Oct 2021 Updates: Vietnam, DevUtils 1.12, and Magic Sidebar ✨

Tony Dinh

👋 Hello everyone, it’s Tony again.

Lots of things happened in October 2021. I released DevUtils 1.12, worked on a new exciting feature for Black Magic, moved back to Vietnam, and other small updates.

Just want to say this quickly: Thank you all so much for following my journey! I hope my newsletter is helpful to you, I really enjoy writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it too!

Let’s get started.

👋 Goodbye Singapore 🇸🇬, hello Vietnam 🇻🇳

I’m happy and excited to return to my home country!

I started working in Singapore ~3 years ago, I love my time there and I love the country.

Quitting my day job means I can’t stay in Singapore anymore because there is no visa type for foreign indie hackers/digital nomads. It’s unfortunate.

On the other hand, living in Vietnam gives me a much longer runway for my indie journey. My saving will last much longer here! I also miss the food so much!

Looking forward to sharing more with you all on the next phase of my journey! 👊

🔨 New update for DevUtils

In October, I released a new update for DevUtils with a lot of new features and improvements.

Most noticeably, the new RegExp Tester now supports group matching and named capture group.

There are a lot of other changes and new tools. If you haven’t seen the changelog yet, check it out here!

DevUtils 1.12 is released

🐍 Fun stuff I did with my banner (again)

This idea has stuck in my head for a while, I decided to finally do it: build a Snake game on my Twitter banner!

I let people play snake on my Twitter banner

The way it works:

Someone comment ➡️⬇️⬅️⬆️ emojis to my tweets
I use Twitter API to read the emojis
Use the commands from the emojis to control the snake
Then I update the latest game state to my Twitter banner.

It’s fun! 😂

The tweet got 675 replies, the most replies I ever had in 1 single tweet ever!

Tony Dinh 🎯

@tdinh_me

Go play snake on my Twitter banner, yeah!

To control: reply to this tweet with ➡️⬆️⬇️ or ⬅️

For example: "➡️➡️➡️➡️⬇️⬇️⬅️⬅️"

11:39 AM - 7 Oct 2021

I “recreated” the live banner and compiled it into a short video, you can watch it here on my YouTube channel.

(Also: subscribe if you haven’t already!)

💬 I'm featured on Product Hunt Maker Stories!

It’s a great honor for me. I shared about my indie hacking journey and my experience in launching products on Product Hunt.

You can read the full interview from the link below:

Tony Dinh on what he’s learned as an indie developer | Product Hunt

I believe every product – no matter how complicated – can be simplified into an MVP we can build within a week.

www.producthunt.com

🌐 My new website: tonydinh.com

I’m so proud of the domain! Well worth $275 🤣

I put up a simple bio website that links to my internet profiles. Check it out!

tonydinh.com is mine, baby!

✨ ...one last thing: Magic Sidebar! ✨

I’m so excited to introduce this new tool for Black Magic. It’s called Magic Sidebar, and it will level up your Twitter game by 10,000%!!!

Magic Sidebar by BlackMagic.so

It’s a browser extension that will add a sidebar to your Twitter Web.

⭐ Simon Høiberg call it “by far the most superior Twitter analytics product in the indie hackers space”

⭐ Joe Previte is “seriously blown-away” by it.

⭐ Jason said it’s “like a personal CRM”.

⭐ I prefer to call it a brand new Twitter experience!

It’s currently in Beta and invite-only, you can give it a try by installing the extension at https://blackmagic.so/sidebar/

Here are some invite codes for you to try:

0FNRTIFKBW
3K1KYDBDOH
XRQ3C3L2NL
3FESPQ1CK8
14W5S9OIJU
3T6RY6FGN8
OBN57GDZ5U
5H6XO409IE
W7N306WIRO
NNNNN9CPB7

Feel free to send me a DM on Twitter if you need more invite codes!

I really hope this new product will help Black Magic to reach its goal of 1k MRR by the end of 2021. I’m so excited about this 🤩

That's all...

…for now!

I hope you like this month’s issue! Feel free to hit “Reply” to reach out to me, I read every response!

Until next time! 👊

Did you enjoy this issue? Yes No

Tony Dinh @tdinh_me

Monthly updates about my indie hacking journey, what I have built and learned.

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Oct 2021 Updates: Vietnam, DevUtils 1.12, and Magic Sidebar ✨

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