tl;dr GitHub Repo
I wanted to grow my skills in Laravel, Vue, Tailwind, and MySQL and the only way I actually learn well is to make something. I need to break things, yell at the computer, and fist-pump and dance after squashing bugs.
I decided the best thing to build was a crowd-sourced bathroom finding app. Many times I've had to go the bathroom and couldn't find one or didn't know the entry code. To combat this, I keep a note on my phone which has bathroom locations and codes from around NYC. I thought it would be cool to create a platform where people could essentially share these "notes" with others and see the locations on a map. If you used a bathroom, log the location and the code. It would help others spare their pants and maybe even drive people into local businesses. That was the idea. Pretty simple, pretty stupid, but pretty useful.
I realized that I've worn a baseball glove on my left hand for over 20 years, but had no idea how it works. It was one of those things in my life that I take for granted, but are secret troves of great engineering and craftsmanship (like an electric toothbrush). So I decided to take mine apart, understand it, and re-lace it. It was awesome. Here are the before and after pictures:
Pretty happy with the outcome, I brought it to work one day (I worked in baseball) and wound up coming home with 4 more gloves. All my colleagues wanted me to restore their childhood gloves. Here were some of the restorations:
Although I accidentally stabbed myself with the lacing tool many times, my favorite part of this work was easily the smile on my colleagues faces when I presented back their gloves. To see their reaction and the nostaglia of them reliving the memories they made with that glove was worth far more than the $25 I charged them for the laces.
Shoutout to Flat Bill Baseball for selling some great laces!