Starting Side Projects with Darren Fu and Kenton Lam

Matt: 0:00

Hi everyone. And welcome to the router, the official podcast of the UQ computing society, where we explore the human side of tech. I'm your host, Matt. And I'm joined today by two members of the UQCS committee, Darren and Kenton. Today. They're going to be taking us through their experiences, working on side projects and how you too can develop your own little side projects with some guidance and lessons along the way. Hope you enjoy. All right. Hello, Kenton. And Darren, how are you both?

Darren: 0:35

Hello? I'm good. I'm doing good. Thanks.

Kenton: 0:38

I'm good. Thanks as well.

Matt: 0:39

All right, wonderful. Um, so before we begin talking about side projects and all that, uh, that'd be good if you two could, uh, I guess introduce yourselves to, uh, to the listeners for anyone who's not already familiar. Uh, Darren, if you want to go first.

Darren: 0:55

Okay. Uh, hi everyone. My name is Darren, uh, Darren Fu and I'm doing a degree in software engineering and maths. Um, you might have heard of me, uh, before, uh, for the UQ Planner project that I did, uh, earlier last year.

Kenton: 1:16

Okay. Hello everyone. My name is Kenton, or you can find me at K on Slack. That's the single letter K I'm in my fourth year, of a computer science and maths dual degree. Um, you might've seen me around in courses or I've also tutored some courses, most interestingly algorithms and data structures. Uh, and I've worked at some places doing web dev and other software things as well.

Matt: 1:45

All right, wonderful. Okay. So I guess, so I guess you've introduced yourselves and you're, you're both uni students. So I guess one of the key characteristics of a university is procrastination. Um, and I guess one of the ways where you can have productive procrastination is through side-project. So, um, I guess, firstly, I want to know what sort of side projects you've done. So I know Darren, you mentioned you've done in timetable planner, and I think Kenton you've done something similar as well. Um, but throughout your whole, your whole, you need agree. Uh, I guess from the very beginning, if you can remember like your first, your first little project that you did, uh, I'd love to know where, where it all started.

Kenton: 2:31

Yeah. Um, I think I can talk about this actually. Um, my projects tend to be not very creative. Um, for me they're just about solving problems or nits that I have with things in my day-to-day life. Um, when I first started uni, I think it was the end of first year or something. One of these nets in my university life was Blackboard. Blackboard is super kind of hard to navigate. Uh, so the first thing I made was actually a little search engine for Blackboard.

Darren: 3:07

Yeah, yeah,

Kenton: 3:08

Yeah. You might've seen it or even used it yourself.

Darren: 3:12

Is this still up? That's that's very interesting. I'd like to see it now.

Kenton: 3:17

I'll be sure to, uh, let me know where you can find it.

Darren: 3:20

I'll link all this stuff in the description, but I do remember it was like a sort of like search box over there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Kenton: 3:29

So this uses a script, which is kind of like a Chrome extension, but more dodgy opens a search box and you can search all your courses with a single keyboard shortcut on the Blackboard and it was actually super useful and a couple of my friends used it. Um, so I think that was the first one I did. And it kind of set the tone for the rest of my side projects through my university career. Um, yeah, I think Darren, what about you? Yeah,

Darren: 3:56

Very nice. Uh, can I ask you whether you still use this, uh, Blackboard extension today? Uh, that sounds ultra useful,

Kenton: 4:04

Unfortunately, not talk about this later if needed, but it was my first encounter with JavaScript and it was horrendous actually terrible.

Darren: 4:17

Yeah, no. Um, so from my end, I think generally it's a little bit like what you said Kenton. Like when I do a side project, it's generally if, uh, I want to see something or there's something that I'm kind of annoyed at. Um, often I think probably the smallest version of that is would probably just be, uh, all the keyboard shortcuts that I've set up for my computer. Um, just to make it easier for myself to sort of, uh, go about my day, um, doing things navigating around it, all that. Um, but yeah, I think, uh, when I initially started, uh, I know Matt, you talked about, uh, when I first started university, but I think it was side projects. Uh, I first started, uh, when I was sort of just in high school. Um, and I was really curious to learn about, uh, programming, coding, uh, electronics and all that. So I'd always try and find time to, um, do some of my own things to sort of get a better, a better understanding of, uh, of the different technology out there. Um, and I remember when I first kind of learned to program, uh, I made lots of little games, uh, things like, um, you know, doodle jump. Uh, I wrote that with JavaScript and that was a lot of fun. Uh, this is a little, this was a while ago now often it's like, uh, what do you call it? Uh, you know, the game 2048? Um, yeah, I made that one time and that was also a lot of fun. And I think when I first started programming, it was these kinds of small projects that really got me motivated in, uh, learning how to, uh, how to write code. And yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun. Um, but yeah, these days it's usually things that sort of annoyed me a little bit, um, that I want to, uh, I, I want to fix up and probably, I think that the best example of that would be, um, would be the UQ timetable planner that I've made, um, which has just really started as an annoyance, um, of me going, like, why have they removed this? Um, can I try and like replace this with something else that I can use? Um, and that that's sort of how I started it started. Yeah.

