HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

j3d

29 karma · joined January 7, 2023

submissionscomments
j3d··on How to read more books
I too wanted to read more books by cutting out doom scrolling. But while I always have my phone on me, I don't always have my Boox ereader. I needed a way to handoff between devices.

I searched for a good Android reader that would sync my book progress across devices but couldn't find anything that worked. So I ended up vibe coding my own app that works for me. I'd consider open sourcing it if people are interested.

j3d··on Ask HN: Which movies did you watch multiple times?
So I Married An Axe Murderer - so many good quotes!

Real Genius

The Princess Bride

Ghostbusters 1 & 2

Back to the Future

Shawshank Redemption

The Fifth Element (coming to theaters again soon via Fathom Events, already have tickets for me and my kids!)

j3d··on Ask HN: Better Alternatives Than Passwords?
Steve Gibson invented something you may like: Simple Quick Reliable Login https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm
j3d··on Show HN: Citadel – a Calibre-compatible eBook management app
This looks really cool and I plan on checking it out. Ironically, I recently built a desktop app using the same stack (Rust + Tauri + Svelte) for managing audiobooks. Shameless plug in case anyone is interested: https://gitlab.com/fonner/audiobook-locker#audiobook-locker
j3d··on Ask HN: Best UI design courses for hackers?
Not sure if this fits your goal of a UI design course, but I found Josh Comeau's CSS for JS Devs course to be a great way to learn the fundamentals of CSS in a way that resonated with my developer mindset.

https://css-for-js.dev/

j3d··on The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection
Shameless plug - if you download lots of audiobooks and need help organizing them and figuring out which to listen to next, check out Audiobook Locker: https://gitlab.com/fonner/audiobook-locker. It's a desktop app (built with Tauri) that scans your audiobook folder and lets you sort, search and tag your audiobooks.
j3d··on Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?
Shared Slides Clicker [1] - an extension to allow for multiple people to remotely drive a single Google Slides presentation. I created this because it drives me insane when I hear people saying "Next slide please"! It leverages React and Firebase.

Simple Weekly Meal Planner [2] - a very simple, free PWA for deciding what you want to make for dinner each week and tracking all the ingredients you need to get from the market. I built this because meal planning is one of the most annoying parts of adulting. It was built with Svelte and Firebase.

Audiobook Locker [3] - a Tauri-based desktop app for managing your audiobooks. Think calibre-for-audibooks. I created this because I wanted a nice way to keep track of which audiobooks I'd completed and which to read next. It uses Svelte for the UI and Rust on the backend.

[1]: https://fonner.gitlab.io/shared-slides-clicker/ [2]: https://simpleweeklymealplanner.com/ [3]: https://fonner.gitlab.io/audiobook-locker/

j3d··on Ask HN: Best way to version control your notes or documents?
I recently switched from using Google Docs to storing my notes in Markdown/Git and making them available just to myself via Docusaurus on a private Gitlab Pages repo.

Benefits: 1. Free 2. Securely available from any web browser. Only people added to you repo can access the published notes. 3. Clean interface with solid search capability 4. Versioned 5. Easy cross-linking 6. Can edit locally or on the web, both with preview

Cons: 1. Requires a little upfront setup. See [0] 2. Requires familiarity with Markdown 3. Requires free Gitlab account

I am pretty happy with this now. I'm able to organize and search my notes at https://<gitlabusername>.gitlab.io/<repo name> and the 1-click edit link takes me to the Gitlab web IDE where I can make changes, see the preview, and commit changes.

[0]: https://jedfonner.com/2023/01/22/private-kb

j3d··on Ask HN: Share your personal site
I enjoy occasionally blogging on https://jedfonner.com/

It's a simple static site built with jekyll.

I'm most proud of the chatbot I wired up to answer basic questions from visitors. I explained how I did it here: https://jedfonner.com/2021/08/03/Dialogflow-v2