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Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

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621–630 of 786 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#621
I'm working on a game based on memorizing Chinese characters. It's cool because it uses the qualities that motivate people to play farm sims to encourage players to study a language. Players plant character-flowers and must pass quizzes in order to pluck them. This website has more information and a download link for the beta, which only works on android at the moment: http://zhongwengarden.com/

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#622

I'm working on a few projects. Firstly, I've developed a suite of Python libraries to deal with NFL data, including play-by-play statistics and slicing game footage into its play-by-play components. A demo of my work is here: http://demo.nflfan.burntsushi.net/?week=5 (excuse the slowness, my web server is crappy) Everything is on GitHub: https://github.com/BurntSushi/{nflgame,nfldb,nflvid,nflfan} Secondly, I'm also w…

Very cool to hear about the Entity-Relationship diagram project. I'm working on something similar myself, an entity annotation and relationship builder app to annotate biomedical texts: http://mark2cure.org/

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#623

Gumroad ( https://gumroad.com ) — enabling any type of creator to earn a living selling what they make directly to their audience. See: https://gumroad.com/demo It's cool because I got started really seriously making stuff when I realized that there was not nearly as much of a difference between making stuff and making a living as I thought there was. It was only getting cheaper and easier to make software. Making so…

What was the hardest part about getting this off the ground, and how did you get passed it?

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#624

A Raspberry Pi-based multimedia display solution for SMEs, large corporates and municipalities. It displays nearly all video and image formats and real time news feeds at 50fps in almost any layout combination while using less than 20% CPU at full tilt. It's cool because most people are blown away at how fast and smooth it is when they first see it. A lot of the code is in C, the video decoder is in a thread (and it…

Make a demo and put it on online!

Coming soon :)

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#626
post #377

Nimrod ( http://nimrod-code.org ). It's cool because it's a systems programming language which compiles to C with generics, an awesome Python-like syntax, AST macros and other metaprogramming features. I am one of the core developers. I developed a lot of the standard library and tools such as the Babel package manager, Aporia IDE and a build farm all written in Nimrod.

Hey, we've chatted in IRC a couple of times. Just wanted to say I love Nimrod, and I'm so thankful that it's being written. I'm currently learning C so that I can play with Nimrod and Vala and have a better idea of how they work :)

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#627
post #37

https://starthq.com - a web app launcher & new tab replacement extension - like the old Chrome new tab page, but better. What makes it cool is that we are implementing a number of desktop and mobile OS features, like multiple, screens, fast shortcuts, cross app search, notifications etc. but for web apps.

I use the StartHQ launcher. Pretty cool! Thanks guys!! I also like the weekly update emails. They email you news and posts about the apps you use.

Awesome! Let me enable some upcoming features like deep links and screens for you.

I can also enable developer mode, if you want: https://github.com/starthq/search#starthq-search-api

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#628
I'm working on a proxy / community-run fork[1] of Healthcare.gov. After all the histrionics about the site's performance and bugs, and upon seeing that it was a Backbone.js app (which I develop full-time), and with unminified/commented source, I thought it might be worthwhile to pull as many files from the repo as I could so that bugs could be reported and fixed in the open.

As the product sits today, it is close to being a functional clone of the site. Healthcare.gov relies on some very complicated and antiquated auth systems, from multiple agencies. It is not enough to simply proxy a few endpoints back to healthcare.gov, some requests need to be spoofed, state saved, etc., in order to make it work properly. They often use absolute URLs in their responses as well, which need to be rewritten. I can imagine this application was an absolute bear to test properly.

I've been working through the login mechanism [2] and it's almost done. I'm excited about the future of the project and it could really use some coders to help out and find / fix bugs. If the project gets some real attention, I think it would be a big help to the folks at QSSI and the nation in general - I really want to help the project succeed because I very strongly believe in universal health care and this is the only way I feel I can personally help out.

[1] https://github.com/STRML/Healthcare.gov-Marketplace [2] https://github.com/STRML/Healthcare.gov-Marketplace/issues/1...

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#629

Turtl! ( https://turtl.it ) It's a client-side encrypted Evernote replacement (with a much easier interface). The goal is to eventually provide easy note-taking, bookmarking/clipping, and file storage (ala Dropbox) with a cloud service that's surveillance/hacker resistant by only storing encrypted data. The kicker is you can still share with others. Right now it's a pretty small alpha, but we're hoping to get some of…

Really cool! Have you thought of making it a phonegap style app so we can use it on our mobile devices too? I've been looking for a simple html note taking app that does client side encryption and works on all major desktop and mobile operating systems.

Mobile is on the way! Right now Turtl is two guys working part time, unfunded. We're going to be doing a fundraising round soon and if all goes well we'll be able to work on it unfettered for a while, including mobile apps.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little confused - what exactly are you doing? Are you making the projectors? Are you programming the game? What software are you using? Are you sensing what it's being projected on?

Some of the hardware was built (one of the projectors), some of it is purchased (a second projector due to time constraints, and all of the DACs). The games, graphic engine, DAC comms, etc. are all programmed in a mix of Python and C++. Most projection software available is commercial and expensive, so I've rolled my own stack. I'm working towards surface distortion mapping, which is increasingly important in the umb…

That is just amazing. Keep it up.
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