Week 11, 2026

Contributing to Groundwork — my first pull request

There is this idea of “folk software”, which is where people create tools that fit the precise shape of their own need, without worrying about product market fit, or paying any mind to the usual commercial gatekeepers. Doug Belshaw, who I met last week, is developing some cool apps along these lines. One is called Groundwork, which he describes as a personal dashboard for freelancers. It is actually the perfect shaped tool for the freelance part of my portfolio — a step up from a spreadsheet, but not as bloated as something like Hubspot. He released the first version, and I had an idea for how the Projected Year-End revenue calculation could be configured differently. So given that the software is open source, Doug encouraged me to submit a “pull request” — i.e. to develop the change I would like to see, and to propose that it be included in the product. Given the power of Claude Code, I just had to describe what I wanted to do, and then iterate through the design until I was happy. And then Claude even did the submission and the documentation.

I am the beneficiary of open source software all day every day (as all of us are), so it’s nice to be working towards being able to contribute back in some way, however small.

FloatTimer

Continuing in the theme, I created a Mac app called FloatTimer that solves a problem for me. Often when I am facilitating workshops I like to run timeboxed activities, and it is useful to have a timer on the screen. Sometimes I achieve this with a separate iPad and hardware switcher that can do a picture in picture overlay — but that involves a lot of gear and a fairly elaborate setup. So I developed FloatTimer, which achieves this through a simple Mac app that places a countdown timer on your screen, and that will hover over a PowerPoint presentation even when it is in full screen mode. I also revisited and spruced up a web based timer that I started a while back. I hope someone else finds these useful!

Adelaide

I spent most of this week in Adelaide co-facilitating a board offsite. These types of work trips are a bit of a vortex where life is pretty much just plane > hotel > conference room > hotel in some kind of repeating loop, with not much time for anything else. Nice to be back in Adelaide though. It reminds me of Perth.