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Ask HN: What are you working on?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#601

Post by MaulingMonkey »

Project: I'm learning to (ab)use nuget packages and micro libraries as a means of increasing my motivation and completion rate on personal projects.

I've had a tendency to (re)start new personal projects from scratch instead of continuing old ones. I'm up to around 300 dead and abandoned projects. Compounding the problem: "I don't want to manage #include paths, library names, paths, and deal with other build errata - for multiple platforms no less - just to escape a lousy JSON string!". A native nuget package can reduce this to a few clicks, which is much more palatable. I've been doing a lot of reusable build automation to make creating .nupkg s a no-brainer. So far I've figured out how to make decent nuget packages for C++, C#, and Typescript projects.

I'm applying this approach to the creation of a native C++ library for sentry.io (because I'm tired of unreported assertion failures within a company being a problem, ever). I've spun off a lot of terrible v0.0.0 junk: https://www.nuget.org/profiles/MaulingMonkey (follow the "Project Link" for the corresponding Apache 2.0 licensed github repositories)

So far I this includes libraries for unit testing, formatting JSON, enumerating the callstack, and a snprintf wrapper. (I've been muttering "always be shipping" to coworkers and friends - taking the piss out of the phrase "always be closing". A former coworker suggested something even better, which I'm trying to embrace: "always be shipped", hence my willingness to put even v0.0.0 stuff out there.)

Problem: My makefiles for linux builds are absolutely horrific - and I'm not just talking about my propensity to use tabs for non-indentation purpouses: https://github.com/MaulingMonkey/libMmkJsonWriter/blob/dc26d...

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#602

Post by calcsam »

conorgil145 wrote: post #535
calcsam wrote: post #198

I'm building a stock option calculator for startup employees. It walks you through how to collect the information you need to know about the stock options you own, or have been offered, and figure out how much they would be worth in various scenarios. http://www.optionvalue.io

I would have found this incredibly useful when I was doing research to understand stock options that I have had in the past. Sounds like a really cool project. Keep at it! Also, to get a more accurate estimation, you will have to know the amount of investment in each round and the permissions that come with different classes of shares. For example, liquidation preferences and investors deciding whether they will conv…

Thanks! I'm definitely planning on adding liquidation preferences -- a lot of people have been requesting it.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#603

Post by aanm1988 »

mgkimsal wrote: post #521
dublinben wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New England, New Jersey and parts of New York start with a 0. http://www.mapsofworld.com/usa/zipcodes/images/usa-zip-code-...

In high school - BASIC class - we had to build a program to let a user input an address. I took the input for the ZIP code as a string, and the teacher 'corrected' me because ZIP codes were numbers, not letters. I said "if I starts with 0, that would be lost". "ZIP codes don't start with 0," she replied. "Umm... yeah they do." I pull out a copy of my New Zork Times from Infocom, located in MA, and their ZIP started w…

> Really didn't think anyone in the US could not know that in 2017

Well I guess you are just much much smarter than us. That goodness you cut us some slack. ;)

I don't know if I have ever seen a zero prefixed zip code.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#604

Post by scottbez1 »

ambrop7 wrote: post #473
scottbez1 wrote: post #126

As a hardware side project I've been designing and building an open source split-flap display - the kind of electro-mechanical displays you used to see in train stations and airports that loudly flip through letters and numbers as they update. https://scottbez1.github.io/splitflap/ Have a few working prototypes ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bslkflVv-Hw ), but I'm currently redesigning the electronics/PCB to make…

This is great. I don't see how I can resist making one. I will probably 3D-print the hardware but use my own electronics and SW for controlling it. (I'm kind of addicted to writing my own software for controlling 3D printers and this looks like it would be an easy fit) I suppose it's a stepper motor that needs to be moved to the right position? How is it homed?

Currently using an IR reflectance sensor and a hole on the spool gear - you can kind of see it here: https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap/wiki/Electronics

The sensor is mounted on a PCB that can be physically shifted to apply minor adjustments to the home position. The adjustments could easily be done in software, but doing it physically "stores" the adjustment parameter for each module without having to reprogram the controller.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#605

Post by ianhowson »

jessriedel wrote: post #190

I have a project idea that might be useful for someone to learn about audio processing (and maybe neural networks?). I like to listen to audio and watch video of podcasts (and lectures and other human speech) at faster speeds. Sometime, especially if I'm trying to "skim" to see if the media is worth listening to carefully, I'd like to listen at 3x or faster. Very often, the limiting factor is the intelligibility of t…

I did a podcast/audiobook player app ('lectr') with gap removal and had experimental support for what you describe. Roughly, it removed samples if there was no significant difference in the frequency-domain spectra. This was a simple threshold test (the threshold could be adjusted by the user).

