All of my side-projects from 2012 • Hacker News Board

Re: All of my side-projects from 2012

#31

Post by jazzychad » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 1:25 AM UTC

freework wrote: post #30

I don't mean to be negative, but I've never been impressed with people who have dozens of side projects. Instead of writing 10 crappy side projects, who not make 1 great side project? My side project, at the time is called Giotto: https://github.com/priestc/giotto . It's a python web framework. I started it in April, and still commit to it almost every day.

Sure, to each his/her own. In my experience, one long running side-project does not afford the learning opportunities of doing many smaller (non-crappy, imo) projects. For me, that's the main motivation behind them: to learn new things and have an excuse to implement them. Also in my case, my day job is extremely demanding, so I don't have tons of time to devote to one giant project... thus many smaller bite-sized projects.

Re: All of my side-projects from 2012

#32

Post by jgross206 » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 1:48 AM UTC

I just have one: unslideshow, a Chrome extension which takes slideshow articles and turns them into single page articles.

https://github.com/jgross206/unslideshow

It's very rough because I'm the only one that uses it. It only works with one site (complex.com) because their slideshows are egregious (100 items with a full page load on each slide) and I got really frustrated one night.

I currently have plans to extend it to other sites and polish up the UI a bit so it's actually worth publishing, but who knows.

I had a lot of fun writing it and learned a lot, it was my first Chrome extension.

Bonus: I left my Ruby POC in the source tree because it was so fun to write. 17 lines!

Re: All of my side-projects from 2012

#33

Post by jk4930 » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 1:59 AM UTC

typpo wrote: post #25

chrisjack wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Asterank and Asterank 3d is pretty cool. How did you get the value of the asteroids ?

Thanks. I estimated the value based on spectral class, which gives us an idea of composition based on how they reflect light. I combined this with current prices for materials mostly from the London Metal Exchange. Other costs such as getting to the asteroid and mining overhead are factored in.

Have you shown this to Planetary Resources? Just for the fun and some PR of it (at least)?

Re: All of my side-projects from 2012

#34

Post by daeken » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 2:08 AM UTC

I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple, but:

- QtzWeb - https://github.com/daeken/Qtzweb (Quartz Composer -> JS+WebGL compiler; used it to partycode http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=60732)

- QuestCompanions - https://github.com/daeken/QuestCompanions (Online labor marketplace for help in MMORPGs -- complete failure from a commercial perspective!)

- SteelBreeze - https://github.com/daeken/SteelBreeze (Xbox emulation platform, mainly to test out new ways to write emulators)

- WebGLEnabler - https://github.com/daeken/WebGLEnabler (Enables WebGL on iOS devices)

- GenShaders - http://www.displayhack.org/2012/genshaders-part-1/ (failed experiment for evolving fragment shaders; still need to write a followup article)

Re: All of my side-projects from 2012

#35

Post by sycren » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 2:13 AM UTC

Could you share the reasons for your choice in technologies in the stack?

i.e node.js, mongodb, heroku, php, ruby etc.

Re: All of my side-projects from 2012

#36

Post by hnriot » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 2:35 AM UTC

johnpolacek wrote: post #2

Jeez, I thought I had a lot of side projects, but I think you have me beat. You've inspired me to make my own list: Scrollorama http://johnpolacek.github.com/scrollorama/ What The Heck Is Responsive Web Design http://johnpolacek.github.com/scrolldeck.js/decks/responsive... Scrolldeck http://johnpolacek.github.com/scrolldeck.js Scrollorama2:SuperScrollorama http://johnpolacek.github.com/superscrollorama/ Are You A Bro…

I played with some of these, is scroll deck supposed to work in the iPad? I couldn't get it to do anything. I don't have a desktop to try for comparison. Amazing work with all this

Re: All of my side-projects from 2012

#37

Post by richerd » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 2:39 AM UTC

- PairMixer - http://pairmixer.com - Find someone to Pair with (got sued for this one had to take it down)

- Sink or Ship - http://sinkorship.com - Ship Your Project In Time, Or Else...

Re: All of my side-projects from 2012

#38

Post by hnriot » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 2:42 AM UTC

freework wrote: post #30

I don't mean to be negative, but I've never been impressed with people who have dozens of side projects. Instead of writing 10 crappy side projects, who not make 1 great side project? My side project, at the time is called Giotto: https://github.com/priestc/giotto . It's a python web framework. I started it in April, and still commit to it almost every day.

That's very negative, despite the disclaimer. And from what I've seen of the above, people aren't writing ten crappy side projects, many of them are excellent.

Staying focused on one thing is fine too, but for many of us, we like to dabble in many things.

If Giotto is your way of learning python and building another (python) web framework then that's fine too. One difference is that many of the above side projects are new and do things that we didn't have prior to someone building them, meanwhile yet another web framework a la bottle et al is really contributing very little new.

Re: All of my side-projects from 2012

#39

Post by hnriot » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 2:46 AM UTC

jazzychad wrote: post #9

jackowayed wrote: post #8

Given that mobile photo sharing has been done to death, I'd be interested to hear what you think makes Pixit a significantly better solution than all the other apps out there for some usecase. (Not trying to sound confrontational--it's just not a space that I thought had much more innovation left in it, so I'm curious to hear what you've come up with.)

That's a fair question. It could be that this is a solved problem by some other system/app, but I couldn't easily find one while my problem persisted... so I did what every over-active nerd does: I just built my own solution. I think Pixit is different because it is solely for quick photo sharing between friends in 3 steps. Simple, quick, and effective. However, I'm not sure how much mass appeal it would have. It wor…

I don't get it?

"I thought up an app that would make it extremely easy to send many pictures to a group of friends in one go."

Isn't that email?

Re: All of my side-projects from 2012

#40

Post by julsonl » Wed, Jan 02, 2013, 3:16 AM UTC

freework wrote: post #30

I don't mean to be negative, but I've never been impressed with people who have dozens of side projects. Instead of writing 10 crappy side projects, who not make 1 great side project? My side project, at the time is called Giotto: https://github.com/priestc/giotto . It's a python web framework. I started it in April, and still commit to it almost every day.

One thing I've learned from trying to learn drawing is that there's value in creating rough sketches in order to capture a certain form or gesture. It feels like coding small-scoped side projects is the coding equivalent of this.