Ask HN: What have you achieved in January 2015?

I decided to jump in head first and build a company. I'd been planning to do it for years as a side-project but always ended up too tired in the evenings - so, now that my partner has a job (he was previously at university so we were relying on my income), I've decided to just go for it.

It's scary and chances are I won't make it - but I'm so glad I've at least made a start. At the very least it'll be a nice break for 6-12 months, with some good experience too.

If you're interested in what I'm making, I'm building a simple, affordable web analytics service. There are loads of fantastic tools in this space (Heap is a great example) but they're 1. frankly very expensive (I'm targeting small companies/design studios) and 2. often more complicated than what most people need. Google Analytics has an awful lot of features (and has the advantage of being free) but is really quite complicated, especially for people who aren't as technical.

I should be launching in under a month - please feel free to sign up to be notified if you're interested: http://pleasant.io/

I' ve been adjusting to a new, much needed lifestyle. I only drink water or tea, no junk food, go to bed very early; I wake up at 5:30 to exercise, meditate and write. I use the (incredibly efficient!) Pomodoro technique to get through tasks.

Since I have a very fluid schedule, I designed the new habits as small "chunks of time" around my only daily constants: breackfast, lunch and dinner. Rather than sticking to "I'm going to exercise at 5:00pm" (who knows, I may be busy then), I prefer "I'm going to practice for 30 min. before breackfast".

Kicked off my personal challenge - 12 Apps in 12 Months - in order to force myself to deliver personal projects as opposed to just tinker with stuff and never make it past the beginner phase.

It's working great; I have a slick kanban workflow on Trello going on, and a (tiny, irrelevant, but useful for this purpose) SaaS app in production.

App #2 is under way ahead of schedule since #1 reached MVP with a full week to spare of January.

It's obviously early days in the project, but I hope to make this my year of sincere effort, and personal growth.

After giving notice back in September, I went full-time into my own startup on the 16th of January. While I absolutely loved my job at The Control Group (they're hiring btw!), I've made so much progress on what was my side project. It's called Pleenq, and it's an extension that allows you to highlight objects within images and link them to where they can be purchased. I made a quick demo video of using it on my facebook feed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYlbMLays2Q&feature=youtu.be (if you watch the video, I realize now that it was a Mets cap).

The leap from making money to making absolutely nothing after having just gotten married in October probably looks like the workings of someone who has gone completely bonkers. Even though it's a terrible time for me financially, I feel like it's the best time for my business to take root and thrive. I owe a lot of how I think about this transition to the hacker news community as a whole, since there is a direct correlation between the time I started reading hacker news, and the time I started dreaming of owning my own successful company.

I don't have a landing page set up yet (man there's so much work to be done!), but if you're interested in knowing when Pleenq goes live, send me an email at justin@pleenq.com and I'll add you to the first round of invites!

Work-related:

- Spoke at a conference for the first time (React.js Conf) [1]

- Released my first serious open-source project (an isomorphic React app server) [2]

- The project I've been building was demoed to some executives and put our team in a really good spot.

Other cool stuff:

- Started buying furniture and accessories to make my room feel like home. I've always been hesitant to own large items because I've moved pretty frequently since I finished high school. Buying a handmade hardwood bed is a big deal for me.

[1]: http://conf.reactjs.com/schedule.html#tweak-your-page-in-rea...

[2]: https://github.com/appsforartists/ambidex/

Built a 100% automated site that lists the best prices and details for all top level domains:

http://tld-list.com

Started volunteering with three different learn to code initiative with the intent to help curb the gender gap in tech and get kids interested in programming: CoderDojoChi[1], GirlDevelopIt[2] and Code and Cupcakes[3]. Also looking to help out with PyLadies. You guys should volunteer for/start these things too ^.^

[1]:http://coderdojochi.org/

[2]:http://www.girldevelopit.com/

[3]:http://codeandcupcakes.net/

Got a patch accepted into the Linux kernel, started my final semester of undergrad.

Decided to launch something every month in 2015 as a way to train myself out of half finishing projects.

Of course I'm briefly blogging about it as a journal too.

