nfriend's comments

nfriend | 1 month ago | on: Ask HN: Share your personal website

nfriend | 1 year ago | on: Orbit Spirograph (2019)

Love it! I'm fascinated by all things Spirograph and built my own digital version of the more traditional toy here: https://nathanfriend.com/inspiral-web

nfriend | 1 year ago | on: Useful things I've 3D printed

I use FreeCAD! https://www.freecad.org/ It's a bit rough around the edges but now that I know its quirks I'm pretty productive with it.

nfriend | 1 year ago | on: Thomas E. Kurtz has died

QBasic was my first language! I recently stumbled across all my old QBasic programs from my childhood and resurrected them with DOSBox: https://origins.nathanfriend.com/

nfriend | 1 year ago | on: Google Pixel 9 Pro

I had this exact issue on my Pixel 6 Pro! I thought it was done for but it seems to have recovered over the last few months and I don't see it anymore.

nfriend | 1 year ago | on: A small studio made a game based on a Stanislaw Lem's novel

> And there is a fantastic audiobook on audible.

Unfortunately it seems like the audiobook has been pulled from Audible! (Unless I'm just searching for it incorrectly?) I saw this book recommended in another thread and have been checking over the last several months in hopes that it has been restored, but no luck yet. Tempted to just buy it from another platform.

nfriend | 2 years ago | on: Death Metal English (2013)

ChatGPT makes a great regular-English-to-Death-Metal-English translator when prompted with the examples from this article: https://chat.openai.com/share/261034ff-f5d5-404c-b354-c9d58e...

nfriend | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://nathanfriend.io/

Very infrequent updates on my latest side projects.

nfriend | 2 years ago | on: Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world (2014) [video]

Anecdotally, I gave Dvorak a try and became somewhat proficient, but ultimately reverted back to QWERTY for one reason: keyboard shortcuts! Control-C|V|Z are all transformed into either two-handed shortcuts or right-handed shortcuts. In either case, I can't copy/paste while selecting text with the mouse (since I'm right-handed).

I now use Colemak (https://colemak.com/) which doesn't have this issue and I'm quite happy with!

nfriend | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: Lander, a lunar lander style web game

Think I found a bug! Left the tab (on Firefox mobile on Android) and then revisited it, and now it says: "Perfect landing, incredible, you can't get better than this" with a score of 102.3 (I'm assuming 100 is supposed to be the max score?).

nfriend | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: Lander, a lunar lander style web game

Love it! It's like a cross between Flappy Bird and Asteroids. Nice tutorial at the beginning, too.

Just managed to get a 98.5, which I think was mostly luck.

nfriend | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022

True, that's the ideal scenario! We've tried room temperature milk in the past, but our baby refuses it :(

nfriend | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022

As silly as it sounds, this water warmer for baby bottles: https://a.co/d/hhJzLBn

Nothing's worse than trying to mix the perfect water temperature at 3 AM while the baby is screaming, waking up the rest of the family. (We use pre-boiled water for the baby's bottles, so it's not as easy as adjusting a tap.) We bought this after we had our second baby and it's made feeding the baby slightly less stressful.

nfriend | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: A little side project, a watercolor art generator

Done - upgraded to a t3.xlarge. Now it can process 4 images in parallel. Still not enough to keep up with HN demand, but it should chew through the queue a _bit_ faster.

nfriend | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: A little side project, a watercolor art generator

Moving it to a larger AWS instance - will be down for a few minutes!

nfriend | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: A little side project, a watercolor art generator

Fixed! Now abandoning the tab will remove the image from the queue.

nfriend | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: A little side project, a watercolor art generator

Not a bad idea!

nfriend | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: A little side project, a watercolor art generator

Unfortunately nothing at the moment! Currently working on removing images from the queue if the user has left the page (which I'm guessing is the case for about 99% of the current queue).

nfriend | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: A little side project, a watercolor art generator

Currently running on a t3.medium AWS EC2 instance! (My max budget is currently $50/month since I get that much in AWS credits each month for building an Alexa skill a few years back.)

nfriend | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: A little side project, a watercolor art generator

Very interesting, I will look into this! Thanks!