I also made a image filter builder, hosted on the web so it runs locally, even though I knew that it was an over-saturated market. I saw those apps and decided to do better. It scratched an itch. Do people use it, or talk about it? Of course not - see above.

For both tools I did the initial coding myself, then let LLMs look at (but not change) the code so they could suggest areas for improvements. Engaging LLMs at that point, in that way, is fun work for me.

Just because things can do things faster, sometimes better, than me doesn't mean I should stop doing themselves myself. That's not a fun approach to life, for me.

> poor people couldn't afford to buy a whole lot of books. And neither did they write them.

Thus the rise of circulating libraries in the 18th century, and the public (lending) library system in the 19th century. Especially after the establishment of mandatory education for children.

Personally, I Copyleft my poetry, and make it available to others to use, even for commercial purposes, from 15 years after the poem's publication. I see no reason to keep them locked in a cage long after I'm done with them.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright

Of course I wrote an essay about this[1]. Here it is: https://rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk/blog/how-not-to-train-you...

[1] - Trigger warnings: discusses poetry; touches on using LLMs in the research phase of essay writing and poetry review.

I've been working for a number of years to make the HTML canvas element more accessible for those situations where using a canvas element makes better sense (allegedly) than using standard tools - because there's always those special edge cases, and if people are going to use canvas elements then I want them to build them in the most accessible and responsive way possible.

I'll not spam my product, but as part of my work I have produced a webpage where I try to list the things a HTML canvas element needs to do to meet WCAG requirements. These are my own, personal views so challenging my claims is entirely justifiable, and correct!

https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/docs/reference/sc-accessibil...

Recently I did some work to add software gradient enhancements to my canvas library. Because these run on the CPU rather than GPU they're computationally intense, but still worth the effort just to see what can be done with different spreads (pad, repeat, reflect, transparent) and noise engine operations inserted while calculating stuff like gradient color selection, and pixel positioning.

Linear gradient demo test - https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/canvas-003.html

I wrote up my experiences of translating Lorca and Cavafy poems here[1]. tl;dr: I have developed a massive new respect for translators; however much they're being paid, they probably need to be paid more!

[1] - https://rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk/blog/adventures-in-poetry...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48053166

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

I create my side projects in the first place because I like to prove to myself that it is possible to do mad stuff in the browser - like a screen recorder with canvas composition, teleprompter, live annotations and talking-head overlay[1]. Or an SVG-inspired image filter builder for local batch application to images (still a WIP but almost there)[2].

It doesn't cost me any money to host the results, so: why not?

[1] - https://kaliedarik.github.io/sc-screen-recorder/

[2] - https://kaliedarik.github.io/sc-filter-builder/

I'm currently building a web-based tool that uses dynamic forms for UI, without the help of of a framework (yeah I know; I have reasons). This is the result: https://github.com/KaliedaRik/sc-filter-builder/blob/main/js...

It's not "easier" using Javascript; raw Javascript websites are a nightmare to build, maintain and reason about. It is "easier" with Javascript + current-favourite-framework-of-the-day.

Also: accessibility, SEO, the all-new Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) thing, etc.

https://kaliedarik.github.io/sc-filter-builder/

No idea if anyone will be interested in using such a (free, MIT) web tool, but I'm having lots of fun putting my canvas library's filter engine (which is inspired by SVG chainable filters) through its paces.

I wrote a JS canvas library[1] partly because existing libraries of the time (2013) didn't do what I wanted a canvas library to do. Things like animated gradients and patterns, etc. I'm still working on the library today - so thats 12+ years of my spare time gone!

Generative art - such as challenges like Genuary[2] - is a key tool for giving me ideas on how to develop the library further. I keep CodePens of some of my better efforts[3] around as a set of extra tests to check for breaking changes as I fiddle with the library.

[1] - https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas

[2] - https://genuary.art/

[3] - https://codepen.io/collection/RzzMjw

Link to tool: https://kaliedarik.github.io/sc-screen-recorder/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47647548

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

Yeah - I use the template (in that case, a circle) to calculate line lengths, then I run 2d text along the 1d lines. Even if I tried to keep all of the glyphs inside the wheel I'd fail - because some fonts lie about how tall they are. Fonts are, basically, criminals.

Agreed! Text layout engines are stupidly hard. You start out thinking "It's a hard task, but I can do it" and then 3 months later you find yourself in a corner screaming "Why, Chinese? Why do you need to rotate your punctuation differently when you render in columns??"

This effort feeds back to the DOM, making it far more useful than my efforts which are confined to rendering multiline text on a canvas - for example: https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/canvas-206.html

https://kaliedarik.github.io/sc-screen-recorder/