halftheopposite (u/halftheopposite)

halftheopposite commented on Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025) · Posted by u/david927

I’ve been developing an observability platform [0] for small teams and indie developers where they can track logs, live metrics, and get alerted in realtime through webhooks. I intend to develop a dead simple on-call calendar as well in the coming weeks.

After using tools like Sentry on apps serving millions of users, I always felt I was missing a cheap and dead simple approach to following what happened in my apps and apis, and basically became my first customer for all of my side projects and even got some friends using it for their SaaS and apps.

[0] https://app.getboringmetrics.com

halftheopposite commented on Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025) · Posted by u/david927

jay-barronville · 10 months ago

> Even if I don’t get any customers I’ll continue developing it for my own needs!

That’s the spirit! A buddy of mine created a tool/API to solve his own problems, opened it to the public and launched it, but he got very few sign-ups, so he just continued to use it for himself. Recently, about two years later and out of nowhere (without doing anything other than the original bit of SEO he did), he started to see a bunch of sign-ups (including paid) and then started receiving feedback and support request emails from customers. Most folks would’ve just called it quits on the product at least a year ago, but he just kept using the product for his own projects and left it open to the public just in case it was helpful for anyone else. Obviously, YMMV, but good luck with this!

I’m on mobile right now, but I think I’ll give it a try when I’m back at my computer.

halftheopposite · 10 months ago

That's so refreshing to hear to be honest! I've went on so many side projects hoping I would see adoption for months and was basically chasing the dream. However I've came to realize that I really take happiness in developing things sustainably over time, with small steps, and most importantly for myself and what I would like a product to look like. Lately I've even been able to onboard a friend on it using it for his own projects as well, couldn't be happier so far.

If you ever have feedback/advices, don't hesitate to reach me out on contact[at]halftheopposite.dev and I'll happily answer.

halftheopposite commented on Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025) · Posted by u/david927

halftheopposite · 10 months ago

I’m creating an observability tool that I’m trying to make user-centric while staying developer friendly. Most of the tools for remote logging, live dashboards and alerts are either too big, too expensive, or have a “per seat” plan, and incorporate the famous “home” screen with metrics and tips you absolutely never care of. I’m also trying to stay cheap and focused on very few techs (node, Postgres, docker, react) and make it stay as a monolith.

So far I’ve put all the side projects I manage (5 of them) and it’s working great. I can follow and query the logs, the JSON payloads by path, see live metrics like number of users currently online, etc. Even if I don’t get any customers I’ll continue developing it for my own needs! Will soon be adding alerts through webhooks, slack, discord, etc.

If you want to try it out: https://app.getboringmetrics.com (no landing page yet).

Edit: just want to say that if you want to try the software but not keep it, you can create an account in under 10 seconds, send a curl request to see logs arrive in realtime, and delete your account in 5 seconds. I do not track anything and do not keep a single piece of data.

halftheopposite commented on Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)? · Posted by u/david927

halftheopposite · a year ago

For the past few weeks I have been working on Enhance [0], a SaaS to help game developers easily add leaderboards, friendlists, store players' data, in-app currency store and purchases, and marketing tools such as email list and website builder and hosting.

I am almost done with the landing page and don't think I'll put much more into it, and will continue working on the API itself. But I still plan on adding a playable game into the 3D scene just for the sake of it and to learn. But so far I'm struggling at projecting a 3D camera render to a texture inside an already existing 3D context.

[0] https://the-project-e609e.web.app/ (temporary domain for development)

halftheopposite commented on Ask HN: What alternatives exist to a Mac mini but for Windows? · Posted by u/halftheopposite

syspec · 2 years ago

The fine folks over at /r/minipc Reddit forum keep a whole spreadsheet tracking nearly all the best options with columns for various features.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IjCpi4_z_WfO0G53E_mW...

Personally I purchased a beelink ser7:

- AMD Ryzen™ 7 7840HS

- Radeon780M (RDNA 3)

- 32Gb ram

All for about 700 IIRC

halftheopposite · 2 years ago

I've actually went and looked over the sub reddit and it's a great resource for exactly what I was looking for (thanks even more for the Google Sheets).

Given the pricepoint and specs of the BeeLink, its availability for shipping in France, and the all-in-one design of the SER7 with USB-4, that seems like a great option to explore.

I will take a deeper look at their other offerings as well.

halftheopposite commented on In search of the least viewed article on Wikipedia (2022) colinmorris.github.io/blo... · Posted by u/alexmolas

chadash · 2 years ago

It is so fantastic that we have a single resource where I can find information on an unremarkable Peruvian moth, a random small town in Iran, or a type of reading material designed for Sunday reading in Victorian England. Before the advent of the internet this stuff wouldn’t be worth the paper it is published on. But now the cost of storing it in the cloud is effectively zero, so we get this amazing long tail of information that is just incredibly valuable. Thank you to the people who contribute and maintain this stuff!

Edit: what would be really cool is if I could leave a note on a page saying "hey, I visited this page and I'm looking to connect with other people interested in the Peruvian Foovius Barivius Moth"... ping me

halftheopposite · 2 years ago

Very shameless plug on your last "Edit:", but I think it fits perfectly one feature that a web extension I made does: https://webcursors.click/.

There's a feature to write a note and leave it on the page for others (with the extension installed) to see and maybe have luck someone contacting you.

halftheopposite commented on Ask HN: Show me your half baked project · Posted by u/notpushkin

halftheopposite · 2 years ago

https://github.com/halftheopposite/TOSIOS: never brought the game to the "fun" part of what a game is supposed to be, but at least it serves as educational.

https://github.com/halftheopposite/graph-dungeon-generator: what was supposed to be circular graph dungeon generator, ended up being a tree dungeon generator.

https://webcursors.click - I should have spent more time thinking about solving a problem that doesn't exist and clearly you can feel that there's something missing.

halftheopposite commented on Show HN: a Chrome extension to see other users browsing the same websites as you webcursors.click/... · Posted by u/halftheopposite

dperalta · 2 years ago

I can imagine, browser extensions are a pain in the butt. Are you planning to open source the code? Did you build everything by yourself or on top of https://liveblocks.io/?

halftheopposite · 2 years ago

I was planning on open-sourcing the extension itself, but not the backend for now because of some secrets. But ultimately, my goal is to create a blog post to create a minimal yet functional Chrome extension connected to a backend with socket.io.

And didn't knew this service existed, so created everything myself so far.