It works for some material. Some speakers (usually professional book readers) have even pacing and it's more effective. A simple 1.5-1.7x speedup is also useful there. Podcasters tend to be 'bursty' in that they speak rapidly and then pause, and gap removal was more useful there.

I stopped working on it as my lifestyle changed such that I wasn't using it. There was almost no commercial interest in the project.

I'd love to see a library, especially with MOOCs etc becoming mainstream. Most players provide 1.25/1.5/2.0x options, but between 1.5x and 2.0x is the sweet spot for me, and almost no apps provide that.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#606

Post by natzar »

ajones05 wrote: post #399
StephenCanis wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really cool idea, I think people would love that! The biggest hurdle would be getting enough interesting content. You would almost need to create a Wikipedia for real world locations. If you were able to get enough content I think that would be an incredible app/service.

I'm doing something similar for local news/events, called SeeAround.me, where people can see/submit local news stories and their locations. But I could see sort of a cross between that and Your Audio Tour as particular interesting for people who want to do their own walking tours, for example.

I already made that for a client. Don't think users will write stories from their mobile, at least good ones. It was difficult to start with no content, too similar to twitter.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#607

Post by meesterdude »

wink wrote: post #418

Surely you mean "What should you be working on?" Too many projects, nothing is ever finished :( I envy the people who a) have some creative ideas and b) manage to ship them. More than once an offhand remark of "wouldn't it be nice if we had X" made me write the damn thing in a much better way than I could have ever described a project of mine. Maybe that's also the reason I'll probably never start a company again (an…

funny enough, the service i'm building is to help people with such problems of nothing getting finished.

I believe in you, indeed in everyone, a great potential of skill and creativity that is waiting to be unleashed with the right words at the right time. I think a lot of people could use just a little help, and it can unblock them in huge, life changing ways.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#608

Post by jessriedel »

ianhowson wrote: post #605
jessriedel wrote: post #190

I have a project idea that might be useful for someone to learn about audio processing (and maybe neural networks?). I like to listen to audio and watch video of podcasts (and lectures and other human speech) at faster speeds. Sometime, especially if I'm trying to "skim" to see if the media is worth listening to carefully, I'd like to listen at 3x or faster. Very often, the limiting factor is the intelligibility of t…

I did a podcast/audiobook player app ('lectr') with gap removal and had experimental support for what you describe. Roughly, it removed samples if there was no significant difference in the frequency-domain spectra. This was a simple threshold test (the threshold could be adjusted by the user). It works for some material. Some speakers (usually professional book readers) have even pacing and it's more effective. A si…

Thanks for your insightful comment! Is Lectr still available anywhere? Nothing showed up on a Google search.

> between 1.5x and 2.0x is the sweet spot for me, and almost no apps provide that.

Agreed, this is super frustrating and is some evidence that the market isn't that interested. (Why would they pay for advanced compression if no one bothers with trivial stuff like finer gradation?)

Fwiw, on Android I use Audible, PocketCasts, and Audipo for audiobooks, podcasts, and general audio, respectively. They are all serviceable and have 0.1x or finer granularity.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#609

Post by dokument »

schwag09 wrote: post #177

Project: R.I.P.Link - a tool for finding dead links on the web[0]. The inspiration for this project came from Wikipedia and the Internet Archive partnering to fix broken links on Wikipedia[1]. After briefly searching around I couldn't find any great tools for this, and I decided it would be an interesting side-project. I was also looking for a good medium-size project to improve my Go skills and understanding of conc…

It would be neat if you could extract the desired data (text) from the page and hash it so that you could later fix the link (by pointing to a new valid link).

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on?

#610

Post by StephenCanis »

arjunbanker wrote: post #517
StephenCanis wrote: post #155

Problem: My experience taking audio tours at various museums showed the use of antiquated and expensive hardware. Most alternate solutions used mobile apps which are inconvenient to download and take more time to release. Project: I went about developing a web app that allows anyone to quickly create an audio tour for free: https://www.youraudiotour.com/create I also integrated Amazon Polly to automatically generate…

Nice! Check out https://www.detour.com/ , similar platform primarily focused on city-level audio walking tours.

Cool, thanks for the link! Looks like a great way to explore new cities.

I'm hoping my site will be more helpful for smaller, less tech savvy, organisations who want to create their own tours. Many of these sites create tours in house or charge a pretty penny to create your own app.

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