Ask HN: What kind of side projects are you working on?

110 points by _3agw ↗ HN

127 comments

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An open source stream processing framework (https://ghostream.com) - it isn't really ready for the limelight yet, but you can find the code base on github (https://github.com/ghostream/ghostream) - final steps on the to do list are a few more example projects, a couple more functional operators and to polish up the documentation.

It has hit the 80-20 scenario. The last 20% is taking 80% of the time :)But it has let me quickly prototype a few little ideas (http://jamielewis.me.uk/posts/2013-11-03-Mapping-Earthquakes...)

Slick. Aside from the issues listed in github, what is taking 80% of the time? Did you expect the 80-20 split?
Honestly, part of it is motivation. I keep getting distracted with other things.

I expected it to go the 80-20 way, the initial ideas are not new ones, I have been building similar frameworks for a few years.

The time is mostly spent on the more difficult problems like "How should operators hang up when the program is closed?" " Should the program be expected to close?" "Should there be a global context object, or a default one" "Should an operator have a window by default or not"

There is no right answer, so its just a case of sucking it up and implementing something, seeing if it works, and going from there.

Plus the side escapades with earthquakes and space weather and irc channels - although implementing these little things does drive the bigger project.

I am hoping before the end of the year I can hit something I feel comfortable slapping "1.0" on and move onto something else for a while and use it as a base for working on some other ideas I have.

1. A news/blogging platform: http://techendo.co

2. I also organize and run the san francisco hacker news meetup. http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Hacker-News-Meetup/

3. Dev school grading site: http://schools.techendo.co

4. Burrito: http://burrito.techendo.co

5. Tribes: http://tribes.techendo.co

6. Next up is an app that helps businesses find their distribution channels -- to be released in a week or two.

7. ..and finally a kickstarter for a hacker tool coming early next year.

Join us on #Techendo on freenode to chat. :)

(comment deleted)
1) Internet-Side for Magic Cards 2) little JavaScript-Game
I'm making an online store in Rails for a specific target market (have to be vague). I'm building it mostly on my own and I'm looking for a second developer to help me out.
would love to learn more.. feel free to ping me, contact info in profile.
I am tired of repeating this again and again, so I am doing some yak shaving and creating a hosted rest service for managing user accounts and authentication. I will use it as basic infrastructure for future projects.
Rather than a hosted/solution - I would be think a program language specific (node/php/java) solution would be more useful. For example - something like $199 for lifetime use for account/oauth/etc system that you can use on any project. Maybe even have additional "packages" like invite friend, etc. Just a thought.
Scala tutorials (http://scalatutorials.com) - it's a "try scala code in your browser" (powered by scalakata.com) and has a basic tour at the moment, but I'm working on making it more like try ruby / codecademy, much more work than I thought by the way
Almost all of the little spare time I have goes into http://Codepoints.net, presenting and explaining Unicode codepoints.

Edit: The page is fully open source: https://github.com/Boldewyn/Codepoints.net

Nice design and a great resource. Unicode is a complex beast, and making it easier to navigate and understand is a worthwhile goal, if only to improve how Joe Programmer deals with non-English text.
I've just started a site that aggregates open public transit data feeds. It lets you quickly see differences between feed versions, discover new feeds, and I'm working on APIs to easily bring in better real time data into apps

http://transitfeeds.com

Interesting - I'm working in this area too; more on the consumption of transit feeds - have noticed in the UK at least that there are a ton of T&Cs thrown around these feeds, do you think you have any issues repackaging like this?
It's definitely on the todo list to categorically make sure I'm complying with each feed. I think the biggest thing I'll need to change is perhaps to not allow download the zip of the most recent feed.

Can you share what it is you're working on?

An invoice management app

A multiplayer RPG in JavaScript

1. Helping people run faster: https://cleverrun.com

2. Stats about where you spend your time: https://clevergeo.com

3. Something with pebble and it's accelerometer, probably related to sports.

cleverrun uses data from Run Keeper? I'm assuming it can pull in information from my Garmin somehow?
Currently CleverRun only works with RunKeeper. However, RunKeeper should be able to pull Garmin stuff in, look at: http://runkeeper.com/apps/fit2app/47741 - Then CleverRun will be able to get that data from RunKeeper.
International social network for freedivers - http://theabyss.de/

With buddyfinder, user blogs, as well as list of freediving spots and events.

A columnar time series db with an lmdb backend - I have only just started and it us quite a struggle.

A map / tile server written in go. So far MapBox' mbtiles work.

This came from a peculiar interest of mine, whether my city needs yet another underground parking garage. So I started to scrape the public rss feed of the parking system. I have some gigs of data by now and RethinkDB is not as performant as I hoped it would be. There is no real query optimization as of yet.

What I want to visualize is whether you can find a parking spot at a certain point in time and reach a spot, for instance a shop, within a certain threshold by foot. In short, if you want to shop at XXX will you have trouble finding a parking spot?

I made embedding transcoded videos as simple as using the <img> tag --> http://transcode.io

Working on the production version atm.

I hate to be the guy who points this out, but heads up--you have an extra apostrophe in "its" on the front page. Normally I'd keep quiet, but since it's your headline...
Didn't get it, what are you talking about?
It should be:

Video transcoding in its simplest form.

Hey thanks davewasthere! I will correct in the next release.
a better trash can
interesting, what kind of trash can is that? can you provide some details, thanks...
Co-browsing solution with go & redis