
I recorded vlogs to show how I built side projects - damechen
https://indielog.com/user/damon
======
sakopov
I sometimes find myself hacking together a quick console-based or vanilla JS
prototype for an idea and then just stop there because messing with different
cloud providers, containers, react, webpack and etc is just soul draining. I
remember when I was 14 I'd throw up a quick PHP script for my project, upload
it to my host and get it up and running in just a few minutes. A month ago I
spent week trying to get Cognito working with a Serverless API and by the time
I figured it out I was mentally done with the project. I cannot ever seem to
get over this hump. I love working on side projects but getting things up and
running properly is just a huge drag these days.

~~~
spanhandler
Confession: it took me like two damn hours the other day just to figure out
how to get TS code that included Node modules packaged for the browser. There
was a lot of advice that was wrong or outdated or otherwise didn’t work. I’ve
written JS since before jQuery was a thing and have done some damn good work
in React and React Native, but hadn’t dealt with bundlers and such manually.
Phew boy, it is a _mess_.

~~~
tasssko
Yes my frustration is the entire frontend in x framework now requires nodejs
by default. I develop with Javascript (nodejs), Erlang(Elixir) and Ruby(Ror
and Jekyll). The one pain point is managing the nodejs dependencies in these
projects.

~~~
panpanna
It is very hard to control your dependencies when you use a framework or a
transpiler in JS. They bring in tons of other packages which have their own
dependencies and so on.

This has also opened a new dangerous attack vector where hackers take over a
small forgotten component used by many nodejs packages and inject malicious
code into projects without anyone noticing.

------
chrismorgan
Bug report on the site itself: with the way you’ve styled _both_ body and
html, body is a separate scrolling pane from the document scroll area, which
causes the header and the “give feedback” buttons to sit on top of the scroll
bar, and breaks keyboard navigation (arrow keys, Space, Page Down, _& c._)
until you focus the body (by clicking on the page or with Tab). A simple
additive way of fixing this is to set `overflow-x: unset` on at least one of
html and body (if you just do one, it actually doesn’t matter which, because
html and body are a bit special), but removing the offending overflow
declarations altogether would be better. A top-level `overflow-x: hidden` is
generally a bad idea anyway—if it changes anything, it suggests that you’ve
got some other styles somewhere wrong (though there _are_ one or two genuine
cases where there’s no good alternative), and doing things that way invariably
ends up going wrong and truncating important content sooner or later.

~~~
damechen
Haha, you made my day Chris! This issue bothers for quite a long time, and I
just didn't know how to fix it. In fact, I thought this is just some css
issue, and didn't affect the functionality, so didn't invest too much time on
it, also because of my procrastination :)

Thanks for suggesting the fix!!!

------
damechen
I started to build IndieLog (formerly Lonely Dev) since the lockdown to fix my
own problem. The other project Backlogs is like a by-product while building
IndieLog.

I never did something like this, putting myself in the public. It sounds
scary. Indeed it was in the beginning, but it's an incredible journey so far!

~~~
lukevp
Nice looking site and product! I watched your drag and drop demo for the
kanban board. You may consider having a “best of” at the top, I wouldn’t watch
a vlog because of the time involved, but I would definitely watch a couple of
top rated videos from your journey where you talk about pivots, big feature
demos, etc. you could manually curate the top ones for now and influence them
with thumbs up and view as there are more user metrics. Good luck!

~~~
damechen
This is such a great idea lukevp!!! I will consider to have those featured
ones.

~~~
frsandstone
You might also take a look at how popular influencers use Instagram Stories to
collect throughout-the-day updates into cohesive stories across days and
weeks.

IE: "My trip to Cabo" might include 1-2 stories out of 10 posted that day, but
they are the user's favorite and tell a cohesive story.

Another analogy is Youtube's "Playlist" feature.

~~~
damechen
Yes, we kinda have that feature, but in a different way. As most of our
members are bootstrapping their own product. Any video if it is related to a
particular product, it can be attached to the product. Like our member David
creates a product called Remake, all related videos can be linked to Remake in
this page
[https://indielog.com/product/remake](https://indielog.com/product/remake)

------
Fiveplus
I quite like the concept of keeping each video under 2 minutes.

