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Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

1901 points l2silver | 4 comments | 27 Apr 23 15:04 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

Maybe you've created your own AR program for wearables that shows the definition of a word when you highlight it IRL, or you've built a personal calendar app for your family to display on a monitor in the kitchen. Whatever it is, I'd love to hear it.
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rpastuszak ◴[28 Apr 23 12:05 UTC] No.35740266[source]▶
The most interesting tech I've build for myself is boring: a writing tool I use every day for journaling: https://enso.sonnet.io

With that out of the way here's some more ridiculous stuff:

In 2016, I made a browser based AR party game where you'd fight kittens falling from the sky by dancing with vegetables in your hands (CMYK was easier to track using the webcam). I have some photos here: https://goo.gl/photos/g6Dp8GLDbuuhT1TRA

From a technical PoV it was exciting (running AR, in a browser, in pre Pokemon GO, pre WASM times!)

I also made a simple photography lighting tool, replacing professional lights with computer/tablet/phone screens (facade.photo). I put it in an old wardrobe bought in a thrift store on Brick Lane and during my startup launch. Results: https://goo.gl/photos/RZ3fCRcScYSGr7aG6

Ah, I also made an AI-powered voice assistant in 2014. The tagline was HTML5-powered voice assistant, as AI wasn't really _the_ buzzword then, but _HTML5_... oh yeah.

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1. pbrw ◴[28 Apr 23 14:41 UTC] No.35741832[source]▶
Enso website looks beautiful, what tools did you use to build it?
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2. rpastuszak ◴[28 Apr 23 19:49 UTC] No.35746229[source]▶
Next.js for the product page and regular react for the app. My personal website was built using eleventy. I enjoy writing plain html and css but I try to be pragmatic when things get a bit complex.
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3. sacredSatan ◴[29 Apr 23 06:54 UTC] No.35750679[source]▶
You might have a typo on the Ensō homepage.

>Ensō works perfectly fine even without internet connecton.

hah, editing to say that I really liked it. I'm stress a lot about how I phrase things and am very conscious about how concise am I when when I'm writing for an audience.

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4. rpastuszak ◴[29 Apr 23 20:19 UTC] No.35756752{3}[source]▶
fixed, thank you sacred satan

> hah, editing to say that I really liked it. I'm stress a lot about how I phrase things and am very conscious about how concise am I when when I'm writing for an audience.

Same here. My fluency has improved quite a bit since I started writing daily, but things get much harder when I have to share my work. I'm trying to be more comfortable with sharing things when they're not perfect. Sit was an exercise in that. I wrote about it here: https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/