Initial discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8908275

And yes, I did manage to ship in January! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8973807

I am planning Feb's challenge later today...

* I've managed to move my blog from Wordpress to my GitHub pages powered domain: http://r3bl.github.io/

* I've managed to read five books in the first ten days of January! My goal is to read at least one book a month in 2015.

* I've managed to lower my cigarette addiction. Now I am fully able to control myself. If I smoke more cigarettes in a day than I think I should, I can pause a couple of days without smoking a single cigarette without any problems. I feel great managing to control just how much I smoke considering that I don't have the desire needed to quit smoking completely.

* I've found my passion once again. Not a day has passed without me learning something new. I'm actually trying to build my habit: http://r3bl.github.io/en/learn-something-every-day/

* I've completely open sourced everything I do on my GitHub. My notes, my portfolio, my journal, my blog... Everything is up on GitHub and I'm currently in a 14 days streak. I will try to continue at least to 50.

* I've managed to write an article worthy of being published on Opensource.com. It is going to be published by the end of February.

I got an alpha version of something we call FastBoot working for Ember apps: https://github.com/tildeio/ember-cli-fastboot

FastBoot allows you to boot up your JavaScript application on the server, gather model data, and send the rendered output as HTML to the client. This allows search crawlers, cURL, and people with very slow JavaScript engines to access apps that were previously unavailable. I've had a fire in my belly to make this work since I had a conversation with Dan Webb at Twitter about all of the reasons they switched away from client-side rendering[1].

1: https://blog.twitter.com/2012/improving-performance-on-twitt...

Most people think this problem has already been solved by being able to render templates on the server, but the problem is much harder than that. For example, I learned on HN yesterday that most server-rendered Flux apps can only handle one request a time, due to the reliance on singletons[2]. You really need an application-wide DI system like Angular/Ember to get this working with multiple requests in parallel.

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8989667

I'm really really really excited about this work because I think we can have a single, robust solution for all Ember developers that is dead simple to install and get running. Most importantly, this makes JavaScript apps accessible for everyone, while retaining the UI advantages for those whose devices are capable enough. In other words, I think once this is complete, we can finally put to bed the controversy over whether server-side or client-side rendering is best—we'll have a hybrid that offers the best of both worlds.

I Had got contract work from HN (Thanks HN) 8 months back. I Purchased my own office out of it in Jan. And soon will work on same contract from there.

I launched alpha of my lifelong dream - website to visualise all public budgets:

http://blog.wikibudgets.org/2015/01/sankey-builder-launch.ht...

Started working on a book about Swift and released early versions of the first 11 chapters.

http://www.swift-tutorial.io/learn-swift

PyParallel: added support for detecting system memory high/low states and altering behavior accordingly (i.e. hit high memory, stop accepting new connections until the event clears), refactored the heap snapshot logic, implemented socket re-use and context re-use for socket servers, switched over to using custom threadpools per socket server such that min/max threads could be limited to ncpu (prevents the kernel from flipping out and creating 200-300 threadpool threads when hitting instantaneous load of 10k+ connections (which happened when I was just palming everything off to the default thread pool, which has no min/max thread bounds and simply tries to do "best effort" servicing of thread pool load, which is completely sufficient in just about every case other than huge instantaneous loads)). Removed the extensive pointer/memory address testing from the release build (still in debug build) which, as expected, gave a significant performance improvement. End result, gloriously low latency and low jitter: https://twitter.com/trentnelson/status/562839986408800257. Only crashes now when you ctrl-c it on the console (as I haven't written the cleanup code yet) -- once that is fixed, I'll build an installer and do a public release, wahey! I love it when a plan comes together.

(PyParallel: native CPython running on all cores without being impeded by the GIL. https://speakerdeck.com/trent/pyparallel-how-we-removed-the-...)

Bought a round-trip ticket to Asia which will kick off a trip spanning over 5 months. Longest trip I've ever taken, and I'm staying in Korea for 3 months, hopefully hacking a lot and working on freelance work and sideprojects when I'm not exploring and getting to know the locals! I know it's not really "achieved", but I've been building up to it for a while :)

P.S. Hit me up if you're in Seoul in July-October!

