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Stoo

73 karma · joined July 1, 2009

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Stoo··on Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
Last month I made about $1200 US from a tabletop roleplaying game I published around five years ago. This is an outlier and only because the game is about Greek mythology which is at the front of everyone's minds due to the release of the Odyssey. Most months I make $100–200 US, which is nice but not enough to let me quit my day job any time soon.
Stoo··on Ask HN: What game have you replayed more times than any other?
Morrowind, without a doubt. It looks and feels janky now but the storytelling is amazing. Far more interesting and unique quests than later TES games.
Stoo··on Ask HN: Are Web Agencies Cooked?
What do you mean by value based billing?
Stoo··on Ask HN: European alternative to Vercel/Cloudflare for hosting
I'm hosting some static sites on Bunny and I've found their service to be superb.
Stoo··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2026)
Are you flexible on the onsite part? Only I'm based in Glasgow and going to London every Tuesday and Thursday wouldn't be feasible, but I would otherwise be interested in applying.
Stoo··on Show HN: I built a privacy-first UK tax calculator
It'd be great if you could input the monthly sacrifice as a percentage. I know off the top of my head how much I put into my pension as a percentage but I'd need to work that out / look at a payslip to know what it is in pounds and pence. Otherwise this looks really useful.
Stoo··on Ask HN: Do AIs reply with numerous em dashes to save money somehow?
But an emdash is incredibly easy to type on a Mac — it's shift+option+minus, or option+minus to type an endash
Stoo··on Show HN: I made a down detector for down detector
They've recently introduced bunny.net Shield to add a security layer. I've not made use of it yet so I don't know what the coverage is like or how effective it is: https://bunny.net/shield/
Stoo··on Ask HN: Recommendations for a self-hosted Substack alternative?
It is, but they don't make it obvious on the home page. They have self-hosted getting started docs here: https://ghost.org/docs/
Stoo··on Show HN: Dev atrophy test – Can you still code without AI?
Having said that, I did just get marked down for having filter(num => num % 2 === 0) when the correct answer shouild (apparently) be filter(x => x % 2 === 0) so it's not great.
Stoo··on Show HN: Dev atrophy test – Can you still code without AI?
Your button answer is wrong though because the input tag can't have content. The version using input should be <input type="submit" value="Submit" />.
Stoo··on What's your "coworker didn't lock screen" procedure?
It used to be update keyboard language and watch as they tried to figure out what was going on. These days I walk on by.
Stoo··on I still like Sublime Text
I've been using Sublime Text since version 2, so probably close to 15 years, and I love it! It's my go to editor for code (mostly front end web dev but I've used it for C# as well, when VS won't get out of the way) as well as all of my writing (using Markdown). I've published 5 tabletop RPGs and related supplements (with another on the way) all written using Sublime plus so many lines of notes and blog posts. It's a dream to work with!

I've paid for my licence but is there a tip jar anywhere?

Stoo··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2024)
I applied for a similar role a few months ago as I've worked on a similar tech stack and product, are you open to people reapplying?
Stoo··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2024)
I applied for a frontend role with you last year, which I didn't get. Are you open to people reapplying?
Stoo··on CSS for printing to paper
PrinceXML is expensive but I feel it's worth the money. I've used it to layout several RPGs with Markdown source files and HTML and CSS for templates and styling. RPG layouts can be quite complex with stat blocks and the like and it's handled everything I've thrown at it.
Stoo··on The State of JavaScript 2018
To be absolutely correct it should be United Kingdom, not Great Britain, as you also have Northern Ireland marked as England.
Stoo··on Solving Sol
Have you seen https://drawshield.net/create/index.html ? It can be a bit hit and miss but it will attempt to display your shield based on the blazon text.
Stoo··on When TV Logos Were Physical Objects
I remember the Anglia TV knight! I didn't realise it had such a fascinating story behind it.
Stoo··on Ask HN: What is your home media player setup?
I use Twonky for media streaming movies / music over the local network. It supports DLNA/UPnP so should work with most players. I use either a blu-ray player or Xbox One to play movies streamed from Twonky but the Xbox One sometimes refuses to connect for unknown reasons.

Aside from that I have a Chromecast for playing anything else that I don't have stored locally.

Stoo··on Why Some Cars Have Gas Tank Fillers on the Left or the Right
And the interface is fundamentally the same, no matter who made the car.
Stoo··on Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
Writer for roleplaying games. Either as a game / setting designer or writing adventures.
Stoo··on Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL
Storytella: https://storytel.la/

An online writing tool aimed at authors who self-publish. It's awesome because of the database back which means you can store people / places / anything really and insert them into your document (think variable replacement / an IDE for writers). The one-click EPUB generation is also pretty sweet.

Stoo··on Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL
Ooh! I started reading this a month or so ago, but never finished. Thanks for reminding me. I will also checkout the Patreon page.
Stoo··on Ask HN: The most boring/frustrating activities during your job as a programmer?
Working on a component / module / piece of functionality and now you're the person to turn when it doesn't work. Even though a dozen other people have worked on it and it's changed completely since you last saw it.
Stoo··on Ask HN: What is your favorite tech prank?
Round-robin email spoofing. Set up an array of people to email, each person in the array sends an email to the next person saying "Can you come over when you've got a minute, please", last person in the array sends to the first.

Watch as everyone in the office gets up and goes over to each other's desks.

Stoo··on Ask HN: What hours in the day are you most productive?
I'm almost exactly the same (8am-12pm and 8pm-12am). When I'm working for myself I spend my afternoons reading or playing video games and go back to work in the evening.
Stoo··on Tell HN: YC W16 rejection emails are out
I didn't either but I did send in my application two days late, which might have something to do with it.
Stoo··on Ask HN: YC interview invites are sent. What's up now?
I submitted my application for Storytella[0] two days late and I haven't heard anything yet. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

[0] https://storytel.la/

Stoo··on Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate and from what?
£10-20 per month. I am so living the dream right now.

£10 comes from my very first paying SaaS customer for Storytella[0].

The remaining £0-10 comes from self-publishing my fiction through Amazon KDP.

[0] https://storytel.la/

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