jfornear

Hi HN, I built this as a weekend side project to try automating personal finance tasks like expense tracking, reports, and taxes with AI.

It’s open source if anyone wants to run it locally or experiment with it: https://github.com/jfornear/nullbook https://nullbook.ai

  Location: Dallas, TX
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Yes
  Technologies: Figma, Sketch, Python, Django, React, React Native, AWS (S3, CloudFront, Lambda), Cloudflare, Heroku, Postgres
  Résumé/CV: https://read.cv/jfornear
  Email: jesse.fornear@gmail.com

Grid Systems by Josef Müller-Brockmann (https://amzn.to/3Mzt5AB) is my favorite design book, but I just use an 8x8 grid since it became the standard on iOS.

Cool idea! I would use something like this to discover AI-related Python starter apps and guides to integrate AI into my projects.

I built a free Django and React starter repo for https://learndjangoreact.com, and can share some feedback from that perspective:

1) I’m hesitant to post it because I don’t want to create a new account or connect my GitHub to promote a free repo.

2) I think Google is good enough for anyone looking for a Django and React starter app, especially since I already have a site for it. GitHub search is pretty good too.

3) I built my starter app mostly for myself to build new ideas faster, and I already moved on to a new idea (https://mailgrid.app) — so any effort spent on this feels like energy taken from that, etc.

4) I think new developers should pick whatever stack that inspires them, and I don’t expect my starter app to appeal to a wide audience.

Hope that helps!

I've been running https://chat.dog for 7 years — don't spend any time on it but it's a fun side project. Building https://mailgrid.app now.

I love Django. I was inspired this summer to start an open source project for gaps in their docs like setting up a local development environment, using React for the frontend, deploying to Heroku/AWS, adding Google Analytics, etc.

https://learndjangoreact.com/tutorial

https://learndjangoreact.com/docs/add-google-analytics

I started https://learndjangoreact.com/tutorial to be concise and easy to navigate with good examples.

I made https://jfornear.com with Jekyll and GitHub Pages. I haven’t updated it since 2019... I’ve been focused on building https://pinjour.com lately.

Readability has improved with the latest typography updates. App looks nice. I mostly read emails but find some newsletters get annoying with too many low-quality updates. I wonder if you could test throttling email notifications for newsletters with low open rates, etc.

Excited to launch this. If you're into birding, fly fishing, hiking, travel photography, etc., try it out and let me know what you think so far!

Great guide, looks nice on mobile. Most personal blogs on HN could benefit from following this. :)

I've been using DGG and find myself switching to Google for maps, images, news, and sports scores and schedules—Google has really built out over the years.

I think one way to look at it is that minimum viable products can easily be “viable“ in the short run and still fail in the long run due to lack of vision and willpower, grit, or conviction.

HR professionals will tell you that many people lie about their compensation. This is probably not worth talking about without sharing your pay stubs or tax returns.

Created https://chat.dog/startup-school to follow Startup School over the next few weeks!

Started an open chat to follow Startup School—will post videos, etc. https://chat.dog/startup-school

Building a personal site is initially a design and time management exercise.

Set aside a few hours a night, and before getting into Vue.js, CSS, etc., jot down a list of pages, sketch out a layout, and gather inspiration for the visual style and any creative ideas you want to add.

I recently learned this the hard way. I changed my phone number after moving cities, and AT&T just leased my old number to someone else!

Intentionally building Chatdog (https://chat.dog) to not require a phone number.

No the name just came out of the fun dog icon, which was inspired by Neko Atsume and Big Dogs.

Thanks for the feedback! This is an early release and there are definitely additional features planned.

Hi HN,

I started on a new project called Chatdog (https://chat.dog) to create an alternative to Telegram, et al. Telegram forces you to download their app and provide your phone number to join a room. Chatdog doesn’t require any personal data and can be used pseudonymously or even anonymously!

Thanks for reporting this! Yes, apparently the Twitter script is always loaded also. I need to add logic to only load it when needed.

All scripts are on Cloudfront except for when someone shares a YouTube video or Twitter tweet. Google Analytics and Typekit are the only third-party scripts that are always loaded. I do need to add UI to allow users to disable these.

Thanks! No UI library—I just wrote the CSS from scratch.

If anyone here is interested, I started on a new project called Chatdog (https://chat.dog) to create an alternative to Telegram, et al. Telegram forces you to download their app and provide your phone number to join a room. Chatdog doesn’t require any personal data and can even be used anonymously!

Hi HN,

I finally launched my side project the other day and wanted to share it on HN.

Chatdog (https://chat.dog) is a new chat app inspired by IRC and AOL Instant Messenger where you can easily create public chat rooms and share them with friends or people online with similar interests.

E.g., https://chat.dog/fortnite and https://chat.dog/hacker-news are public chats that took 2 seconds to create and are easy to share!

I used Stripe Atlas earlier this year to incorporate Chatdog (https://chat.dog) and it has been a good experience so far. Stripe's customer support is responsive and helpful. I'd highly recommend it!

COL multipliers for San Francisco are about 1.8x...

IMO, Medium (like Twitter/Blogger) is about self-expression, not publishing. Medium should optimize more for fostering self-expression and community discussion and decouple from Twitter.

Perceived consumer demand to fix publishing is overstated and solves the wrong nonproblem. Consumers arguably like fake news and click-bait, deriving self-reinforcement and entertainment value.

I wonder if hiring content marketers to write in verticals with high paying affiliate programs could get them profitable without compromising their social mission.