1. Nearly completed V1 of Cachet (https://cachethq.io) - unfortunately personal issues arose plus being a bit burnt out meant I was unable to quite reach my deadline. But we're nearing it.

2. Started working on Larameet UK (https://james-brooks.uk/larameet-uk/) which will be a mini-conference/meetup for Laravel and PHP developers alike.

3. Moved back in with my parents so that more of my savings can go towards a house.

4. I reached sixteen weeks of not drinking energy drinks; Monster, Redbull, Lucozade etc and reduced my daily coffee intake to two cups max. I'd rather drink tea and water now. I don't smoke nor do I have a particularly addictive personality, but stopping myself drinking these energy drinks has been really hard and continues to be when I'm near them.

5. Finally (after five years) setup a deployment system for our consumer websites at work. This makes a massive difference and is a step in the direction I want to be doing.

Worked on and finished a couple big features for Improvely (https://www.improvely.com). Visitor profiles are looking snazzier (http://i.imgur.com/Up61dUk.png). Still an unending TODO list for February and onward.

Gave W3Counter (https://www.w3counter.com) a bit of a facelift, and a new set of plans & pricing. Offering annual plans has increased customer LTV a lot.

Started testing Amazon Aurora for RDS. I'm considering replacing several bare metal servers with RDS once that service is out of "preview". The feature set is just bonkers for how easy it is to use. The price is just bonkers compared to RDS for MySQL/Postgres -- you get multi-AZ replication for free. Can't wait.

Did my taxes. Waiting on 1099s to come in before I file anything just to make sure everything lines up with my own books.

After a mastectomy last December, the docs are finally letting me work out so I'm going full bore to put a little muscle to compensate for the lost mass.

I've been trying to meditate for exactly five minutes a day. I'm not sure it's helping but I'm pushing on.

Almost landed my first Fortune 500 client for my one man startup, jQuizzy.

So far, it's heen s kind year.

I was let go from my last position. Work ran out. Best thing to happen ever. I was under far too much stress in that role and ninety percent of it was due to company mismanagement; My time in the military ran smoother then what they had going on.

Since becoming unemployed, I've started working out more by running around 10 miles a week, giving private Brazilian jiu-jitsu lessons, and even have had the opportunity to assist instruct defensive tactics with the local Police Academy. I'm also eating better, saving a ton of money on gas and on not eating out (I had a literal six charges on my debit card for January, including gas!), and just feel 1000x better.

Now I'm just looking for the next opportunity, sadly it looks like I have no where to go in the technology sector in my area (SW Virginia) and may be moving into a Correctional Officer position with the Regional Jail because plainly, I need a paycheck.

I finally started writing my book, "Take Control of Your Career". Put up a landing page to give away a free chapter on writing awesome business email to start gauging interest.

http://www.joshdoody.com/career/

I've started writing a binary file format reader in Python, or at least extending one by someone else that only works in very limited cases. I had to review binary/hex numbering (I wasn't a CS major) but progress has been surprisingly steady. This is my first time working with bits and it's not as scary as I'd thought. I'm aided greatly by a decent file format specification, and the existing code. The project probably would have been impossible if I was starting from zero.

I've also started training for alpinism. 1 hour of hill walking with a 30-lb pack twice a week, plus core/body strength workout, and a 6-10 hour hike every weekend. The gas mileage driving to the mountains is killing me.

Launched into beta my Android note taking / whiteboarding / vector draw & show.

You draw on Android (multiple people can co-draw in real time) and also can view docs online (also with realtime updates)

Here's a sample drawing / note http://write-live.com/d/dba21681-8d3f-4fbe-8b4b-e5c1983df934

sample diagram http://docs.write-live.com/WriteliveServer/webview.html?d=2b...

landing page http://write-live.com/

Made a deep dive into Angular for a user-facing website and built a daily digest service around the Hacker News API - http://hnbuzz.com

I had some experience with Angular for making internal dashboards and there I believe it shines, but for regular websites it makes some normally trivial things unnecessary complex - think SEO, back button, rss etc.

