Comment by rpastuszak

3 years ago

The most interesting tech I've build for myself is boring: a writing tool I use every day for journaling: https://enso.sonnet.io

With that out of the way here's some more ridiculous stuff:

In 2016, I made a browser based AR party game where you'd fight kittens falling from the sky by dancing with vegetables in your hands (CMYK was easier to track using the webcam). I have some photos here: https://goo.gl/photos/g6Dp8GLDbuuhT1TRA

From a technical PoV it was exciting (running AR, in a browser, in pre Pokemon GO, pre WASM times!)

I also made a simple photography lighting tool, replacing professional lights with computer/tablet/phone screens (facade.photo). I put it in an old wardrobe bought in a thrift store on Brick Lane and during my startup launch. Results: https://goo.gl/photos/RZ3fCRcScYSGr7aG6

Ah, I also made an AI-powered voice assistant in 2014. The tagline was HTML5-powered voice assistant, as AI wasn't really _the_ buzzword then, but _HTML5_... oh yeah.

Ha. I made The Most Dangerous Writing App for that very purpose (sold it a few years ago after it became an unlikely success), I love finding other peoples home made writing tools! Thanks for sharing Enso!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Dangerous_Writing_A...

  • Haha, a few years ago I created a Chrome extension called "Writer's Block" that would delete everything in the textarea if the user pressed backspace/delete. I used it a lot myself for a while and it got me into the habit of writing without premature editing. I never got around to actually releasing it.

  • Thank you so much for making it, when I started getting into the habit of digital journal, it had helped me a lot to not fix grammar and to not cringe at the things I've just written down.

Both Enso and Sit are really nicely done. I think it would be interesting to add a wordcount "goal" with Enso - set it before you begin and have it notify you when you reach the wordcount for that day. Maybe even re-use the chime from Sit, heck maybe even say ok you reached your writing goal (either time or word count) time to "sit" for a few minutes and then back to it.

Enso website looks beautiful, what tools did you use to build it?

  • Next.js for the product page and regular react for the app. My personal website was built using eleventy. I enjoy writing plain html and css but I try to be pragmatic when things get a bit complex.

    • You might have a typo on the Ensō homepage.

      >Ensō works perfectly fine even without internet connecton.

      hah, editing to say that I really liked it. I'm stress a lot about how I phrase things and am very conscious about how concise am I when when I'm writing for an audience.

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