
Ask HN: What projects are you working on? - RomanPushkin
I think its good having this kind of thread at some period of time.<p>Previous posts:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8561842
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7957989
======
dhagz
I'm going to be making my first Ruby Gem. It's going to enable easy lookup of
weather forecasts. I want to unite geocoding APIs and weather APIs, basically.

It started from a simple "whats the weather" app I wanted to make to learn
Sinatra, and then I realized I could turn everything I was doing into a gem
and that would be kind of cool, and definitely new for me. It's simple, but I
figure if I do a good job it will be useful to someone, as there don't seem to
be a ton of (well-documented) options for this kind of gem out there.

~~~
colinbartlett
That's awesome! Good luck, post it back here when you have it.

------
trevordev
1) [http://trevorb.cloudapp.net:3000/](http://trevorb.cloudapp.net:3000/)
personal dashboard to read hackernews/reddit/web comics without seeing the
same post twice (I swear I can waste time 10x more efficiently)

2) [http://trevorb.cloudapp.net:3001/](http://trevorb.cloudapp.net:3001/) mmo
type game exploring webgl, socketio and just experimenting

~~~
sjs382
A while back, I made something similar to the dashboard over here:
[http://news.http410.com/](http://news.http410.com/)

~~~
munishm
this is beautiful. Kudos!

------
deet
A personal banking assistant you communicate with using natural language.
(Using speech recognition, NLP, and ML).

[https://www.wealth.ai/](https://www.wealth.ai/)

Will launch in a few months.

~~~
amirouche
I am not sure about the domain “personnal finance”, seems to narrow. It looks
like a small H.E.R. application.

The design is convincing.

I went through your blog posts, nothing about your stack. Could you explain
what do you use of “speech recognition” (and “speech synthetisis” if any)?

------
JacobAldridge
I'm a business guy not a technical guy, so these projects will reflect that.
By day, I'm a consultant helping mid-sized companies build growth management
systems, so these projects reflect that a little as well.

There are 3 markets here - Coaching, Tourism, Barristers - so I'd love to hear
from anybody also playing in those spaces.

1) I'm building the business system for a business coaching organisation.
They're nominally competitors of mine, but I think they have a great niche and
expertise and more clients would benefit if they had a systemised approach.
This might scale for other coaching / consulting companies.

2) I'm researching micro-operators in the Travel and Tourism space, to see if
an approach to strategy and traction I built for a similar organisation can be
shared at scale and at their price point. Finding it challenging, because many
of these micro businesses don't want to grow / invest in growth.

3) Early market feedback from Barristers indicates their 'business' training
is inadequate. I've developed an overview for building a Bar practice from
pre-startup to a thriving specialisation, and am currently talking with
potential partners in their area of specialty (eg, personal financial
planning).

So my focus is seeking scale. These aren't going to disrupt the world, but
they're also 'not another to-do list app' so I feel I'm helping.

------
burritofanatic
An ebook that'll function as a guide as to how to quit law and code based on
my experience.

[http://www.quitlawandcode.com](http://www.quitlawandcode.com)

~~~
gxespino
This is interesting to me. I'm a nurse who recently made the transition to
developer and I think others could benefit from my experience.

Did you validate a need for this book prior to starting? Do you see an exodus
of lawyers leaving the profession? I ask because I don't necessarily see
nurses leaving their professions although most everyone I know is unhappy with
the job.

~~~
burritofanatic
You aren't Jared Sinclaire are you?
[http://jaredsinclair.com/about.html](http://jaredsinclair.com/about.html)
He's a registered ICU nurse who became a developer - I thought this transition
is more unique than mine.

More than a quarter of licensed attorneys who graduated from law school in
2000 are no longer actively practicing for a myriad of reasons. A significant
number from my year, 2008 hold jobs that don't require a law degree.

