So you are a freelancer. But for a while now, you’ve been tempted by the idea of becoming an entrepreneur. You can imagine all the great benefits of making the switch, yet you’re still not sure. As it turns out, there have been many others who have had to face this exact same problem. Anakin Skywalker was one of them.

Although a different terminology was used in that galaxy far, far away, the most respected Darth (entrepreneur) in the Star Wars universe was, at one time, in a similar place. Studying his transformation can help you with yours. But first, let’s take a look at how this really works.

Recommended Reading: 7 Successful Entrepreneurs Who Began As Freelancers

Jedi Masters vs. Sith Lords

Let’s begin by taking a look at the differences between Jedi Masters (freelancers) and Sith Lords (entrepreneurs).

Jedi Masters

Being a freelancer is much like being a Jedi; you go through an apprenticeship, growing your skill by watching videos and tutorials, reading books, and practicing. If you are lucky enough to come across a Jedi Master, you become his student and your growth increases tenfold.

As you become more powerful and sought-after, you might have the option of hiring a virtual assistant to do the basic, routine work needed for client interaction, promotions, and other miscellaneous tasks – just like how Jedis employ droids as assistants to aid them in battle.

Sith Lords

Entrepreneurship, on the other hand, represents the Dark Side. Being an entrepreneur, you study the dark arts, are more likely to rule the world, and your destiny will probably lead you to a more astounding impact then that of a Jedi. You couldn’t care less about dogmatic, archaic rules.

The purpose of a Sith Lord, as stated by Darth Bane (the first Lord and unifier of Sith Legions), is to outgrow and eventually overthrow his Master. As such, constant evolution is assured. Plus, entrepreneurs get more toys too.

(Image Source: Gaz Hunt)

Why Anakin became Darth Vader

As the Chosen One, Anakin Skywalker was foretold to be the one who would bring equilibrium to the Force. In almost all of his inner tumultous dialogues, he was portrayed as a Jedi who wanted more – to be the greatest Jedi who had ever lived. That sort of ego-driven thinking can only lead to the Dark Side (of entrepreneurship)!

And so are you, if you want to dedicate yourself to achieving that goal of owning your own business. You’ll need to step out of your comfort zone and embrace uncertainty. Change is difficult, but Anakin also stepped out of his comfort zone to embrace the Dark Side of the Force.

Now ask yourself, do you see a bit of Anakin in yourself?

The Truth Behind Anakin’s Decision

Siths are like entrepreneurs; they know how to manage money. And almost all entrepreneurs have the drive to take care and provide more for their families — the birthplace of business is the desire to take care of others.

But I’ll tell you a secret. You should know that this desire actually comes from your ego. You want to take care of others because you want them to be safe and healthy so that they can always remain around you. Feeding and satisfying your needs – whether they are romantic, emotional or materialistic in nature – is essentially fending for yourself. That’s how the dark side works.

Similarly, the real reason Anakin was drawn to the Dark Side was because he craved the power to protect his wife Padme by learning an immortality spell created by Darth Plagueis (banker of the InterGalactic Banking Clan, also a Sith Lord).

Jedi Masters vs. Sith Lords (Contd.)

Are Jedi Masters and Sith Lords really so different from each other? Although the Siths are seemingly evil, are the Jedis truly selfless?

"The Jedi and the Sith, are very similar." – Chancellor Palpatine

Don’t you realize that deep down, Jedism just like the Siths, help loved ones just because they want to feel good about themselves, maintain their self-image and keep their loved ones close by?

Freelancers and entrepreneurs are basically the same. It’s just that Siths/entrepreneurs admit and come to grasp with their nature. There’s a time limit to what you can earn by working as a freelancer, and you won’t be able to help all your loved ones. Understand this and you’ll grow much faster and eventually become a Sith Lord.

"I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts."
– John D. Rockefeller, a well-known real-life Sith Lord

Oh and one more thing, Sith Lords… have more fans!

(Image Source: Julia Vazquez)

Crossing Over to the Dark Side

Jedis are weak, and do nothing but talk. Their teachings, while sometimes full of good intent, create less results and less impact in the real world. The Jedis / Freelancers are content creators. The Siths / Entrepreneurs are business creators. A Sith Lord must know a bit of everything, from content to marketing to customer care and getting awesome Jedis to cross over and join them.

Read Also: 7 Ways Freelancing Is Similar To A Corporate Job

As for yourself, to cross over to entrepreneurship, you have to do it like Anakin did, kill fellow Jedi Masters… or just be determined, sever all ties, and never look back. Kill your instinct and habit of selling your time for money. Use the Force of your anger (against confused clients) in favor of your circumstances to fuel your passion for business.

The Sith Code (Revised For Entrepreneurship)

Rule #1 – Only Jedi Masters can become Sith Lords

There’s no point in being a junior freelancer, only to quickly change trains and try to become an entrepreneur. Make sure you are a Jedi Master before attempting to cross over to the Dark Side; have a decent living capital that is enough to last you 4 months.

