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

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

#821
post #800

I'm finally frustrated enough by the state of coding that I'm developing my own coding environment and language. The leading question is: What if UI was first-class while programming? Happy to elaborate if anyone is interested, I will also write about it on my blog ( https://watwa.re ) at some point

Jonathan Blow approves :D

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

#823

I'm working on a web app that helps you discover books, movies, TV shows, video games, and songs that you'll like. The app makes it super easy to describe what you're looking for and then gives you a unique set of 10 suggestions on each run. It's the first solo project I've done in many years and I'm having a great time learning. I've also been able to get some great recommendations for myself and it's fun to use! ht…

c.f.,

https://www.literature-map.com/

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

#824
post #730

I'm trying up standup comedy this summer -- open mics for now. I thought it would be absolutely terrifying to be in front of a bunch of strangers and try to make them laugh, but it turns out if you're prepared, it's not that hard. Open mic crowds are benevolent and don't expect you to be the next Richard Pryor or George Carlin anyway, and I don't "engage" the public at all; I just tell my jokes. I try to come up with…

Good luck! I am happy to know that you don’t do crowd work, which has become fashionable now. I remember Big Jay Oakerson’s roast where someone pointed out that crowd work is what you do when you don’t have any material :)

Crowd work almost always comes down to race or profession of the audience. It can be funny only in so many ways.

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

#825
I am building what I like to call PAI. Personal AI that ingests all your online information into a knowledge graph and is connected to your tools, all running locally. Will eventually build an off the shelf consumer device capable of running all this locally.

You can talk to it over a e2e encrypted reverse proxy (using Signals double ratchet protocol) so you can access it on the go safely and privately.

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

#827

I have this creative writing website where writing friends can write branching fiction novels together. Sorta like choose-your-own-adventure, but more literary - third person past tense, actual characters and narrative arcs. Configurable number of choices at the bottom of every chapter, and as you're reading, if the choice label doesn't link to a chapter yet, you can write it. It's been floating around since 1996 or…

This sounds fun! Every now and then I re-start a similar project, but where you just write 3 words at a time in a story :)

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

#828
I'm trying to push the boundaries of SQL by building Anyquery[1]. It's a SQL query engine that allows you to run queries on anything (GitHub, Todoist, Parquet, Google Sheets, logs, emails, etc.)

It's mental gymnastics to transform different data sources (e.g. a spreadsheet) into a SQL database with write support, but I do enjoy the journey and learn a lot from it.

[1] https://github.com/julien040/anyquery

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

#829
I've been learning how to use Blender. For a long time I've thought that working with things in 3D could be made simpler by having an app where your phone is a sort of 3D cursor, and e.g. for modeling you could use your phone as a sculpting knife by moving it around in the air.

So I spent some time trying to make an app that allows you to do that, but can't shake the thought that such an app would work better as a Blender addon/plugin rather a standalone app. And I also am trying to figure out how people work with 3D currently, to see if such a tool would even be an improvement over existing tools.

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

#830
I'm writing a book. A novel. By hand (this is, no AI involved, just me and vim).

Sometimes I feel I'm loosing the time, because nowadays there is a lot of AI generated content and even more competence in self-published books.

After a long walk against myself, of about 10 months, it's nearly finished (in my native language, Spanish). It still needs a few more reviews and retouching.

I got recently unemployed after +20 years as Linux sysadmin, and my wife is now unemployed too (after +20 years in HHRR), fortunately we have still a few savings.

I dream that it will (economically) work, but most of the time I intuit there will be less than a few sales from family and friends.

Depending on how it goes, I've already the script for the second and third parts.

In parallel I'm researching different ways to generate cash flow without working for another person. I would like to avoid going to search for a job in the current market of cloud, docker and kubernetes, as I'm more a hardware/colocation guy, and 99,9% of job offers request for docker/kubernetes.

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