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eg312

162 karma · joined March 8, 2012

contact: alex at eg312 dot com
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eg312··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)
An interactive compound-interest explainer, based on The Compound Effect book https://github.com/alexadam/compound-effect

Added more widgets to Printable Mockups https://github.com/alexadam/printable-mockups & https://www.printablemockups.com/

eg312··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)
With the help of AI & LLMs I restarted working on some of my older side projects. I updated the code and did a landing page for Printable Mockups (a free, open-source drag-and-drop tool for creating device accurate wireframes and sketchpads that you can export as PDFs, print, and sketch on by hand) https://github.com/alexadam/printable-mockups I plan to add more features soon.
eg312··on Show HN: A graph paper generator that renders vector PDFs in the browser
Nice work! I’ve built something… similar: https://github.com/alexadam/printable-mockups & https://www.printablemockups.com It’s free, open source, no backend needed and you can use it in the browser. I plan to add more widgets and support full page templates, like yours.
eg312··on Show HN: A simple app to create .gitignore files
Yes, it's inspired by it but I didn't like the fact that all the available options are hidden and I had to search every time I wanted to add something.

With my app, you can organize you favorite gitignores as lists.

eg312··on Docusaurus 2.0
I just needed a quick way to write in MD and have 'templates' with parameters to avoid copy/paste/replace, especially when documenting shell commands.
eg312··on Docusaurus 2.0
That's why I made https://reactivedoc.com/. You can use it to write interactive documentation in markdown and save it as a simple, self-contained, html+js file.

Now I'm working on v2, with cleaner syntax & more widgets (I want to add an embedded web base terminal to run shell commands), you can see an example here: https://reactivedoc.com/editor/

eg312··on Ask HN: Is there a good framework for an interactive user manual?
I'm working on https://reactivedoc.com/ - it's markdown + some custom widgets, and you can export it as a self-contained html file.

I made it to solve my own problems: document commands & scripts and replace parameters with user input values. Soon I will release a new version with simpler syntax.

eg312··on Ask HN: What Are You Up To? (April 2022)
I needed a way to document my shell scripts (or code snippets) and to quickly replace “parameters”. For example, if you want to download a YT video as mp3, you have to remember this command “youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 <video URL>” . You can use the autocomplete & history in the terminal but you still have to remember parts of the command and replace the old URL with the new one. You can also save it in a text file, and replace <video URL> … too many select/replace/copy/paste ops…

A few months ago I made a good enough solution for my problem https://github.com/alexadam/reactive-doc - it saves ~ 10 minutes/day when I have to run complex devops scripts. And I can quickly share the ‘docs’ because they are just plain html files / or markdown.

Now I just finished the next iteration - better ‘syntax’ for input widgets, runnable @shell commands and a web based terminal https://github.com/alexadam/shell-driver with custom filters and selection actions (useful for me)

Next steps: add more features to the web based terminal -> convert history to scripts, autocomplete with parameters, command palette & context aware menus, multiple terminals (with tabs or panels). I also want to add support for React components in the MD editor.

eg312··on Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell
Time is money and https://reactivedoc.com/ saves me ~500 minutes/month and I also have a paying user. I made it because I needed a simple, self-hosted tool to create documentation with "parameters". The output is a self-contained html file. Coupled with an external runner, it's a great automation tool for simple tasks.
eg312··on Ask HN: Who's looking for a co-founder?
I'm not targeting printers and I don't want to depend on them. If a user wants to print on demand his notebook, there will be that option (if possible).

Also, I'm not targeting consumers. Since the engine is already opensource, I don't have a problem making the whole app open.

"I would personally pay for is the ability to have my custom designed notebook printed and shipped to me" -> I think the core feature is how easily you can design your custom notebook. There are already p-o-d services and you can just use Photoshop or Word for editing. But they are too complex.

What I was trying to say is that, maybe, some companies would pay for custom widgets that hook to a db and display nice graphs & tables to quickly create business reports. But I don't think those companies care about p-o-d because they already have their own providers.

So far, the business model is: free everything except for the cloud storage (if any) and premium widgets & layouts. I would not add a premium over the p-o-d price since I have no control over the quality and I would offer it as a 'bonus', like an option to link the app to a 3rd party printer of your choice.

Anyway, thanks for the input, it really helped me! If you want to keep in touch, let me know.

eg312··on Ask HN: Who's looking for a co-founder?
Great advice!