These articles should give you a glimpse into the situation. There were
several others I really like from over the years, but I can't seem to find
them at the moment.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/business/dealbook/burdened...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/business/dealbook/burdened-
with-debt-law-school-graduates-struggle-in-job-market.html)

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/04/30/job_market_fo...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/04/30/job_market_for_law_school_grads_what_happened_to_the_lost_generation_of.html)

I don't believe the general job market for nurses is as bad as it is for
attorneys. People also have a great difficulty accepting a potential sunk
cost, or refuse to believe that there's greater opportunity elsewhere once
they have both feet committed somewhere.

~~~
gxespino
Nope, thats not me, although I'll probably reach out to him soon.

The market for nursing isn't bad, although it's not as good as it was 5 years
ago. Job satisfaction, however, is horrible.

I'll start a similar book and see if I can drum up some interest. Two things
going for me: Nursing satisfaction is pretty low and burnout rates are pretty
high.

[http://www.everydayhealth.com/news/why-americas-nurses-
are-b...](http://www.everydayhealth.com/news/why-americas-nurses-are-burning-
out/)

[http://www.indeed.com/forum/job/nurse-rn/Want-leave-
nursing-...](http://www.indeed.com/forum/job/nurse-rn/Want-leave-nursing-
advice-please/t451784)

On a list of unhappiest jobs in 2013, nurses came in at No. 4. First place
were associate attorneys, btw. I thought that was pretty funny.

------
lewisl9029
A proof-of-concept for a multi-platform, secure, distributed, client-side chat
application called Toc Messenger:
[http://lewisl9029.github.io/toc](http://lewisl9029.github.io/toc)

Built with web technologies such as Ionic, Telehash and remoteStorage.

It's very bare-bones and severely under-optimized right now (have fun
downloading 4MB of code lol...), but I have some pretty ambitious features
planned for launch such as simultaneous logins, group chat, voice/video chat,
file transfers, some kind of email-based user on-boarding process (I'm looking
at integrating Persona), and peer discovery using the Bittorrent DHT over the
internet as well as automatic discovery for clients on the local network.

And yes, of course it will be open-source. =)

------
misframer
I'm working on a network flow monitoring system called Cistern [0]. Part of it
is a time series storage engine called Catena [1]. I've also written a few
protocol implementations for it, including sFlow v5 [2] and SNMP [3].

[0]
[https://github.com/PreetamJinka/cistern](https://github.com/PreetamJinka/cistern)

[1]
[https://github.com/PreetamJinka/catena](https://github.com/PreetamJinka/catena)

[2]
[https://github.com/PreetamJinka/sflow](https://github.com/PreetamJinka/sflow)

[3]
[https://github.com/PreetamJinka/snmp](https://github.com/PreetamJinka/snmp)

~~~
nubb
interesting! I am a network engineer so I am curious to ask - what benefits
would your tool bring me in my environment? 100+ branches, 3 large data
centers, etc...

~~~
misframer
I'm trying to make it very scalable so that you wouldn't need a big machine to
monitor many systems. Using Go helps with that, but I've had to make protocol
implementation efficient too.

I want this system to be very developer friendly. I think I could make this
more like a database instead of a monitoring system. You wouldn't insert data
into it directly; that happens with network flows. You should be able to query
it like a database with rich data models and aggregations.

I don't think it would be a direct benefit. I'm hoping that it will become a
great framework so people can write tools on top of it that would be way
better than anything I can make.

------
archagon
I'm working on a sort of DAW-ish thing for iPad. Except it's not really a DAW
— more of a musical sketchpad. When I was sitting down and thinking of what I
would like in a music creation app, I thought of two things. First, the
typical DAW grid structure (and sheet music before it) is far too rigid for
modern music. It's really hard to annotate music with syncopation, pitch
bends, and fluid rhythms unless you already have the song in your head — and
even then, it takes forever. Second, the feedback loop in most DAWs is really
large. By the time you've pecked away at your piano roll and fiddled with the
dozens of switches, your song is no longer fresh in your head.

In other words, I wanted something akin to musical clay: a very simple, very
malleable representation of music in space that focuses entirely on ease of
interaction.

With my app, I try to solve both of these problems. In regards to the former,
you have the option of drawing every note arbitrarily in pitch or time, as
simply as in an ordinary drawing app. (Snapping is an option, too.) And as for
the latter, the whole thing is a scroll view, so panning and zooming are
incredibly simple. Furthermore, you have immediate access to undo/redo and can
also rewind to the last place you played from, meaning that iterating on your
ideas takes only a few seconds as opposed to the arduous process of
controlling a DAW. The UI tries to get out of your way as much as humanly
possible.

I should emphasize that this won't be production software; the music you
create will sound like MIDI. Rather, my goal here is to make an app that you
can freely sketch and create musical ideas in, which can then be used as a
rough draft for working with a more featureful DAW.

Performance is a top priority, and I'm targeting 60fps on my iPad 3.

Screenshot with rough "programmer" UI:
[http://cl.ly/image/1I0y0G2v0b2T/IMG_0281.PNG](http://cl.ly/image/1I0y0G2v0b2T/IMG_0281.PNG)

Depending on my work ethic, I expect to release in a month or three.

