
Ask HN: What are you working on? - Anon84
I know this question has been asked before in one way or another, but in the mean time projects have been started and finished. People have changed jobs or even fields, etc...<p>What are you working on? And where? Start-up? Academia? Your favorite MegaCorp?
======
plinkplonk
I am doing something slightly weird. (I can talk about this on HN, but I am
keeping it quiet otherwise).

I read an article on Slashdot about John Carmack where he said, (emphasis
mine)

" After I took the job at Softdisk, I was happy. _I was programming, or
reading about programming, or talking about programming, almost every waking
hour_. It turned out that a $27k salary was enough that I could buy all the
books and pizza that I wanted, and I had nice enough computers at work that I
didn't feel the need to own more myself (4mb 386-20!).

I could still clearly remember my state of mind when I viewed other people as
being ignorant about various things, but after basically _doubling my
programming skills in the space of six months_ , I realized how relative it
all was. That has been reinforced several additional times over the seven
years since then. "

The phrase "doubling my programming knowledge in 6 months" caught my eye and I
thought I'd take a crack at it. I've set aside 6 months to do this. Given my
smaller "quantum" of knowledge as a compared to Carmack it should be easier
:-P.

So anyway, I've set a fairly ambitious(for me) agenda

(1)work completely through Algorithms by Cormen et al and Randomized
Algorithms by Prabhakar and Raghavan, doing every exercise in each book,

(2)become _really_ good at lisp and Forth - write about 10,000 "lines of code"
in each language, versions of the HRL library (see below)

(3) release an Open Source java library of Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning
algorithms (something extracted from a consulting project I recently
completed.).

I've taken a 6 month sabbatical from my consulting work. It was kind of weird
explaining to my clients that I am completely unavailable for the next 6
months, but I think it is worth a try. The bank account looks healthy enough
(touch wood). I've been working on this for the last 10 days, averaging 12
hours a day and loving it. .

~~~
prakash
Why Forth?

~~~
access_denied
I can't answer for plinkplonk but my guess is, for CS learning purposes, Forth
paired with Lisp is a combination like pizza and beer (as opposed to pizza and
sandwich).

~~~
prakash
very interesting analogy but I still don't get the picture :-)

------
markbao
I'm trying to develop my own mobile device. Going to be fun. Intel Atom
1.6ghz, Ubuntu-based, hopefully some kind of 5" capitative touch, software
written in Qt/C++ (for lack of a better framework/X drawing option).
<http://avecora.com>

Also working with hnuser://jasonlbaptiste on Ramamia (beta), which lets you
keep in touch with your family. <http://ramamia.com> \-- as well as status
updates for sports games at <http://tickrtalk.com> (we were launched, but the
data source pulled the plug on our API access...)

...and Classleaf, <http://classleaf.com> \- bringing education a bit more into
the 21st century by helping teachers create class websites, with homework,
test and due dates, events, file attachments, email lists, pages, and more,
and class tracking for students. (You can tell I say that pitch too much.)
Mostly managing sales staff (they're working on commission, $1000 per sale) to
make sales to high schools primarily.

Lastly, working to study/improve SAT/ACT/SATIIs/my abysmal GPA so I can
actually get into a decent college come this fall... sigh. Anyway, overview's
mostly at <http://markbao.com>.

~~~
defen
Why do you want to go to college? Speaking as someone who did, I'm not sure
you'll learn much that you haven't already.

~~~
markbao
College social experience, connections, academics, and excuse to be in NYC
(that is, if I get into my top choice NYU)

~~~
physcab
I believe strongly in higher education (I'm getting my PhD afterall), but
sometimes it needs to be said that college is not the only place you can get
all these experiences. You will build your own social networks regardless of
wherever you go and whatever you do, and your connections from your various
businesses are surely just as strong, if not stronger than what you'll find in
college. And of course, if you're such a self-starter as you seem to be,
you'll take the time to learn the subjects on your own regardless if you go to
college or not.

Please realize that there are many different paths through life. We are lucky
to be in the top 1% to take advantage of these educational opportunities. But
we're also just as lucky to have the freedom to choose how we want to live our
life in a way that brings us the most joy.

~~~
chewbranca
Speaking as a college dropout, who dropped out due to lack of money and
immediately got a programming job, I would like to stress the importance of
college. As far as the social experiences go, you will rarely ever be in an
environment that is anywhere near the social level of college. As programmers
we tend to get jobs where we are locked in on the computer all day off in our
own world. I have definitely made social connections from working, but no
where near the level that you get with college.

I agree with some of the other posts that you will not likely learn things in
college that you don't already know or couldn't easily learn, about
_computers_, but my recommendation is to ignore the computer curriculum in
college (unless the program is outstanding) and pick a completely unrelated
topic that you enjoy. Your college degree will be a piece of paper that no one
cares about, so make college about you, not about getting a degree to impress
someone else. This also has the advantage of keeping programming fun, a lot of
programming classes and homework take topics that are very interesting and
make them tedious and unenjoyable.

If I was to go back to college and start over right now, I would double major
in physics and linguistics, and minor in greek/roman history and in
philosophy. You can still take programming classes, but ignore the earlier
classes, figure out the materials, teach yourself anything you need to know,
and test out of those classes so you can just take the classes you are
interested. There is also a lot of interesting math classes you can take.

(EDIT: typo)

------
pg
Besides YC, I've been working on Arc. (No writing lately. I can't seem to
focus on more than 2 things at once, so it's always a choice of Arc xor
essays.)

Specifically, I've been trying to do things to Arc that will make News
shorter. I'm running out of room, though: News is 1886 LOC, and it's rare now
when I can find something that will cut as many as 5. So I'm going to try
writing some other types of applications to make short.

~~~
zackattack
1886 is short. Anyone else surprised?

~~~
projectileboy
Read the source code for arc.arc, srv.arc and news.arc, and you'll probably
learn something new about programming. I did, at any rate. Apparently PG isn't
just some investor who can't hack... :^)

~~~
ntoshev
Care to give some examples of things you learned?

~~~
jacquesm
speaking for myself, the idea that everything has an id from the same range
and that the context figures out how to use that id was a neat thing. I'd have
split it up into several structures simply because that seems to make the most
sense but this works well and in fact makes the code very compact.

Articles, comments it's all the same.

------
Zak
I'm working on newer and better software for controlling stage and club
lighting. It's still in the early stages, so the final form of the product(s)
isn't clear to me yet. A likely initial release will be aimed at the club
market, currently dominated by Martin LightJockey since a decent offering
there won't require any custom hardware.

I'm using Haskell and functional reactive programming. I intend to expose some
sort of programming language (probably graphical) to the user so they can
extend the effects engine[0] in ways I probably haven't thought of.
Internally, I'm going for a very abstract design so I can build several types
of control interface on top of one core.

[0] To oversimplify a bit, effects engines in lighting controllers allow the
application of functions of time to any of several attributes of an automated
light. A simple example would be a sine wave applied to tilt to make it swing
back and forth.

~~~
spitfire
I've done this before profitably. I ended up leaving the market in
frustration. I can give you one piece of advice, don't deal with club owners.
They are the scum of the earth.

