51–60 of 175 posts
In the past I’ve built more complicated products to scratch itches (mostly PM related). This one is kinda fun cause it’s so stupidly simple.
One is 'automation of repetitive conversations'. It is actually another iteration over the problem and can be seen on https://discu.space/. I don't think I can do better presentation in text than in the video on homepage. I just beg anyone interested to hit me via profile instead of registering yet, as everything might explode for now.
It got me cool experience with making web extension as well as horrible experience of trying to get it through google webstore.
Another one is using sounds to maintain focus in changing contexts. There are SO MANY white noise etc. generators (and they are good), but none has low latency feedback mechanism to say 'more intense'/'less intense' beyond 'lower/higher volume'. So you can't for example overload yourself to start doing something and then slightly lower noise when you get to a hard part of w/e you're doing. Enter lacking a proper readme https://github.com/Nowado/NoiseGenerator.
As much as tkinter is a pain to use, it's my first project done with so much copilot. I don't think there are 100 characters in a row in this project that I wrote by hand. Also that operating system doesn't like when unknown Python code demands full access to keyboard.
1. Productivity system. I’m trying out different methods of todo lists. When I start a new method I think I’ve finally found the right one, but I end up not sticking with it and starting over with a new approach after a while. My current system is something I started yesterday after coalescing a few different ideas from the last week or so. I have a list of categories in a text file (on my phone) ordered by priority such that at any time I can start at the top of the list and think if there’s anything I should do in that category. If so, I work on that. The order is determined by what would be best to do in SUPPORT of things further down the list. That way you can stay on top of things without waiting until they are urgent, and it seems to align my actions with my overall goals better.
2. Hardware/software. I’ve noticed that software at every layer of the stack is written and changed/updated based on the desires of the creator of that software, not you. This might sound crazy, but if you really want to have control of your software you should write it yourself. Ever since I ran across Forth (jonesforth in particular) and realized you could create your entire software environment (drivers, OS, editor/compiler/debugger, application) from scratch because lets you start with nothing and quickly move up the layers of abstraction focusing only on what us needed for your particular application. (See also: http://collapseos.org/forth.html and https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesfort... )
The combination of 1+2 would be building a device with a hardware keyboard, simple display, and a microcontroller where I could have a todo list. (I could potentially just use an old PC with a BIOS as well to start with.) I could have it let me have reminders that I could snooze for a desired amount of time for instance, or have recur at specific times until dismissed (daily checklists). If I didn’t want the screen to go into sleep mode, or the OS to force me to update, reboot, or do anything at all that I didn’t want it to (like have unwanted notifications or ads or algorithmically driven distractions or security holes from the network/Internet), it wouldn’t. It would have zero dependencies.
It’s a single bash script.
To this day, I use to deploy all my projects, including my work projects, no matter what tech stack I use, with great success.
I wrote up my process here but since then I've made some improvements so that logic for the trigger for detecting when the machine is on actually happens on the accelerometer itself. I also rewrote the code for the ESP32 in micropython which has been a lot easier to manage than C.
https://www.instructables.com/Washing-Machine-Notification-S...
The whole process taught me a ton about programming micro-processors, the I2C protocol and even using a logic analyser to debug issues at the line logic level.
I hated angular when it first came out and couldn't believe what insanity people were willing to put up with, so long as it came from google. (e.g. GWT) I created https://intercoolerjs.org out of frustration with that, and the lack of progress in HTML/hypermedia in general, so I could build a web application I was working on (https://leaddyno.com, since sold).
When covid hit I took a look back at intercooler and decided that it was really two things: HTML++ and a scripting language, so I split it up into htmx, focused just on the hypermedia angle, and hyperscript, the scripting language I wanted for the web (derived from HyperTalk, and old scripting language from HyperCard on the mac).
I now use them both professionally (email me if you want to use them too.)
All major players in the field oversell their own solutions, and nothing of them works. It's always forensics, and too late to actually defend your computers. Every platform and XDR/SOAR solution is made for manual human interactions, for the sake of overworked 24/7 analyst teams sifting through millions of log entries per day.
The signal/noise ratio is just too damn low to be effective.
That's why I decided it's time to disrupt the market with a self-maintaining and self-defending system. After what happened to me ~a year ago, I pivoted from my peer to peer Browser network idea to a peer to peer Cyber Defense+Intelligence system.
Turns out it's a big itch for a lot of customers, too.