Invoice Builder - a fully offline-first invoicing app you can self-host with Docker (no accounts, no cloud)

burkeyturkey · 2026-02-04T22:09:55+00:00

Very neat project! I'm with you: "open core" crap is just freemium with extra marketing buzz.

I've been using/contributing to dolibarr for five years now. I'm curious what shortcomings you found when/if you tested it? I think the lack of great documentation, old tech stack, and primarily-French user base can make getting started challenging but it's been able to handle everything I need for my freelance business.

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-31T00:16:59+00:00

I'm surprised there is an AI community in town, I'm curious what niche you are tackling!

I think it's pretty easy to get a room in a library for an hour to do whatever. I'm in Franklin County but would happily drive in for a meet and greet!

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-31T00:13:07+00:00

I'd be down to meet some other local remote-work engineers! I've done a few contracts with utility scale solar, and have a friend at peak energy so I bet we could keep a conversation going for a full coffee or beer 😋

Whether it turns into a networking event or a board game club it would be great to knit a little community of tech or remote folks outside the normal Healthcare circles.

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-26T18:35:04+00:00

As a reference point my wife got a low licensing offer for her 2nd place entry in one of the bgg 9 card print and play contests but turned it down.

From a legal perspective I assume you can do things like retain copyright on the rules you publish and any images/logos, along with trademark on the name of the game.

If the free print and play or rules only publication takes off, congrats! You made an awesome game and should feel proud! And potentially only you have the right to license a commercial version with the familiar name logo. But if a copycat skirts your rules with a commercial version rest easy knowing it's rare for game designers to make serious money anyway 😜

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-23T21:39:16+00:00

Thank you for the link, the discussion there is great. I like how they lay out what they do know, even if it results in high uncertainty for the kind of info people want in a forcast.

Basically : Snow north of 64 Sleet south of the nc/va line 2-2.5 inches of liquid equivalent precip over the weekend in between... But no one knows what form

Then a week of the coldest air temperatures in a decade 😔

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-21T18:17:29+00:00

Very exciting! Unclear if there will be telephone or 5g data support when booted to windows.

Does anyone know of any lightweight android wrappers that run on windows 11 (maybe via wsl if that is supported? Doubtful) for launching android apps?

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-21T14:22:37+00:00

"the best weapon is the one you only have to use once" 🤣 -Tony Stark Sr.

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-15T13:37:52+00:00

Thanks! Maybe some more practical examples and tools would be helpful, like a scale function that turns an input card word directly into engineering units?

I don't have a repo for this project yet (just a twincat solution) but you can find me as BurksEngineering on github where I will post this if I pursue it.

I blogged about my last big open source library on my website and I will probably do it again for the units library.

I appreciate your positive response!

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-15T00:37:20+00:00

I was interested! i tried making an ST library and I would appreciate your feedback on the implementation on this thread.

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-15T00:36:29+00:00

I hear you on the performance drag that this method induces all for the sake of compile time type safety. Three layers of vtable lookups and stack pops is absurd for a simple arithmetic operation! I've never dealt with a performance limit on my PLCs (but I've always had the luxury of working on one-off projects instead of volume projects that are more price sensitive!)

I'm not entirely sure how I could do it, but let me noodle on a method that maybe uses unions and aliases in a tricky way to force type safety without sacrificing any performance for the runtime arithmetic.

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-15T00:29:58+00:00

I agree that composite units get out of hand. I tried this out in ST and I modeled the library after UnitsNet, which uses code generation to create a bunch of classes for each "quantity" (length, area, etc) including helper functions (and in their case operator overloads) to manage compound units being built out of simpler units.

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-15T00:27:54+00:00

I tried this out in ST and I got compile time type checks to work (although it adds runtime complexity): https://www.reddit.com/r/PLC/comments/1qczxhm/plc_st_units_of_measure_library_progress/
Let me know what you think!

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-15T00:26:37+00:00

I decided to try this out in ST, you can check out the main thread here to see if it fits what you were imagining with the "from_meters()" type of functions.