Owners of night clubs don't get into the business for profit, but rather for
lifestyle. Your fancy code will just be seen as "huh it lights some shit up".

If you can put yourself above dealing with individual owners, more power to
you.

~~~
Zak
I'm quite familiar with club owners, and I'm well aware that they have no idea
why lighting control matters[0] even if it's explained to them in painful
detail. I'm honestly not sure how best to go about marketing such a product. I
suspect I'll do better to market directly to people who will be using the
product and make them handle selling it to club owners.

What was your product?

[0] I'm not sure if it actually does matter in the sense of making an event
more popular, which matters to both profit and lifestyle oriented owners. It
can make a huge difference with a live band, but a lot of times it's below the
audience's conscious awareness.

~~~
bmelton
I may be speaking out of turn, since I have no special expertise with either
club owners or club lighting, but you might try taking it to the channel to
market. If you can find club lighting supply houses (which I am only guessing
exist) -- and allow them to make hearty margins, they'll push your software
for you as part of their new installs / sales.

Again though, I don't know the market or niche, so take this suggestion with
LOTS of salt.

~~~
Zak
It's not a bad idea. At the consumerish end of the market, people often buy
club lighting from Guitar Center[0], which sells a large selection of
generally low-end to midrange DJ and club equipment. An aggressively-priced
low-end version could sell very well there.

The higher end of the market is served by specialized lighting dealers.
Professional lighting equipment is _very_ expensive, such that prices are not
usually listed. A lower-end professional console goes for around $10k (based
on used prices I've found for an Avolites Pearl Tiger).

LightJockey, the market leader I mentioned in my original post costs about
$1300 and sits somewhere between consumer and professional. It is _not_
available at Guitar Center, so that's a potential means of displacing it in
the market. All I need to do is make a superior product, and I'm sure I can do
that.

[0] A US chain store that sells and services musical instruments and related
equipment.

~~~
bmelton
I bought my first Les Paul at Guitar Center, so I'm familiar.

I think if you could get them to push for you, and maybe MusiciansFriend.com
(a similarly sized competitor, a la New Egg vs. Tiger Direct), you'd be in
decent shape, distributor-wise.

Either way, best of luck. Let us know how it goes.

------
vitaminj
Slightly off the beaten track - I'm currently in a small developing country in
Southeast Asia working on renewable energy projects for rural villages. I've
been here for 4 months and am absolutely loving it... it's actually a
satisfying use of an electrical engineering degree!

~~~
fakeempire
what country?

~~~
vitaminj
Laos

~~~
nuggien
How did you get there? Are you with a company or doing volunteer work?

------
Anon84
Now for something completely different...

I've been working on a global model of epidemic spreading for about a year now
(the project was actually started about 3 years ago). The idea is to be able
to forecast the progression of the disease across the globe as in where it
will hit next, how many cases, there will be, the efficacy of possible
governmental interventions, etc... (think weather forecast for disease
spreading)

Swine flu came around just when we had finished testing a more detailed
traveling model. It's been holding up pretty well so far!

~~~
yan
So, what are you predicting for the future?

~~~
Anon84
H1N1/A seems to be taking over seasonal flu in the southern hemisphere.
Chances are that if you get the flu over the next 6-9 months, it will be
H1N1/A. What this means in terms of actual number of cases and fatalities
depends on the rate of mutation and how quickly the vaccine becomes available.

------
Ixiaus
As is the theme with the hackers here, I gave my letter of resignation last
week to my employers and will be working full time on some
underground/blackhat technology that I've developed.

I will also be working on a few of my startup ideas; I am also going to pursue
my self-education full time (as in 2 days per week). I have a rigorous self-
made curriculum worked out.

My strongest startup idea is to create a pornography web application that uses
an in-house ontology to describe the media in-depth. User interaction will be
a simple "I like this" or "I don't like this" system to refine individual
user's results. The ontology is the key though, most of the creative and foot
work will be in that.

I'm also going to be building an RDF Triple Store using Clozure CL; complete
with graph inference, a RESTful API, and built to operate as a distributed
system.

My self-education entails all of the classic subjects: Mathematics, Rhetoric,
Writing, Greek as a foreign language, Logic, and the Sciences. Some of the
more specific subjects include: Knowledge Engineering, comp-sci, &c...

------
flooha
Trying to make building customized websites suck less. Have you ever tried to
build a MediaWiki site with extensions, or an osCommerce/Zencart site with
contributions? It sucks so bad, I'd rather claw my eyes out. Most of the
installation instructions consist of:

Open this file. Find this code. Paste this code before it. Paste this code
after it. Save the file. Rinse and repeat for 10 more files. Upload and pray.
Error Troubleshoot Insert the missing semi-colon Upload and pray. Rinse and
repeat.

On top of that, you have thousands of people all over the internet doing
exactly the same thing. again. and again. and again. What a waste of human
effort!

My answer: <http://flooha.com>

Choose your app, choose your add-ons, build it, install it, done. So easy
anyone can do it. No downloading, unzipping, reading instructions, opening
files, copying, pasting, comparing, merging, uploading, etc... Just clicking.
Uploading addons is as easy as filling out some form info and uploading a zip
file.

The site is live, but I have not yet "launched", meaning that I haven't done
an ounce of marketing. I had actually planned a "Please review my app" post on
HN on Tuesday, but I couldn't resist this tread.

------
patio11
I just launched the online version of Bingo Card Creator and am busy iterating
as fast as I possibly can before the school year starts. This weekend I added
breadcrumb navigation to the main workflow, put in spinners for some of the
AJAX interactions, built in some more analytics into the backend, and finished
the Mailchimp integration.

Next (workable) weekend: finish QA on Windows version 3.0 of the desktop app,
and get it in the hands of Mac testers.

------
sdesol
I'm working on a solution to unify all the major SCMs (ClearCase, Git,
Perforce, Subversion, etc.) and abstract the data it in such a way that I can
provide information that can be digested by all levels of an organization. I'm
calling this my full spectrum tool as it's intended to be as useful for
developers as it is for executives and everybody in between. Basically I'm
trying to change how we communicate and access information when it comes to
software development.

I've been working on this fulltime for over a year now and it seems like I
can't make a dent in it. Don't get me wrong, I have a very solid foundation so
far that includes an indexer and a very flexible server/client framework that
should work for any organization. However, even with this I still have a boat
load of work to do.

There are definitely days where I think I've gotten way over my head, but I
figure I've invested too much to walk away now.

