Never did I imagine myself getting into running, especially as a middle-aged man. It always seemed a bit boring to me. Cycling is what I thought I‘d inevitably venture into, especially because I love watching that sport. But here I am, roped in by a couple of friends, fully embracing the running trend. Well, kind of. I have zero aspirations to run a marathon, or even a half for that matter. But I’m thoroughly enjoying doing short stints a couple of times a week, ranging from 5k to 8k, with a goal of consistently running 10k. Why? First and foremost for my health and cardio fitness, but also because I‘ve signed up for a 10k charity run in October that I’m determined to complete in under an hour. It was actually late last year that I first got a bit of the so-called runner’s high. I went on a 3-week remote work trip to the beautiful island of Lanzarote, which is filled with volcanic landscapes. Well, it turns out circling some of those under the sun makes for great trail runs, which I discovered over the course of that trip. And it was a lot of fun, if not a challenging way to introduce my body to running. Anyway, I’m returning to Lanzarote for another 3-week trip in November, and I intend to pick up where I left off, but hopefully in much better cardio condition. If you want to follow my progress, you can find me on Strava. Experimenting with a running photo aesthetic P.S. You’ll never catch me on a treadmill. It’s outdoors in the fresh air, invariably battling a Scottish headwind, or nothing. P.P.S. I still much prefer rock climbing to running as a form of exercise, so you’ll still find me bouldering on plastic or real rock a couple of times a week.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it feels like the end of an era. Or at least the end of the familiar formula that indie businesses relied on to build, launch, and grow over the past decade. Something has quietly changed. It’s probably been happening for a couple of years, to be fair. But recently it feels impossible to ignore. The reasons are pretty obvious. What’s less obvious is what comes next. And maybe every generation of builders feels like this. The tools available today have probably never been better, although I‘m also wading through plenty of sewer shit. We’re building software and shipping feature updates at an absurd pace, and at a much lower development cost, at least in the short term. Yet unless you’ve managed to build an audience, every product launch these days feels harder than it used to. Not because a product necessarily lacks quality or value in its own right, but because we’re drowning in software. You either have a million competitors, or your potential customers now have the tools to build a rough version themselves, whether they have technical skills or not. SaaS is far from dead, but the abundance is staggering. And the old assumptions around product roadmaps, paid advertising, and organic discovery no longer feel reliable. We can now build more refined products with fewer resources. But each improvement to a product seems to have less influence on whether anyone discovers or buys it. I’ve been feeling this most directly through 099 SPLY. We started by making digital assets and mockups for designers. More recently, we built a browser-based 3D editor that lets people create still and animated product mockups without specialist software. It‘s comfortably one of the most capable things we’ve made. But the editor has also been one of the hardest things to get people to care about. I knew it was a risk, though. Browser-based mockups are very niche, but it‘s an experiment I have zero regrets about. Maybe the positioning is wrong. Maybe we simply haven’t found the right audience. It‘s tough to know. But I also don’t think our experience is unusual. Plenty of small teams are now discovering that being able to build something is no longer much of an advantage in itself. Cutting through the noise has always mattered. It just feels much more pertinent now. For years, SEO offered some kind of safety net. You could publish a useful product, write about it, optimise content, and gradually find an audience through search. It was never easy and it tested your patience, but there was at least a recognisable path. But search today is dog shit. Results are crowded with ads, aggregators, AI summaries, and content written primarily to occupy space. An increasing number of searches end without anyone clicking through to an external site, and taken to their logical extreme, they point towards what some call “Google Zero”. There’s a label for everything, isn‘t there? Then we have social media, which tends to favour founders who are comfortable performing in public, have the time to publish constantly, or already have enough attention to generate more of it. The product can start to feel secondary to the content wrapped around it. Each release needs its own miniature marketing campaign, and even then the response can disappear within a day. But I also respect the grind and energy some founders put into making that work. Distribution has always required effort. So where does that leave indie hackers? Honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t think the answer is to stop making software, and I certainly don’t think small digital businesses are finished. But relying on the same combination of product quality, SEO, launch platforms, and occasional social posts feels increasingly naive. Maybe the next phase is less about finding another universal playbook and more about building in ways that are harder to replicate or make interchangeable. Or maybe it‘s about building a stronger rapport between founder and customer. I’m trying to think more experimentally myself, with less attachment to any particular format. And more willingness to test strange ideas, abandon weak ones, and follow whatever appears to have genuine energy around it. None of that makes the current landscape less frustrating. But if your launches feel quieter, your growth has stalled, or a project that once looked promising is beginning to decline, I doubt you’re alone. It might not mean the work is bad. It likely means the conditions around it have changed. For the time being, I‘ll keep listening, learning, and adapting. Maybe I‘ll even start a YouTube channel or something. If any of this resonates, feel free to continue the discussion over email or DMs with me.