The printing quality & shipping will be a problem and I was thinking to offer the print on demand just as a 'secondary' option, not a feature.

Probably it would be more profitable to create custom widgets and designs for companies or exporting the layouts as standalone, mini-apps - something like an UI/app editor (what you see is what you get) - that are also printable :)

eg312··on Ask HN: Who's looking for a co-founder?
Thank you! Unfortunately that mailing list if full of random emails from people who thought they need an account to access the app.
eg312··on Ask HN: Who's looking for a co-founder?
I'm working on an app to create custom notebook layouts by drag-and-drop graphical widgets with the option to print on demand the result: https://notebookeditor.com/

I have a lot of ideas on how to improve it and I think there are many use cases, especially for creating custom educational materials. But I haven't found the product market fit until now and I don't have a clear plan on how to monetise it.

The 'front-end' product is 80% done but there is no 'back-end' yet - I'm still thinking if I should do it as saas or a standalone desktop/mobile app.

If interested, contact me at: alex @ myhnusername .com

PS. some of the images I used on the website are copyrighted and I didn't ask for permission or give credit. Sorry! I'll fix it asap.

eg312··on Show HN: A bookmarking tool designed to help synthesize your web research
I made an extension to save web pages as eBooks: https://github.com/alexadam/save-as-ebook. You can easily modify it to remove the images (or scale them down) and invoke it automatically on each page visit or refresh.
eg312··on Show HN: Map33.js – a library to build 3D maps with Three.js
Looks cool! Is there a way to export the mesh & the texture?
eg312··on Building Spectro: a Real-Time WebGL audio spectrogram visualizer
Very cool! Are you the author?
eg312··on Gandi loses data, customers told to use their own backups
I use Gandi for domains & DNS too. I've never had any problems so far but I don't want any surprises... Where do you want to migrate? What is a better alternative?
eg312··on Ask HN: Who's Looking for a Co-Founder?
how can I contact you? My email address is in my profile
eg312··on Ask HN: Where do you find new music to listen to online?
On r/listentothis - I made a browser extension that highlights my favorite genres https://github.com/alexadam/ListenToThis-Highlight, but I have to update it because it doesn't work with the new reddit changes
eg312··on Show HN: A tool to create printable UI mockups and wireframes templates
The blurriness is a problem… With the pdf library I’m using (jsPDF) I cannot export the SVG directly so I convert it to an image and then embed the image in the pdf. To solve the problem, I can increase the converted image’s resolution but then the pdf becomes huge (~20 MB, for example). There is a ‘quality’ parameter in the code, maybe I’ll expose it in the UI and you can find an optimum value. I’ll try to find a way to export or ‘write’ the svg data directly in the pdf, I think it’s the best way to do it.
eg312··on Show HN: A tool to create printable UI mockups and wireframes templates
Thanks! The Notes component is on the to-do list
eg312··on Show HN: A tool to create printable UI mockups and wireframes templates
Thanks! The Notes block is the next thing I’ll add to it
eg312··on Ask HN: What are your top subreddits?
r/parametric_design
eg312··on Ask HN: How can I convert a series of blog posts into an e-book?
I had a similar problem and I built this https://github.com/alexadam/save-as-ebook You can add web pages as chapters and it generates an .epub
eg312··on Ask HN: What is your side project for 2017?
I plan to add support for styles, more export formats and 'save as audiobook' to: https://github.com/alexadam/save-as-ebook
eg312··on Ask HN: What simple tools or products are you most proud of making?
https://github.com/alexadam/save-as-ebook - Save a web page/selection as an eBook
eg312··on Ask HN: What good open source projects written in React that I can learn from?
I don't know how much you can learn from it, but here is a react + three.js project I've done for testing: https://github.com/alexadam/bridges
eg312··on Show HN: A Web Extension to save a page or selection as eBook
Added on the to-do list. Thanks!
eg312··on Show HN: A Web Extension to save a page or selection as eBook
Thanks! ... You are right, I have a bad habit of not writing proper commit messages when working on my projects (because, usually, nobody reads them besides me :) ).
eg312··on Show HN: Dynamic drawing application in Swift, inspired by Bret Victor talk
I've done some (not quite similar) experiments: https://vimeo.com/160730056

I wanted a quick way to edit code and see live results - to make it easier to explore/test new combinations.

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