~~~
mrduncan
Have you ever thought of open-sourcing it (or even parts of it)?

~~~
sdesol
It's still too early for me to think about this, but I'm sure some aspects of
it will be open sourced.

------
tptacek
I just got Ming, the Flash library, working in Ruby. I'm instrumenting the
pure-ruby Ruby-AES library to "snapshot" each transformation of the AES round
function, and playing with different ways to visualize substitution and
permutation. I'm hoping to lay out step-by-step transformation of AES blocks,
left-to-right, on a 34"x24" poster for Black Hat.

Our Chicago intern, who we found on Hacker News, is going to be helping me
with this project this week. He doesn't know it yet, though.

I'm also finishing our "official" poster for Black Hat, which is a hex/ASCII
chart with "interesting" characters highlighted (like a calendar with
holidays).

Starting sometime in the next couple weeks, I'm coming off a solid 18+ months
of back-to-back consulting projects and moving back to product work for
Playbook (<http://runplaybook.com>), Matasano's product. I have a lot of
customer calls to make. Another thing that entails: recruiting a jQ/frontend
Ruby developer in Chicago. Leads welcome!

------
dgallagher
I'm working on a startup that's, well, it's a secret. Not everybody is going
to tell. ;)

Last November I was laid off from my job. Haven't been able to find a new one,
so I've been teaching myself to code in the meantime. It's a completely
different field but I'm in love with it. :) I come from a mixed
business/finance/IT (Win sys admin) background. I've run several self-employed
small businesses which weren't scalable.

Amazoned about $400 in coding books and am chewing through them nicely.
Struggled for months but eventually built a partial working prototype for my
startup, and know that I can finish and launch it. If it fails miserably, well
damn, I'm going to walk away smarter than I've ever been before, and am going
to be well positioned to go on and do it all over again.

Definitely looking for a partner or two in the Boston, MA area. Ideally
someone with experience in, or willingness to learn:

\- Python w/Django 1.x

\- Windows App development (C# I think???)

\- Linux/Apache/PostgreSQL Stack

\- Objective-C w/Cocoa (App Kit) | PyObjC

But I'm not set in-stone on the technologies. Whatever is easiest and most
time/cost-effective. Ping me if you're interested and we can discuss further.
I don't bite, except for apple's. Contact info here: dave-gallagher.net

"Find out what you can not do, and then go, and do it!"

~~~
inklesspen
Wait, so you want someone with Python, Django, .NET, sysadmin, and Cocoa
experience? That's a heck of a lot of hats, even for a startup.

------
thunk
I'm trying to solve, once and for all, the problem of hacking music on a
computer, using Lisp and a couple venerable libs. You'll all be the first to
know when I release the alpha (very soon).

------
lzell
I quit my job a month ago for my second crack at bootstrapping a business:
<http://www.shirtstastegood.com>

I'm in nyc and I would love to hear any feedback! Thanks.

~~~
lzell
If you like any of the shirts, I made a coupon for HN readers:
<http://www.shirtstastegood.com/coupons/lXgcYWo4XEQ9fVAq>

~~~
chedigitz
Love the shirts. Wish you the best of luck.

How about taking it one step further, and giving viral video content creators
an affiliate cut in the shirt profits. With Store front widgets, that could be
placed anywhere. Transitioning into a platform.

We do sketch comedy, and I could see us using a service like that.

~~~
lzell
We are working on a viral video incentive program right now!! The store front
widget is a great idea, we did not think of that. Do you mean place the video
embed and accompanying t-shirt into a widget to be included on blogs etc? That
way the content creator has an easy way to spread the t-shirts as well because
they get a cut of each sale! Thank you so much for the input!! I love it!

~~~
chedigitz
exactly, an embed code that could be placed on blogs, or other sites. It seems
like a great angle for everyone.

------
ctingom
Working on my first startup after spending 11 years designing web sites. My
startup is a time tracking application called Minuteglass. It's been an
adventure. I can't wait to do one of those posts on HN where I ask people to
review it.

<http://www.minuteglass.com/>

------
DarkShikari
As has been for a while, my primary personal activity is developing the x264
video encoder, for fun and for profit. I work on ffmpeg as well from time to
time.

Some current commercial activities:

Working on optimizing CoreAVC video decoder for CoreCodec.

Working (9-5) at Facebook, primarily on video and photo-related stuff.

Working on the encoding backend for ShowReelPlayer.

------
chedigitz
Just resigned from my 9-5 to focus full time on my baby GMTV, a sketch comedy
series on YouTube, and other fun projects. Currently, Building a sound stage
in my loft for filming.

project 2 - a music aggregator that delivers new hip-hop tracks being
discussed on twitter, the goal is to rank based on conversational patterns.
m.grownmantv.com

for fun, I help students make sense of financial aid through video, twitter,
and the good ol telephone. stuffa.org

~~~
parlin
Hey, i tried the music aggregator - nice I want something like that. Feedback:
It would be great if the the the next song would start playing automatically
after the current song. Much like www.hypem.com. also, maybe there is a way to
make the song info not pop up in its own box, but somthing more inline, in the
page?

good luck

~~~
chedigitz
Thanks!! an inline in the page is great idea, like growl, that's my new goal.

------
emmett
Justin.tv. Who would have guessed that 2.5 years after putting a camera on
Justin's head, we'd still be going strong? I was really expecting more of a
blaze of glory followed by immediate failure, not a sustainable business.

~~~
prakash
Funny, how that is turning out, eh? What were your thoughts when you started
kiko -- was it the thought of a sustainable business?

~~~
emmett
Yes, I expected Kiko to look much more like how Justin.tv has turned out.
Whoops!

------
woid
Working fulltime for <http://transpond.com> (web-based widget
generator/builder)

In my spare time I'm making tools for web developers at
<http://www.binaryage.com>.

Also look at <http://hashpage.com> (mashup builder on top bespin, github and
google app engine) code: "michael" -> click to generate homepage -> woid ->
"edit"

Anyone uses XRefresh, FirePython, FireQuery, FireRainbow, Visor? Gimme
feedback! :-)

------
Pistos2
Continuing on with my console editor ( <http://purepistos.net/diakonos/> ).
Aiming to get it to live up to being billed "A Linux editor for the masses". A
recent version formalized an extension system (even though it has been
extensible with Ruby for a long while now). Upcoming roadmap items: modes;
window splitting; further development of the git extension; ...

~~~
emilis_info
Are there any plugins for Diakonos?

~~~
Pistos2
As listed in the release announcement ( <http://purepistos.net.twi.bz/f> ): a
basic git extension; a Selector extension (isolate-as-you-type searching,
using CSS or XPath); a comment toggle extension. Links to these are in the
announcement.

More extensions to come. With the extension system, you can: create functions
in Ruby, map them to any keys; bundle editor configuration (key config, syntax
highlighting, new language defs); integrate the functionality of gems; you
name it.

------
david927
A new approach to the relational database. Relationships are handled
differently allowing them to change on the fly. And the query language is
straight-forward; no joins, etc.

We should reach private alpha by the end of August. It's a start-up in Prague,
Czech Republic, but strangely all four of us are American.

------
tlrobinson
<http://280atlas.com/> \- You've probably seen this by now.

<http://narwhaljs.org/> \+ <http://jackjs.org/> \+
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/ServerJS>

\- Attempting to make JavaScript more usable on the server and other non-
browser contexts. Bringing it up to par with Ruby, Python, etc. Includes a
standard library, package manager, etc.

------
jrussino
I'm leaving San Francisco at the end of the month to begin a Master's program
in Mechanical Engineering at John's Hopkins University. My undergraduate work
was (mostly) in Biology/Neuroscience, but I realized late in the game that I
was much more interested in doing engineering-type work. My primary area of
interest is robotics.

