I'm in the exploratory phase of a few projects, meaning I haven't decided if they are compelling enough (or within my skillset) to push me to develop them properly. That said, the one project I've explored multiple times, each time getting a little closer to making the full mental commitment, is a word processor.

Not a "text editor" for code and whatnot, but a real-deal word processor for writing novels and such. I cloned Visicalc (onto the Pico-8), so my "How does a spreadsheet work?" itch has been scratched. I think it's finally time to answer for myself, "How does a word processor work?" (in pure C, to level-up those skills as well) So lately I've been working on small programmatic experiments to understand the underlying subsystems necessary to build one.

I am writing a newsletter, https://www.clientserver.dev, which started with the writing prompt “what if someone tried to make Money Stuff for software engineering?” I’m still iterating on the format a bit, but I just crossed 100 subscribers and made the Hacker News front page, so I feel like I’m on the right track.

I had a daughter almost 2 years ago, and for a while I didn’t have any free time. But once I started getting a few hours in the evening, I wanted to start up side projects again. I found it frustrating to work on coding projects in 1-2 hour windows. But writing is a little easier; I feel like progress is a little more linear with writing, and having the Monday/Thursday deadline has helped me just ship.

I'm beta testing a SaaS called ChimeraHR that helps bridge the divide between developers and HR when it comes to assessing programmer's skill. The main idea is that the programming languages we use reveal a lot about how we think and problem solve.

When devs put their top languages on their resumes, they are also saying a bit about how they prefer to work and what they value. This signal is largely lost on HR since a lot of it is insight you get from actually coding over time. I strongly believe that we can get more people hired and into the right organizations and cultures if people could see beyond the surface level of the keywords on a resume.

I'm looking for first customers now and people to give feedback on the idea and the upcoming offerings. There's a proof of concept now that hints at how it all works.

I'm making a log search engine that fits in your pocket: https://humanlog.io/

The idea is to be able to ingest your logs locally and run queries against them without having to resort to a hosted prod-like environment. It's all focused on localdev-first experience. I use it when the o11y tools at work don't do what I need: I can just pull the raw logs locally and run my queries there.

It's still very rough around the edges but it gets better day by day. I want to add features like alerts and monitoring, metrics and tracing. A full o11y platform in a single binary with zero config. I would love any feedback.

(Also please excuse the poor onboarding experience, I haven't polished it as this is a side project and I have a day job)

I'm working full time but looking at these streams outside of work

SaaS - I'm working on this https://prfrmhq.com - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43538744 [Show HN: My SaaS for performance reviews setting goals and driving success] - Shows I can use AI and I've integrated into AWS Bedrock - Shows I can integrate with Stripe for payments

Consulting (Architecture, Strategy, Tech) - I'm working on getting my consultancy running but the market is hard atm. https://architectfwd.com

Next SaaS - Starting a SaaS for managing core strategy and tech concepts

Bacon Wrapped Urns: https://baconwrappedurns.com

Mortality is so hot right now so why not celebrate with a custom urn to enjoy your journey into the spirit world in style.

Recipin: https://recipin.com

Private recipe archiving/bookmarking. No ads, no AI, no javascript . Join a server or host your own (https://github.com/bradly/recipin). Screenshot: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bradly/recipin/main/public...

I'm building v2 of MyNixOS, which is an experimental platform to help users navigate, create, and run software configurations using Nix/NixOS.

Just shipped the first phase of v2 which lets you navigate Nix store objects.

Give it a spin here: https://v2.mynixos.com/nix/store/16s8kjwv6zz7xyv3hjr890n7v0d...

(Adjust settings in the upper right corner menu to control what is streamed).

More info here and in FAQ on front page: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/mynixos-v2-release-updates/622...

I've been building https://notionbackups.com for almost 4 years now.

It's mostly feature complete at this point, but there are still some rough edges.

Notion's API is far from complete, and updates are few and far between. This has led me to work around some of its limitations in creative ways. For example, there is still no way to create top-level pages in Notion, which makes restores impossible. Instead, I ask customers to create a top-level page themselves and write backups there.

Personally, the hardest part of working on a project for an extended period is not getting burnt out repeteadly. Sometimes it helps to work on something else, and other times you just need to step away from the game entirely for a while

I'm working on Torch Lens Maker [1], an open-source Python library for differential geometric optics. The goal of this project is to design optical systems with modern numerical optimization (PyTorch autograd). The website has a detailed roadmap of what I have planned.

I also had a recent blog post [2] do fairly well on HN, and now I'm kinda thinking about a new design for version 2 of that project because I can't help it I guess.

[1] https://victorpoughon.github.io/torchlensmaker/

[2] https://victorpoughon.fr/i-tried-making-artificial-sunlight-...

I'm building an AI DJ for Spotify called Listen to Luther. It's open source here: https://github.com/jacobheric/luther. Currently it responds to prompts with a list of songs that can be queued, played or added to playlists on Spotify. Next I'll give it proper memory and the ability to adjust and remix on the fly. I built it because I was frustrated by the mostly passive experience of Spotify's own AI DJ. There is no path to commercialization here as Spotify's TOS does not permit it (I asked them). So I host it for myself and a few friends and made it open source for anyone who's handy enough to run it themselves.