I plan to write a detailed blogpost about it but until then you can ping me if you want to know more about my experiences. Happy to chat.

Also started doing a nice trick - get a cool glass bottle, fill it up with water in the morning + some lemons slices and place it on your work desk. Makes hydration so much easier.

Good luck with learning Ruby On Rails. I'm actually following the same path. Here are some of my "achivements" for Jan 2015:

* With my spanish knowledge I started to give some courses to help people "hablar español". Funny experience.

* I finally decided of which language I'll learn in 2015: Chinese. I though Japanese I'll be cool as well, but I heard Chinese seems easier for beginners... huehue

* I'm actually keeping learning Ruby On Rails with a really intense learning flow. Which helps me acquire some sort of "coding discipline".

* No more cigarettes. Really proud, really.

PS: If you found some grammar errors, I should apologize. Unfortunately, my native language isn't english.

I've stayed well on top of my consulting projects, already done preparing my taxes even!

I made significant progress on my sideproject (implemented native mac, linux, and windows clients in addition to the backend!). Shameless plug: It's a filesystem-based time tracker (think dropbox filesystem monitoring + Machine Learning to automatically classify projects = no-hassle, fully automated time tracking) http://moonlighter.io

Personally, we paid off the balances on my wife's car and student loans. Now to continue tackling my own student loans. (Can't wait to only have the mortgage payment...)

I made it to day 10 in Handmade Hero.[0]

Botched the audio implementation and had to start over from scratch with the archived code, but that it worked at all (albeit badly) is still better than I would have expected (and on the bright side, I now know how to bootstrap an SDL project with batch files[1] which is so much easier than doing it through Visual Studio's GUI.)

Apart from that, nothing of consequence.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/user/handmadeheroarchive

[1]https://github.com/kennethrapp/SDL2-Lua-Batch

* Switched to washing my hair once a week after 45 days of not washing it, no 'poo style. Before this, if I didn't wash it every day, I'd have a head of grease in 30 hours.

* Hit 60K pageviews on http://www.developingandstuff.com for the second month in a row; started splitting posts by content into several thematic blogs.

* Restarted playing the bass, seriously considering getting Rocksmith after trying it out at a friend's house.

* Got my first sale on fiverr: https://www.fiverr.com/mparramon/

Launched my first SaaS, and I have quite a few users registered... some paid accounts, even!

http://sendtomycloud.com

Also, gathered a lot of attention for the ANSI & ASCII art communities (and at least 2 new artists!) with my rewrite (and promotion) of http://artpacks.org.

FYI: A new pack full of ANSI art from Blocktronics comes out today, around 2pm eastern. You'll be able to see it at http://artpacks.org/2015

After finishing my "One Game a Month" challenge in 2014 I got back to my plan to learn (again) some electronics and I'm building a AVR based 8-bit 80s style microcomputer.

On January I got the video driver (composite video, PAL; rendering from external SRAM) and the keyboard driver (PS2).

Reading and learning about PAL and PS2 has been very interesting, and also I had to learn a EDA software (KiCad) to keep the schematics safe because the Arduino board has now more cables that I can safely track ;)

Besides I had to understand lots of details about the AVR, mainly how SPI and the USART interfaces work.

Good fun!

Got to write some F# professionally.

Wrote up an article about getting F# adopted in the work place. It got ~1k views https://medium.com/@the_ajohnston/how-to-get-pragmatists-to-...

Wrote up a very domain specific article on scheduling. It got 8 views https://medium.com/@the_ajohnston/dont-use-the-word-reschedu...

I started writing a chess game where rather than just two players there are two teams of an arbitrary number of players each who vote on what move to play next. Pitting yourself against a crowd of 100 other players should prove entertaining.

Fun tech too.. using chess.js (https://github.com/jhlywa/chess.js/blob/master/README.md), chessboard.js (chessboardjs.com) and Firebase.com at the moment.

Finally, got productive after months of burn out. Couple of features for http://thehorcrux.com/ (A backup integrity verification phase exposed to the user). Pressing the "Submit for Review" button today. :)

Also doing a machine learning project at a nice uni. It's probably the reason for my recovery. It's a way better environment than staying at home getting distracted. I think I now get the concept of co working spaces.