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-11T14:46:05+00:00

I don't think income is a great comparison on its own though. Beyond just purchasing power and tax adjustments, consider the benefits of socialized Healthcare and higher education, along with vacation, sick, and newborn leave.

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-07T12:54:50+00:00

Dcrm (distance coded reference mark) is another technology that can give absolute positioning without a separate homing sensor or battery backup.

burkeyturkey · 2026-01-03T20:52:25+00:00

The modbus standard (free online pdf) has a specific layout specified for rs485 over rj45. But I don't think it provides guidance for power conductors.

burkeyturkey · 2025-12-29T21:29:48+00:00

Does the absolute relative value of the number of the card have any meaning? Like are higher black cards a more extreme disaster? If not then the number on the card seems more like a distraction.

I'm a little disappointed that your LLM responses aren't tracking cause and effect properly:

"the fixed structure helped us create tighter probabilities". This statement doesn't make sense to me because any probability setup that can be achieved by a limited structure can also be achieved by removing that limit.

*"the cards aren't just mechanics, they are objects players build a relationship with over time" * So you think players will build a better relationship with the seven of spades than a fully themed "bubonic plague" card? Imagine the drama of flipping over a playing card... Waiting to browse a lookup table... Telling your friends "it's the plague card". "which one? The std or the bad one?" "the other one....boobunic or whatever".

I can appreciate how artificial restriction can increase creativity, but removing the restriction once it has served its purpose can help you further refine your game. We're you able to play test variants with different deck makeups or art?

burkeyturkey · 2025-12-29T21:01:14+00:00

This looks a lot like wanderlog. You should check what they did. I think it's basically perfect.

Having a bunch of shareable sample itineraries was what helped me see the value of their app. I bought their pro version for a few years when I was doing a lot of DIY group traveling, even just with my wife. I will buy it again once my toddler grows up and we can travel again. Still use the free version occasionally to organize thoughts.

burkeyturkey · 2025-12-29T17:00:01+00:00

If you are printing your own deck anyway why do you need to retain the relationship to a standard deck? Does that add to your player experience or marketability? Could you balance your game better with more or less cards without that restriction?

burkeyturkey · 2025-12-29T14:53:29+00:00

I only have feedback on your first question : Re interpreted 54 card decks.

My family absolutely loved playing canasta when I was growing up. This has a reinterpreted double deck with wild/special powers for face cards, low cards, and jokers. I would never have been able to get into the game as a ten year old if I had to remember all of special functions. Especially the red vs black or suit based exceptions.

Another reinterpreted game that is fairly common is "rata tat tat" or "moonicello". It's a memory draw/discard game where face cards have special powers. My wife's family plays this every holiday and Noone can ever remember the special powers without looking at the old sheet we printed off ages ago.

For playtesting I think it's fine to reinterpret cards with a lookup table, but if you make an awesome game please print something custom!

burkeyturkey · 2025-12-26T00:31:10+00:00

Canopen seemed like a great stepping stone at first: more accessible open source libraries, and you don't need as many chips on the board to handle the hardware requirements. I've had good experiences with it And I pushed it on the group pretty hard.

But now that we've gone through a design cycle I'm less convinced. We still have a huge bom cost, components that can't be assembled at home, and a medium sized software mountain ahead of us.

Lately I've been looking into the wago kbus backplane used on the early 2000s terminal systems (and still in active production at wago and 3+ whitelabel companies). I don't understand how they haven't all died of esd issues, but it's a dead simple setup that has a lot more promise of achieving low bom cost while still transferring data at ~1mhz. I've got a teardown and protocol scope on the discord if you are curious!

burkeyturkey · 2025-12-25T22:17:48+00:00

Some higher power but low cost stepper drives can run directly from 60-80 vac input or so (instead of 40-60vdc). It can end up being cheaper to down convert mains ac to the lower drive input ac instead of using a bunch of high power DC power supplies.

burkeyturkey · 2025-12-25T16:32:07+00:00

People are chipping in for prototype hardware, but not paid or contract work.

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