What Are You Doing?

I apologize for being such a downer, but I'm dealing with the fact that my mom died last week. With my brother, other family members, and friends, we're figuring out what to do next.

EDIT: She had some end of life arrangements in place (like a will) to make things easier. She had cancer, so this wasn't unexpected, but it doesn't make the feelings any less chaotic.

Have really got into fitness (much more strength training) lately and trying to up my protein levels but trying to do so in a healthy way. Kind of went down a rabbit hole a few months ago of reading way too many labels and trying to understand ingredients lists on products (takeaway: supplements usually have lots of weird stuff in them). I've started trying to compile all of this information into a database so when I have spare time (like I do right now, I just upload more info). If anyone is curious: https://proteindb.com/database

I am reading a student's outline of their approach to computing the diffuse neutrino flux expected from a class of galaxies over the lifetime of the Universe. It's part of a study we are doing to see if we can determine the origin of the astrophysical neutrino background seen by IceCube[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory

I'm quitting my job of 4 1/2 years next week to pursue a passion project. I woke up a bit ago, am sitting on the couch, procrastinating, and dwelling on the bittersweet realization that I'm going to be lacking job security soon. Exciting times.

I'm building a "sneaky" mental health app. It presents as if it were a modern, sci-fi take on Tamagotchi coupled with a daily self-reflection routine. You find yourself surprisingly compelled to nurture your virtual pet, commit to the routine, and then the software nudges you to journal and meditate since you're already showing up for your pet.

I'm excited to see how I improve myself with my software and if I can touch others who might typically be reticent of adopting additional self-care habits.

Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into a pitch, but now you know where my head is at. :)

I am chatting with my Mom on the phone planning Christmas. My dad died over 26 years ago and I am an only child so we always do our own thing.

I am heading to Recurse Center in January and thinking about what I am going to do. Reading more HN than usual seeking inspiration and/or confirmation.

I keep circling around computer graphics and flow based programming. I have been following Ben Houstons work with his behavior graph library and I dont think I want to built Yet Another Node Based Execution engine. But building a poor-man's frankenstein houdini clone might tickle my brain.

But I also want to explore how flow based programming could related to infrastructure management tools.

Choices... choices...

Handling error and adding logs before deploying a beta. I'm also contemplating the fact that the programing langage that was imposed to me for this project is really bad, and i'm fucking afraid that it's going to be imposed to me in the future too.

For those interested, i'm using PCSOFT Windev.

I've failed at "creating content as a side gig" multiple times over the course of my career, and I'm working on providing more structure in my life so I can give it another go. Over the last little bit I've been getting my sleep, diet and exercise in order, and doing more reading about how ADHD and dopamine have affected my brain.

Unfortunately, I can feel the momentum and enthusiasm slowing down after a couple weeks of this. I'm tired, but I'm still trying to write goals and give myself some foundation for my work (Substack, and Twitch, pretty separately). I'm pretty happy with this "elevator pitch", which is something I've never really been able to do:

"I'm writing about the relationships people have with the Internet, and how it changes over time. I want to focus on the effects of fandom on marketing, creativity, competition, and personal identity. The Internet has been an enabler of dreams for a lot of people, and I want to explore how people use that for better or worse."

Procrastinating on studying for my AWS certification next week. I was unemployed for several months of this year and knowledge of AWS or any of the major cloud providers was the most glaring hole on my resume. Happily, my new employer pays for AWS training for all of its employees, so that hole is being filled... except, as always, it's way more fun reading HN than studying :/

Having a cup of Darjeeling tea. About to brave icy pavements to walk into the local town. Am at an age when falls are serious.

I am currently creating a financial plan for an imaginary startup. This is the task in one of my university modules.

Me? I’m trying to poke holes in my latest crazy business idea. And wondering how you can make ice cream of a specific density. And feeling a little embarrassed that I forgot you have to actually write the Ask HN in your Ask HN.

I blew up a 3.3 V AC/DC module this morning. Still not sure why... Must have been a spark. Replaced it with another, and that seemed to work... until just now the Bluetooth beacon it was supposed to power stopped working. I was worried about overshoot from the cheap AC/DC output, but didn't expect it to break on first power-up. Now it's drawing 400 mA instead of 5 mA. I doubt that's all piped to the antenna... I guess that's why I bought more than one module. Pending investigation.

But that was really just procrastinating designing an authorization model for an object database.

I'm doing a few things.

1. I run a blog that is about 4 years old. I spend maybe 5 hours or so each month writing a new post to keep it fresh, and an additional 2-3 doing generic maintenance work (responding to comments, SEO checks, etc). This generates good income for me.

2. I am working on a saas project that fixes a simple but very important problem. Cloud functions make my life so much easier, it's incredible. This generates no income, but probably will.

3. I run https://contractrates.fyi. We are a crowdsourced dataset of freelancing hourly rates. I don't know why this site didn't exist already because it's such an obvious problem. Anyway, I built it and the reception has been insane. It makes zero money because I can't charge people to share information, but it's a nice resume boost site and a joy to work on. This is the only one I'm okay to share :)

I am just obsessed with building stuff. Adhd is a significant advantage if you can harness it correctly shrug.

