It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s project is Hack-An-Icecube (demo, source). It’s a failed attempt to make a game in Unity3D, the game engine/framework.

This is my first failure, which I think is good! I was getting bored only attempting things I could definitely succeed at in one day. That said, running out of time is fun. Wrestling the IDE isn’t. This was mostly wrestling the IDE, setting configs, and installing software.

I won’t continue this tomorrow, I’d rather do a new project each day (It’s called Hack-A-DAY)! But I might do another Unity3D project before the month is out.

The ice cubes load and fall, and that’s it. No controls, no game. I ran out of time.

This is an attempt to recreate One Hour Jam Cannon by juzek exactly. I ran out of time, but I made some progress getting Unity to work.

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s (catch-up) project is Hack-A-Homepage (demo, source). You can enter various information about yourself, such as links to your social media, and make your own little homepage.

This one took about another hour. I think it’s okay, but today was definitely a “do the numbers” game to catch up. Tomorrow I want to do something more fun and new.

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s (catch-up) project is Hack-A-Link (demo, source). You can enter a long link, and it will be shortened.

This one was also pretty easy. About an hour.

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s project is Hack-A-Paste (demo, source). You can upload text and share it with others.

Today’s project was an easy one, because I was busy. Took an hour or two.

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s project is Hack-A-Chat. (demo, source). It’s a free web chat for anyone that goes to the website.

Check out the link above to try out the live demo.

So far, not much easier. Another 8-hour day. I was hoping to do something with WebRTC today, but I didn’t get to it.

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s project is the Hack-A-Blog. (demo, source).

Check out the link above to try out the live demo. I’m proud of getting this one done in time. I think the next days will be easier, as I figured some things out already.

I’ve been prototyping an e-ink laptop.

I’m not the first, there have been many other such devices before. I came up with the idea independently, but the specifics are heavily inspired by the Ultimate Writer by NinjaTrappeur in 2018. Similar to him, my use case is typing without distractions, and reading books. E-ink displays are quite slow to update, so I don’t think it can serve as a general purpose computer. Here’s a video of it in action. It operates at one frame per second.

The electronics are not fully done. They need better secured, and I’m going to redo the cabling and power back.

I’m not the best woodworker, but I’m slowly learning. Here are pictures of case and lid action.

On the software end, shout outs to:

• the creator of the ultimate-writer software, NinjaTrappeur, who has been encouraging (and explained the right way to rewrite the stack, if you wanted to today).
• Ben Krasnow, who made a video about how to hack partial refresh on an e-ink display.

There’s a few things I’d like to polish still–even as a prototype this isn’t fully done.

• The raspberry pi and battery pack are currently sitting loose. They need secured, especially since they can fall out the open front.
• The software has some major problems. It doesn’t support Control-C, etc in linux, a must, and it doesn’t update the screen at boot until you press a key, which would be nice to fix.
• There’s no power switch. Right now you have to unplug it manually.
• I’d like to add a carrying handle.
• I’d like to tuck away the electronics behind a panel. They’re ugly.
• The wood looks rough in a few places. I want to hide some splintered wood, screw holes, etc.
• The USB cables have too much stress on them. I need to make a little more room in the wood, and use a right-angled connector in one place.

There’s also no default software, but that’s a feature. A prototype is for figuring out how I want the interface to work, and what I want it to do.

Parts list

• 7.5 inch e-ink screen from Waveshare (not particularly good) – $60
• Raspberry Pi 3 (Pi Zero, etc also work with no changes) – $35 (but unavailable)
• microsd card – $7
• Plywood and boards, wood glue – $15
• Plexiglass (to cover screen) – $10
• Bolts, washers, and nuts to secure it. – $5
• Circular window latch x2 – $8 (or use $10 smaller version)
• Hinge x2 – $2
• Total: $142

Power budget (at 5V):

• Keyboard: 500mW. Other USB keyboards use zero to within my measurement abilities.
• Screen: 0-250mW when updating. Hard to measure.
• Pi 3: 2000mW. I have the wifi chip enabled (the default) but I’m not actively connected to wifi.
• Pi Zero W: 650mW

A real-life test showed 5-6 hour battery life. Theory says (13Wh/battery * 4 batteries / 2.7 watts)=20 hours battery life. I’m investigating the discrepancy. In theory, swapping for a Pi Zero W and a better keyboard would give 72-hour battery life.

I write down everything I do. Yesterday, I wrote a quick-and-dirty analysis program to get some stats on common habits.

The full results are here: drive floss food read sleep teeth tv wake walk youtube. Of course, what I write down doesn’t perfectly match what I do, so most of the absolute stats are vastly wrong. Comparative ones are still interesting.

