SaaS on Matt Ellis

Fighting the frontend demons

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 23:39:30 +0100

So project Pineapple has been making some progress, I’ve got what I think is an acceptable MVP, with the basic functionality working as expected. One thing I’ve found with doing this project is how much I hate doing frontend work, and how much it drains my excitement to develop my side projects.

I had a plan in mind to combat this, one of which is obvious the other not so much. First and foremost, stop the need for making everything perfect. I can’t stress enough how much time I sank into trying to make something look perfect on the page, be it size of buttons or positioning (my worst nightmare). This is a given but apparently my brain doesn’t work rationally 😶‍🌫️.

Project Pineapple updates, part 2

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 17:06:26 +0300

So I’ve had a bit more time to myself recently, and have had a bit more drive to get stuff done, so I decided to try and progress project pineapple a bit more. I’ve actually made a load of progress on it to a point at which I think in the next week or so I’d be ready to launch an early version.

I can very much be chaotic in my approach to things sometimes and I found (not so shockingly) that breaking the working into small actionable chunks makes it much easier to make progress 📈. One thing I also realised with my side projects is that I always have to over-engineer it, and I get to a point whereby I lose interest.

Project Pineapple updates

Tue, 16 May 2023 09:41:18 +0100

So Mexico happened… I was severley unprepared for what to expect in terms of the culture and how things work. TLDR: Double petrol(gas) charges, toll roads without card payments and lost luggage 🧳

Anyway I’m home and the house is a bit of a bombshell. I’ll be starting to work on project pineapple again this week, trying to get a very basic MVP in place. I’ve been reading “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries and he emphasises a lot that you should attempt lots of quick experiments to test your assumptions.

Preparing for Mexico

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 14:25:16 +0100

This week has been quite blurry in terms of getting stuff done. It’s been interesting to see how losing access to Sunsama has affected my productivity. It actually makes quite a difference, but I can’t fathom paying $20 a month! 😅

Anyway, bank holiday is approaching and I’m packing my bags to go to Mexico for 2 weeks, in search of some long awaited rest and relaxation. It’s been a while since my partner and I have been on a vacation without family.