Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The blissful Zen of a good side project

joshcollinsworth.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 140 posts

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#71

Post by cafeinux »

lupire wrote: post #22
cafeinux wrote: post #20

I was just thinking about this yesterday. A few weeks or months ago I started learning something new from an online course. Because I like using Anki to help me remember, I started copy-pasting stuff from that course to a spreadsheet to then export it as a CSV to import into Anki. One thing leading to another, my spreadsheet quickly ended with weird formatting everywhere that would be converted through macros to HTML…

It almost certainly would be useful for someone other than you. Everything you described automating is something at least thousands of people also do. And most of them don't care about the code quality if it works.

I'm really not sure: it's highly specialized to scrape the pages of that particular course and output it in my own HTML and CSS classes. Luckily for me, their format is quite standard across chapters, but may not be across courses, and I didn't write the code to be modular or adaptive given my need (and the fact that I'm learning Python, not application design).

Still, the code lives in a git repo, so it's not excluded that I'll make it evolve to something more generic and maintainable in the future. But today, it's my own little dirty code that I will jealously keep and hide like that lewd drawing I did when I was a teenager.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#72

Post by djmips »

damion6 wrote: post #46

It'd be nice if folks stopped using a religion as a catch phrase. If I included Jesus in a catchy title people would be offended

Gatekeeping the use of the word Zen in English is probably counter to the core principles ironically. But I understand your concern.

Even the CPU in my computer is named Zen

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#74

Post by keyle »

djmips wrote: post #68
keyle wrote: post #39

It's an interesting read. I'm in the complete opposite camp. I can't pick up a game controller for more than 5 minutes without feeling like I'm wasting time. This has lead to many, many side projects throughout the years, which I tend to like a zen garden[1]. Pruning, refining, improving, and sometimes rewriting. As soon as I work out the game mechanics of any game, I just see it as just content now, and there is not…

How are your in the opposite camp of an article encouraging side projects when you say you have many side projects?

The author wrote about long periods of time when he wasn't encouraged to make anything creative, and just consume.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#75

Post by ratsimihah »

keyle wrote: post #39

It's an interesting read. I'm in the complete opposite camp. I can't pick up a game controller for more than 5 minutes without feeling like I'm wasting time. This has lead to many, many side projects throughout the years, which I tend to like a zen garden[1]. Pruning, refining, improving, and sometimes rewriting. As soon as I work out the game mechanics of any game, I just see it as just content now, and there is not…

Have you tried League of Legends or Valorant? I'm like you as I can't not have multiple side projects going on at any time, but at the same time there is so much room to improve in these kinds of game I find them hard to stop at times.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#76

Post by wahnfrieden »

aecsocket wrote: post #67
wahnfrieden wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japanese learning, people sell premade decks for things like learning kanji with mnemonics and graphics, or curriculum-like decks that provide a sensible order such as N+1 sentences (sentences with at most one unknown word or kanji) I'm also in the business of generating Anki decks, except on the tools side: https://reader.manabi.io is growing in popularity for Japanese sentence mining for Anki on iOS & macOS My p…

Interesting app, I haven't heard of Manabi before! How does it compare to other apps like Jidousho? And other, more general desktop tools like Yomitan? On mobile, I'm currently using Yomitan on Firefox for mining, but I'm curious about other mobile-specific approaches and apps that people have made.

Compared with Yomitan, a couple quick differences that come to mind:

- Manabi tracks the words and kanji you've read to show you which are new to you, and which you have as flashcards. You can see this visually on the page, and in a vocab listing

- Review flashcards that appear in whatever you're trying to read. Soon I will also have it auto-review flashcards passively as you read and encounter them naturally

- Add flashcards to Manabi Flashcards or to Anki including AnkiMobile on iOS

- One-tap words to look up instead of mouseover from starting boundary

- Manabi packages reading tools such as RSS, EPUB and soon manga (via Mokuro) with user-editable curated libraries of content. Yomitan is less of a standalone-capable tool

I am working on adding Yomitan dictionaries now (to also make the app multilingual) as well as more integrations such as 2-way sync with Anki, WaniKani, JPDB

I think Jidoujisho has a lot of similarities but it's not an iOS/macOS app

I should put up some product comparison material as there are a lot of tools out there

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#77

Post by wahnfrieden »

joshdavham wrote: post #66
wahnfrieden wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japanese learning, people sell premade decks for things like learning kanji with mnemonics and graphics, or curriculum-like decks that provide a sensible order such as N+1 sentences (sentences with at most one unknown word or kanji) I'm also in the business of generating Anki decks, except on the tools side: https://reader.manabi.io is growing in popularity for Japanese sentence mining for Anki on iOS & macOS My p…

Ah I didn't realize you also had a macOS app out! Also cool to see you're on HN! I honestly love the niche that we're in.

Hi! Maybe you saw my old app before I rewrote it fully in SwiftUI. Yes it's a nice supportive community to be in

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#78

Post by prox »

wonger_ wrote: post #49
keyle wrote: post #39

It's an interesting read. I'm in the complete opposite camp. I can't pick up a game controller for more than 5 minutes without feeling like I'm wasting time. This has lead to many, many side projects throughout the years, which I tend to like a zen garden[1]. Pruning, refining, improving, and sometimes rewriting. As soon as I work out the game mechanics of any game, I just see it as just content now, and there is not…

Yeah, I've noticed that when I have lots of stressors, I don't have any creative energy. I have to give myself permission to let go, that it's ok to forget about a side project. It's more important to focus on self-care and tackling irl problems at that point. But when life is good, it's hard to stop tinkering. Weekend-sized projects are the best. For me, it's an urge to create and see the core 20% come to life, not…

One of the hallmarks of people who get stressed, and especially people with burnout is that they don’t have any creative or any relaxive or active outlet anymore. They get kind of stuck in their stressloop.

Say a people who enjoyed playing an instrument stops playing, etc.

The best companies I worked allowed for a bit of game/social activity between work sessions.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#80

Post by prox »

aaarrm wrote: post #40
keyle wrote: post #39

It's an interesting read. I'm in the complete opposite camp. I can't pick up a game controller for more than 5 minutes without feeling like I'm wasting time. This has lead to many, many side projects throughout the years, which I tend to like a zen garden[1]. Pruning, refining, improving, and sometimes rewriting. As soon as I work out the game mechanics of any game, I just see it as just content now, and there is not…

I'm the same, and it has kind of ruined me. No one I know thinks the ways I do. I keep wondering if it's just due to anxiety or a fear of death, or an inability to feel present or what. But I really wish I could figure this aspect of myself out so that I can relax and enjoy in a moment. Whenever I realize that I was lost a moment, I get anxious about what I should be doing with my time instead.

If you are very analytical, a good call is to learn a different way of being, call it “acceptance mode”

If you look at techniques employed from modern buddhism / zen, where you just learn to settle into present (breath, sensory experiences etc.) you can learn to shift your mind from analysis to acceptance modes.

Post reply on HN