Here’s some results:

• The data say I’m a night owl. I go to sleep 0.9 times a day on average. 2am-4am is most common. I wake up at 11am-12pm.
• I brush my teeth 0.18 times a day, on average, but 0.36 times in 2021. Surely that’s not right!? I have flossed 25 times since 2018. I’m going be honest… that one probably is about right, yikes.
• I watch 30% more youtube on Tuesday than Saturday, but only 4% more television. I watch most TV between 9pm and 1am. Youtube is pretty spread out. I watch tv 0.7 times a day, buy youtube 1.9 times a day.
• I read 1.1 times a day, usually before midnight.
• I eat 3.5 times a day on average. This includes 796 days where I didn’t record eating. Omitting those, I eat 6.5 times a day.

I’ll leave you with this poor man’s graph of driving frequency over time. See the pandemic hit?

{'2018-01': 'x',
 '2018-02': '',
 '2018-03': 'x',
 '2018-04': 'xxx',
 '2018-05': '',
 '2018-06': '',
 '2018-07': 'x',
 '2018-08': '',
 '2018-09': '',
 '2018-10': 'x',
 '2018-11': 'xx',
 '2018-12': 'xx',
 '2019-01': 'x',
 '2019-02': '',
 '2019-03': 'xxxxxxx',
 '2019-04': 'x',
 '2019-05': '',
 '2019-06': 'x',
 '2019-07': 'x',
 '2019-08': 'xx',
 '2019-09': '',
 '2019-10': 'xxxxx',
 '2019-11': 'xxxxxxxxx',
 '2019-12': 'xxxxxx',
 '2020-01': 'xxxxxxxxx',
 '2020-02': 'xxxxxxxxxxx',
 '2020-03': 'xxxxxxx',
 '2020-04': 'xxxxx',
 '2020-05': 'xx',
 '2020-06': '',
 '2020-07': '',
 '2020-08': '',
 '2020-09': '',
 '2020-10': 'x',
 '2020-11': 'xxxxxx',
 '2020-12': 'x',
 '2021-01': 'xx',
 '2021-02': 'xxx',
 '2021-03': 'xxxxxxxxx',
 '2021-04': '',
 '2021-05': 'xxxxxxxx',
 '2021-06': 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
 '2021-07': 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
 '2021-08': 'xxxxx',
 '2021-09': 'xxxxxxx',
 '2021-10': 'xxxx',
 '2021-11': 'xxxxxx',
 '2021-12': 'xxxxxxxx',
 '2022-01': 'xxxxxxxxx',
 '2022-02': 'xxxxxxxxxx',
 '2022-03': 'xxxxxxxxxxxx',
 '2022-04': 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
 '2022-05': 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
 '2022-06': 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
 '2022-07': 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
 '2022-08': 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
 '2022-09': 'xxxxxxx'}

I made a site for your constant refresh needs: http://isrickandmortyout.com/

Very, very early in my self-improvement journey, I tried adding a 20 minute timer to my life. Every 20 minutes of my waking life, it went off. I’d explicitly say to myself what it was I was doing (“Watching TV” or “Talking to Fred”). It’s important to have a verbal or written note of what you’re doing.

I added a specific prompt at one point: “What am I doing, and why?”. I don’t think goals are how I think about things today, but it’s how I tried to think back then (goal factoring). Today I might ask, “What am I doing, and do I want to be doing it? Do I want to be doing it this way?”

The basic 20-minute check-in process was very helpful to me. Some benefits:

• Ding! What am I doing? It gave me an awareness of time. How long do things last? Our subjective sense of time doesn’t always match. For example, doing my daily chores takes about 20 minutes. A typical conversation with a friend takes 60-120 minutes for me. But the chores feel way longer to me!
• What am I doing, and do I want to be doing it? Interrupting default activities (a type of inertia). Watching TV until I get bored of it takes me 2-10 hours, if I don’t have a timer. Having a timer interrupt me let me say “well, maybe this will be the last episode, then.” It’s easy to get into a low-energy state for leisure activities where you don’t notice the passage of time. And it’s important to note, I don’t have any rules. I can keep watching TV all night if I want to. This helps me avoid doing it out of pure inertia. (It also really keyed me in that TV does not really “recharge” my batteries. Other relaxation is better.)
• Do I want to be doing it, or doing it this way? Interrupting bad approaches (a type of inertia). Sometimes, I get stubborn. I’ll keep trying to solve a problem in one way, for way too long. Having a regular interruption keys me into how long I’ve been doing that. I’ll notice I should maybe try a different approach or a work-around. Or give up.
• Ding! Providing a check-in. I’ll just take stock, and say “hey, am I really having fun? is this even useful?”. Sometimes I’m just doing something dumb. Or sometimes I forget to have fun or take a break for too long. This is my reminder to check in with my strategic system; my emotions; my body.