Matt: 6:08

Hmm. And then did you make any, any games? Any,

Kenton: 6:14

No, unfortunately I was not creative enough to make any games only boring things for me.

Matt: 6:20

Uh, no, that's all right. I mean, yeah. I mean, personally for me, I think I had a similar path to Darren. I did well, they weren't side projects, but like projects. Like I, I played a lot of them. Yeah. So I played this, uh, this game called step mania, uh, which is like, uh, you can imagine it's like Dance Dance Revolution, but on a keyboard. Um, and one of the very first side projects I did or kind of side projects, this is like, I, I, there was this theme, uh, that I really liked using it was called simply love. And it was like this like is theme where you can like customize all the different colors and like the gameplay and what it looks like and everything. And I made my own little version of it for like, with like scoring features and things like that. And it was all written in Lua, but I didn't actually write much Lua. I just looked at the existing code and like guessed how to, how to change it so that it would work. Um, but yeah, that was fine. In fact, I didn't even really think about that, but

Darren: 7:21

So that kind of thing, uh, almost all started side projects kind of start small. And when you're starting at the very beginning, there's no intention of saying that all this is going to end, and this isn't even a requirement for a side project quite like this, no requirement to say, Oh, this is going to like, uh, become a huge thing or like it's going to be used by all these people. Right. Um, and then when it's in that state, like, there's nothing wrong with saying, Oh, that's a really cool style that I want to try and mimic. Let's see how, how, how close I can get to it. Um, and often like, uh, just getting to that point, right. Can be really, really rewarding.

Matt: 7:50

Yeah. And like, I guess, like tinkering with things that already existed as a good way of like getting comfy with like tech and stuff. So it doesn't even have to be like a, a brand new thing, but I guess like, so, so like, I think both of you, you've done things that are like from scratch there. Right. So like the UQ Planner I'm guessing, or some scratch and Kenton your, I think a few of your projects are just like, from the very beginning, right. You had an idea and you're like, alright, I will do it. Um, so I guess the first, one of the first decisions, like, okay, so how do you, how do you even like start, like when you have an idea, what do you do? Like you just go something up or to sketch it out or,

Darren: 8:34

Um, I've got a list. Uh, I've got a list of things that I want to do when I get the time to yes.

Kenton: 8:40

I think definitely the first thing to do when you have an idea is to write it down

Darren: 8:46

Because these, uh, sorts of, I think, uh, as I can call them sort of like nitpicks that you usually find right there, probably the smallest of things you just kind of come across, uh, as you're doing something else for uni or for work or whatever. Right. Um, and then if you don't write them down, I mean, easily just forget them. Um, and so it's good to keep a list. Uh, and then when you've got the time, you can come back and go, hold, hold on. Uh, that might be worth doing, uh, and then that's the start of your side project there.

Matt: 9:13

Um, and so like another thing, I guess, so when you, when you, when you, when you have an idea, uh, and you're like, I want to do this now, or what's your, what's your next step?

Darren: 9:27

That's a hard one to answer Kenton. You have you got anything to, uh,

Kenton: 9:32

Um, yeah, it is a hard one to answer, but there are a few tips. I think, I think a lot of the time, if you're asking about choosing, like what do you even do? Um, it's constrained by what the idea is. So for example, if you want to do something, um, or just run with my example of Blackboard, then it needs to work with Blackboard. So that pretty much means it has to be JavaScript and it has to run into browser. Um, once you have like the basic constraints set up, you can start Googling. Google is your best friend

Matt: 10:10

Or Bing or, duck, duck, or your search, internet choice, internet indexer of choice.