Rule #2 – Understand how the Force works

Don’t cross over if you have doubts or feel you’re not ready for it. You’ll only cause disturbances in the Force. Unlike what some might think, the Dark Side is pure. You need to be mentally congruent with it. Make sure you can dominate and lead your employees and you’ll know what to ask of them. Otherwise the Force will spit you out.

Rule #3 – Sith Lords love networking

By first being a Jedi Master, it will be easier for you to make use of all the connections you’ve gained while working as a freelancer. You’ll have clients (who already are Sith Lords) that will respect you and help you in making the leap.

If you are not an outgoing, extrovert person, remain a Jedi. The key to becoming a succesful Sith Lord is networking and leadership. You’ll need to have an aura of influence. That’s how you make use of the Force. If you are shy and you know you can’t change, don’t even make the leap!

Conclusion

If you can really mentally use this metaphor of Jedis and Siths, you’ll make your evolution that much easier. Oh, and keep in mind that we Sith Lords are the real creators. It’s a well-known fact that a Sith Lord will easily win a battle with an equally powerful Jedi Master. That’s because the Dark Force is stronger. So what are you waiting for, young Jedi?

When it comes to the gaming duel of PC vs console gaming, PC gaming has always been played on a desk with a small display controlled by a mouse and keyboard, while gaming consoles have controllers and are played on the television in your living room. Well, Valve’s Steam Machine is changing all that.

The Steam Machine is a PC / console hybrid gaming platform where you can play all your PC games on a big screen and its revolutionary controller. In a nutshell, it’s an exciting gaming console that’ll be the center of entertainment for your living room very soon. Here’s everything you need to know about the Steam Machine: what it’s made of, how it functions and when you can own one.

Recommended Reading: Professional Gaming & How You Can Build A Career In It

What Is A Steam Machine?

Stripped down, a Steam Machine is a very tiny but powerful computer. A teardown of the prototype Steam Machine Valve gave to 300 lucky souls revealed that the components within the Machine were things you could buy from a PC store and build on your own.

It uses a Mini-ITX motherboard, the only motherboard with a size that will fit into a casing slightly larger than an XBox 360. Other than that, it has all the things a standard PC has: processor, RAM, hard drive, with one of the top graphics cards from NVIDIA.

(Image Source: iFixit)

With the secret out, many custom PC building companies are already in talks to build their own version of the Steam Machine. What they don’t have, however, is the Steam Operating System.

About Steam OS

Since the Steam Machine is basically a small-sized desktop PC, what makes it unique is the Steam OS. Steam OS is Linux-based and open source and its the thing that is powering all the hulabaloo about Steam. Currently, you can use Steam’s Big Picture feature to play Steam games on your living room TV, but it can go a lot further.

Steam OS wants to include wireless streaming of PC and Mac games from the powerful desktop in your room to the basic Steam Machine in your living room with little compromise of the controls and graphics. It’ll also have family sharing features where multiple members can unlock game achievements at their own pace without interfering with each other’s saved games.

Users can also control what game titles are seen by whom – this creates a secure, non-violent gaming environment for the young ones. Steam is also working with online media services so you’ll be able to enjoy music and TV content through the Steam Machine without another dedicated streaming device.

Steam OS is currently still in beta mode but if reviews you see everyone online is anything to go by, it may amount to something that rivals the latest gaming consoles.

Revolutionary Steam Controller

Games made for PC differ from those made on consoles, even if they’re the same title from the same developer. This is especially true for first person shooter (FPS) games as there are slight ‘auto-aim’ features on console games to compensate for the lack of accuracy achieve on a controller compared to a mouse and keyboard.

Since Steam is targeting PC gamers, they have to tend to this issue by creating a controller that can replace the mouse and keyboard. The Steam machine also needs a controller setup that allows up to 8 players to bring their own controllers and hook it up with the console for a good game. There are PC controllers on the market but plug and play has always been easier on a PlayStation or XBox.

(Image Source: The Verge)

To find the perfect mouse and keyboard replacement, they prototyped many designs that included traditional thumbsticks and old-school trackballs but ended up with clickable trackpads for aim and movement. The controller that will be released in 2014 will also feature a touch panel in the center and buttons at the back.

How Can I Own A Steam Machine?

Right now, the Steam Machines you can find online are 1 of 300 that Valve has sent out to beta participants. For everyone else, you can try out Steam OS by building your own computer and following these directions — be warned, it’s a bit complicated.

It won’t be long before other companies release their own rendition of the Machine, so it’s really a matter of waiting for Steam to finalize the OS and get their controller into production. Companies like iBuyPower and Digital Storm have already released their own Steam Machines at CES 2014.