Acting as sous chef to my wife who is cooking a Curry, Dishoom’s Ruby Chicken Curry which is possibly one of the best curry's I've ever had.

(Probably frustrating her a little that I'm on HN at the same time)

In a meeting that could have been an email

I'm slowly recovering from 4 moves in the last 4 months (and a tiny bit of homelessness). My lease expired and rent was raised too much for me to justify staying where I was. Thought I was moving into a mutually beneficial situation that didn't work out that way. This is an interesting recovery process.

I'm also trying to get back into Software after an injury that left me in a wheelchair for 7 months and walking again just as COVID hit. I got into volunteer work and eventually ended up doing COVID vaccination and testing for the few jobs I've held since. The work gap is hard to explain for me personally.

It's likely I'll end up in a low skilled position for a while as I continue the full interview processes needed now that I have a stable place to live again.

I like the question - and wish I had a more positive response to it.

Nobody will know homelessness until they experience it. My life has ended up in 2 storage units, my car, and the room I'm now renting. Don't think it's impossible that it could happen to (some of) you. Many people are much closer than they ever realize.

At this point I am still looking in software dev / database roles. I am a published author, and have been working with SQL since the 90's. I started at a dial-up ISP in 1994 when RADIUS still meant what it stands for :)

No real reason for writing this other than prompted by a question. I am likely a bit of an outlier in this situation.

After seeing the market take a dive this past year and companies showing their true colors wrt employee loyalty Ive finally decided to go back my startup roots and am actively looking to find co-founders. I used to be a good networker but then I got too comfortable at big-tech/big-co so trying to reboot a bit. Thankfully I never stopped building random things on the side.

Fighting the urge to fire up Dwarf Fortress while at work. I will probably lose this fight because there isn't enough work to hold my attention.

Dealing with anxieties of everyday existence. What am I doing, whoami?

I am taking a dump.

Working on my laptop in the laundromat waiting for my clothes to be clean, considering quitting because my coworkers aren't caring much about things today, looking at pictures of my new girlfriend I cannot wait to hug tonight.

And browsing HN, eh!

Working on the JSON serializer for the video DJ macOS app I'm working on. Trying to position this as a free, open-source, entry-level competitor to Touch Designer or Resolume.

There are lots of professional grade live video tools with great features and steep learning curves, I'm aiming to create a dead-simple, WYSIWYG tool for people who want audio-reactive live video effects at their events. The dream is for non-technical artist types to be able to pick a playlist, add a video source (stream, file, webcam, etc), choose some effects, plug in a projector and watch the magic - all with 0 knowledge of shaders or color theory.

Freezing. Turned the heat down due to high prices. It will be a cold winter.

Going through massive heart pain and left arm pain Failed to get diagnostics from doctors, hospital Going through life in pain So playing video game and playing guitar Talking to Friends on Discord.

Working on a long-term technical strategy to steer a program I care very little about and have no actual faith in into the domain I have always wanted to go to with my career and never chose to.

Looking for a new project. I'm a freelance iOS developer and posted in the most recent "looking for project" topic but I wonder about whether that's actually very effective.

Coughing and blowing my nose.

Got the 'rona this weekend, and while I'm a lot better (as in no longer sleeping 22 hours a day), I'm still pretty messed up.

Writing code(C#/Typescript) to pull data from a SAAS product's API. Mostly for POC purposes to understand what can/can't be done.

Watching a YouTube critic of Del Toro’s Pinocchio while going through what I need to do for the day and lazily merging an PR that was just approved.

I have Xcode open. Building a cashflow management and forecasting app with Swift/SwiftUI. And using ChatGPT to write a large chunks of it!

I'm investigating a linker error around the use of `boost::none` that happens with clang but not gcc. Google is no help.

I suspect it's related to LTO.

Trying to get live TV (congressional hearings) onto a virtual screen in a “metaverse” meeting app for a goofy FTX watch party later today.

Watching the TV in the background while I should be working. Too excited/stressed/nervous for the World Cup semifinals.

Building and vetting, through dogfooding, an energy storage concept of my own design that will in time become a business.

On the eve of me turning 50, I am playing a tabletop dice baseball game on my desk while reading HN {obviously}

Sipping coffee. Writing posts and working on content for my newsletter around working part-time in the tech industry.

Some DevOps stuffs, from debian to alpine base image migration (old stuff, not very exciting)

I am currently on a bus stop, waiting for a bus to go to the gym.

I was playing a StarCraft 1 custom map (Impossible Kregmy).

I've spent the last few days building copypastemathjax.com after finding myself searching google too many times for mathjax expressions.

Trying (or trying not?) to get out of bed.

Currently freezing my nads off 'cos it's -9 or whatever, outside

Nursing a badly cut finger I injured washing up a chipped jug.

I am prepping the area where I milk my goats every morning.

I am waiting to get my hair cut.

currently working on https://hourly.fyi -- pushed to prod November 1st. it's a site for contractors, freelancers, etc to open source their rates in an effort to inform people and educate them on what they might be worth.

there are posts all the times in coding sub-reddits asking what people should charge and 1 post in particular literally asked for a "levels.fyi for contractors" so I made it.

My specialties are everything but front end, but it's fun to start learning.

brb bio

Looking at advent of code day 13 thinking it will be hard to do given that I am an idiot.