Kenton: 10:19

But yeah, you can look up like, how do I run JavaScript? How can I run custom JavaScript on a webpage and pretty quickly you'll end up at user scripts or maybe even browser extensions. And then from that, it's just, um, one step at a time you might download a basic sample extension and try to get it to load, try to get it to do something small, like print its existence to the console. And then it's just baby steps, one Google query at a time. How do I add a button? How do I search for text on a page until you build it all together into something useful?

Matt: 11:02

So, so I guess, so your, your experience continue. It's not like you didn't go and look up an entire tutorial on how to write user scripts from the beginning and then, uh, do it learn it and then implemented afterwards, right. You just kind of did it at one step at a time.

Kenton: 11:19

Yeah. And our, um, this may just be my personal style, but I tend to do poorly learning from long tutorials that try to teach you everything the, the, or learn things when they come up, uh, because then I can immediately apply them. And I just find that it's more useful for myself, but there are lots of tutorials for all sorts of different things. If you prefer learning that way also videos, I'm not a fan of videos, but they exist. Lots of them learn JavaScript

Matt: 11:49

In 16 hours. Isn't it

Darren: 11:51

Exactly. 40 minutes. I've seen some videos like that React in 40 minutes or something like that. Um,

Matt: 11:59

So for like a, for like a quick, for like a quick refresher, I guess

Darren: 12:04

I've seen some where they even try to go from the very beginning, all the way to advanced concepts. Um, and 40 minutes, I've, I've never tried to use a tutorial like that. Um, but yeah, I, I agree with Kenton in that if you're starting a project and you're trying to follow a tutorial, it might make sense to do the row tutorial, to learn about one component of the project that you're doing to get a better understanding of that tech or something like that. Um, but if you're sort of doing a tutorial, often, I find that, uh, it's a little bit constraining that I guess that the tutorial is the, uh, the thing that's steering the direction of your project rather than, um, what you're thinking yourself. Yeah. Um, but yeah. Anyway, hold on. What was the original question?

Matt: 12:46

I mean, I guess, yeah, so I guess Kenton kind of answered it, but in his own way about how to choose a technology and how you're, you're constrained by, by the, um, by the constraints

Darren: 13:03

I was going to say. Yeah, yeah. Well, we can say, yeah, no. Um, I, I remember originally you've asked, uh, once, you know, the project, what are you going to do afterwards? Right. Uh, what the next step is, and basically said, you start from Googling. Um, and then eventually you just have the project unfold from there. Um, and I think that's basically exactly right. And the, the, the, uh, the two things that I thought that I'd add is first, uh, you can use sort of knowledge that you already have. Uh, what do I know about, um, the system, this, uh, this thing that I want to try and get working. Right. Um, and how can I sort of get as close as I can to the objective first and then keep going. Right. Um, and then they'll one, and actually, this is part of the story for UQ planner was actually just tell people, uh, if you don't know how you might get it to work, go and tell people, Hey, I think that, um, I really want this. Right. Um, and, uh, I, I don't know how hard of a project, but it might be that it might be, um, but I really want to do it. And I think this is something that's really worth making. Um, and that's actually what happened to me. Um, we just, uh, sort of had a group chat, um, me and, uh, me and will, and in that chat, I said, Oh, I can't believe they've taken the planner down. Right. Um, and then Will happened to see that message. Anyone who said, Hey, hold on. Uh, I was doing a course last semester and they made a really basic version of a timetable planner. Uh, do you think we could maybe use that, uh, and then sort of get somewhere from it. Um, and that's where it like, sort of eventually unfolded from there. Right. And so the third one would be, uh, asking people and then seeing what, what happens there.

Matt: 14:32

Mm. Yeah. And, and I guess so, so when, when you, when you've done well, I guess, like, do you have a, let's say you start a project from scratch. Right. So, so a lot of these projects are kind of web-based right.

Darren: 14:47

Often. Yeah, I guess often. Yes. Uh, um, do you have a stack of choice that you jumped to? I guess, like, obviously if it was a user script, then, you know, you're limited, but if it's your own application, uh, do you, do you prefer a certain front end framework or anything like that? Um, at least for me, um, when we started off the planner Will's project was already in Angular. Um, and, uh, I've got, uh, uh, some experience using Angular. And so let's, let's keep going from there. Um, but then I dunno, today I've, uh, if I were to start the project again today, I would say, Oh, I've got more experience in React. So I might start with that. Um, but really, I think, uh, it might depend on sort of just what you want to learn, what you might feel most comfortable in. Um, and then if you were trying to try to think about the project longterm, right. Uh, if, if you want to sort of keep this up for a while, uh, what's the technology that I can use to make this the most maintainable for me, uh, and, and the cheapest to, uh, to sort of run.

