Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2024)

I'm experimenting with a "new" kind of lisp macros.

Macros in lisp are just normal functions that receive the code they wrap as argument and return some modified code. Typically they will just wrap the passed code into some more code. But then there are code walking macro: macros that will traverse passed code to modify it in depth.

What I'm working on is "code diving" macros. Not only will they traverse the passed code, but they will resolve called functions and macros, fetch their source code and traverse it too. And so on. All the redefined fns/macros are accumulated in a let/macrolet binding, topologically sorted by call/dependency order. Instrumented code will call these local redefinitions, shadowing the global definition lexically.

This allow the programmer to write truly local monkey-patches for existing code he doesn't have control over (e.g, code from another library for instance). I'm writing this in Clojure, and the traditional way to do this is to temporarily change the global definitions of targeted variables using with-redefs. This is problematic because other threads will see these redefinitions, and not just threads created within the instrumented code, but already existing threads too.

Another way to do it is to just redefine the targeted functions globally, but then your modifications are available to the whole program for the rest of its execution.

I'm working on making a physical console for the Pico-8. Its pretty simple, works on linux booted into kiosk mode, looks for when a 3.5" floppy is inserted or removed, and loads or closes the game via a shell script.

I want it to be like a C64-style keyboard with all the guts inside it but wirelessly connect to the display/tv, so what I might do is use an ESP32 to read the game floppy and wirelessly transfer and cache the file to a dongle that plugs into an open HDMI port. Not sure yet.

I've been working on an app to help VvEs* in the Netherlands self-manage.

For about a year, I was trying to get our VvE management company* to take care of major issues we have in our building's crawl space. We had an inspection done, but even after about seven months of constantly nagging them, they failed to get a single quote for the work that the crawl space needs. I called our manager, and he essentially yelled at me for twenty minutes and was not shy to express his anti-immigrant sentiments (I'm American).

Because of this, I'm now on a mission to get this company fired and take management into our own hands, which will save us a bunch of money. The existing VvE management tools are ugly, slow, and unnecessarily complex, so I'm building my own.

It's only been a month, so I haven't hosted it yet (still coming up with a name, to be honest), but I have made good progress functionality-wise. If anyone in the Netherlands is part of a small VvE and wants to chat, let me know! My email is my username (@gmail).

* The US equivalent would be an HOA (Homeowner's Association). Basically, a corporation that is responsible for the upkeep of shared resources for homeowners (e.g. the roof of a building or the pool in a gated community).

** Many VvEs choose to outsource management of the VvE to a third party. These companies—in theory—take care of maintenance requests, yearly meetings, voting, etc. From everything I've read online, almost none of these companies satisfy their clients.

The default suburban life leads toward a comfortable kind of solitary confinement. Someone who lives in a “single family home” equipped with air conditioning, a privacy fence, a big screen TV, a garage door opener, and the internet will tend toward isolation because all of those technologies make aloneness easier.

The reader may point out that many people are isolated in big cities too. This is true – if an adult has decided to be alone, they can be. But in the city, one's lack of social connection is more often felt whereas a suburban home can diminish the effect, like ibuprofen taken for a headache.

I've been working on the ability to read sky brightness without a sensor.

I've always been interested in stargazing, but had a curiosity about how "good" the stars I was seeing were relative to conditions in other places on earth.

I'm working to answer that by doing inference of the value a SQM would get you, but over H3 cells in a geojson file, and then reporting on the cell with the highest reading during the last iteration over the set of H3 cells.

https://github.com/nonnontrivial/ctts