Congrats on getting to the 100-mark! What do you think was the best thing to
come out of vlogging simultaneously?

~~~
damechen
Yes, 2 minutes is like a standup update. Our members also think the limit is
very helpful to keep them concise. A good way to practice speak in some sense.

The best thing so far is definitely making lots of friends around the world.
We can see each other, hear each other. It's the feeling that none of those
text-based forums can give.

------
chrismorgan
Multiple people here seem to be thinking this is recordings of the actual
building of side projects. Rather, it’s videos not more than two minutes long,
mostly just a person talking to the camera about the work they’re doing.

~~~
webosdude
Yeah even I thought it would be concise demos or screen recordings of everyday
progress but it’s just person talking. Is there a blog or Youtube channel
which slowly builds a project which you can follow too?

~~~
egfx
There is an in site IDE at gif.com.ai and I was thinking about recording a few
demos of how to build gifs using it. But I thought it would be better to
contact existing computer graphics bloggers who post videos. It’s hard to both
build an app and vlog about it full time. It’s not like you can just stream
your screen.

~~~
LeonB
(TimeSnapper developer here) — you can use TimeSnapper to continually
screenshot your work. Run it together it creates a super fast movie.

For the purpose of indie log it might be sufficient to handroll a custom
script that takes the snapshots and then use ffmpeg to convert them to a
video.

~~~
egfx
It looks like the ability to focus in on an app could prove useful. If I get
into it again. I will take a look.

------
kamel3d
Great job! Would like to see you on indiehackers podcast talking about your
journey, maybe a bit early for this but hopefully soon. I have a suggestion to
add some kind of pagination to the video so after one video you go to the next
one without going back to the pain profile page, or maybe some kind of
playlist, I think would be wise to focus on making the video experience very
good before adding the audio feature. good luck

~~~
damechen
This is such an invaluable idea! I am adding it to my roadmap:
[https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/pagination-to-the-
video-19...](https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/pagination-to-the-
video-1921a7c0)

Thanks a lot!

------
natchy
Hey I was just thinking about doing something like this, but just on Youtube.

I was recently on Indie Hacker's podcast and got a lot of followup emails from
other engineers asking questions and it was cool talking with random
developers.

Is there a way to post a link to a youtube video on IndieLog so I can double
dip?

~~~
damechen
Hmm, I think that would be cool to have. Indeed some of our members are
Youtubers as well. It would be a duplicate effort for them to upload the same
thing on IndieLog. Thanks for sharing this idea. I will definitely see how I
can make it work!

I added it to our backlogs: [https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/allow-
indietubers-to-share...](https://indielog.backlogs.co/post/allow-indietubers-
to-share-yt-link-on-indielog-ca3f08eb)

~~~
ed
Backlogs is a cool idea! But I feel like it really wants to be a Trello
Powerup. Show a popup asking for CC info after install, using Stripe Checkout.
Then give people a CNAME record that displays a public board in an iFrame,
available at backlog.yourservice.com. This would be like a 3-5 day project,
instead of weeks, to duplicate most of Trello's functionality. And you'd
benefit from the visibility in Trello's marketplace. You could really simplify
your implementation and still validate the idea. Just a thought!

~~~
damechen
That's so true! If I heard Trello Power-ups, I will definitely give it a go.

Actually for Backlogs, some features are already taken from IndieLog, like the
upvote and commenting. I just implemented the roadmap boards and the changelog
page.

Haha, I built the Backlogs on the side, so it is a slow process :)

------
gregalbritton
Great concept and nice implementation! Feels a bit like Justin.tv meets
Github. Very cool.

~~~
mgkimsal
years ago, I'd proposed (to the 5 people who used to listen to me!) that we
put together a protocol to be able to tie audio files (for comments) to
specific commits in a subversion system (2006 maybe?).

perhaps if GitHub gave us a way to do media attachments with particular
commits, we could let people embed instructional/teaching moments in their
code bases...

not suggesting GitHub is the only player out there, but may be big enough to
give this a try as a side project for some of the internal folks.

~~~
damechen
This idea is mind blowing!!! We can make Github more fun, like giving users
options to attach audio, or video along with the commit. World nowadays is no
longer text-based, it needs more context!

------
dgoberna
I love the idea and the implementation! Great job!

If I had time for side projects I probably would use it. Bookmarked for when
that time comes.

How many active users (uploading videos) are already? How you feel about
speakers in other languages?

