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vitoc

367 karma · joined September 11, 2011

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/vitoc; my proof: https://keybase.io/vitoc/sigs/7QQGN1YbEzhyAaTbiRYs1s-4U4P3zpWH6fyB8K42ufQ ]
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vitoc··on Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash
I used GnuCash for a few years too, then switched to something else because:

1) I couldn't make transaction importing work for the statements that I want 2) I couldn't get to the report that igpay got (this was many years back) for some reason, I also wanted more custom reports and it seemed really complicated to create one 3) I wanted a tool that was more malleable. Although GnuCash is completely open source, the codebase does not look too approachable for me

After trying a few other approaches (including spreadsheets), I settled with Ledger CLI. I also built importing tools over 3 years of coding on weekends and finally got a complete set of features and financial institutions that I want :) Started with the reporting / analytics part recently... You can check it out here:

https://prudent.me

Any feedback will be very appreciated :)

vitoc··on Virtual tour of the tomb of Pharaoh Ramses VI
Try and spot a lookalike of the chinese character 大 in this tomb...interesting...
vitoc··on The Svelte Compiler Handbook
Very clear and crisp overview of the compilation process!
vitoc··on Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support
Same here, I tried the data entry way (telling myself that the friction encourages thinking more before spending). It lasted about 2 years before I started creating import helpers to get transactions from my current accounts and etc.

Now, I put together some JS to create custom import helpers that adapts to different bank formats. Unsurprisingly, banks doesn't seem to want to converge/adopt a standard on transaction exports still (like a simple standard on the CSV will do), despite all the hype about open banking and such. Step by step?

I have some libraries that I reuse to create these custom helpers documented here:

https://docs.prudent.me/docs/dev/creating_ext

This works with the wrapper that I created as well :)

vitoc··on Show HN: Lunch Money, a personal budgeting tool with multi-currency support
I have similar requirements, except I wanted something on my laptop (well, I could self-host locally too). After about 10 years or so with GnuCash, I started using Ledger-CLI. Both satisfied those requirements...But I wanted to have more control over imports and reports.

As I go about normalizing that in my life, I started writing GUIs to make interaction easier and import helpers to make imports easy. Sometime ago, I packaged all of that into a desktop/laptop app: https://prudent.me

vitoc··on GnuCash: Open-source double-entry accounting software
With Prudent, you can combine multiple ledger journals from different users (maybe share the journal text files via Git) and obtain aggregated financial reports based on the combined ledgers.

https://prudent.me

vitoc··on GnuCash: Open-source double-entry accounting software
If you like Fava-like interface, maybe check out Prudent, which works with ledger: https://prudent.me
vitoc··on Hledger: Robust Plain Text Accounting
Check out the parser extension approach at https://Prudent.me
vitoc··on Combining finances
In Prudent, you can combine multiple journals. Your wife can maintain a separate journal while you maintain another one. This way, both parties can do whatever they want or agree to some set of rules. Most importantly, at any time, you or your wife can see the combined financial strength, or individual financial situation. Awareness of both can make a big difference in making important financial decisions. Avoid being penny wise, pound foolish. The combined report (of savings, etc.) gives both of you better insights on the financial journey that you can embark together (i.e. buying a house, having kids, moving cities, etc.)

https://docs.prudent.me/docs/combining

vitoc··on My Budget – free, open-source offline cross-platform budgeting
Maybe check this out too?:

https://prudent.me/

Not just for budgeting, but in the same space! :)

vitoc··on How to Grow Old (1951)
Russell published "The Conquest of Happiness" 26 years before this essay. I spot all of the causes of happiness from "The Conquest" in this essay: Zest, Affection, Family, Work, Impersonal Interest, Effort & Resignation :)

Check out https://happy.runningroot.com/

HAPPY is a modern and visual journey through The Conquest of Happiness, Bertrand Russell’s age-old advise on happiness. It provides a convenient framework that helps establish mindfulness towards the causes of unhappiness and understanding while embracing the causes of happiness.

HAPPY provides concise notes on what to look out for using many examples from philosophy, history and art. Given that happiness is a vast subject, the framework in HAPPY is a practical way of embedding Russell's ideas in your life without going too deep into the science, psychology and philosophy. It helps you benefit from these understanding with a constant mental awareness that sustains your happiness for productivity and health.

vitoc··on Why Westerners Fear Robots and the Japanese Do Not
At first glance, I thought the title might be better with the use of "but" in place of "and", as in "Why Westerners Fear Robots but the Japanese Do Not"...
vitoc··on Ask HN: What are some well written/engineered open source software?
I like the engineering aspects of VS Code:

https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode

vitoc··on Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?
I agree, great advice.
vitoc··on Show HN: Replify – Create a REPL for any command
This could significantly enhance my Docker in the CLI user experience.
vitoc··on Infrastructure Software is Dead
Well, service, yes. Additionally, freedom from service dependence too.
vitoc··on A Beginner's Guide to Scaling to 11M+ Users on Amazon's AWS
Coming from an environment that uses lots of AWS resources to handle scaling requirements across different kinds of workloads on different linked accounts, one of the challenges we faced was to communicate and collaborate efforts and its impacts on cost efficiency. Typically our best environment isn’t the product of a singular design effort at the individual level, but many times emergent based on differing opinions and trials to assert assumptions in practice. We built a tool, https://liquidsky.singtel-labs.com, to help with this.
vitoc··on AWS mistakes to avoid
I work in a team that uses quite a lot of AWS for various reasons beyond cost. We also use various other clouds too, depending on needs of a specific project or situation. Our experience with cloud is that it is a journey. Obviously, coupled with DevOps tooling, it’d allowed us to deal with environment requirements at the speed of software, i.e. Infrastructure as Code and all. One thing we find ourselves doing over and over is changing the infrastructure, either because requirements change, new cloud services are launched and its useful to us or simply because we find more efficient ways of running cloud resources (Trusted Advisor helps).

We’d built a tool called Liquid Sky (https://liquidsky.singtel-labs.com) to help us keep track of the cost impact of the changes we make constantly. I did mention that we use cloud for reasons beyond cost, but we definitely still want to know that we’re sensible and maximise cost efficiency as well, its just another (important) factor. Because we change our cloud resources so frequently, we didn’t want to make it a very rigid process when dealing with the sensibilities of cloud cost. Hence, we’d built Liquid Sky in a way that gives our engineers the freedom to explore better way of running things on the cloud while keeping cost in check as well as keeping the team (including cost guardians) in the loop.