In addition, I've just begun working on a wine-related iPhone app (my first),
which I'm very excited about. I'll be sure to submit something here when I've
got more to show for it.

------
jellisjapan
I've been slowly creating a site to help japanese students learn kanji reading
and context at readthekanji.com. I'm quite happy with it as it gets much
better with every release and I'm learning a lot as I go.

~~~
miles
Insanely well done! Love the clean look, context-based learning, and web-based
IME. The IME is especially cool - I've never seen it done anywhere else. Great
job.

~~~
jellisjapan
Thanks, I'm really glad you like it! The IME wasn't difficult because unlike
most cases of Japanese input, there is no need to convert it to kanji, which
saves sooo much extra work.

------
htsh
transitioning away from my legal work back to startup work, learning rails
while working on 2 early ideas and 1 underway.

the 2 ideas i'm at will to share:

1 - .org - wikipedia-style database of case-law commonly used by pro-bono
lawyers -- create something that would assist legal clinics manage their
information locally but also something that stores that data and shares it
with other clinics doing similar work. caselaw is supposed to be free and
without copyright but somehow its come to be locked up by the lexis/westlaw
duopoly. I understand they add value, but we believe there is room for a
simple database of opinions & briefs, even w/o the shepherdizing.

2 - .com - brainstorming site for early stage startup development, using
principles from Covey & Napoleon Hill. i.e. weekly meetings with small groups
of founders discussing multiple ideas, voting immediately upon disagreements,
etc.

I'd love to discuss the last idea as its the one I'm actually working on
coding right now but the folks I'm working with want to remain hush-hush for
now.

I'd be fascinated to hear folks' ideas for startups with a broad focus on the
role technology can play in community development, government & regulation &
even stuff like troll regulation / comment scoring. If anyone wants to IM or
chat, hit me up at hitesh@gmail.com.

~~~
netsp
Your .org sounds like a possible .com

~~~
htsh
I can see that. We thought we'd keep it wiki-style at the beginning, possibly
setting it up as a foundation. we think its more likely that legal clinics &
others are more likely to trust it & use it that way. We would start as narrow
as possible, possibly focusing on mental health working with the clinic I used
to work with and then expanding outwards.

~~~
netsp
I started to write a comment on how/why this could easily be a business. I
have recently been involved in this area.

But then I remembered some interview with the founder of betterworldbooks.com:
"This idea would be best embodied in a company." In this case, maybe it's not.
Lowering the barrier for a non specialist lawyer to work on the kind of cases
that attract pro-bono attention is good work.

~~~
htsh
I think there's something to be said about the indication users of the site
will get from knowing that profit-maximizing will never be a goal of the
software. It may pay some salaries (as wikipedia does) but it will never sell
out its purpose first and foremost as a collaborative tool.

------
fcoury
On my hosting start-up: <http://webbynode.com>. I am the programmer behind our
Manager app. :-)

Our main difference is providing ReadyStacks for easy bootstrap of servers:
watch the screencast for more info here - <http://webbynode.com/railsvimeo>.

~~~
markbao
Oh, hey, cool. I heard about Webbynode with the video that RailsEnvy did
documenting the reasons to use it (which I found on Rubyflow). Can't seem to
find it right now, but really liked the features. We're on Linode right now,
but looking at our other options...

~~~
fcoury
Thanks for your comments! You're most welcomed to give us a try. Is this the
video you mentioned:

[http://www.webbynode.com/screencasts/webbynode-
sixreasons.mo...](http://www.webbynode.com/screencasts/webbynode-
sixreasons.mov)

?

~~~
markbao
Yeah, that'd be it! Nice promo.

------
swolchok
Seeing if Hex-Rays' decompiler plugin (<http://www.hex-
rays.com/decompiler.shtml>) for IDA Pro (<http://www.hex-rays.com/idapro>) can
be reimplemented in Python with little work for much benefit, following the
Pareto Principle. Not really cloning their work; rather, noting that IDA does
not expose even trivial data-flow analysis.

I suspect that most of the fancy stuff is locked up for decompiler users only,
which would make sense since the decompiler is much more expensive than IDA
itself. So far, I have du and ud chains implemented in a nice, readable
fashion and will be releasing the codebase this week, after my advisor and I
discuss licensing issues. Going to write well-engineered code for automated
analyses that are often done in an ad-hoc fashion by the RCE community.

EDIT: after reading another comment about how short news.yc is, just shortened
an idiom that was repeated 5 or 6 times. It would be sort of nice if this was
done at compile time to avoid the overhead of function calls and nested
generators, but it's still quite elegant IMO to clean up common loops with
generators.

------
jlongster
Finish porting Gambit Scheme to the iPhone so I can quickly develop apps with
technologies I'm familiar with.

[http://jlongster.com/blog/2009/06/17/write-apps-iphone-
schem...](http://jlongster.com/blog/2009/06/17/write-apps-iphone-scheme/)

------
jimm
Rewriting all the back end software for a big kids' TV show site
(www.icarly.com). Recently launched polling system and search system (reverse
index). Entire site is generated as static pages + JS data so we can server
the 4 million registered users and 270 TB video/month off of one box (with
Akamai's help). Next up: the user registration/login and user generated
content management systems.

------
yummyfajitas
Trying to make MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) suck less.

Also working on a tool to make scientific collaboration easier.

~~~
maryrosecook
How are you trying to make it suck less? (I'm just curious: recently, I had
three MRI scans while I was in hospital).

~~~
yummyfajitas
The variable cost of MRI is scan time. The MRI technician needs to make a
tradeoff: more time for higher quality image. I'm trying to get a better
quality in the same time.

Big picture idea: the MRI doesn't spit out pictures, it spits out encoded
pictures (the Fourier transform). Using a simple model of what bodies look
like, I can dramatically narrow the search space when decoding the pictures.

~~~
maryrosecook
Wow, that sounds amazing. Don't forget to emphasise the benefit to the
patient, as well. Spending two hours in a small, hot tube when you've just had
heart surgery is not fun.

------
DanielBMarkham
I'm getting ready to switch from consulting to bootstrapping for a while, so
I'm looking for new startup ideas and partners.

~~~
tocomment
Feel free to shoot some ideas by me. I'm looking for ideas/partners too.

~~~
stanleydrew
hmm me too. you guys wouldn't happen to be in the bay area would you? i've got
a couple of ideas that i want to pursue, just looking to build the right team.

~~~
ablerman
I'm in the bay area, and also batting around some ideas. We should chat.

~~~
iamelgringo
I'm hosting Hackers and Founders Meetup this tuesday night in Mountain View if
you guys are interested. www.HackersandFounders.com

------
justlearning
reading everyone's tasks on hand, i feel like an ant standing in a herd of
mammoths.

anyways,I am working thru clojure -using the only book available. reading some
code. unlearning OOPS...and trying to make sense of the marsh of doing many
things and not accomplishing anything.

in one word - struggling.

~~~
bmelton
Heh. I'm probably standing with you, further down the food chain in this
thread. That said, everybody started out somewhere, and you're learning.

The only advice I can give is to work on an actual project, however small,
while learning a new language. It helps me learn ALL of a language, instead of
just the tricky bits, and I feel more accomplished when, instead of having
just read a book, I actually BUILT something. Chances are the something you
built will suck, or at least not be leveraging all the cool stuff you learned
later in the book, but it's something. You can either keep playing with it or
do nothing else, but if you're in a job interview, and somebody asks if you
know "x", you can point them at some code to show exactly how well you do (or
don't).

