Ever since the now very quiet drunkenbatman hosted the <a href="http://www.drunkenblog.com/evening_at_adler/">Evening at Adler</a> and Gus Mueller posted, "<a href="http://www.gusmueller.com/blog/archives/2005/12/25.html">How to become an independent programmer in just 1068 days</a>", its has been a goal of mine to one day live the indie Mac developer dream.

Over the years I've dabbled in Mac OS X development but have struggled to find the time in between a full time job and also having a life to be able to see something through from start to finish. I'm convinced the ideas are sound because frequently others eventually release similar products. My last endeavour was for a better archiver than that provided by the Finder. It was to be dead simple, taking interface cues from things like <a href="http://appzapper.com/">AppZapper</a>. I discovered a little while ago that the fine folks at Apimac had created <a href="http://www.apimac.com/compress_files/">Compress Files</a>, which implemented my ideas and more.

Frustrated by this lack of time I decided to do something about it (after a small helping of procrastination). Last week I successfully negotiated a reduction to 4 days per week at my day job, with the fifth day allocated to Mac development. The first day of my new job is Mon Feb 11, 2008. However I find myself with a bit of a problem, I don't have any current projects to actually work on. Heeding the advice in Gus' post for <abbr title="Think small and make sure you really like what you are doing">Lesson #1</abbr> I'm seeking ideas from the Mac using community for a small application that I can use to get started. So if you got an idea for a small application that you don't mind sharing feel free to post a comment and let me know, it might be just what I'm looking for.