Why this exists
I've been building things since I was a kid. In 2018 I started DailyHobbyist, when I realized I was doing all sorts of creative things and wanted to learn more. It began as a blog where I tried a new hobby and wrote about it: butcher-block shelves, a backyard catio, biking to work for a month. I ran a YouTube channel for a while too. Over the last few months it has turned into a lot more: phone apps, browser tools, songs, 3D prints, furniture, and something I call the Computer. It isn't a machine I built. It's a system: one dashboard plus a team of AI helpers that keeps track of everything I'm working on and helps me run my day. More on that below.
The goal under all of it is simple: love God, love your neighbor, grow as a person, and be a little better than you were the day before. Everything here is built for the joy of building it. If one of these things helps you, that's the whole point.
This first issue is a catch-up: what exists and where to find it. After this, the newsletter comes out once a month.
Worth 10 minutes of your life
If you only click one thing in this issue, make it this one: The Most Important Skill a Man Can Develop (8:17). It's about becoming a better, stronger person, and that's worth eight minutes of anyone's time.
Verses of the month
For the first issue, two passages about the thing underneath all of this: love.
He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 1 John 4:8 (NKJV)
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 (NKJV)
Things that are shaping my thinking
A friend who built for the love of it
One of the biggest things shaping my thinking right now is losing my friend, who went by cptclvtch (github.com/cptclvtch). Going through the things he built, I keep noticing why he built them: for the love of it. He wrote his own programming language and his own physics engine. He was working on a video game as a passion project, a love letter to video games. It was his version of a thesis, the kind of work someone makes to show everything they love and know about a field.
He also shaped the world around him to fit, which is something I do too, and it's a big part of why we connected. He once bought an axe and decided the handle wasn't long enough, so he cut a longer one and had it welded on. When it was done, you couldn't tell it had ever been anything else. The detail work was that good. He did that with a lot of things. In his studio apartment there was a mini fridge that wasn't his, so he made wooden panels that hooked onto it, with no screws and no glue, just to make it look classic and feel better to live with. Some people would call that a waste of time. For him, it added real value to his life.
He built his own things from the ground up, to understand a problem all the way through and see it from a new angle. That's the kind of builder I want to be.
Some of his work now lives on the site in the Everything Else section, so it can keep being used and enjoyed:
- Glossa Mechani, his programming language, where a program can rewrite itself while it runs. It now runs in your browser.
- Goal planner: works out a character's steps on its own.
- Collision lab, built on his physics engine.
- Node planner, for mapping ideas as boxes and arrows.
His code isn't just sitting on a shelf. We've started using pieces of it in our own projects, building on what he made as a way to honor him. It feels right that the things he built for the love of it keep getting used.
King Baldwin IV (1161–1185)
Someone else I've been influenced by recently is King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, the leper king. He was crowned in 1174, at 13, while already sick with leprosy. In 1177, at 16, he led a much smaller army against Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard and won. The True Cross was carried with his army, and later accounts say he got down from his horse and knelt before it to pray before the charge.
What strikes me most is his faith. By every human measure the odds were against him: a sick boy king, a failing body, enemies on every side. He put his complete trust in the Lord anyway. As the disease took his hands, his feet and his sight, he still went out with his army. In 1183, blind and unable to ride, he had himself carried on a litter at the head of his army to rescue the besieged castle of Kerak, and Saladin pulled back.
No battle ever killed him. It was the disease that finally took him, in 1185, at 23. Saladin never took Jerusalem while Baldwin was alive. The city fell two years after his death, in 1187. A sick, dying king held back the Muslim wave under Saladin, one of the greatest generals of his age, until his last breath.
It reminds me that the strength is the Lord's, not ours: "My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). When I heard his story, I was amazed and inspired, and I want to learn more about him.
From the workbench
- Bookshelf (September). I turned an old bar into a built-in bookshelf: pine butcher-block-style uprights, four bays, hidden cabinets in the base, and lights at the top of each bay.
- Fish tank stand (September). A cabinet stand with removable decorative panels, built toward a homeschool project for the end of the year.
- 3D-printed flower press. It's a simple press for drying flowers, printed in PLA.
- 3D-printed learning tools. I've found a great use for the printer in homeschool, starting with an abacus for learning math. More to come, and maybe free print files.
Free tools I built
I built each of these to solve a problem I ran into myself, and they're free for anyone. They all run right in your browser. There's nothing to install and no sign-up.
- Image to SVG: trace any picture into a clean, scalable vector.
- Nameplate Generator: design a nameplate with inlaid text and export a 3D-printable STL.
- Cut List Optimizer: cut boards to length with the least waste.
- Sheet Cut Optimizer: lay out parts on 4×8 sheets for the fewest sheets.
Light Phone 3 apps I built
I built these apps natively for the Light Phone 3. They're simple and focused, black and white, with no distractions. Each one is free, with a downloadable APK and open source code.
- Lists (v2.2): nested lists for everything. Download APK · Source code
- Bible (v2.0): Scripture on a screen made for reading. Download APK · Source code
- Stopwatch: it starts, it stops. Download APK · Source code
- Coming: Checkbook, Alarm Clock, and more in the works.
- The apps are also listed in the awesome-light directory.
Music and videos
- Praise Laid Down: original Christian songs, including battle rock, worship, and narrative songs straight from Scripture. Listen on Suno
- YouTube: DailyHobbyist (trying every hobby, sharing the process) and Praise Laid Down (worship).
- The old blog: Daily Hobbyist, 2018–2023
The Computer
The biggest project this year isn't on the site. I call it the Computer, like the ship's computer on Star Trek. It isn't a box on my desk. It's a system I put together: one dashboard where everything lives, plus a team of AI helpers that each do one job. I tell it what I'm working on, and it keeps track, checks on things, and has my day laid out for me in the morning. It's a tool, not a friend. Here's how it works:
- The dashboard. Every project lives on one board as a card with steps, along with a calendar, documents, and a to-do list. Nothing lives in my head or scattered across ten apps. One screen tells me at a glance whether everything is working: each system gets a light, green when it's running and red when something is wrong, with the biggest problem shown first.
- The organization. The AI helpers are set up like a small company. Each one has one job and someone it answers to, and if a problem is above its job, it goes up the chain instead of guessing. A night crew works while I sleep. One wraps up the day, one double-checks that wrap, one writes a morning brief, and one plans the day. When I sit down in the morning, the brief is waiting, and it opens with: read your Bible and pray.
- The reviewer. Any change to the Computer gets checked by a second AI against the written plan before I approve it. Nothing goes live without my yes.
- The think tank. When I'm weighing an idea, a video, or a big decision, I hand it to a panel. Each seat looks at it from a different angle: a business owner, a security person, a skeptic, a tradesman, a Bible scholar, and the future me as a father and husband. Then a president sums up what the panel thinks. It doesn't decide for me. It makes sure I've looked at it from every side.
All of it is built by someone who is very new to coding. AI writes the code, and I decide what gets built and why.
Support the hobbies
Everything here is free. If something helped you, you can buy me a coffee or join on Patreon.