

Ask HN: What are you working on right now? - nahcub

What&#x27;s your side project right now? I love seeing peoples&#x27; projects, so link to it if you can!
======
ajuc
I do 2d side scrolling game in html5. It's supposed to be arcade rpg, with
quests, dialogs, and upgrading your ship instead of leveling up (maybe later
I'll add skills like hacking). Moving works like in asteorids, but there's
huge flying city to fly through instead of asteroids. Theme is
postapocalyptic.

I have working prototype using only canvas, and one using webgl, there's just
tutorial and one simple quest and I need to develop better events system to
write quests more easily.

Demo is here:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44884054/dema/current/ma...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44884054/dema/current/main.html)

Quest system is using my
[https://github.com/ajuc/pefjs](https://github.com/ajuc/pefjs) library - works
similary to jbpm, but it's much simpler and has much less features (no
subprocesses, no persistence, no transactions). I use slightly modified
[https://code.google.com/p/jsdot/](https://code.google.com/p/jsdot/) graph
editor to create quests (nodes are waiting states, edges are transitions
between states with conditions on them).

The game works, but isn't fast enough, so now I work on using webgl for more
stuff. For now I have nice way to draw huge tiled maps using webgl (
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44884054/dema/current/al...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44884054/dema/current/allwebgl2d.html)
) - it's huge map of 4096x4096 tiles 64px x 64px each, and I only need to draw
2 triangles using 2 textures to do that.

Now I plan to keep objects data in another texture, redraw to it each frame
calculating physics and collision detection in fragment shaders, and draw
static vertex buffer with that texture to have moving objects.

I procrastinate heavily, should just make the game instead of all that tech.

And I certainly need better graphic.

------
nekopa
I am going through coursera's startup engineering course and can't decide what
to focus on for my final project:

A medical startup, unsexy, but looks likes it could be very, very profitable.
I have no domain knowledge for about half of this idea, but I have an
experience Doc who can cover that part, and is excited about the
possibilities.

An educational startup, something very close to my heart, where I have a lot
of domain knowledge and experience. I also think I have struck upon a rock
solid business model that can make me money (think lifestyle business, but a
little higher) yet allows me to create a business that I would be very
ethically proud of.

------
mugiltsr
I have worked on below side projects in last 4 years and made $0 seriously

1\. Intranet search engine - Shut down 2\. Followyours.com - You can follow
topics and you would get updates on the topic - It would get it from different
sources and analyse based on social signals based of retweets, likes etc.. -
Shut down 3\. InstantExamResults
([http://www.instantexamresults.com/](http://www.instantexamresults.com/)) -
to publish results of university students - Got interest from few universities
but no one is willing to pay as there are sites which publish results for
free. 4\. ConceptsA2
([http://www.conceptsa2z.com/](http://www.conceptsa2z.com/)) - A site to teach
math for school students in India - Going to shut down as there is no +ve
response among students.

As they say, I think I have not worked on the problems that people are happy
to pay to get it solved.

Now I am thinking of working in progress tracker application for online
learners and teachers. Launched the landing page to verify the interest from
online teachers. [http://unbouncepages.com/online-
teachers/](http://unbouncepages.com/online-teachers/)

Sent mail to around Authors on Udemy(as Google adwords have become costly).
Got interest from only 1 guy. Will be sending mails to online teachers for
another month.Based on the interest, I would decide whether to continue on
this project or not.

~~~
kranner
2\. sounds interesting. Something similar has been fermenting in my notes for
a while, so I'd be interested in your thoughts on why it didn't work for you.

