Show HN: Koi.rest – watch some fish and regain your balance

hhxii about 2 hours ago 4 commentsRead Article on koi.rest

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Hi there. My name is Paul. I’m a developer, an explorer and I’ve got ADHD. As of the beginning of August, I’m also unemployed.

This last part, along with everything else this past year, has caused me a great deal of stress.

While our balcony zen garden project is yet to be completed, I had an idea to create a virtual one that everyone can use.

It's an idea that, unfortunately, I’ve been postponing for a while now, mostly because I have no fucking idea how to do it as I don’t know JavaScript, and I don't have the capacity to learn it right now.

So I let perfect be the enemy of good and, well... just kept the idea to myself.

Then I said "fuck it" and used AI to make the thing I really wanted to make.

I realized I didn't want "perfect". I wanted "good enough".

I tweaked, added, removed, drew, researched, questioned, tested... I just wasn't the one coding it.

So now, instead of occupying my brain, it now lives on the internet for others to enjoy.

Yes, there’s something noble about making something entirely on your own, but what good is an idea that just sits in my head?

So here I am. I made the thing. The weird, little, quiet koi pond.

The silly project of passion. The little corner of the internet to let strangers watch fish quietly, together.

I hope this pond helps you as much as it helped me.

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

100% Positive

Analyzed from 268 words in the discussion.

Discussion (4 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

Cider9986•about 1 hour ago

I really like the UI especially the about page. I don't think you are supposed to be able to see the about page on the playing page (it took a bit to start and then started when I was in about) but it looks good there with the blur.

Here's a list of other sound/relaxation websites: https://fmhy.net/audio#ambient-relaxation.

This one is pretty funny but not relaxing to me. It may be a covid remnant: https://imisstheoffice.eu/

jeromechoo•about 1 hour ago

This is neat. I like the zen background sounds. I'm particularly fascinated by digital third places with extremely limited social interaction (like cursor camp by Neal). I think it has something to do with the impossibility of something like this happening in real life.

That said, I'm not sure how real the "koi you see are other people visiting the pond together with you" bit is. I only ever saw 3 swimming koi. Maybe that's the base.

hxii•about 1 hour ago

Hey! That’s the base, correct. Three are always there so if someone joins and nobody else is using it – they’re never alone.

In essence, when you someone joins the counter goes up and another koi will spawn locally.

It’s a bit nerfed from my initial idea to sync the movement of each koi, but I might do that in the future.

It looks like the way I deployed (Railway) it causes `429 Too Many Requests` to be returned, so I’ll definitely have to look into that. But it’s 1:21 AM so tomorrow.

Thank you for letting me know!

p1necone•29 minutes ago

I noticed the koi pop in and out of existence on visible parts of the screen - it would be nice if incoming koi swam into frame from offscreen, and outgoing koi swam offscreen before disappearing.

applfanboysbgon•about 1 hour ago

It appeared to be real earlier, or at least simulated being real. I watched for 10 minutes and there were ~10 koi in my pool, with koi routinely flickering in and out of existence as though they suddenly joined or left. That said, I see three static koi now. Entirely conceivably that HN killed the backend and triggered a failsafe.

keithnz•33 minutes ago

lots and lots of koi at the moment!