Ask HN: Plans for side projects in 2014? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Plans for side projects in 2014?

27 pointsadsrikanth40 comments

Would love to know your plans/goals for any (tech) side projects in 2014

I've not yet committed to the project, but I'd like to make a portable raspberryPi server that will connect with nearby, likeminded servers and provide a wifi-mesh for anybody in range. Users on the network should get chat + filesharing services. If I can get that to happen, I'll try to make it battery/solar powered.

I'll be headed over to SudoRoom (Oakland) in the coming weeks to get input on the project. If anybody's interested, please reach out.

I'm working on a freemium SaaS which provides security for WordPress based websites. It remotely scans for vulnerabilites in your wordpress website the same way an attacker would and notifies you. Zero programming knowledge required. No installation required.

I need more money for the servers so I'm currently waiting for my Google bug bounty to come through (it's been over 6 weeks!) so I can fund a security startup with security money from Google.

You should check http://sucuri.net/ They have a similar site scan.

What kind of bug did you find?

i'd like to start a blog that tries to recapture the spirit of the old "acorn user" magazine [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_User], focused squarely on the hobbyist programmer, but not shying away from accessible write-ups of complex topics. a sampling of articles i remember off the top of my head:

1. pacman style game developed from scratch, with a discussion of sprite animation and techniques to make a monster chase your character through a maze

2. software + hardware guide to connecting a beep-when-you-whistle keychain (remember those?) to one of the input ports and make your computer do interesting stuff when you whistled

3. graph an arbitrary f(x, y) = 0 function via numerical methods (trace the intersection of z = f(x, y) with the xy plane)

4. basic text adventure with a discussion of representing a map via a graph, using an array to simulate pointers

5. an introduction to forth for basic programmers

the key point is that these were both complete projects, and jumping-off points to explore the topic in greater depth. as a kid i found it very inspiring, and learnt a lot from it.

Is this still just a thought or have you already started on it. I'd love to read something like this. Where will it be when you put it out?

still just a thought, but one i've been turning around in my head for months now. i'm hoping the new year will give me the psychological motivation boost to actually start writing it.

i'll add a link from my website (http://zem.novylen.net) when it's up.

Not sure if I will have time to get back to it, but I plan to create a set of tools for working with Schematron [1]. I worked with it quite a bit at my last job (and actually enjoyed it), but it is a niche thing and I found it difficult to get started/productive. I plan to create a set of updated (Schematron is old) and interactive web-based tutorials and also create a command line tool to help develop, test, and maintain large Schematron rulesets. I define large as being in the 100s of rules per spec and having several specs which interact. I don't know too many groups which work with Schematron at that scale, but I have some lessons learned in terms of organization and maintainability which I'd like to share.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schematron

I mostly work on PHP/MySQL with some frontend so, to diversify my skills - I want to spend some time learning Android application development and release at least one app in the Android Market. Not very sure about the app itself; may be something like sending my phone's sensor data to a web server using REST API.

This year I ended up focusing on an open resource for teaching and learning Python, http://introtopython.org. In 2014 I hope to bring that project to an appropriate level of completion.

After that, I'd like to go back to another project I started, http://opencompetencies.org. This project aims to help educators build and maintain their own sets of education standards.

These projects have been well-received so far. I just need to keep making time for them, and see them through to maturity.

Open Competencies sounds like an awesome idea. Curriculum is not as open or transportable in the US education system as it should be, particularly at secondary schools. Too many teachers are reduced to teaching to exams, because that's the only thing their school district has time or resources to focus on.

It would be fantastic to see more educators relying on (crowd, open, ...) sourced plans, and rely less on the mediocre textbooks and resources that most districts provide.

Thanks for the encouragement!

I plan to release an app for londoners, focused on finding good pubs around tube stations. It's pretty funky: http://dribbble.com/shots/1326115-London-Pub-Crawl-Interacti...

Plus I want to play with creating a few games. I have 5-6 simple ideas I'd like to spend a couple of weeks at a time trying out that I'll be putting on my blog at http://danielhough.co.uk

Out of curiosity, what did you use to prototype the interaction?

No prototype there my friend, that's the real thing, although a few builds out of date. I recorded it in the iPhone Simulator using Quicktime and then turned it into a GIF using photoshop.

Nice! Thanks a lot, I appreciate it. Cheers, and best of luck. I sent that gif off to some friends in London, they're definitely excited.

http://www.mtgprice.com - automated price guide for Magic: the Gathering cards.

I'm looking forward to when you transition to a Bitcoin price guide.

interesting

I played a LOT of MTG years back and even bought several boxes to sell off individual cards in the hopes of making a profit. This site would have been insanely useful at the time. I lived on ebay and checked those prices against other individual sites for prices differences to get the best deal when building my decks.

I only glanced at the site, but it looks well put together. I am thinking about getting back in MTG, so I'll check this out if I start building decks again and buying/selling cards.

I guess I don't have to build this myself anymore! Great UX by the way, pretty impressed. Are you going to expose an API?

e: It looks like the answer to my question is 'yes'. I would like to note that your gains/loses pages for legacy/vintage/all are very noisy due to low trade volume. I suggest putting in some filters.

How about you start? Why don't you seed this discussion with at least something other than just a question and "I'd like to hear your side projects..."? Show us that you're invested in this by giving us your thoughts/ideas instead of asking us to "do all of the heavy lifting" here and I suspect you'll get a lot more response.

I agree; updated the description.

Thank you all for the ideas, I will be grinching the best and brightest in return for 0 shares of my future company.

So I should try to come up with the best sounding, longest to implement, but in reality most unprofitable idea and hope you burn 9 months on it?

Wait, these were quick ideas? I need to rewrite my grinch playbook.

All my past side projects have dabbled at the surface of a new or interesting technology. I hope to do at least one project which can take me deep into a specific language/framework so I can get a good feel for all the features in a specific technology.

I plan to continue building community around Huginn (https://github.com/cantino/huginn), and hopefully to start blogging about different ways to use it.

I enrolled in codepath's iOS bootcamp starting Jan 15th 2014, so I am planning to launch an iOS app in the app store. Not very sure about the app itself. But I am planning to make some sort of utility app for education.

Nice plug. Thanks!

I plan on porting code samples/frameworks from Objective-C to RubyMotion.

Also I want to release some standalone novelty apps with in-app purchases and guerrilla market the shit out of them.

In 2014, I want to setup an experimental Openstack based cloud, blog about my experiences with it, and possibly setup a training, consulting and development services around Openstack.

A web app with simple artificial life simulator with simple AI. All the computation would be done by the client through Meteor to do the real time stuff.

http://intercoolerjs.org/

Please help, if you are interested.

Look cool, However there is are a few 404s in your docs. All Action Attributes 404 as well as a few more links.

Yep, I'm writing this shit up as I type. :)

Hope to have it done by the end of the weekend.

You should add some share button to your site, I'll tweet about intercoolerjs but with a twitter button it will be easier for people to spread the word :)

Got a white label podcast app, WSYWIG email thing and possibly a Bitcoin Mining guide/authority site

A TV Guide

http://zapping.io

I'm trying to get one of my ideas out of my head into coding :)

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