I've worked with Photoshop for an age. Back in 2022, I created a small business called 099, offering a focused collection of minimal PSD mockups and web tools for creatives. Although I still appreciate the demand for PSDs, especially among seasoned designers, I wanted to explore a different way of generating mockups: directly in the browser, without subscriptions, licences, or heavyweight software. Because I feel a newer generation of creatives expects tools to be fast, focused, and accessible. Focused browser-based tooling has been gaining momentum across the digital design industry, even if it still sits in a comparative niche. But that doesn’t make it any less worth leaning into. And that’s exactly what we’ve done with the new version of 099.supply. the new 099.supply site using the MacBook Pro 3D model We’ve built a 3D mockup editor around a simple pay-as-you-go model, with enough customisability to be useful and enough restraint to avoid becoming something it’s not. At the same time, we’ve kept our PSDs available. That’s the point of 099 now: two modes of making, side by side. PSDs for those who want control, familiarity, and layered files. Browser exports for those who want speed, simplicity, and a finished mockup in seconds. This all might feel like a stepping stone before everyone is exclusively using AI to build mockups and web components, but not everyone is comfortable with moving at the same pace. Nor should they be. For now, I want to see where this goes. So, I invite you to try the tool. You can export for free, or pay a small one-off fee for higher-quality output, including 5-second animated mockups. Are the editor features sufficient? What feels missing? Is the pricing fair? Please get in touch and share your feedback. the 099 editor in action, customising the cap model

It recently dawned on me that, as a digital designer, I had yet to make a macOS or iOS app. So I wanted to give the former a try while also experimenting with a coding agent to bring it to life. While it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the constant stream of AI tools and announcements, I think it’s enough to explore a couple properly and find your own way through the noise. Keeping up with the industry is one thing. Feeling pressured to try every new tool is another. Anyway, for this project, my agent of choice was Codex. It felt like the logical option given my existing subscription to ChatGPT. So I ran with it, and it didn't disappoint. I vibed, nay, context engineered my way to a beautiful little Mac app in just a week. Local Log is a minimal open-source journaling app that lets you record both text and video entries in one quiet, focused space, with everything stored locally on your Mac for privacy and simplicity. No accounts, no cloud dependency, no clutter — just a clean archive of your thoughts, searchable and always yours. With autosave, editable entry titles, keyboard shortcuts, and light and dark mode support, Local Log is designed to stay out of the way so you can get straight to logging. Local Log app icon in dark mode Why a journaling app? I’ve always loved the notion of blogging and thinking in public, but there’s always been a layer of restraint to it. I wanted to create a digital space where you can be unapologetically honest with yourself. A private space to recalibrate, reflect, and reset. Where each entry becomes a small record of your mind that you can revisit whenever you like. The design was inspired by the irreplaceable iA Writer and the open-source app Freewrite, which gave me the idea of adding vlogs. The typeface felt important to me, and I had no desire to offer multiple choices to the user. I made a decision and I stuck with it. And that font was Geist Mono by Vercel. And a shoutout to Manu for the clever app icon, which mirrors the UI itself. You can view the GitHub repo and download directly for free. Local Log app icon in light mode Default screen in light mode Entry example in dark mode Entry example with collapsed sidebar Select actions in the entry archive

Another blogger challenge, but this time one I’m initiating. I previously wrote about a list of silly things I hate. So to balance this, I’ve decided to write a more positive list of some random things I like, because it’s good to smile at the world now and again. volunteering the smell of coffee beans when perseverance pays off noticing someone practicing patience experiencing collective creative momentum receiving video messages or FaceTime calls finding an item of clothing that actually fits well receiving random emails from strangers that build unexpected connections the rare occasion of articulating a thought so flawlessly it’s almost surprising seeing cats sitting on windowsills (they’re the unassuming neighbourhood watch)