Matt: 15:50

Yeah.

Kenton: 15:51

Yeah. I think, um, yeah, definitely, uh, a lot of personal projects of mine have been web deployed, so that deployed, uh, onto the website and definitely React and TypeScript is probably the easiest stack to work with there. And Darren has a really good point, which is you should try and make it maintainable because too often I feel like personal projects or side projects end up being temporary, or just like you create it once and you forget about it. Um, which is a shame because these are useful things and it would be nice if they stayed around so more people can use them. Uh, so I think on that note, it would be good to avoid things like having to run your own server. Yeah. And there are lots of tools available, which let you do just that, like serverless is pretty big right now. And it works very well with React and TypeScript. And there are things like Google's Firebase, which will give you cloud functions to run code on the cloud. They give you a database, they give you authentication and a whole bunch of things, which were pretty generous free tier and it just does all of that work for you. And the best part is you can just leave it there and it'll keep chugging along whenever it needs to. And you don't need to worry about your server crashing. You don't need to worry about maintaining your own database. And it's just pretty cool. I think it can help to create a side-project which lives a bit longer than the average one.

Matt: 17:31

Yeah. I I've used, I've used Firebase myself and I love it because it's just, so yeah, you can, you can kind of just leave it, leave it alone. Um, and it will just do its thing. Um, have any of your projects like needed or have you, have you, have you ever gone back to your projects and been like, I need to fix something? Or is it just, yeah,

Darren: 17:54

I think on that one, actually one, one good thing to add is that if you're writing code, um, make sure to, I guess you kind of know, uh, or you, you might have the feeling at the beginning that you don't know whether this is going to go anywhere. And so you don't, you aren't really that inclined to write really clean code or really, uh, maintainable code. Um, but I think one lesson that I've learned is that if you don't, uh, it will probably come back to bite you. Um, and so do try to write nice code, um, because you don't know whether you'll have to come back to this in a semester or two. Um, and, uh, yeah, like, uh, the best way to make them maintainable is to make sure that everything you write is sort of, uh, nice and clean. You don't have things all scattered across different files in a way that's completely, uh, or like really hard to manage or anything like that. Um, yeah. Um, always good to sort of keep your code maintainable.

Matt: 18:45

I guess everything is temporary until it's not exactly everything is temporary until it's not. That's good advice, um, on that note as well. Oh, sorry. What were you saying?

Darren: 18:55

Oh, uh, I think I also had some things to add about what Kenton was saying about sort of making sure that, uh, your project is scalable. Um, at least if you can plan, or I can say that, uh, I've used a service called Netlify. Um, and because when you're building a react application, uh, because it's JavaScript, it's entirely run from, uh, from inside the browser, right. Um, you don't need a backend at all, which means that, um, there are services like Netlify, which purely serve the assets of your app statically. Right. Um, but don't actually sort of do any calculations in the backend. Um, they serve, they purely serve the files of, of your app. Um, you've got lots of services like that. Um, like Netlify, that can serve your app for free. Um, and then you can use them. Uh, so that's not very clear, uh, know you've got, you've got services, like Netlify that, uh, serve your app for free. Um, and then you can basically just run them without worrying"I have to go running into fees". Um, and then the second thing was, uh, cloud functions. And then with, uh, the UQ planner, uh, what I actually did was I actually looked at all of the cloud service providers, all the, uh, all the providers for Lambda functions. And I found that CloudFlare, uh, was a service provider that gave the maximum number of requests, but, uh, for free per day. And that was the reason why I use them. Uh,

Matt: 20:11

I think actually I think that part of the question, I guess, have you ever gotten close to hitting the free requests limit on CloudFlare for UQ planner? It's pretty popular.

