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Some things I made

· 4 min read
Andy Hawkes
Andy Hawkes

Once upon a time I was paid to write code in exchange for coins, and I wasn't bad at it.

Then I got paid to lead and manage people who write code in exchange for coins, and it turned out that I wasn't bad at that either.

These days I am paid to lead and manage people who lead and manage people who write code in exchange for coins, so I guess that:

  1. I'm pretty good at tech and people,
  2. My job is becoming more and more fractal, and
  3. I only really write code for myself these days

Given that I'm attempting to start writing stuff / blogging again, I thought I would share a couple of the daft personal projects that I have put together in recent years.

Chef-o-tron​

Back in November 2021 I found myself laughing at a couple of tweets from Alex Rushmer and Dhruv Baker — a couple of chefs I followed on Twitter1 — bemoaning the ludicrous state of festive food items in UK supermarkets and on TV, and wondering if there was some kind of festive food generator machine that churned them out?

Seemingly there wasn't, so I created one - the Chef-o-tron

It started out simply enough as a randomised text string generator that smashed together a few festive foods in the name of comedy, but then I started adding to it.

What was originally xmas focussed turned into something more suited to all year round usage.

And then I added a tasting menu generator for extra pseudo-chefiness.

And a bingo card generator for people to use while watching their favourite cooking shows - first Masterchef and then Great British Bake Off.

The markup is crap, the CSS is buggy, and the JS is clunky, and it's kind of languished for a while now, but still raises a smile whenever I decide to pick it up again — normally before a fancy meal out at Vanderlyle in Cambridge, which is run by Alex Rushmer, one of the original inspirations for Chef-o-tron in the first place!

Drink-o-tron​

Not being one to waste the opportunity to stretch a joke, I decided to recycle the shoddy code underpinning Chef-o-tron to produce similarly over-the top beverage ideas, because... well, I could, and I like delicious (and sometimes ludicrous) beverages!

Thus Drink-o-tron was born and proceded to come up with stupid beverages galore!

Given the propensity for some craft beer afficionados to blather on about umpteen different grains, hops, adjuncts, and beer styles, I created a craft beer generator - and some of them even sound like they might be tasty!

I also wanted to have a stab at cocktails too, so I did.

I've thought about plugging the craft beer generator into some kind of AI image generation to produce beer labels for the ludicrous ideas it comes up with, but I haven't got round to it yet.

I did, however, make ChatGPT come up with a name for a beer as well as a review and some accompanying tasting notes.

Footnotes​

  1. Ah, remember the days when Twitter could still be a haven of trivial, transient amusement, rather than a festering cesspit of rage, bigotry, and right-wing extremism? Good times... ↩