~~~
justlearning
Thanks. I will get the rubber burning. " The only advice I can give is..." a
very crisp advice. I am going to stick to your advice rather than borrow from
it.

------
jasonkester
Polishing Twiddla. It's amazing how much work you can put into something and
have it still look sort of the same from the outside. It does a lot more
though, and it does it a lot better. Our customer service load is as low as
it's ever been...

I'll be tweaking the revenue model a bit over the summer, to make sure it
keeps bringing in enough to finance the next 6-12 month roadtrip. I'll be
flying one-way to Guatemala in October and slowly working my way south for
some surfing in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and bullet dodging in Columbia.
Just picked up a used Thinkpad X60 that will fit in the bottom of the bag
without bogging me down, should hopefully survive the trip, and will be
powerful enough to run VS.NET from the beach.

------
bmelton
Working my 9 to 5 (which is more like an (8 to 8), and trying to learn Django
well enough to start an open source product I think Django makes sense for.

Django is fun, and surprisingly productive even while learning, though with
little free time it's going slower than I'd like.

------
joshsharp
Working my day job at <http://recursive.com.au>

Current side project is <http://twitterscribe.com>, an archive for your tweets
that exports in PDF and CSV. (Yes, another Twitter-related app.) I have some
things like OAuth to integrate, then we're going to publish custom books of
your tweets.

Hopefully that'll bring in a bit of money, then I can move on to one of the
other ideas - either my "tag the world" location database, or a "social
networking inspired" enterprise intranet. I'm thinking the second has a better
chance.

------
johnwatson11218
I'm working on a web based blackjack program. I have a beta up at
<http://www.barracudafix.com> . My idea is to make it easy to learn card
counting with this free webapp. I'm using java, spring, mysql, and dojo. I'm
thinking of porting the ajax stuff over to jquery.

------
utku_karatas
Wow. So noone here working on an IDE or text editor? Anyway I do :-)

Recently decided to give a break on my degree (physics) and finalize my
neverending Python IDE (Windows only - sorry :-)) while making buck on Django
gigs for the bills. I don't even remember when I actually started on that.
Must be the beginning of 2002. Now is the time.

~~~
davidw
Solved problem: Emacs :-)

~~~
utku_karatas
Yeah, I heard that OS has its devoted fanatics :-)

------
Eliezer
Same ol', same ol', still saving the world. <http://singinst.org/>

------
evgen
I am currently working on what is turning out to be a somewhat funky graph-
database in Erlang that will be used to power the semantic recommendation
engine for a news/questions/info site targeted at a professionals and industry
people in a particular market.

------
yan
Looking for people to work on interesting projects or people who need help
working on interesting projects. Anything unixy/obj-c/system services/web
stuff-related.

~~~
allenbrunson
What do you have in mind? I can do objective-c/mac/cocoa/iphone stuff. Until
recently I was working with a startup, where I wrote the beginnings of a
Pandora-like music streaming service.

I'd love to join another startup.

------
dmpayton
Doing my 9 to 5 at <http://www.cukerdesign.com>

Nights and weekends are split between developing my side-startup (a service to
help makes diabetes management simpler), the occasional WoW session, and
spending time with my wife and year-old daughter (not necessarily in that
order).

Also planning a natural language datetime parsing service with a friend who
was an old boss at another startup.

------
abyssknight
Honestly, I wish I was working on something outside of the office. The reality
is I wish I was working on something _worthwhile_ while I'm _in_ the office.
Lately the job has become a job again, and although it pays the bills, its
still meaningless work. Building the same applications ten different ways for
ten different purposes. Its futile.

That said, I'm glad I work where I work otherwise I might be struggling. Being
the go-to guy has its ups and downs, but for now it'll do.

Things I have been neglecting, however:

* HackMyJob.com - Job automation script sharing. Working this with a coworker outside the office. We're just trying to learn Django, honestly.

* FragTweet.com - Just a simple service to tell friends when and what you're playing. Unfortunately, a competitor has beaten me to market on the advanced features.

* MeetTheDress.com - A outfit sharing/comparing site. Still not even out of the spec on this one. I'm just not motivated at the moment.

* All my personal sites. Just last night I jumped two Wordpress point released on AbyssKnight.com. Maybe those sites need some TLC...

------
paraschopra
Been working on Wingify (<http://www.wingify.com/>), a behavioral targeting,
real time analytics and website optimization software. Lots of learning on the
way: Design of Experiments, Tokyo Cabinet, Distributed System Wide Job Queue,
Scaling, etc. etc.

Aim is to make best on site measurement and targeting app ever!

------
dill_day
I'm doing a NSF `Research Experiences for Undergraduates' thing at school...
the project is trying to help out with an optimizing compiler for Linear
Algebra kernels.

For a personal project I've been working on compiling Scheme to JVM bytecode;
I'm fixing bugs in my syntax-rules implementation right now. My code isn't so
great but I'm hopefully learning a lot!

------
adbachman
Incorporating a non-profit hackerspace in Baltimore, Maryland and preparing to
sign a lease on a workshop. <http://baltimorenode.org>

~~~
yan
I might see you there Wed :)

------
alex_c
Starting up my second start-up, in the mobile space. Doing customer discovery
right now, so it's a bit early to talk about it, but I have high hopes (and
no, it's not making iPhone apps). There are a lot of opportunities in mobile
if you don't focus on the app store.

Other than that, doing iPhone and (soon) Android consulting to pay the bills.

~~~
tocomment
Any tips on finding "opportunities in mobile if you don't focus on the app
store."?

Also how does one get into iPhone consulting. Do you still get paid if your
client's app gets rejected?

~~~
alex_c
Think B2B, for example. The iPhone (and the others - Android, Palm,
Blackberry), combined with the app store model provide two things: 1) users
effectively get a handheld computer which always has internet access, and 2)
developers get much more access to these mobile devices than carriers have
traditionally allowed. Pick an industry - what does this allow them to do that
they couldn't before? (ideally, something that is difficult to do with a
simple mobile version of a website). Chances are they're hearing a lot about
this iPhone thing, but don't really know what to do about it - can you help
them figure it out?