Darren: 20:23

Um, it actually has. Um, but Oh, that was actually because of a bug. Uh, it was, it was quite funny. I don't remember the exact details of the bug. Um, but ah, yeah, I remember, um, so I think in the, in the second semester that we introduced, uh, the planner, uh, we had this idea that, um, because the times are often changing even after you've initially loaded them, um, that would basically sort of automatically make requests to try and see if changes were being made and then sort of update them in the front end, uh, automatically. Um, and then when we first made that change, I can't remember exactly what it was all we're doing in the front end. Um, but what ended up happening was that, uh, all of our clients were basically making a ton of requests to a Lambda function, uh, requesting to see where the changes had been made to any of the course times. Uh, and then, because we had tons of computers running this, this front end, uh, roundabout when we had course registrations and things like that. Uh sign-ons um, we hit that, uh, free tier limit pretty quickly. Um, and then I think we ended up paying something like$5 or something around that, uh, just to, to open up the limit a little bit. But I think that was the only time when we ran into, uh, into that problem. There were a few times when I think we got close, uh, under normal usage conditions, but, um, generally I think, I mean, if you've got a university with, uh, 20, 30, 40,000 people and that doesn't happen too often, it's not something that you need to worry about too much. It's pretty cool that you can have a, have essentially the service that so many people use and it costs nearly nothing to run. Honestly, it's kinda crazy. I, I think, um, I think it's, it's a really good deal, uh, and yeah, kinda kind of one reason why you can say that, um, if you're sort of launching a project, uh, you don't have to worry about the cost too much later on. Uh, if you sort of think about the way that you architect a little bit at the beginning, um, you, you likely won't even have to pay anything at all, especially if you can get all the work being done, uh, in the client and in the browser instead of, uh, in some backend.

Matt: 22:40

Um, I guess one last thing I, I wanted to ask, um, is about when, when you have done a project, uh, do you, do you have any, I guess, ways of testing it or, or getting the word out about your project, any preferred methods of, uh, shilling, I guess,

Kenton: 23:00

Yeah, I'll go first on this one because my shilling is much less effective than Darren's. I think, I don't know.

Darren: 23:10

I just want to say that I think at least with the planner, uh, we just very much happened to be in the right place at the right time. Um, I don't really think that there was anything in particular that I did that sort of, I guess, like made the differences, especially in terms of shilling. Uh, yeah. Uh, but yeah, continue. Sorry.

Kenton: 23:28

Yeah, I was just saying that, um, I think if you want to test, it's a good idea to reach out to some friends who might find benefit from what you've made and they're always able to give feedback and they won't be too mad at you if something goes wrong. Um, beyond that#projects on the UQCS Slack is super cool. There are lots of people talking about their own projects, uh, so you can share it there and you can get some feedback. And also, um, if you have any questions, that's also a good place to go and get help from experienced people in the UQCS community. Uh, but apart from that, I don't really share my projects out that much.

Matt: 24:14

They don't have to be shared. Right. Like, I guess it, as long as it solves a problem that, that you wanted to solve, I guess.

Kenton: 24:22

So that's my thinking. Like I make a lot of these for me and if it works good enough, it's good enough for me.

Matt: 24:31

Um, Darren, I guess, do you want to say anything?

Darren: 24:35

Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess from me, uh, uh, once you're sort of at a point where with a project where you think, Oh, I really want to get this out there. Let's see what happens. Let's give it to some people. Um, you can put it on, uh, places like Facebook, uh, Reddit, um, groups like that, course space, stalker space, um, things like that. Uh, I think these days, uh, maybe even on a discord, you can see a Slack and it's just a really good place to, to, uh, get word out there on your project. Um, but then other than that, I, I really agree with what Kenton said, um, about sort of asking your friends, um, it's a really good way to sort of, if you want to eventually get your project really out there. Right. Um, or sort of, uh, have it become something that, uh, people would actually go and use. Uh, it's really good to just go and ask people, Hey, uh, I've, I've gone and done this. What do you think about it? Um, how do you think I could improve it? Um, and just ask questions like that. Um, because I've done that before with a lot of the projects that I've done and I think that, um, it's definitely something that's been really helpful and usually people are more than, more than willing to help out.

Kenton: 25:38

Yeah. I think that, especially if you're going to go and try and get lots of people to use it, you want to make sure that it works pretty well before you did that because you only have one chance to make a first impression.

Darren: 25:51

Yeah, I, a hundred percent. Um, I think, uh, yeah, with the planner just before we launched, uh, we were so stressed out that there'd be issues of it or things like that. Um, and, uh, it turned out that we'd done our homework, we tested it well, and, uh, not too much happened, uh, not, not too much, uh, sort of disasters happened, uh, on, uh, on the, on the day that we started to post on Facebook and everything like that.