~~~
amirouche
What do you mean by work ethic?

~~~
archagon
Well, hah, "depending on how lazy I am"!

------
nstart
A lot of things at once. I'm finally committing to finishing them in order.

A) My personal CMS. Standard CMS but outputs a static website. Kind of a
static site generator without going through all the "put file in folder run
[jekyll/bootstrap] whatever to generate site and upload via ftp" hassle. Just
blog like you normally would if using wordpress or medium.

B) A couple of SMS applications to generate some money on the side for me.
Junk apps along the lines of "send 'quiz me' to 7890 to get a new quiz
everyday". They are big (huuuge) in some parts of the world still.

C) An android app to create a single image from two images. This is just to
learn android development.

D) A firefox addon for...

Sigh. I should probably shut up and go back to working on this stuff.

------
bluejellybean
I recently launched Steam Profile Lookup!

[https://steamprofilelookup.com/steamid/76561197982486517](https://steamprofilelookup.com/steamid/76561197982486517)

Fraud is a big problem in the steam trading scene and this tool basically
allows people to do a quick background check before they trade.

This is my first real project that I've been able to put in front of users and
it's been a blast. I've found it's a lot more enjoyable for me to have actual
users trying stuff out rather than just building internal tools. Getting
feedback, trying stuff, and running tests is just deeply satisfying. It's also
really forced me to write good, production grade code.