~~~
damechen
The visitor are like hundreds every day. But today is totally different :)

For speaking in another language, so far we don't have people do that. I am
not an English speaker as well.

But if you think our platform is useful for you to simply document your own
journey, feel free to say it in your own language :)

------
macspoofing
Awesome! It's not easy to put yourself out there like this, but it will make a
difference for somebody who will either take value from your videos or be
inspired by them (or both!). Kudos!

~~~
damechen
Indeed! We are like virtual colleagues, help each other out, cheer for any
achievement, and grow ourselves and our products together.

------
thecoppinger
Hey, look! It’s my hero Damon! Made my day seeing this on HN just now, you
definitely deserve the exposure. Keep it up mate, you’re doing great work.

~~~
damechen
Hey Charlie, thanks for support as always!!!

I really didn't expect this much attention. I will do an update on IndieLog in
a bit.

------
mgkimsal
Nice. I did a test project and just let screenflow record for hours - I think
I have around 26 hours of stuff, but ... it's definitely not fit for
consumption or learning from. I look back and think I could edit it down some
and make it useful, but then think I may just start the next project with a
more focused eye on the recording in the first place.

~~~
damechen
26 hours nonstop? You didn't take any sleep?

~~~
mgkimsal
oh no, it was a few hours a day for a few days, then... picked up a couple
weeks later, etc.

------
tunesmith
I've been tempted more than once to vlog programming, but what do you do about
the (frequent, for me) times where you're just searching stackoverflow or
reading docs or barking up the wrong tree? I'm more tempted to write the
thing, then vlog starting over from scratch as if I know what I'm doing.

~~~
adamfeldman
That's all a normal part of my process, and true for many people. Seeing that
is as valuable as anything else.

~~~
damechen
Totally agree!

------
felubra
Hi, I just tried to login in the site via Github, but a popup flashes and
nothing happens. I've tried the Feedback tool
([https://feedback.indielog.com/post/](https://feedback.indielog.com/post/)),
but this page gives me a 404. Thank you

~~~
damechen
Hey, I am really sorry, it sounds terrible!

I just fixed the 404 issue for the feedback tool. For the Github popup, I can
see new users signed up via Github with no issue.

May I know what browser are you using? Is the popup blocked by the browser
somehow? Thanks!

------
danso
Very cool, and great presentation! Have you considered getting on a service
like Twitch or YouTube? Not so much as a way to produce the step-by-step
snippets you're already doing, but to document yourself working in livestream,
with all the upsides and downsides it entails?

~~~
damechen
I want to try livestream, but my 19mo daughter would not allow me to do that.

Actually as you can see, most of my videos do not have good lighting because I
recorded them in the evening time after my little daughter went to bed. In the
day time, I only got fragmented time slot so I can add things, whatever bug
fixes or new features, little by little.

So blocking hours to do livestream would be hard for me as for now :(

------
batt4good
I wish there were more live-coding and / or code snippets!

This guy is a UX pro!

~~~
damechen
Would like to see if we can bring the live streaming and code sharing to our
platform! Wow, you just opened up some hidden potential to IndieLog. Thanks!

------
catsarebetter
If anyone has issues logging in or signing up in Chrome, spam Damon so he'll
fix it lol, otherwise, use Firefox.

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apineda
Waaay better name! Good choice. :)

~~~
damechen
Glad you like it!!!

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surajs
This just gave me the idea to use YouTube for the same thing.

~~~
damechen
Haha, do it, it's going to be fun!

------
jsnk
Love the idea. Is there a plan to support Email only sign up?

I dislike using social account because I might get suspended and lose the data
and access to the website.

~~~
damechen
hey jsnk, email sign up is supported now!
[https://indielog.backlogs.co/changelog/support-email-sign-
up...](https://indielog.backlogs.co/changelog/support-email-sign-up-279e18dc)