Matt: 26:17

Yeah. I guess you can never expect what happens when you get bombarded with traffic and new users and all that kind of, it's just, whatever happens, happens, I guess. Exactly. Yeah. You can try your best to prepare for it, but yeah. Um, and I, I dunno, I don't think I have really anything else, um, that I, I wanted to ask in particular, but as a, as a final thing, do you have any advice for the first years or maybe second years or even X years? You just want to try out some side projects for the first time, any

Kenton: 26:52

Hmm. I dunno for me, for side projects with me. The most difficult thing has been motivation, well ideas. And then once you have the idea of motivation, um, so I think, yeah, just find some motivation, whether that's, um, friends telling you that, Hey, this will be super useful or whether this is something that you really want to solve some problem. Um, yeah, some kind of motivation will go a long way to making sure that you a finished a side project. First of all, because there are too many unfinished side projects. I have a few, I'm sure everyone has a hundred something that they can talk about, but yeah. And B, uh, that you do it well, because if you care about something, uh, you'll naturally want to do a good job and you want to improve user experience. So everyone, um, enjoys using what you've made, I think, yeah.

Matt: 27:53

Darren?

Darren: 27:56

Um, yeah, completely agree Kenton. I think, uh, you should really take an attitude where you're just kind of curious to try and fix things, uh, learn things and try and help other people. Um, and then like, you don't know when you might end up creating something that, uh, uh, could be really, really useful to a lot of other people. Um, and then on what Kenton was saying about motivation, uh, one sort of hack that I've done with a few times is honestly just try and link it to your courses a little bit, um, or links to things where you do have to put in an effort, a certain amount of effort, uh, every once in a while. Um, so that, I guess you, you kind of have a, uh, sort of a deadline pushing you a little bit. Um, I don't know if you've sort of linked it to a course that it's, it can still be considered a side project. Um, but, uh, one thing that I've found is like, say, for example, um, I've, I've, I've done the side project where I scraped the New York times with like, I think six gigs of data or something, and then visualize the entire thing. Um, then I linked that to the course COSC3000, uh, I think what was the name of the course? I think it was

Matt: 28:55

The visualization course? Visualization

Darren: 28:58

Data visualization. I can't a hundred percent remember, um,

Matt: 29:04

Visualization, computer graphics and data analysis, I think.

Darren: 29:07

Yeah. That's the one, something like that. Um, but yeah, um, having, so I wanted to do that project, um, or I wanted to do some kind of a data analysis project, um, and then enrolling myself into that course, uh, really sort of pushed me to, to keep going with it. Um, and it sort of gave me the initial push to get the project to a point where I was quite happy with it.

Matt: 29:26

Hmm. All right. Well, thanks so much, uh, both of you and, um, yeah, it's been really good to hear about your experiences as a side project, and I hope that encourages, uh, our listeners to try of their, um, and yeah, uh, just one last word from me, uh, there is a side project that you should totally try out that's related to the UQ computing society. Um, and it goes by the name of UQCSBot, uh, which I will link, um, in the, you know, in the description. Uh, and I don't know if it counts really as a side project, but, you know, it might be something worth trying out in your time that there's a bunch of things that you can, a bunch of features that you can add to UQCSBot. You know, if you've ever had a grievance on the UQCS Slack about something that you wish was, uh, functionality, uh, I guess it's worth something trying out on that repo. So I'll leave that

Kenton: 30:23

UQCSBot is great. Um, there's always features to do as well as bugs to fix. Uh, of course I think in particular, it's great because it's made by the members of UQCS for the members of UQCS. Um, so it's extremely easy to get help, um, on the UQCS Slack, if you're stuck or don't understand something with the bot, we're all happy to help out. And it's a pretty good place to start if like it's your first project as well. Because as I said, lots of support along the way.

Matt: 31:00

Sounds like a, sounds like a good deal. Right? Sounds pretty cool. I'd like to have a go at it. All right. Thanks so much. Good luck to everyone with your side projects.

Kenton: 31:08

Yeah, they're great fun.

Darren: 31:10

Happy hacking.

Matt: 31:12

All right. That's all we have time for today. Hope you enjoyed. The next episode of the Router will be out in a fortnight. Apologies for the delay on this one, but we hope it was worth the wait. Until then don't forget to join our Slack community at slack.uqcs.org. My name is Matthew Low and this podcast was created by the UQ computing society with gracious support from our industry sponsors.