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Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?

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Re: Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?

#501

Post by zzo38computer »

Mostly I have been working on a software project called TeXnicard, which is not yet complete, but a lot of things have been done, as can be seen from the timeline view of the Fossil repository. In doing so, I have found a bug (#702472) in Ghostscript, having to do with the printobject and writeobject operators. I both reported and fixed this bug, but have received no reply from Artifex about it so far. (The patch is currently included in the TeXnicard source repository, in the file called "gspatch.txt".) I have done some other things too, such as some improvements to ZZT (such as listing the date/time in the restore game menu), but the thing I have been working on most is TeXnicard. I have not done any hardware projects, though.

Some of the other ideas listed here look like interesting ideas too, although I don't always like the implementation. (I suppose that isn't so uncommon; that is why there are many different programs and other projects for similar purposes.)

But, occasionally I have played GURPS using the internet. Before the lockdown I was not doing it on the computer, but now I am sometimes doing. Since I am the only player, I simply used a direct connection; I wrote a shell script containing a command like this one:

  ts '%.s>' | tee -a send.log | nc -Clvt 12345 | ts '%.s
We then coordinated the times with email, and he sent a bell to my terminal when he was ready. And then, I can just use "cat" and "sort" commands to produce a full log.

Re: Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?

#502

Post by amaurymartiny »

acid303 wrote: post #481
amaurymartiny wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mostly Using Tor, I can verify around ~60% of emails. Notably, the exit nodes can connect to Gmail/GSuite servers. So it's not that bad. If Tor's exit nodes are blocked by a server, I fallback to Heroku, where I have right now 3 fixed-IP instances. And if I see that one of these also gets blacklisted, I would have it self-destruct and relaunch, Heroku assigns a new IP on each new instance.

Does Heroku reuse these IP addresses? Can someone get them after you?

I unfortunately don't know the answer to these two questions.

Re: Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?

#503

Post by mcintyre1994 »

jstanley wrote: post #147

I made an automatic chess board that allows you to play with another person over the Internet (using lichess), but with a physical board. It has been described as "very lockdown chic". Each chess piece has a magnet in the bottom. The board senses your moves by looking at where magnets disappear and appear, and it plays your opponent's moves by dragging them with an electromagnet underneath the board moved by a pair o…

This is so cool! Can it be set up to track both players in an lichess game as a spectator? I think that'd be pretty cool, having a self playing chess board as a display piece.

Re: Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?

#504

Post by Taurenking »

I feel like this thread has been posted more than a couple of times lately, or am I imagining things?

Anyways I built a quick bot to connect Calendly to Slack[1] as people in my sales team where requesting "native" integration (plus we didn't want to pay for multi-user access on Zapier)

Unfortunately it works only with Calendly Pro and Premium accounts, but looking into workarounds for free users (leveraging gCal)

[1] https://www.calenduck.co/

Re: Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?

#505

Post by ohyash »

I started a freestyle newsletter for sharing knowledge I get from the internet.

Quickly I reaized the existing solutions are limited. So I started developing my own Email Platform, which is in early stage currently and can only send dynamic mails for now but I plan to grow it into a single blogging cum newsletter platform going forward. The project isn't online yet but my newsletter is: https://linktr.ee/Knowledgeday

Re: Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?

#506

Post by tohmasch »

I started a newsletter on how to raise money from VC, PE, and family offices.

I'm in the process of releasing the first publications to discuss the fundraising process as well as how to find, contact and handle oneself with such organizations.

Feel free to get updates upon release here: https://familycapital.ck.page/1838069523

Re: Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?

#507

Post by vincent_s »

I started TextRewrite [1], a SaaS/API to automatically rewrite sentences without changing the meaning. SEOs use this to create unique content. Could also be used by students to cheat but I'm not encouraging this. Works in any language, uses AI. (Signup link is not yet working but you can email me if you want to give it a try.)

[1] https://www.textrewrite.com/

Re: Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?

#508

Post by jstanley »

acs4u wrote: post #488
jstanley wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, but it's really not a consumer-quality product, and I don't think I have the engineering chops to turn it into one. The frame is made by hand out of plywood. A lot of the wires inside are just taped in place. The Raspberry Pi takes several minutes to boot up to the game screen, during which time you can't interact with the board in any way, and you just get a load of Linux nonsense on the touchscreen. It's al…

Working with a contract manufacturer should be able to alleviate those issues you're mentioning. Feel free to DM me if you have more questions. Awesome project!!

I'd be interested in learning about how contract manufacturing works, although not necessarily for this particular project.

Hacker News has no DM function.

Re: Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?

#509

Post by b__d »

I started playing Rocket League. Now I'm on gold ranks throughout every compatitive game modes, though on varying levels (1 to 3). It was equaly satisfying like learning a new language or instrument. The controlls fall into the typical "easy to learn, hard to master" category and the advanced techniques require an immense amount of time to nail consistantly (I'm far from that, btw). But it was fun and I alwayse played together with friends, so it had a huge social factor too :)
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