(Image Source: iBuyPower)

These Machines will be available in a variety of designs, letting gamers choose how they want to decorate their living rooms slash gaming centers. Prices will also vary based on the installed hardware.

Unlike the PS4 or XBox One, games on the Steam Machine can run at different graphics settings just like on the PC, allowing for some compromise on visuals but relief on your pockets.

Final Verdict: Getting A Steam Machine

The Steam Machine could replace current generation gaming consoles and can also be the only entertainment system your living room needs. Gamers also won’t have to pay for any additional subscription or membership fees like the PlayStation Network (PSN) or XBox Live service. A basic Steam Machine can also be cheaper than a PS4 or XBox One but still give you an enjoyable gaming experience.

(Image Source: Colbehr)

PC gamers will be able to enjoy all their games even if their main machine is a Mac as they’ll be able to stream it to the big screen. This may extend to stream media content from your desktop in your bedroom or online content streamed through in-built media services.

Unlike proportional fonts, monospaced fonts consist of characters that all have the same width. This unique characteristic of monospaced fonts makes it easy to quickly tell the number of characters there are in a line, which incidentally is one of the advantages monospaced fonts have over proportional fonts. Monospaced fonts also tend to make text easier to read, thanks to their uniformity and consistency.

It’s precisely because of the simplicity, consistency, and practicality that monospaced fonts are a popular choice among web designers, developers, and programmers in general. With that in mind, we would like to share with you today a collection of 20 monospaced fonts you can get for free.

For more fonts, check out our 100 Must-Have Free Fonts For Commercial And Personal Use.

Recommended Reading: Top 10 Fonts Web Designers Love

Please click on the links provided to download any of them.

Cousine by Ascender Fonts

Source Code Pro by Paul D. Hunt

Skyhook Mono by David Waschbüsch

Anonymous Pro by Mark Simonson Studio

Telegrama Raw by Yamaoka Yasuhiro

DejaVu Sans by DejaVu

TeXGyreCursor by GUST e-foundry

Audimat Mono by SMeltery

FreeMono by GNU FreeFont

NotCourierSans by Open Source Publishing

Droid Sans Mono by Google Android

Oxygen Mono by Vernon Adams

Tye Paloon font by Font Monkey

Cutive Mono Font by New Typography

Lekton by Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino

Ubuntu Mono by Dalton Maag Ltd

BPmono by backpacker

CP Mono Font by Liquitype

Liberation Mono by Red Hat

PT Mono Font by Paratype

Building a WordPress theme is so easy with template tags. You can add the_title() to display the post or page title, and you can use the_content() to display post or page contents. There are many more template tags in WordPress that we can use to display other things.

But when it comes to displaying only particular things on your theme, you might want to create your own template tag. In today’s tutorial, we are going to walk you through this not-too-complicated process. Let’s get started with the fundamentals.

Recommended Reading WordPress Conditional Tags (And Snippets) For Beginners

Basic Template Tag

If you take a look at the WordPress Core sources, you will find that a template tag is basically a PHP function running a set of codes with some parameters.

To create your own template tag, you can write a PHP function in functions.php within your theme directory, for example.

 function my_template_tag() { echo 'This is my template'; } 

Then, in your other theme files, say, single.php or page.php, you can add the function, like so.

 <?php my_template_tag() ;?> 

This will display the ‘This is my template’ that is echoed inside the my_template_tag() function.

Creating a WordPress Template is really that simple. Alright, let us now take a look at a slightly more advanced example.

Page View Count Template Tag

In this example, we are going to create a template that will show view count for each post and page.

First, install and activate WordPress.com Stat in Jetpack. And make sure that you have connected Jetpack to WordPress.com. The reason we use WordPress.com Stat is that the View data will be stored in WordPress.com rather than in our own database. This could save on our server load.

Create a function in your functions.php named the_view(), like so:

 function the_view() { } 

We will put the function (the template tag) in a page or post, so we need to get the page and post ID number. This can be retrieved using get_the_ID();.

 function the_view() { $id = get_the_ID(); } 

We can then use a function to retrieve the number of views from WordPress.com Stats by using stats_get_csv();. This function accepts several parameters ( find the complete list here).

In our case, we need to add the days, which specify the time range of the view count, and the post_id.

 function the_view() { $id = get_the_ID(); $page_view = stats_get_csv('postviews', 'days=-1&post_id='.$id.''); } 

In the code above, since we set the days parameter to -1, we will retrieve the view count of the given post ID from the very beginning, from when the WordPress.com Stat plugin is activated.

Once we’ve the number, we just need to echo it, as follows.

 function the_view() { $id = get_the_ID(); $page_view = stats_get_csv('postviews', 'days=-1&post_id='.$id.''); echo $page_view[0]['views']; } 

That’s it, our new template tag for displaying page view count is done. You can <?php the_view() ;?> anywhere in page.php or single.php. For example:

If you have any questions, please feel free to put them in the comment section below.