
Ask HN: What are you currently working on in your spare time? - SoundAndBug
I have a lot of spare time at the moment and I&#x27;m thinking about a new project to add to my portfolio.<p>I&#x27;m exploring the Canvas and WebGL APIs. I&#x27;ll probably do something with it and add WebSockets for multiplayer functionality.<p>I was looking at Phaser3 yesterday and I was surprised how easy it was to get started.
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trykondev
My mother has expressed to me several times her disappointment at not having
any printed pictures since she got her iPhone. I usually remind her that she
can get her pictures printed if she really wanted to -- but after several
years of this, I realized that the hassle of getting them printed is enough of
a barrier that it's never going to happen.

So I'm working on an app that will allow for automatic printing and delivery
of pictures from mobile devices:

[http://www.printstream.net/](http://www.printstream.net/)

You can add pictures to your PrintStream account and it will choose a certain
number each month to print and deliver to you. We also are thinking about an
even more automatic method, where the app will algorithmically choose from all
of your photos each month without having to explicitly add them to your
PrintStream account. This is definitely a feature my mother would want, but we
want this to be opt-in to protect the privacy of the users.

I'm still prototyping the app using React Native but I'm excited to get it up
and running.

~~~
otras
This reminds me of NanaGram [0], but it seems your use case ("I want to print
my own photos") is different than their use case ("I want to send printed
versions of my photos"). Very cool!

[0]: [https://nanagram.co/](https://nanagram.co/)

~~~
aacook
Thank you for the mention. My quantum-of-one [0] was my late 94-year-old
grandfather [1]. My brother and I gave NanaGram to him for his birthday.
(Well, really it was a quantum of two because my grandmother also loves
getting photos in the mail.)

I got married this past June and at the wedding shower my Mom gave my wife
lingerie while chanting "4 kids! 4 kids! 4 kids!" As you can probably tell, my
Mom has 4 kids. My initial use case was "I want to send curated 4x6 prints
from my 3 siblings and I to my grandparents." Most people using NanaGram send
photos to their loved ones but we do have some folks sending photos to
themselves.

@trykondev FYI your title tag is "Mysite." This is a super fun space to be in.
Good luck with your launch. I think grandparents and moms are some the best of
quantums.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3075&v=4WO5kJChg...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3075&v=4WO5kJChg3w)
[1] [https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell-
cook](https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell-cook)

------
graystevens
I got fed up of going to conferences and getting some cool stickers that I
never get to put anywhere.

The obvious idea is to put them on your laptop, but that can make reselling it
difficult, and you lose those stickers if you sell it with them still
attached.

So... I’ve managed to find some sticky-backed vinyl that looks almost exactly
like the aluminium used on the MacBooks and MacBook Pro’s. I’ve stencilled and
cut out a couple of lids and when applied you can barely tell they’re on
there. They look awesome.

I’ve had them on nice hot laptops for a couple of months (with cool stickers
applied on top) and they peel off fairly easily, but most importantly, leave
zero residue.

I’m planning on figuring out if there’s a market for these ‘skins’ and going
from there. I’ve take pictures along the way so I’ll put a blog together about
it shortly, and gauge interest.

~~~
nniroclax
That's pretty neat. My workaround at the moment is to put all my stickers on a
hardshell case for the MBP. That way, I can just pop it off if I'm ever ready
to sell or just want to look more "professional".

I must say though, that the extra bulk of the case can be slightly annoying
and I miss the look of the aluminium. I"ll be interested to follow your story!

------
matt_the_bass
I’be been making high build quality Wordclocks as presents for friends and
family over the past few years. I’m frequently told “you should sell these!”
So I’ve made a design that I think is pretty nice from a piece of hardwood.
I’ve sold one so far (without any promoting). I am now working on building
some stock and just about to start promoting the site [1] and hope to sell 3-4
before the holidays. I plan to market these as a limited edition (100 units
max) are piece.

Moderator Dan contacted me and suggested I post as a Show HN about my story. I
hope to in the next few days.

[1] www.finewordclocks.com

~~~
SoundAndBug
This looks amazing.