~~~
mugiltsr
I have got some 300 users signed up for this web app. But the engagement was
very low. When I talked to people, they said that they can get the information
of their interested topics from their favorite websites - If they like cricket
they would see in cricinfo.com and so on.. And most of the news they want,
they can get it from twitter,fb and other sites they regularly check. So
followyours.com did not provide 'real' value for them, from their
perspective..

~~~
kranner
It still sounds like a promising idea to me. Perhaps niching it down e.g. for
people to follow only their favourite authors will be a useful exercise. That
way you can also build in features specific to that niche. Anyway, thanks for
sharing.

------
ceeK
An iOS app for the "Unibus" timetable at my University. It solves an itch I
had about how long it takes to get the bus times plus how crap the apps look
(i.e. [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/bus-catcher-warwick-
uni/id35...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/bus-catcher-warwick-
uni/id358457624?mt=8)). Moreover I wanted to flesh out my portfolio of apps to
hopefully delve into some freelance work soon.

I don't have a link, but here are some pictures:
[https://i.freeih.com/7279/iphone_screenshot_3.png](https://i.freeih.com/7279/iphone_screenshot_3.png)
[https://i.freeih.com/7278/iphone_screenshot.png](https://i.freeih.com/7278/iphone_screenshot.png)

The hosting website was made by a member of HN, as was the service that
created the product placement of screenshots. Thanks HN! ;)

~~~
vineet
Great UI. What service did you use to create the product placement
screenshots?

~~~
ceeK
Thanks! The service is called PlaceIt by Breezi and can be found here:
[http://placeit.breezi.com/productshots/](http://placeit.breezi.com/productshots/)

~~~
vineet
Thanks! Awesome service. I haven't seen it earlier for some reason.

------
helen842000
The 2 MVP's that I'm working on currently are :-

[http://www.postalcandy.co.uk](http://www.postalcandy.co.uk)

Was just using this to gauge interest but have shipped quite a few orders
already through the MVP setup. Working on a much better branded site with some
decent product photos. I would love it if this worked out!

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

This has exploded with popularity lately and I have a backlog of 100+ items to
post! Considering implementing gravity forms to allow user generated content
or completely rebuilding the site with better blog post section to encourage
people to comment & discuss.

~~~
jlengrand
The foundcamera idea is awesome. Lovin it

~~~
helen842000
Thanks!

------
mindcrime
Open Source Enterprise Social Networking, Collaboration and Knowledge
Management'ish stuff. Specifically, Quoddy[1] and Neddick[2].

[1]: [https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy](https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy)

[2]: [https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick](https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick)

I'd link to the demo sites, but both are running fairly old versions of their
respective codebases, and I'm not _quite_ ready to refresh them. Just a few
more bugs to fix, then we're tagging releases of both projects, and updating
the demo servers, etc. But it will probably be another week or two at this
rate.

------
hrrld
I'm working on a simplest-possible rss reader you can actually host yourself
(locally, and trivially) with node:

[https://github.com/harold/rss-box](https://github.com/harold/rss-box)

I've been using it exclusively since the Google Reader shutdown, and really
enjoying it.

I'm also working on a redesign of my website, where I'm building up some
infrastructure around distributing some electronic music building blocks
(soundpacks):

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

------
kranner
An iPad app for speed-reading ePubs:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/velocireader-ebook-
reader/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/velocireader-ebook-
reader/id635707909?ls=1&mt=8)

I made this because I wanted to speed-read on my iPad but I couldn't find any
app that had even the bare bones of typographic practice in place. I just
launched a minimal viable v1.0 a few days ago and am now polishing up some UI
and interaction edge-cases.

------
ulisesrmzroche
I started [http://lindavista.tv](http://lindavista.tv) a few day ago, New
Music Television from Latin America. It's a real-time music video leaderboard
and tv platform for latin american music, style, art, and culture.

The tech stack is all Node, so it's been pretty awesome. I'm getting a little
traction, mostly from bands from Chile, got one sign-in a few hours ago, but
I'm still finding the business model.

------
cpolis
A few days ago, I started working on a Rails based CMS:

[https://github.com/cmpolis/zencms](https://github.com/cmpolis/zencms)

I've been working with a design company for a while and haven't been satisfied
with the CMS's that we have been using, mostly Wordpress. I feel like there's
a better way to do it, so I'm hacking!

------
mflindell
I'm still working away on [http://des.sk](http://des.sk) which is my little
project to bring contacts, tasks, documents, calendar and email all into a
single place.

I love doing little experiments with all the features too, like sortable lists
in documents or dynamic content in the calendar.

------
mohit_agg
Performance Analytics - [https://www.fueldeck.com](https://www.fueldeck.com)

Helps in understanding user behaviour (engagement, conversion) based on your
app performance wrt different platforms, geography, browsers etc. Still in
private beta. Feedback is welcome.

~~~
xSwag
What's up with your font rendering?

