PC or mobile. There were a few interesting developments playing with these tools. They do have their uses in appropriate situations.

The NFC tags have some interesting features but Android has blocked some of the more interesting ones and by the time a lot of my tags came from China I’d moved on to other things.

The Stream Deck is pretty good , although some of its features I can replicate using MaxLauncher instead, but having extra physical keys is handy too. The Close Tabs button is so handy, you do not need to be as accurate opening and closing tabs in the browser.

The barcode scanner is definitely a fast tool for inventory. Far less faffing about than trying to use a mobile phone QR code scanner. I found that using it with AutoHotKey I was able to be quite productive.

The issue is with dragging it around the place to reach things. Its better being in a static location, eg a Till etc.You take stuff to be scanned to it rather than the other way around.

I’ve still got to get used to gaming mice but they are handy, even for just logging into the PC. I’m still trying to use button combinations but have not got as far as I would have liked.

I’ve had massive value out of the Bone conducting headphones that Zoe gave me. They are light and allow you to hear what’s happening around you too, so they are very practical. I’ve used them far more than I have normal headphones, and no wires, and they sync with bluetooth really easily. Definitely a gamechanger for listening to audiobooks and podcasts while out and about.

Home Server, NAS and e USB Hard Drive enclosure

I did splash out on a server but I haven’t actually had it up and running. I sort of lost interest when I couldn’t run Windows server license that I thought may have come with it. I was toying with setting up a Linux server but lost interest in that too. At the end of the day the contabo VPS does me right, it is quite and far away. If I started up the server I’d have to maintain it and it’s a bit noisy, also it would be running continuously and electricity costs can be a bit tough, especially in winter. I was also keeping an eye out for cheaper hard drives but they ain’t that cheap.

I like the low maintenance of the NAS and I’m glad I have a backup one now that’s a bit faster than the MyCloud. I’ve yet to populate it with too many files, I get a bit bored maintaining the file system.

I’m rapt with the USB Hard Drive enclosure, basically an external hard drive where you can switch over the hard drives as you like. At some point in time I need to do site backup and DB backups on my websites and I should store them on that. And buy HD’s when I need them for backup. Far more practical than the external hard drives I’ve had in the past. I can’t believe I haven’t come across them before, far more flexible.

Passive income, Glide templates and Patreon

I’m not sure where I’m to drift to next. A bit of paying work would be handy as I’ve got a few bills to pay. On that topic the barber shop glide template got me a bit of money overall , about $800 total sales but I only get the NZ equivalent as both Glide & Stripe take 50% of the income, but that was from August 14th last year, so not bad for 3 apps in a year and 3 months, although the $50 only sold 3 and the $10 only sold about 9-10 so all the rest were on the cheap $5 template. I’m not sure that was really a payback for the time/effort I put into them, with the video tutorials

I think this year its been more low code or low tech solutions , not so pretty but handy and productive and , as I have more control over them, more productive from my point of view in that I’m more in control of the product.

Last year I was looking at some sort of passive income and the Templates were an interesting experiment. They were not that interesting though, I wasn’t driven enough to develop mundane boring app, only ones I was interested in. I haven’t come across that IDEA that will generate things for me yet, but it is in the back of my mind.

I’ve stepped back from the Glide mobile apps as they are a bit laggy, and that was where my exploration of PWA’s was heading. They are more versatile as you have the phone in your hand all the time. Although for reasonable work you need to be on a PC to be reasonably effective.

I’ve built the plant height data capture app and also the TimeCapture & FileSaveLaunch app in AHK that I’m pleased with. Also played around with part protection of programs that may allow me to sell some of those, but a bit of a setup for a site with some sort of paygate for purchase needs to be developed for that to be able to be put out there for the opportunity of getting paid for some of the ideas.

I also tried Patreon but that was a bit of a bust. All the stuff I do attracts all the people who don’t pay for software but want free stuff. So a bit of effort into that that didn’t go too far.

Where to from here?

Ot dung te.

I’ve just noticed that screen swelling on my Microsoft Surface Book in top left corner where there is a crack. Maybe battery swell. So move onto the Microsoft Surface Pro as main computer.

I’m writing this a few months later, I’ve been focusing on Revit Scripts and Text Expanders & AutoHotKeys and creating an Udemy course.

The site has moved away from Asset Capture to more personal productivity tools. I initially was trying out lots of free programs but now I’m moving into creating scripts to make more bespoke programs with AutoHotKeys.