creature_x

I built roughly 10 apps over the past year. Building them was the fun part; consistently marketing them was where my energy disappeared. I also couldn’t justify hiring an agency for every small project.

I tried using ChatGPT and Claude, but getting one good result was very different from getting consistently good results every day. I still had to find the angle, write the prompt, judge the output, repair it, and return tomorrow with another idea.

And thus, Feral was born - it's a content creation engine that generates text + image creative to promote your stuff, in a manner that's conducive for social media.

The entire harness around Feral's content creation pipeline consists of marketing, copywriting and psychology principles. It understands your business, but equally importantly, it understands what your customers tick; their dreams and desires, and then it creates content that speaks in their language.

You can try it here:

https://feralhq.com

There is a 5-day free trial, then it is $45/month.

I would genuinely appreciate feedback!

I’m building Feral, an AI agent that learns your business and audience, then creates content that actually resonates with your people.

I built it because I’m terrible at content creation and had a graveyard of under-promoted apps that never went anywhere. I know showing up consistently on socials matters, but I also have a strong aversion to AI slop, so I’ve spent a lot of time and money making the output feel less sloppy.

If you're interested, check it out here: https://feralhq.com

Not sure if I completely agree with this. Since time immemorial the world has been going to hell in a hand basket. My own grandparents were born and braised in poverty in one of the most poverty-stricken countries on Earth. They had lots of kids. Those kids grew up and started their own families. It was rocky, but we are all doing fine, and doing extremely well compared to our grandparents.

I don't have a complete answer for this and I think this is an extremely complicated and multi-faceted problem. From my vantage point, I know a lot of people who can afford to have kids but their mantra has been "Now is just not the right time" as they spent their 20s imbibing in casual flings and evanescent relationships. I was one such person. Now that I am in my mid 30s, the desire for casual sex has been replaced by attaining financial freedom. My desire for wanting more and more is something I am not proud of, but I am not doing anything to change, so what does that say about me ?

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice, from what I have tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire

I am currently building an agentic process to help me with social media marketing for my apps, as this is my biggest obstacle in terms of gaining traction. This involves disparate processes: AN entire workflow to generate high-quality blogs that are germane to my product domain, crafting posts on X/replies to comments in a tone that is uniquely mine, conducting one-on-one outreach on my behalf, etc..

I recently released what I think is an incredibly fun brain training app. It's heavy on toilet humor, but the goal is to improve your working memory, processing speed, and mental math. It's called Turd Turf and it's completely free to play- you can check it out here: https://turdturf.app

As you progress, the questions get more complex and the speed gets faster! If TurdTurf doesn't take off, then UnicornMath surely will (:

Your comment is well received and the profanity has been removed!

Haha, it's not THAT spicy ;)

You press a button to smack- there's a 3 clip that shows this on the homepage so I am surprised you find it unclear!

What I am working on right now:

-https://salespark.app/apps/discount-spark: A Shopify app that allows merchants to create more powerful discount codes so they can create stronger offers for their customers.

What I recently built but didn't find a successful product market fit:

-https://wordazzle.com: A word game that's designed to expand your vocabulary with exceptional words.

-https://spicychess.com: Chess, meet boxing! Imagine playing chess BUT you can also smack your opponent. Now, if you smack em enough times to drain their health completely(yes, you have a health bar), you can steal their turn. It's fun, a little evil, but after thousands of $ spent on marketing, never found critical mass.

Tbh I use the dual n-back protocol most vigorously on days where I feel cognitively sluggish as it's benefits are most apparent to me then.

I've been using the n-back protocol for over a year and it's definitely improved my cognitive abilities. I don't know if my IQ has increased, but on days where I use this protocol(20-25 minutes) I see a marked improvement in the clarity and vibrancy of my thoughts- put another way this protocol's biggest benefit is it's effectiveness in clearing the mental fog in my head. I've tried experimenting with other protocols(solving crossword/chess puzzles, meditation,etc..)but they were not nearly as effective as n-back.

I've actually built my own variation of n-back(triple n-back), where you're tested on the colour of the stimulus in addition to the sound and position-so it's much more cognitively demanding. If you're interested, you can check it out here: https://mind-workout.pages.dev

I am building a couple of apps:

https://spicychess.com: A real-time chess playing app where you can taunt your opponent and smack them during the game! If you smack them enough times to completely drain their health, you can steal their turn and make their move. There is also has a progression system where leveling unlocks increasingly fun abilities designed to torment and troll your opponent.

https://wordazzle.com: Inspired by the quote 'the limits of my language are the limits of my world,' it's a daily game delivering 7 carefully chosen, sublime words designed to genuinely elevate your verbal prowess. You can also save the words you love as flashcards to review them later!

