So many ideas, so little time.
I always find that I have too many ideas, some are crazy, stupid or just plainly a waste of time. But I also notice that anytime I sit down to actually make something I learn something cool before I abandon the project halfway. If I even start at all.
So here’s a list of all the ideas, thoughts, half baked projects and anything else that comes up.
General
- Is open source better: I recently started using Signal as an alternative to WhatsApp. The reason I switched is to not provide Facebook with more data. But what do I know about Signal, who built it? Who makes sure my data is safe? The only guarantee I have is that it’s open source. But why is this better? Is all the code checked? Is there a place where people can report problems or dangers in the code? Are there similar apps? Can I obtain the source of Signal?
- Skate map: Inline skating is a great way to spend the time, especially in the summer. But there’s one really annoying thing: bad roads. I’m not a fan of the asphalt roads littered with potholes but the worst are the old fashioned cobble roads. These roads tire you out quicker, it’s dangerous and it’s just less fun. I always forget the bad roads. I was thinking of making some kind of application to keep track of no-go zones. The app could live track your location and either ask you to rate the road somehow or it could actually measure the movement of your phone to figure out road quality. Maybe there’s even more data (speed?) to get valuable information.
- Drone swarm: Forget home automation using expensive switches, lamps, thermostats. How hard can it be to create a few drones that zip through your home to operate stuff like you would.
- Building thoughts I believe a lot in good conversations. Especially when all parties manage to talk in a calm matter. Ideally every person in a good talk seamlessly takes the point of view of the other persons in the conversation. But this is very hard to do.
My solution: build a Lego set together. Apart from having fun together, I find that building (a Lego set) does some things to your mind. On the one hand it distracts you. The focus on the building process may take away from great rational processes but it allows a discussion that people cannot invest in too much, keeping it light.
On the other hand, Lego put you in a systematic frame of mind. The building process forces you to look at different angles and “build” your arguments.
Great idea for a Youtube show. - Bird vending machine: https://imgur.com/gallery/xr2FFry
- Route mapping with wind: See the route you take colour codes for the wind direction. Bright green for strong wind in your back, deep red for strong wind from the front.
Web scrapers
For some reason I seem to think a lot about web scrapers, here’s a couple of ways to scrape the web:
- Funda AI: At the moment the housing market in the Netherlands is really cramped. A lot of people struggle to get a house. There is a site (Funda) that shows all houses that are for sale. But often viewing these houses is not possible due to the many reactions. What if you can beat Funda by scanning realtor sites.
It might be possible to create a scraper that checks all houses on Funda, saves the house characteristics, and visits the realtor site of the house. Using this as training data you should be able to create an AI for each realtor that accurately scans the realtor site and finds new houses when they enter the realtor site (usually a few days before they enter Funda). Now you can send interested parties a message so they can react in time. - Configurable web scraper: Given the above idea a simpler version would be to create a configurable web scraper with some digest functionality. This would be awesome for getting specific news, weather updates, or any information on public sites.
- Black Friday monitor We all know that discounts are never really what they seem. Black Friday is the best example, if shops say 50% off, is that really what’s happening or did they raise the prices just before black Friday to make it seem like a bigger discount? What if you could monitor the prices of certain products all year and get some transparency in the actual pricing strategy.
- CompareQ: Gther data about stocks, crypto values and compare them in graphs