Ask HN: What Are You Doing?

I was playing a StarCraft 1 custom map (Impossible Kregmy).

I am chatting with my Mom on the phone planning Christmas. My dad died over 26 years ago and I am an only child so we always do our own thing.

I am heading to Recurse Center in January and thinking about what I am going to do. Reading more HN than usual seeking inspiration and/or confirmation.

I keep circling around computer graphics and flow based programming. I have been following Ben Houstons work with his behavior graph library and I dont think I want to built Yet Another Node Based Execution engine. But building a poor-man's frankenstein houdini clone might tickle my brain.

But I also want to explore how flow based programming could related to infrastructure management tools.

Choices... choices...

I blew up a 3.3 V AC/DC module this morning. Still not sure why... Must have been a spark. Replaced it with another, and that seemed to work... until just now the Bluetooth beacon it was supposed to power stopped working. I was worried about overshoot from the cheap AC/DC output, but didn't expect it to break on first power-up. Now it's drawing 400 mA instead of 5 mA. I doubt that's all piped to the antenna... I guess that's why I bought more than one module. Pending investigation.

But that was really just procrastinating designing an authorization model for an object database.

Yeah! I definitely consider Finch to be in friendly competition with what will become Symbiant. :)

The largest difference is how our audiences discover and think about us. Finch users feel they need help and seek out Finch. Finch understands this, calls attention to the needing help, and presents itself as an anxiety-free warm hug. Finch wants users to "come out of their shell" and to engage with the world. Then, Finch nudges that engagement towards self-improvement. It's great.

Symbiant users think they're fine as-is (but are underappreciating how far from the ceiling they are), frequently lean into gaming to wind-down and as a means of escapism, and are more likely to adopt concepts that make themselves feel "smart" rather than applying labels to themselves that make them feel like they need fixing. Symbiant strives to talk about mental health at a higher level of abstraction, hinting at the complexities of psychology, and allows the user to feel like they are discovering knowledge by connecting all the dots. It then provides tools to allow the user to apply their new knowledge.

Think of how Papers, Please or This War of Mine strive to educate users about political tyranny and war, but do so in atypical ways. You're not the tyrant or war hero - you're a pawn in the overarching story. After playing, the user is touched with an understanding that feels more well-rounded having learned from a unique, atypical perspective. My goal is to construct and provide a similar learning experience around mental health, self-reflection, and habituation.

Truly sorry for your loss, may better days come to you and your family.