~~~
mohit_agg
I am not seeing any issues on chrome? Can you please share more details.

------
adyus
[http://ezsend.it](http://ezsend.it) \- the quickest, easiest way to print a
stamp or shipping label. I'm using the easypost API and focusing on UX.
highlights include reverse geocoding for less typing and showing the closest
drop off location.

------
pmtarantino
This is the beta I am working on:
[http://booky.quintopiso.com.ar](http://booky.quintopiso.com.ar)

Two friends and I are the only users. Before I release it publicly, I want to
make it better an add a few more bookstores/sellers.

------
krapp
Cloning Hacker News (or something like it) in Laravel 4.

All I can offer is a screenshot, which is objectively terrible because I just
started more or less recently:
[http://imgur.com/RI9GM5r](http://imgur.com/RI9GM5r)

------
Concours
[http://www.feedsapi.org](http://www.feedsapi.org) \- It is a service to Get
The Full Content of Your Favourite News , RSS Feeds And Blogs Delivered To Any
Email, Apps or RSS Readers In Real Time

------
yolesaber
I just started my first "real" job as a software engineer (did some
freelancing and remote work in college) so I have had to put some of my side
projects on hold. But I am working on the 2nd draft of my novel!

~~~
nahcub
Awesome! What's your novel on? Best of luck getting published!

~~~
yolesaber
It's speculative fiction in a Ballard / Pynchonian vein, focusing on a patch
has been developed that replaces the biological need for sleep. So I'm
exploring what it would be like to live in a world without sleep and dreaming,
including economic, aesthetic, and political effects. I've structured the work
in two parts: the lead up to the development of the patch and then 50 years
after its introduction and subsidization by the government.

~~~
MrMeker
How can I get it once it comes out? It seems really interesting.

~~~
yolesaber
Heh, well I need to finish this draft and then have a professional editor go
through it - and then of course I need to have a publisher house accept the
manuscript. But thankfully I know a good amount of people from school who do
publishing work in NYC so we'll see how that goes. If not, I'd be more than
happen to send a manuscript over to you once I'm done!

------
rickcarlino
Prototype for peer-to-peer auction classifieds in Phoenix Arizona.

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

------
phdtree
[http://phdtree.org/](http://phdtree.org/), a Wiki project to document the
academic family tree of PhDs worldwide

------
slajax
[http://github.com/Retsly](http://github.com/Retsly) \- A PaaS API for RETS
(Real Estate Transaction Standard).

------
MojoJolo
TextTeaser ([http://www.textteaser.com/](http://www.textteaser.com/)), an
Automatic Summarization API.

------
MaysonL
A branch and bound algorithm for the Warehouse location problems in Coursera's
Discrete Optimization class.

------
czbond
Identity Management security product (who can access what, when, and how). No
site yet to offer.

~~~
akama
This is something that is difficult to do well. I wish you the best of luck
and hope you present it when your done.

~~~
czbond
Thank you. I have loads of experience (used to implement the "best of"
products for the fortune 500) - but taking a fairly different approach.

------
navyad
just trying my hands with Django, jquery, Ajax etc and developing a clone to
imdb site for learning purpose.

------
sdegutis
I've been working on a scriptable window manager for Mac OS X called Zephyros
- [https://github.com/sdegutis/zephyros](https://github.com/sdegutis/zephyros)

By scriptable I mean you can write your scripts in almost any language, and
there are already built-in libraries in Ruby, Python, Clojure, Go, and
JavaScript for doing it.

By "window manager" I mean you can move around windows and resize them and
stuff using a programmatic API. And you can bind global hot-keys to your
callbacks in whatever language you're using.

------
contingencies
(1) A very special woman. (2) Retracing the travels of my great grandfather
from a set of 120 year old postcards around Europe as a sort of photography
'then and now' project, donating imagery to libraries and museums along the
way. (3) Writing a history of the region of far southwest China. (4) Learning
about construction and sustainable building in preparation for building a
house. (5) Buying new test locks and practising lock picking after getting
addicted to the sport at OHM2013.