This has nothing to do with technology, but hey: I finally decided to take saxophone lessons, I will buy a sax on Saturday morning and have my first lesson next Tuesday.

I've been playing both flatpicking guitar and mandolin respectively for 14 and 4 years, but have been in love with the sax for more than 20 years.

At almost 29 years old I decided it was time to take the plunge and learn how to play the thing.

It's going to be a good excuse to finally learn how to actually read music in the process.

I feel motivated like I rarely felt before.

Started learning ReactJS by trying to implement a very simple vim interface. This is my first side project where I've actually gotten somewhere with implementing basic functionality and then committed it to github. The project isn't close to being done (read: I'm kinda aware that it doesn't work ideally), but my goal is to commit code once a week.

http://carise.github.io/reactjsvim

Quit eating sweets of any kind - over a month in and going strong.

Started reading every night before bed again - trying to read two books / month in 2015, despite a very busy schedule.

Lost about 12lb.

Also made a decision on what to build for a new SaaS project.

Like a few other people in the comments here I started a 12 things in 12 months, where I will complete one different project each month.

January's project was http://finishonethingtoday.com, it managed to hit the top of HN for a few hours and got a lot of attention and continues to bring in visitors and has opened up a few new areas for potential projects in the future :)

Built this: https://github.com/AquiGorka/remote-device

Started a new project: www.AquiGorka.net

Started writing in my blog again (spanish only): www.AquiGorka.com

Hacked youtube (via a javascript bookmark and/or chrome extension) in order to synch a second screen experience to any youtube video with the platform from the company I currently work for (iamat.com)

Cheers

Got serious about building a team to help me launch my travel startup - http://gateC21.com ! I have a few writers, a copy writer and a branding guy working on making it great! The ball is rolling really fast now!

Other small wins. -Started to read more again (leisure). -Played with stuff I've had on my list (jasminJS and phantomJS) - They are awesome!

Launched[1] first product of our startup[2] on 30th. Working on to get it going. [1]: http://blog.dsdinfosec.com/a-great-day-for-dsdinfosec-launch... [2]: http://dsdinfosec.com

Pushed some major new features for enterprise clients of Emphatic (a website I run which provides subscriptions for handmade social media content for businesses - https://www.emphatic.co ) and made the registration flow easier to use.

In the real world, got a squirrel out of my attic. :-) Equally challenging!

Started intermittent fasting after a break of two years, My cycle is once every 3 days, no food for 40 hours.

Decided to build http://expertinamonth.com to teach people to code better.

I will be launching the first set of courses in a month or so. I am looking for course suggestions, so let me know what interests you

Just started doing some advertising work for a new client that's in the tech space. 2 weeks in, and we're already beating their campaign goals by 25%+ Feels really good when we find a client we click with and we're able to iterate quickly and get their marketing firing on all gears sooner rather than later.

Pulled together a team of enthusiastic organizers and launched the website for a not-for-profit conference for web developers in the Pacific Northwest [1]. Not technically January, but we just sold-out our first batch of early bird tickets yesterday.

[1] http://cascadiajs.com

I participated in the Global Game Jam where I met a bunch of awesome folks, managing to win "Best game made by a group of strangers" at our location! Followed that up with continued development on said game, with the goal of not breaking my personal GitHub contribution streak.

Great thread idea! Began a "biggest loser" competition at work, lost 5 pounds. Launched MisfitWatchr for iOS and Android (converts Misfit activity into WeightWatchers points). Began development of BeerSwift (faster check-ins for Untappd). All in all, a very productive month!

Managed to finish the code, get most of the assets done and get a beta out for testers for my iOS/Android game (Flaming Notes) to learn the music staff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_xNPk2y8N4

Wrote at least 500 words every day, outside of work stuff. It's the start of a habit, but it's early days. I use Commit[1] to track my progress.

[1] http://thinklegend.com/commit/

After nearly two months of work, I launched my logo concept for IO.JS: http://behance.net/gallery/23269525/IOJS-logo-concept

Lots of green boxes in my GitHub contributions/activity table (compared to the entire last year). But honestly, most of those activity is on my own projects, I would like to contribute more to other open source projects :)

I launched Rocket Renegade. Developed in Swift.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rocket-renegade/id955229059?...