~~~
fsimoneschi2
Credit scoring and fraud detection/prevention are big problems in games and
virtual economies in general. Keep me posted about your progress (DM
@fsimoneschi).

~~~
bluejellybean
This is very true. Currently the best communities can really do is name and
shame. Obviously this means there will always be a larger percentage of
scammers here than normal. The other big issue with the community driven
method is that people can't really take their lumps with a temp ban. Make one
bad decision and it will haunt you

As people spend more and more time inside virtual worlds the natural
progression is for people to trade in-game items for cash. If someone could
make rent just playing WoW and selling items, there in-game time would
skyrocket! Unfortunately game companies are pretty against this with the only
real exception being Valve.

The biggest argument against cash trading is that it ruins the markets for
'normal' players who don't want to grind gold. Markets in general are hard but
throwing in the requirement that they also have to be fun makes the challenge
extremely difficult. Competing against bots just ruins the market aspect of
the game for most players.

I'm not sure what the solution is but I think a core issue is that most
companies don't think of structuring the game around the economy and item
entropy. This leads to weird inefficiencies and massive inflation when players
and bots alike start grinding gold heavily. The only game that really comes
close to fixing this issue is EVE Online. Their market is fairly well built
and expensive items can disappear in an instant making runaway inflation not
as much of an issue (though still very present).

It's an annoying problem from the traders prospective because fraud runs
rampant and there isn't a ton we can do. Sites like mine help raise the bar
required to scam large amounts of money but without the game companies support
it will always be an ongoing battle.

------
meesterdude
Something of a cross between reddit and craigslist. Not live yet, still
sorting out voting. Hopefully eventually though.

------
andrewchambers
A service which is a cross between git and dropbox with client side encryption
and deduplication.

The clients are GPL open source with a cli client underway here
[https://github.com/buppyio/buppy](https://github.com/buppyio/buppy)

My server is private but based on a kubernetes cluster. I hope to add a server
version people can setup themselves if they don't want to pay for the official
server.

Still too wip for alpha, but I want to announce and get alpha testers soon.

------
RaitoBezarius
I'm working on a web application that helps a group of friends to play virtual
roleplay in a cool way (using advanced chat interactions - like soundtrack
while roleplaying, others devices that helps you play while you're outside,
everything that can enhance your roleplaying experience).

I'm also working as a side project to integrate AutobahnJS (a PubSub / RPC lib
based on WAMP protocol) with React.

------
BaptisteGreve
I'm working on Unimersiv, a platform to learn through virtual reality.

We believe that Virtual Reality can strongly improve the capacity of the human
mind to remember the things it learned for a long time. According the Cone of
Learning created by Edgard Dale, the american educatonist, after two weeks,
the human brain tends to remember 10% of what it reads, 20% of what it hear
but 90% of what it does or simulate Unimersiv yields the latter scenario
impeccably.

With the educational content published on the platform students can interact
with the virtual environment in person and manipulate the various objects
within it. This supports “learning by doing” and also results in creativity by
constructionism. There are already some great experiences that Oculus Rift'
users can use to feed their thirst for learning, the most famous is Titans of
Space which takes you into space to teach you everything about our solar
system or Apollo 11 in which you become Neil Armstrong on what is the 20th
century greatest achievment.

Link: [https://unimersiv.com](https://unimersiv.com)

------
jbwashington
I'm making a countdown timer for my university's transit system.

[https://github.com/jbwashington/BusHog](https://github.com/jbwashington/BusHog)

I find myself making a series of countdown timers in the morning based off my
class/bus schedule, I figured I would cut out all the bloated map UI and pull
data straight from the school's bus API.

------
Stoo
My main focus is still on Storytella[0]. I'm currently speaking to a
copywriter about getting some good quality user guides set up. I set up
writing-ideas[1] this week, just for fun really, and a chance to write some
code without much thought for architecture or performance or testing or any of
that professional kind of stuff that I have to do for Storytella. There's also
Sunstone[2] which is in need of some love. Outside of code there's also
Hollow[3], where I get to flex my music skills.

[0] [https://storytel.la/](https://storytel.la/)

[1] [http://www.writing-ideas.com/](http://www.writing-ideas.com/)

[2] [http://sunstone.stoogoff.com/](http://sunstone.stoogoff.com/)

[3] [http://www.hollow-audio.co.uk/](http://www.hollow-audio.co.uk/)

------
jamblesjumbles
Working on making Portfolio, a sweet way to keep up-to-date with your stocks.

Would love feedback if you're on an iPhone:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/portfolio-instantly-know-
wha...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/portfolio-instantly-know-
whats/id974217998)

------
krapp
\- Building an entity-component framework in C++ and making Space Invaders. No
code because it's literally terrible but here's some "gameplay footage"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxQZz0yr4V4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxQZz0yr4V4)

\- Building a forum that's a sort-of-but-not-entirely HN clone in PHP. It's a
free app on Pagodabox and still mostly doesn't work but assuming it's awake
what there is of it is here: [http://original-
oak.gopagoda.io/](http://original-oak.gopagoda.io/) This might wind up being
my final project this semester, and if it is I will post it here, or maybe not
I don't know.

\- Unity tutorials and ragequitting/restarting Handmade Hero all the time.

------
prokes
I'm working on TrackHSA ([http://trackhsa.com](http://trackhsa.com)), a
website to manage your Health Savings Account purchases, receipts, and
distributions. Launching soon, if you have an HSA check it out.

------
canterburry
I run a small SaaS business formatting images for responsive websites and are
building a console which aggregates all my data in one place and correlates it
to each of my customers.

For example, I use Stripe for payments, Desk.com for support, Mandrill for
transaction email, MailChimp for campaigns and Gmail for email...I want to see
any interaction I've had regardless of API for each of my customers.

I hope I'll can get better at spotting issues as they happen and address them
faster.

------
revskill
Write books on software engineering: [http://checkraiser.gitbooks.io/rails-
and-react-js/](http://checkraiser.gitbooks.io/rails-and-react-js/)
[https://www.gitbook.com/book/checkraiser/beginning-react-
nat...](https://www.gitbook.com/book/checkraiser/beginning-react-
native/details)

------
colinbartlett
[https://StatusGator.io](https://StatusGator.io) It monitors the status pages
of various cloud services and then alerts you.

[http://BrushbackApp.com](http://BrushbackApp.com) Baseball news app for iOS
and Android.

[http://taxstax.com](http://taxstax.com) Tax withholding service for
contractors.

------
andersthue
I am working on an app for a new working method for makers that makes it more
fun to be employed as a maker while making managers and customers happier.

The main gain for makers is that they get more time in flow and secondly get
more control over their time and how and when they have to do the work.

[http://timeblock.com](http://timeblock.com)

------
siquick
Been working on [http://www.soundshelter.net](http://www.soundshelter.net)

Sound Shelter is a platform for electronic music lovers to recommend their
favourite vinyl records to each other.

We then use the recommendations to build a personalised feed full of music we
think they'll love.

------
gordalina
I'm working on wits (written in the stars) - an app that takes western
astrology into today's mobile platforms. It's kinda sad that there aren't any
proper astrology apps in stores today.
[http://astrowits.com](http://astrowits.com)

------
tehbeard
1) An API to get information about minecraft (blocks, items, entities,
enchantments, commands etc in a similar vein to
[https://swapi.co/](https://swapi.co/)).

2) A client-side app using that API to make creating custom mobs and items
easier.

------
kidproquo
Working on v2 of Flaming Notes (music game to learn sight reading,
[http://www.adhyet.com](http://www.adhyet.com)).

Main v2 feature will be the ability to import MIDI files to have songs instead
of randomly generated notes.

------
purans
Trying to build this..
[https://github.com/narup/PubKit](https://github.com/narup/PubKit) \-
Lightweight messaging, data store and push notification platform for mobile
apps

------
edencoder
Heaps.

1) A framework (edencoder/eden) 2) A (sort of) imageboard
[https://www.1eden.com](https://www.1eden.com) 3) An online marketplace
(adlist) 4) A rental management software

... and a full time job

