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Ask HN: What are your “scratch own itch” projects?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your “scratch own itch” projects?

#21
post #13

https://github.com/piku , for sure. I was getting tired of deploying stuff manually or juggling containers for the simplest of apps, so I sat down and wrote most of it in a couple of weekends. I now deploy the vast majority of my personal projects with it (including container-based ones, actually).

This is super cool - definitely something that hits a need of my own too. Thanks for sharing this!

Re: Ask HN: What are your “scratch own itch” projects?

#23
I'm building https://cubetrek.com It's intended to be running/hiking/skiing/mountaineering analytics app focused on mountaineous terrain (think Strava but for activities in the mountains).

Just got finished on the 3D visualization of GPS tracks, now working on the user accounts to store/compare/visualize/share past activities.

It's definitely "scratch your own itch", as I'm building it to suit my exact needs.

Re: Ask HN: What are your “scratch own itch” projects?

#24
I recently wrote a multithreaded web server and MVC framework in C from scratch using clang blocks and a request-based memory arena [0] and now I’d like to expand the endeavor into a custom compiled-to-bytecode DSL with web server and SQLite runtime.

The goal is to limit the environmental impact of serving web applications. Ideally memory usage should be less than a couple of MB for an idling server, a Docker container less than 100MB in size, and CPUs efficiently converting request paths into SQLite opcode and JSON responses.

[0] https://github.com/williamcotton/express-c

Re: Ask HN: What are your “scratch own itch” projects?

#25
We built an alternative Web UI for GCP because the default one is insufferable at times, especially when you have thousands of resources scattered across workspaces/projects, again due GCP’s problems of lacking more granular details on service costs such that you have to isolate resources to the project level.

Re: Ask HN: What are your “scratch own itch” projects?

#26
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a shell. It is a terminal UI in which you can browse tables, go into tables, browse and edit rows in a spreadsheet like interface etc. If there is any database out there that is commonly used to demonstrate DB software, I could record a little screencast. So far, it supports SQLite, MariaDB and MySql.

ah, so a bit like visidata?

Yes a bit. With a focus on browsing/editing databases.

Re: Ask HN: What are your “scratch own itch” projects?

#27
I wrote a music synth library called Scott's MusicBox. The source is on github:

https://github.com/OhioVR/MusicBox

I tried to emulate orchestral sounds using an abandoned sample collection using it with some success but no one really liked it.

I also had problems with our point of sale at work which I tried to improve with a picture book with bar codes over the items. That helped me scan items without upc labels. Hit and miss but I'm going to have to sell my printer so that project is also dead.

Re: Ask HN: What are your “scratch own itch” projects?

#28
My SO got 4 thermoses for Christmas one year, so I decided to build a simple wishlist service[0] to prevent it happening again. Launched it 6 years ago, and since then it's been used by friends, family and myself for all Christmas and birthdays - so I consider it a huge success. In addition to already being a success for me personally, it's growing organically, and last year really picked up the pace when I reached 1k users. Now it's at just over 7k, which is surreal.

[0] https://wishy.gift/

Re: Ask HN: What are your “scratch own itch” projects?

#29
I love doing these. Some recent projects (before I started recording video):

Minimalist CSS “Framework” https://neat.joeldare.com

Personal Digital Brain https://github.com/codazoda/nolific

The Raspberry Pi in my Bedroom https://joeldare.com/private-analtyics-and-my-raspberry-pi-4...

In January I’ll start to publish “live coding” style videos of some of the projects I work on. I guess it’s the cumulation of my toy projects. I’m recording them as a way to encourage myself to create even more. Most are very simple. Many are “reinventing the wheel”. But, I love the work.

In the first two video’s I write a simple binary in Go (a language I’m not very familiar with) then run it as a command over ssh.

In the third I write a command line tool to generate random character strings.

Each video will have a companion GitHub repo.

The channel is completely empty at the moment. I’ll publish my introduction the first week of November and then publish videos weekly starting on January 1st. I’ve already created the first couple video’s and I’m editing the third now.

It will start out really rocky as I learn techniques for recording video and audio and improve my process.

My (blank) YouTube Channel https://youtube.com/codazoda

Re: Ask HN: What are your “scratch own itch” projects?

#30
I wanted to learn how databases work internally, like how they store and retrieve data, build indexes, etc.

I built an educational KV store to teach someone to write a database from scratch. I have set up this project in TDD fashion with the tests. So, you start with simple functions, pass the tests, and the difficulty level goes up. There are hints if you get stuck. When all the tests pass, you would have written a persistent key-value store in the end.

link: https://github.com/avinassh/py-caskdb

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