Can you share which micro-controller are you using?

~~~
matt_the_bass
Thanks! I’ve tried a bunch of different arduino/compatible units. Early ones
started with Duos. Some others used Sparks. It’s more a function of what bus
voltages are needed for the LED controllers. If possible I prefer to not use
line lever converters. Currently I used a customized protoboard but am
planning on custom PCB in the future. Each one is generally an improvement on
the last due to streamlining processes.

------
codegeek
I have been learning Go/golang for the past week. What an awesome language. I
always wanted to learn something that was not quite low level like C and not
high level/interpreted like php/python etc. Go seems like a good balance
between the two. I may build a REST API with it soon :)

------
jxub
Today, I was going through the ffmpeg tutorial on
[http://dranger.com/ffmpeg/tutorial01.html](http://dranger.com/ffmpeg/tutorial01.html).
C ecosystem has lots of warts, especially with linking, however I settled on
some "sane" defaults with all the warning flags, C11 version and clang-format
(now I probably still need to use Valgrind at some point).

On the physical plane, I've been practising my longboard carving skills.

Projects that I currently have on my backlog:

\- Upgrading my BarrelDB Elixir client ([https://gitlab.com/barrel-
db/Clients/barrel_ex](https://gitlab.com/barrel-db/Clients/barrel_ex)) to
support the new version of the underlying Erlang distributed database.

\- Fixing translation from Elixir to Erlang on a function body level of
Doppelganger
([https://github.com/jxub/doppelganger](https://github.com/jxub/doppelganger)),
an automated Elixir to Erlang code translator working with pattern-matching on
the AST level.

Also, reading about ways to limit global warming. I hope the recent IPCC
findings make people and corporations change their habits, or at least make
governments impose bans on non-electric cars, modern farming practices, etc...

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ecesena
We’ve started Solo, an open source security key for two-factor auth. It’s cool
because it’s the first to be open and support the newest FIDO2 standard.

We worked for about 2 months on a kickstarter that launched last Wed and is
going beyond expectations! If we reach 10K backers, this will be the most
backed security product on Kickstarter... for an open source product that’d be
a dream coming true!

[https://solokeys.com/kickstarter](https://solokeys.com/kickstarter)

~~~
nniroclax
This looks really great! I've never really carried a key with me and am afraid
of losing it, but am thinking about giving it a try. How long have you guys
been working on this for?

~~~
ecesena
This is the upgrade of U2F Zero ([https://u2fzero.com](https://u2fzero.com)).
We're working on Solo since August, but we Conor started his project more than
1 year ago.

------
nniroclax
I work on a remote team and am building a tool in my spare time to help with
some of the downfalls of working remotely.

As a remote worker, occasional zoom calls help build connection and team
retreats are amazing, but the rest of the "oh hey! New coworker just walked
by! Let's go say hi!" type communication just isn't there. That serendipitous
communication you get in a colocated environment is hard to duplicate in a
remote one.

I'm building [https://hallwayapp.com](https://hallwayapp.com) at the moment to
serve as an asynchronous home base of sorts for my team (and possibly other
teams). If you work remotely, I'd love to hear your thoughts and/or how you
build teams.

------
dbla
I'm building a fitness tracker specifically for rock climbers using RFID in
addition to the regular fitness tracker sensors (accelerometer, altimeter,
etc). It started as a project to teach me lower level embedded programming (I
do web dev for my day job). Since then it's expanded and we're actually
testing it at a local rock climbing gym. If you're curious you can see a demo
video here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gnEAeMDKt8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gnEAeMDKt8)

------
tomaspollak
I'm relaunching my chiptune/VGM music player [1] with a bigger catalog, and
working on a libgit2-based Git client for the CLI [2].

The former is all about exploring new browser features (WebGL2, Wasm,
WebMIDI), the latter all about dealing with ancient terminal stuff. Quite a
mix!

[1] [https://muki.io](https://muki.io) [2]
[https://tomas.github.io/jix](https://tomas.github.io/jix)

~~~
SoundAndBug
It's interesting to see what can be done with the Web APIs.

This is my venture into the Web Audio API (+ websockets):
[https://www.personalecho.com/jam](https://www.personalecho.com/jam)

It's pretty basic, but I find it fun. I used Tone.js for it.

~~~
tomaspollak
Tone.js is great! Also check out timbre.js if you haven't.