~~~
mod
Paginate (imageboard)

------
philippnagel
Together with another dev I am buildung the file sharing and editing service
we always wanted to use.

Editing-support for lots of file-types, encryption, git-like workflow, are
some of the things we Plan to implement.

------
lnk2w
I'm building a small system to control the development solicitations,
changelog and database scripts. Also I'm planning to build a HR system with my
brother and a friend.

------
someotheridiot
[http://rebrickable.com](http://rebrickable.com) \- Figure out what new cool
stuff you can build with your old LEGO collection.

------
jacobtracey
Been working on [https://fris.bi](https://fris.bi) for a while - it's a WebRTC
group video chat app.

Would love anyones feedback!

~~~
RomanPushkin
Need demo on the main page without registration!

------
RomanPushkin
[http://wellwellapp.meteor.com](http://wellwellapp.meteor.com)

Agile Retrospective feedback tool. Create a board, share the link.

------
tomjacobs
Something where people can talk about their projects that they're working on:

[http://glitchclub.com](http://glitchclub.com)

------
mcdevhammer
An HTML5 canvas UI framework. Not really serious, just wanted to finally learn
to do OO javascript properly and see where it goes.

------
creativeone
Building a platform to assist in marketing some vacant office space we are
buying in Atlanta. Will then try to take on CoStar.