- Jumping in on a screencast series about vim stuff. Although I'm kind of hesitant about it's reception I've decided to go through. - Other projects but honestly not near finishing them.

I found an OpenSSL bug which was assigned CVE-2015-0208 (details forthcoming). I feel like that is a good achievement. Follows on the heels of the PHP5 bug I found in December(CVE-2014-9427).

Started online grad school at Georgia Tech in CS and managed to launch a beta of my first product.

http://www.thesnaffu.com

* Found a house and applied for mortgage

* Finalized my tax return for 2014 (best year ever for me)

* Tinkered with isomorphic React rendering, and got a working example that loads data asynchronously

Launched a Meteor-only job board and developer profile listing: https://www.meteorgigs.io

Created my first small web page with ReactJS, which will be (hopefully :) ) developed to a bitcoin market watching graph tool

Launched The Love Game: an app for falling in love, which saw 200,000 people try it out in the first 48 hours, including Mark Zuckerberg. (Was on HN as LoveActualized.com). Had about 2,600 double confirm optins.

Turned The Love Game App into a physical product and produced a crowdfunding project which is live as of yesterday: http://PlayTheLoveGame.com/crowdfund

Sold our first 10 "Get Your Story Straight" packages to VIP customers for $500 each to help them maximize press and onboard them to the PRMatch Command Center & Press Room (http://prmatch.com).

Hosted my first virtual mastermind for publicity, called Publicity As a Path : Foudations of Transformational Mass Communication, with about 80 people attending.

Built The MemeScope, after waking up with a vision that there should exist an online kalidescope that uses recent news images as source material. Http://AnthonyDavidAdams.com/memescope

Have been doing yoga regularly, eating well, playing ultimate frisbee regularly.

Began conversations with Cher's former multi-platinum producer to collaborate on my first album of original music. (He and I cowrote a song a few years ago and performed with John Legend at a charity event.) also wrote the bulk of about 3 new songs.

Launched a publicity tour for my moms new book on leadership that debuted in every Barnes & Nobles. ( Http://DrJanetRose.com/media ) which led to her booking her first paid speaking at around $6k (speaker fee + bulk book buy) I built her brand over the last couple years and have been coaching her, so this feels amazing - she will retire as a school administrator this year and this work is her passion for retirement.

Took on a couple new davinci / polymath coaching clients (life, love, creativity, strategy, marketing, pr, etc) and stoked to watch them flourish this year.

Started successful negotiations with a new manufacturer after my factory for my patented CreditCovers skins for Credit Cards decided to breach our 30 day termination clause and just turn off drop shipping.

Built / archetected a marketing program, web site, toll free hotline and produced a book on TreeCare for SC Homeowners -- as a gift for my childhood best friends business.

After applying strategies above mention best friend used to get 6 figure credit lines at 18 (and then like any good 18yr old, defaulted) rebuilt my credit after some trouble in my twenties from starting projects on credit cards -- got issued a Venture Card at the "Excellent Credit" level and another card, with credit lines 10x what I had previously. Stoked to learn from his mistakes and leverage some really great, easy, legal strategies and feels amazing to have this cushion / tool available again.

Upgraded my relational contexts to where I am 95% less attracted to people who aren't available for the kind of intimacy I want -- this has probably been the "one wierd trick" that has opened up so much other flow and productivity. Watching how I would often optimize for relationships where I felt neglected or abused or unmet, and now spotting that pattern, extracting the gift the pain of those relationships brought me, and transcending it. I've developed a process I am now coaching people on that allows folks to use the relational space and conflicts hthat arise therein to literally reprogram their midbrain, gain insight and unlock tons of creative energy and potential.

Caught a great Phish cover band last night in Charleston, Sc - Runaway Gin

Great question, I feel like I got some shit done this month! A lot actually!

built this in ~2 days https://github.com/ooooak/music-app

completed my first hack of the year.. ;)

http://periodicnames.com/