As for consulting, I started out with a bit of luck, a company I was
subletting office space from wanted an app made. Past that, referrals are
priceless. And yes, this hasn't come up yet, but they absolutely pay if the
app gets rejected - you get paid for the work you do, not for the success (or
failure) of the app. Most clients are curious (and fearful) of the approval
process, and it's very valuable if you can guide them through the submission
process and likely pitfalls - but approval is not ultimately your
responsibility.

~~~
cpher
Sorry for the newb question, but are you saying that ANY app developed for the
iPhone (including a custom app for a client) must go through the App Store
before being installed on their phones? I'm asking because we have a web-based
intranet app that we could create an iPhone-based version of, but it's only
useful to the client. So, there's no reason to put in on the App Store. But it
sounds like you're saying all apps must go through it. (Edit: I don't own an
iPhone so this is new territory for me)

~~~
alex_c
For small deployments, you can use "Ad-hoc" distribution - users have to jump
through some minor hoops (give you their device UUID, then drag the app file
into their iTunes and sync to the iPhone), but it works. It's mainly aimed at
distributing copies for testing or reviewing before an app hits the app store,
and I think there's a limit to how many copies you can distribute this way
(100 different devices? Don't remember 100%, I'd have to look it up).

You can also physically install the app yourself from your development machine
if you get their device (again, there might be a limit on the number of
devices, since you have to register each one).

As rdouble mentioned, there's also the enterprise program.

And, of course, there are jailbroken devices with third party app "stores". I
don't have much experience with these, but jailbroken iPhones are supposed to
make up a significant percentage of users - might not be as useful for
business use, though.

~~~
jpierce420
Ahh ok, thanks for clearing that up. I remembered after my last post that my
professor showed me a free Standford web class on developing for iPhone, and
they were giving real, in-person students iPhones to test their apps on.
Still, they shouldn't limit this, nobody would overtake the appstore, they
just can't stand even the smallest percentage getting around them. Makes me
sick. The iPhone could be such a better device, but Apple keeps cutting apps
for the use of 'undocumented APIs'. A few apps made the camera do things that
Apple never imagined being possible, and they get cut for the above reason. I
just wish they would open up more, broaden their horizon a bit. They're such
control freaks.

------
jrockway
Recently "finished":

eproject - file/buffer grouping for emacs,
<http://github.com/jrockway/eproject>

cperl-mode for MooseX::Declare - <http://github.com/jrockway/cperl-
mode/tree/mx-declare>

On my agenda:

Emacs/LLVM; compile Emacs to LLVM bitcode, link with extensions written in
arbitrary LLVM langauges. Right now, even my simplest attempts immediately
segfault, so it is on hold for a while. <http://github.com/jrockway/emacs>

(Once this works, I want to make ECL run on LLVM. Then we can write Emacs
extensions in a real programming language. I hear Python compiles to LLVM now
also, so that's another option. Eventually Perl will too.)

HTTP::Engine refactoring; removing unnecessary metaclasses and adding support
for requests inside preemptable coroutines: <http://github.com/jrockway/http-
engine> (A threaded web server without the disadvantages of threads.)

Persistent application framework: <http://github.com/jrockway/eventful>
(Generic foundation for web applications, TCP servers, IRC bots, ...)

Persistent _command-line_ application framework:
<http://github.com/jrockway/app-persistent> (Make your slow-starting Perl
application start up instantly.)

Path::Class replacement based on Forest::Tree::Pure:
<http://github.com/jrockway/data-filesystem> (I also have a binding to make a
Data::Filesystem tree into a FUSE filesystem.)

Once this yak shaving is out of the way, I have a few applications to write:

Filesytem::Kindle - plug in your Kindle and see the books as unencrypted HTML
(this one is going to be released anonymously, you didn't hear this from me, I
was never here...)

PleasureChicken - email / im / irc message consolidator, indexer, data
extractor. The idea is to let the computer read your messages for you, so you
don't have to. When you buy something from Amazon, it will stick the UPS
delivery date in your calendar, and remind you that you just spent $300 on
your Amex. When your boss IMs you at 3am with the word "broken", play a sound.
etc., etc. This might be a hosted service one day, as well.
<http://github.com/jrockway/pleasurechicken>

Angerwhale 2 - A weblog for programmers that doesn't suck.
<http://github.com/jrockway/angerwhale-ng> (See also:
<http://github.com/jrockway/angerwhale> for the old version.)

Unfortunately, my time is being taken up by menial $work_tasks, which
distracts me enough to not get much done. But that should all be ending soon.

------
J3nnings
A small business selling stickers: <http://www.supplycrate.com> A ventrilo
status website (taught myself codeigniter): <http:///www.ventstatus.com> A
ajax risk clone (using codeigniter and learning jquery): no domain

------
apinstein
Working on Neybor, an Automated Real Estate Marketing platform:
<http://neybor.com>.

Working on PHP framework as well that I use for Neybor and other projects at
<http://phocoa.com>.

------
arfrank
Full time job: Largest IT Consulting firm around processing security paperwork
for clearances

Startup from College: <http://www.studentsherpas.com/> \- Trying to help out
college students. Adding a free job board for local jobs for local businesses

Side Project: Working on news aggregator where not all users are created
equally. Basing it off a pseudo-physics system where users have mass and give
stories/links inertia and they gain mass by passing interesting links.

Other things: Doing some coding for a fitness competition based startup.
Currently working on a discussion system for them.

I have a few other ideas mulling around that I would love to have someone to
work with.

------
andrewtj
I'm working on two DNS Service Discovery related projects at the moment.

The first is a Wide Area Bonjour hosting service which will be of interest if
you have a few Macs that you wish could find each other when they're not the
same LAN. I'm hopeful it'll become my income stream in the near future:
<http://globalhostname.com/>

The second is a Firefox extension that adds discovery and registration support
to Firefox: <http://bonjourfoxy.net/>

Both are in the midst of heavy updates and any and all feedback on them would
be appreciated - see profile for contact details.

------
tapostrophemo
Working the day job (in-house dev. at Nationwide Insurance).

In process of incorporating an LLC with a businesss partner; our first project
will deal with web widgets...should be live (selling from day 1) by the end of
the summer.

Fun recent project was a thing I threw together "in a weekend" to make finding
things from nearby cities on craigslist easier. Prototype at:
<http://didyoucry.com/clshop/>

And re-roofing a section of my house. (Oh the pain of having to use muscles
for "real work" after years of cubicle dwelling.)

------
dawie
Docley (<http://docley.com/>): Simple Document Management

------
newsio
On my nights and weekends, I am trying to get the pieces aligned for a mobile
news startup, and stumbling on the back-end challenges (not surprising,
considering I am not a hacker).

------
ScottWhigham
Startup - <http://www.learnitfirst.com> is a video training company I started
in 2004 as a side business cum full-time business.

You, OP?

------
NoBSWebDesign
I recently (about 4 months ago) quit my job as a Marketing Engineer, which I
had taken when I graduated with Mechanical and Electrical Engineering degrees.
I am now supporting myself full-time with my consultancy while I work on my
startup (<http://www.ratemystudentrental.com>), which offers a Web-based
rating system for student rental housing, with a management system for
landlords and a private-label housing portal for universities.

I also just recently launched a new service that spawned from an internal
RateMyStudentRental system I had developed, after a few people who
incendentally saw me using it just "had to have it." And that one is called
<http://www.leadnuke.com>.

I'm also trying to finish getting our band's first album mastered (just
finished recording and producing), so we can post it on our site for
downloading (<http://www.moirocks.net>).

And my new goal I just set for the next six months is to transition from
running in typical cross-trainers to being able to run barefoot :-)

------
Oompa
Start-up, while undergrad at Georgia Tech. Fun times :)

------
bemmu
Adding features to my MySpace application that turned out to be surprisingly
popular (<http://bit.ly/mDZYb>). Specifically I want to let users see who
lives near them, and maybe get some dating aspects going. Also playing some
more with the Twitter API after our first failed project with it, let's see if
I'll get something released this time.

------
timinman
I'm creating an online spiritual-learning (Christian) site for kids:
<http://kidbuilder.net>.