Thank you!

Thankyou for the feedback! "What B means.." is fairly succinct so I think I'll keep it as. I'm glad you like the project!

Exactly the vibe I was going for! Thankyou for the feedback

Thanks! I have o plans for integrating with any other services for now.

I'm glad you like it!

Thank you!

I can attest to the benefits of n-back. I've been doing it for a couple of years now, five days a week for 20-25 minutes. I've noticed a tangible positive difference in both my verbal fluency and my processing speed on days where I engage this protocol.

I've benefited so much from this protocol that I created a mini app just for myself (https://mind-workout.pages.dev/)* as I was unable to find a suitable app for mac. [On windows there 's Brain Workshop (https://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/)

*This is a variation of the n-back task called triple n-back, which is much harder than dual n-back.

Thank you! I'll think about changing it to typing; I actually think it'll be better if it's a little more challenging!

I wonder if the next great competitive advantage will be the ability to write excellently; specifically the ability to articulate the problem domain in a manner that will yield the best results from LLMs. However, in order to offload a difficult problem to a LLM, you need to understand it well enough to articulate it, which means you'll need to think about it deeply. However, if we teach our students to offload the process of _THINKING_DEEPLY_ to LLMs, then we atrophy the _THINKING_DEEPLY_ circuit in their brain, and they're far less likely to use LLMs to solve interesting problems, because they're unable to grok the problem to begin with!

Under $100 - A wet shaving kit! You can buy a good double edge safety razor, a shaving brush, and excellent shaving blades for under $100. I made the switch after growing tired of my Gillette setup. I used to think shaving was a chore, and well, I still do, but it's a lot more pleasant now. As a bonus, my shaves are a lot closer.

Under $1000 - A good espresso setup! I bought Breville Bambino Plus, DF64 Gen 2 grinder and some auxiliary tools for under $1000 this year and it's been a game changer. I can make better-than-Starbucks coffee for a fraction of a price. I did the math, and making my own espresso/latte/cortado is 3x cheaper then buying it from Starbucks. Oh, and it's much tastier.

Agreed! There is definitely overlap between the three books but my recollection of Siddhartha and N&G is that Hesse dwelled more into how hedonic pleasure corrodes the soul. On a side note, you'll get along well with Doestevesky's Brothers Karamazov if you found N&G affecting.

I actually started with The Glass Bead Game, but I found it too dense. Perhaps I'll give it another try!

Steppenwolf By Herman Hesse. It's remarkable how a fictional character written by someone a century ago can resonate so deeply with a modern person. But then again, that's a common thread amongst great literature. I recommend this book to anyone struggling with loneliness or feeling like they haven't found their footing in this world.

“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at everything else.”

I second https://css-for-js.dev/ by Josh Comeau! Josh does an excellent job at tying seemingly disparate concepts together. If you're interested in advanced animations, https://frontendmasters.com/courses/css-animations/ is really good!

I built a Chess app called SpicyChess(https://spicychess.com) that has a training component which leverages spaced repetition and strict time constraint to increase your pattern recognition ability for tactical motifs. SpicyChess also allows you to "bookmark" a puzzle for review later on. The philosophy behind the training regiment is inspired by the following two books which have been very helpful in improving my game: reading Rapid Chess Improvement, The Woodpecker Method.

I actually built an app(spicychess.com) that's loosely modelled after the Anki flashcard method; You're given 10 minutes to solve a puzzle on your first attempt. On every subsequent attempt you're given half the time to solve the puzzle, until your 6th attempt where you're given 30 seconds to solve the puzzle. Repetition combined with strict time constraint has been shown to massively improve one's ability to spot tactics, and thereby increase one's rating, especially at the below 2000 level. You can also bookmark puzzles for future review (:

https://hamzahassan.ca

I haven't posted in a while but this blog is my personal scratchpad for concepts pertaining to software development that I find valuable (:

Thank you so much for the screenshots; they really helped. If you refresh the page the countdown time should be fixed but I'm very curious about the loop number that you're seeing on the /train page ? Does it say: Loop 1 of 6 ?