Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

I'm working on a little mobile game which surrounds locating and collecting VW beetles 'spots'.

I've been spending a lot of time in México over the last year and have been working on a photography project surrounding the VW Beetles (Vochos as they call them) you'll find all over the country. I'm inspired by the range of character of the Vochos and how they've become ingrained in the country's cultural landscape.

I realized I had a sort of hyper-niche problem where I was locating Vochos I'd like to shoot when I wasn't carrying my camera. I was getting annoyed with using Google Maps to list locations I'd like to return and shoot so I spent a weekend putting the app together and turning it into a game.

After using the app for a few weeks I've realized the spotting or hunting of the cars is the part I enjoy the most about my project and when I have the time I'd like to publicize it so others who find themselves in Vocho dense area can check it out if they'd like!

Building Blazing speed VPN in less than 1000 lines of code: https://github.com/dvasanth/kadugu

So back in 2021 I built a loyalty platform for a chain of gas stations in the Caribbean. Thought it would be a quick deliverable, then hands off.

It's turning into a full time side gig that's paid off in handful of batches (~$25K and running)

I'm trying to become a loyalty vendor API.

Would really like to work on my own interconnected systems of blogging tools and social media. Kinda a blend between having your own site and myspace? Not really targeting a market or anything like that, just think it would be cool to do for personal use and sharing with family and friends

Helping others with their mental health (after my own struggles).

Worked as a software dev/manager for a decade, went through workaholism, burnout, then alcoholism, depression, all that. Doing a ton better now, and taking some time off to write about what I went through and hopefully help out others going through the same thing some: https://depthsofrepair.com/

I'm building FitBee (https://apple.co/4aGUw5X) - a simple and user friendly alternative to MyFitnessPal. It's been really fun trying to figure out how to build the most frictionless food tracking app possible. I just launched a feature where you can get a calorie & macro estimate by taking a photo of your meal and am working on several improvements to it.

I have a small amount of experience building iOS apps but have never done anything with a backend before. This project is fairly backend heavy, so it's been quite a journey learning how to do everything from setting up a database to deciphering elasticsearch.