~~~
lucifer
you're in the wrong website. try: love the almighty dollar, with all your
heart, and your mind, and join a startup with your fellow, as you promote
yourself.

------
alyssumclimbs
Working on <http://flowmingle.com>

FlowMingle is a group oriented online dating site that leads a small, local
group of singles through a guided introduction process. I'm working with two
other full-time partners in Lexington, Ky. Specifically, at this moment we are
integrating the ability to sign-up and login with multiple social networking
APIs.

------
GeneralMaximus
Building a full text search tool for Haiku (<http://haiku-os.org>). Fun times
:)

~~~
allenbrunson
i actually worked at be, back in the day, before they went out of business.
i've since moved on to macosx, but beos was pretty cool for that time period.

~~~
GeneralMaximus
Cool. What did you work on? Just curious.

~~~
allenbrunson
i did my best work on beos before i worked at be, unfortunately. this is what
got me hired:

<http://www.platinumball.net/pineapple/news/beos/>

be had their "focus shift" shortly before i started. after that, they were no
longer pushing beos as a standalone product. they repurposed it as an os for
embedded devices. the whole company was working on the ill-fated sony evilla
when i got there.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_eVilla>

it was pretty obvious to me and most of my fellow employees i talked to that
this product was not going to be a success. it wasn't.

be went out of business seven months after i got there and i was laid off.
would have been a good experience if i'd jumped on the bandwagon two or three
years earlier, i bet.

------
amichail
Numbrosia 3 iPhone/iPod touch app:
[http://amichail.posterous.com/numbrosia-3-screenshot-and-
des...](http://amichail.posterous.com/numbrosia-3-screenshot-and-description)

Also see Numbrosia (in iTunes store) and Numbrosia 2 (under review):
<http://www.numbrosia.com>

------
peregrine
I spend most of my time working at
<http://www.directsupplycareers.com/careers/> (if your thinking about applying
I can refer so drop me a line) and I spend the rest of my time working on a
maps/weather mashup.

Until I go to school that is then I split my time between them.

------
toisanji
I am working part time on my side project <http://sanbit.com> for fun, I would
like to turn it into a startup, but now sure on the angle. I am also looking
into working on some projects with other people, anyone interested in getting
a project going?

------
trickjarrett
I'm working on rebooting my LLC for web development and training. I'm also
working on a few application ideas.

I've really begun working on my blog again in earnest, unfortunately though I
have had a tough time choosing technology based topics to write about. We'll
see though.

------
gruseom
Making a new spreadsheet. Trying to make it fast enough. Learning about
spatial data structures.

------
dannyr
Recently went from full-time to part-time day job to focus more on my startup,
<http://www.launchset.com> .

If you find my site useful and want to use the service, let me know. email me
- danny at launchset.com

------
davidw
Not as much as I'd like to be. Lots of consulting, and
<http://BikeChatter.com> for fun. Hopefully going to be doing some more with
Hecl soon. Being a dad takes up a lot of time.

------
spencerfry
I run a 3 person startup full-time: <http://www.carbonmade.com>

And then on the side I run a small design blog: <http://www.burstoid.com>

------
emilis_info
I am developing a web wiki with a WYSIWYG user interface. It has an in-place
editor instead of forms and textareas (stole some ideas from Zim desktop
wiki).

I am also creating a new programming language for the wiki - a mixture of many
ideas from lisp, python and other. The language can be expressed by HTML
lists.

Working from home in Vilnius, Lithuania. Currently on child-care vacation paid
by the state.

I will opensource my work, but haven't found out yet how to make it support my
further development after my vacation ends and I have to return to my bank
job.

If you have ideas how to make some money from yet another wiki/cms -- I would
be very thankful for them.

------
rs
Working full time on a new version of <http://xp-dev.com/> \- the new platform
should be out in a few weeks and should do everything that everyone has been
asking for (will be easier to use as well). Git hosting will be coming up as
well (Mercurial later on).

After the recent debacle with stolen code and what not (took my off for a
week), I'm back on full steam working on it, and having fun! :)

(Nice to read what everyone else has been up to. There's actually quite a lot
of interesting projects/products being worked on here).

------
gz
Most recently <http://www.pdfamigo.com> which lets you create PDF forms
online. In fact I asked for and got feedback right here just yesterday.

------
jasonlbaptiste
Formerly: 2 years at Publictivity as founder/CEO

Now: Ramamia.com co-founder with Mark Bao. Part time side project, but may
make it full time. Also, CTO of MIT Enterprise Forum in florida (nonprofit).

more: jasonlbaptiste.com

------
endtime
I'm working for Microsoft this summer on the team developing some of the
Office web apps...specifically, I'm working on the Word Viewer.

I'm also working on a startup that hopes to launch this fall.

------
fuzzythinker
Thinking of continuing to work on my javascript physics engine:
<http://fuzzthink.com/openjs> or starting something else.

------
tome
Trying to polish off metapaw-dip in my spare time
<http://www.metapaw.co.uk/projects/metapaw-dip/>

------
hikari17
I'm working on getting our bootstrapped genealogy research site ready for
private beta: <http://www.genlighten.com>.

------
iron_ball
If I tell anyone, I'll lose my motivation. Scientific fact!

------
babyboy808
I'm just working my day job over at eirestudio.net - design/dev work. I have a
few side projects going which are mostly for fun and learning more JavaScript.

------
MoeDrippins
Small company. Financial software. Yeah, that seemed a lot better a year or so
ago.

But I've been at this a few years, this recession too shall pass.

------
tobych
Academic start-up: Multicriteria Mapping.

I'm in Poulsbo, a Norwegian settlement just across Puget Sound from Seattle,
WA, USA, working (remotely) with Andy Stirling
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Stirling>) at SPRU, University of Sussex,
Brighton, England, on his Multicriteria Mapping (<http://www.multicriteria-
mapping.org/>) methodology and related analysis software. MCM is a hybrid
qualitative/quantitative multicriteria analysis technique, (over to our
colleague Molly Morgan) "which through its novel approach to discussing
different options in contested areas of technology policy might be up to the
task of opening up decision making and engagement methods" (from Molly's
article on the Science Progress site: <http://ow.ly/h6hY>).

Researchers use a small Java application (MC-Mapper, by another developer) to
run two-hour long structured interviews with participants, and a larger
Java/Python/Hibernate/MS Access/MS Excel mashup (more mish-mash, really), MCM-
Analyst (by me) to prepare text reports and charts from results aggregated
across the participants.

As I write I'm preparing a draft Marketing Plan as part of our bid for some
funding for marketing and product development: we're a startup, someday hoping
to spin off into a non-profit trust to oversee the development and application
of the methodology and provide tools, support and consultancy services to
support its use.

I'm finding David H. Bangs, Jr.'s "The Market Planning Guide"
(<http://ow.ly/h6hK>) hugely useful: basically I'm working through it, piling
it all into a ridiculously long Word document, with the next step being
copying and pasting the necessary bits into what will become the Marketing
Plan. This is my first time working on a proper marketing plan, having b*gger
all experience in marketing beyond word-of-mouth, and this is all a... big
emotional effort... I've been helped on that front by reading HN regularly.

The Jython/MS Office mish-mash has got to go: we're envisaging us gradually
migrating to Eclipse/RCP/Jython. Hoping (with funding) to developing a web-
based service to complement the existing not-yet-Internet-enabled desktop
applications. We're envisaging doing that in Django: choosing that over eg RoR
because of our investment in Python.

Oh, and some work here and in the UK doing web development in SilverStripe for
small businesses.

I find many posts on HN a fantastic source of inspiration, energy, resources,
and ideas. Just great. If I'm bored, this is where I go.

------
JimmyL
Just graduated, so working on getting a job (anyone in Toronto?).

In the meantime, brushing up on my Python with Project Euler and a Kenken
solver.

------
mrtron
Recently put together <http://www.twitpare.com> as a fun app for all.

------
mv
I have been learning Python by implementing genetic algorithms.. Anyone else
interested in machine learning? I'd love having someone to shoot ideas with.
I'm in medical school so most of my friends don't know too much about
programming.

moejoe16.geo@yahoo.com (this is my spambox that i only check when expecting
email)

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raquo
I'm trying to create a web analytics SaaS for blogs that is usable and
provides some publishing-specific metrics (unlike GA and most other services).
I started it because I love design and visualization and it was a pain for me
to derive any insights from available web analytics services.

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Derferman
Just switched my personal website from Wordpress over to GitHub pages using
Jekyll. So far, so good.

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joe_bleau
Bringing up a new embedded hardware design (RFID) at work (small and stable
private company).

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neuromanta
I'm fresh out from college, having an Msc in information engineering. I have a
job, working as a researcher trainee. In my free time I'm working on a game
with pygame, and collaborating in an open source project, a software which
helps localization.

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anon17
Testing mining and simulation products written in C and .NET for a mid-sized
software house.

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bgnm2000
Learning ruby to start a few more projects, and excycle.com, as well as
working part time

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HeyLaughingBoy
I'm building small, portable, high-efficiency LED-based lights these days.
Unlike most of my "toy projects" I have real uses for high intensity, battery
powered lighting.

Current one now in design is a belt-mounted light powered by a 3-AA battery.

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asciilifeform
This: <http://www.loper-os.org/?p=8>

As before.

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lvv
After keep saying to myself - C++ is good enough, I wound up in having all my
projects being in different language: <http://volnitsky.com/project> (bash,
python, c++)

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eserorg
In the oil business: <http://eser.org>

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jacquesm
A way to tag text using google backwards. Don't ask :)

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isharan
A course management system which is a lot more flexible than moodle and other
software, but requires a lot more work from the school.

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PStamatiou
i should be working on my startup (on profile page) but i am recovering from
catching mono and have been sick for several weeks now.

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bkrausz
Trying to brand myself and build up my consulting business (basic web
consulting with a niche-market twist).

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richesh
working full-time on <http://www.CrowdMind.com>

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nagoff
Trying to get everything ready for our recently announced launch in August
(www.psonar.com)

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8plot
I'm working on revolutionizing the fiction publishing industry.

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vivekamn
Doing feasibility on white label mobile social network.

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billclerico
wepay.com

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jimmyrcom
A free ear training and music theory software <http://www.trainear.com/> that
few people use because no one cares about ear training and music theory

