[dmix]

I always wonder how you know so much about so many topics to make quality comments on a wide variety of topics on HN. Truly a jack of all trades.

Maybe it's like how I spend so much time reading random Wikipedia articles on topics because I need to know how everything works.

[jacquesm]

Hm... too many projects :)

And that list is only getting longer, I think I'll pass it on to my kids.

Right now (and for the past couple of years) it has been mostly music but also still some more interesting tools to play with. Currently making a set of super realistic traffic lights for my youngest including pedestrian crossing and automatic cycle influencing (road coil pickup to detect car presence in front of the lights) for his model cars. Green wave, the works.

I've mostly stopped writing up the projects, but still have a bunch of posts pickled that I probably should finish. Most recent software bit: ear training module for pianojacq.com is work in progress (press low 'A' on an 88 key keyboard to enable the secret menu that will enable the ear trainer, it is not quite ready for mass consumption yet but it is getting there).

[rebuilder]

Even more off-topic, but something I’m struggling with personally: how do you find the time for projects, with kids in the picture? Me, I can just barely eke out a truncated workday, then it’s kids and housework until the kids go to sleep and maybe 1.5 hours of time until bed, which mostly I spend with my partner.

So I see people with diverse interests and kids and I just wonder: how!

[jacquesm]

Hm, that's a hard one. I try to involve my kids in them, this doesn't always work, but when it does it is fantastic.

I'm also an insomniac (it's 7:20 am here and I'm still awake...) so I have a ton of time when everybody is asleep (that's when I do most of my coding and reading), and when everybody is off to school I catch up on sleep. Not ideal but it mostly works. Another nice-to-have is that I can make ends meet with a relatively small fraction of the year spent on work (and that simply means I'm not reducing my savings, if I want to grow my savings I'd have to work more than that).

[Shocka1]

Yup, the trick with kids is simply staying up later. I usually do a couple 2 to 4am nights for freelance work, then do an early bed night, then repeat. Waking up at 7 to take the kids to school is a little rough, but a stop at the coffee shops always fixes that.

[dmix]

Oh cool, not to further derail this thread but the music direction is interesting. I've also just gotten (back) into music production using an MPC One+ and I used https://www.audiblegenius.com/ for music theory+ear training. A frequent theme I've noticed in Youtube tutorials is a ton of >35 software engineers mentioning they are getting into music and feeling the need to say how old they are, as I guess the meme is learning music is for naive 20yr olds.

[jacquesm]

For me it was COVID that drove me back to music, I had a ton of time on my hands and we'd just bought an old (and really crappy) piano so I decided to get more serious about it. Long way to go though before I'll be satisfied with it, and I doubt I ever will be. Not giving up, it is just too much fun.

Thank you for that link!

[jacquesm]

So, you're officially an influencer now, I bought the course. Very high quality material, a ton of work must have gone into that. I hope to get my own stuff up to that level of polish, it certainly sets an example.