~~~
SoundAndBug
Is this it:
[https://github.com/mohayonao/timbre.js/](https://github.com/mohayonao/timbre.js/)
? (It says it's not maintained anymore)

What does it offer that Tone.js does not?

~~~
tomaspollak
Yikes, just realized it's no longer maintained.

Timbre lets you do more advanced stuff in a simpler way (less lines of code),
although the last time I used Tone.js was a long time ago, so things might be
different now.

Take a look at the Timbre.js examples!

------
peasantking
I run an Amazon FBA business and also organize a 1000+ person meetup group.
People often ask how they can find and vet a quality freight forwarder:

[https://www.jumpcargo.com](https://www.jumpcargo.com)

A user will be able to view and contact freight forwarders by state or
transport type. I'd like to get a payment portal and maybe even a jobs board
in there too.

------
Findeton
I have a big project and a small one.

The small project involves getting rid of reducers in react redux, by creating
a modified version of JSON.

The big project is a new social network. A selling point is recovering the
idea of Google + circles, but using groups instead (like in Whatsapp). Think
about merging WhatsApp and Facebook together, you should be able to publish
things in the same way you do messaging through WhatsApp.

~~~
SoundAndBug
Can you explain why do you want to get rid of reducers? What do you gain from
it?

Good luck with the social network. Seems like a tough job.

~~~
Findeton
With the spread (...foo) operator you can already merge json objects. However
in order to use it you need to have access to the objects you make reference
to.

This is how it would work: In the front end (like in react-redux) you have
your state variable and then you normally make a request to the backend, which
the backend returns this "JSON2" object, which you can merge automatically
(with JSON2.merge method) to create the new state, without requiring reducers.
The only thing is that the back-end would need to be aware of how the front-
end state structure looks like (it doesn't need to keep track of the current
state though).

// the front-end state

let state = { some: "things", nested: { something: { what: "what", } }, other:
[2,3] }

// action is a string with JSON2 format that comes from a query to the back-
end. Take the "..." literally

let action = "{ ..., nested: { something: { ..., more: "manymore" } }, other:
[1, ...] }"

// create the new state

state = JSON2.merge(state, action)

// now state is:

state = { some: "things", nested: { something: { what: "what", more:
"manymore" } }, other: [1,2,3] }

------
brogrammer2019
Thanks to heaps of feedback I have received via email, I am manually merging
feedback text changes into free programming books; goal is to release fresh
new free programming books by 1st of November 2018

Link: [https://books.goalkicker.com](https://books.goalkicker.com)

------
mechnesium
From a meta-perspective, HackerNews is how I'm currently spending my time.
Alas, it is a stopgap to a more pervasive problem in my life.

If I weren't currently on HackerNews, I would (very literally) be spending my
spare time wondering how I should spend my spare time.

Should I change jobs? Go to graduate school? Learn to make electronic music?
Play Hearthstone? Exercise? Eat? Sleep? Go(lang)?

This is a daily battle that happens when I arrive home from work with at least
3 waking hours to myself, which is a rarity.

The inability to make a decision on how to spend my spare time is causing me
to slowly lose my sanity. It is eating away at the fiber of my being. I'm not
sure if having ADHD may be a factor.

------
finfun234
I'm building [https://www.shareseer.com](https://www.shareseer.com) to make
access to financial data easy.

Most recently I added a feature that allows download of financial statements
for most US listed companies.

------
alashley
Just finished this app that lets people find workout partners/personal
trainers with similar routines/diets.

Link: [https://gymmmr.com/home](https://gymmmr.com/home)

------
bootsz
Right now I'm writing a Scheme interpreter from scratch. It's quite a rabbit
hole and I'm loving it so far. Planning to dive into the world of compilers
next.

------
tmaly
I am working on building a teach your kids how to program with Scratch 3.0
tutorial. It is slow going, but my daughter is having a lot of fun working out
the details

------
dkvochkin
I have been building an e-commerce website[1] from scracth (I know I could
have used shopify or similar but I wanted to learn the ins and outs) to sell
motivational posters. Tried a few ads but seems like there is no market for
this kind of posters. Probably shutting it down soon....

[1] [https://printinsanity.com/](https://printinsanity.com/)

------
Jemaclus
I'm building a Tradewars (old BBS game) clone in Go. It's fun trying to
reverse engineer how certain things worked.

------
seanwilson
I'm working on a browser extension that checks if the website you're working
on follows current SEO, speed and security best practices:

[https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/)