~~~
michaelkeenan
The ear trainer is very cool.

I think it might benefit from a simpler interface, and/or making it more
obvious where I should look first. I wasn't paying much attention when I first
checked it out and I thought I was supposed to hit the piano keys to answer
the questions. Then I read that I could hit Replay, but I didn't see the
Replay button, so I just hit Play. This changed the interval, which I thought
was the intended behavior and didn't like that. Then later I saw there's a
Repeat button, and then I saw the song answer choices.

If I were you, I'd do something like:

-Make the Song Answer Choice buttons bigger and/or brighter.

-Bring the Play and Repeat buttons closer to the answer choices and the piano.

-Change the instruction to click "Replay" to be consistent with the word "Repeat" (or change "Repeat" to "Replay").

-Hide the statistics, songs and other buttons from the main interface; instead, have them accessible with Show/Hide buttons or tabs.

I know there's a tutorial video, but I think you could still alter the
interface to make it easier for people who don't want to watch videos (for
example: me. I'm on a relatively slow connection right now and YouTube videos
take ages to buffer.).

You might also like to grab random people, put them in front of it, and watch
what they do, see what confuses them, etc.

I think it could be really successful! Maybe post it to Hacker News separately
as a "review my app" kind of post.

~~~
jimmyrcom
Thanks for the thorough feedback and correction for repeat. I do plan to make
a simplified version eventually but for now I'm still adding features and
trying to document the most recent ones.

For now there's video tutorials there that guide through the basics of using
the ear trainer and further instructions on the help page. There's a few
things that are counter intuitive but are far more efficient that way. For
example when you click the wrong answer the correct associated song starts
playing. Clicking star wars and having it play here comes the bride might seem
confusing but it's necessary for improving the song associating with the
correct interval. Also automatically playing a new interval when you're
correct is confusing at first but the more clicks saved the more efficient
training can be.

I can't guarantee anything if they don't watch the tutorial or read the help
page for now. Making it beginner foolproof would be great but not if older
users have to make 5 - 10 clicks when starting up to get it back to the most
efficient settings. I tried a version with elements hidden but in the end it's
better just make another version and call the current one the 'advanced
version'. The song buttons are packed because they're dynamic in length. The
songs can be named anything in the song editor. Also if you select all chords
or scales in the first dropdown it already overflows the expected area. There
can be a lot of answer choices.

Thanks again for the detailed comment, It'll try and reciprocate my time if I
notice somewhere I can or if you tell me something you want feedback on.

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jpierce420
Just joined an open source project, a p2p client for eDonkey, and eventually
bit torrent and others. It is an older project that went proprietary/closed-
source and failed, and we're breathing new life into it starting with the old
open source code base. We're about done cleaning it all up, and will start on
new features soon. Completely in C#, and runs on .NET and Mono. Great project,
great people, already members from all over the world. Check us out on
sourceforge: <https://sourceforge.net/projects/hathi/> Come see some real C#
power in action, and join us in the fun! :-)

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ddemchuk
I've mentioned this in another comment here before, but I'm working on a
social book summary website. Users can search for or submit up to 500-word
summaries, vote on their favorites, and leave comments on them as well. It
emerged from my frustration in trying to refresh my memory for books I've
already read.

I would love to hear other people's opinions on it...

