Console #94 -- Gyroflow, United In Flight API, and Watchit
An Interview with Geolffrey of Watchit
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Projects
Gyroflow
Gyroflow is an application that can stabilize your video by using motion data from a gyroscope and optionally an accelerometer. Modern cameras record that data internally, and this application stabilizes the captured footage precisely by using them.
language: Rust, stars: 2775, watchers: 37, forks: 87, issues: 74
last commit: February 25, 2022, first commit: November 12, 2021
repo: github.com/gyroflow/gyroflow
United-In-Flight-Api
United In-Flight API is a postman collection for United's internal in-flight wifi API.
stars: 29, watchers: 2, forks: 2
last commit: January 29, 2020, first commit: January 27, 2020
repo: github.com/greatjack1/United-In-Flight-Api
WatchIt
WatchIt decentralizes the way you watch your movies. In short, it is a "collective entertainment methodology" in which each user consumes movies from the network and at the same time shares movies with other users.
language: JavaScript, stars: 165, watchers: 11, forks: 25, issues: 11
last commit: January 30, 2022, first commit: November 17, 2020
repo: github.com/ZorrillosDev/watchit-app/
social: twitter.com/geolffrey_mena
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An Interview With Geolffrey of Watchit
Hey Geolffrey! Thanks for joining us! Let’s start with your background. Where have you worked in the past, where are you from, how did you learn to program, what languages or frameworks do you like, etc?
I am a Software Engineer from Nicaragua. I started getting familiar with computers when I was 10 years old; although programming began to be part of my life after I was 20 years old when I studied computer science. I really like Javascript, Python, Golang, and Rust. I am self-taught and I love to undertake new ideas.
Who or what are your biggest influences as a developer?
My dad is definitely a great old-school developer, I always love hearing what he has to say about my code lol. He wrote many things in C language as an example: he wrote drivers for aviation devices and managed security in the company he works for. He likes my code generally, although I must say that he is very meticulous and likes clean code.
What's an opinion you have that most people don't agree with?
Usually when I talk about NFTs and the future of the film industry, people disagree. Many people often say that NFTs do not add any real value to assets, they often mention that NFTs are usually scams or that cryptocurrencies simply have no future.
I usually try to explain to them that the future is undeniable and that the directors of blockbuster once thought the same as them and that there was a project called Netflix that crushed them. So in a nutshell it could be said that blockchain and NFTs are part of that new future :)
What’s your most controversial programming opinion?
When I was young I liked to venture into books about programming and explore all the possibilities, so I started to reverse engineer how libraries work and how they achieved their purpose and after I had a good understanding I created my own, for me it was like reinventing the wheel, this led me to think that using the libraries of others was silly if you could write your own.
What is your favorite software tool?
Jetbrains IDEs
If you could dictate that everyone in the world should read one book, what would it be?
If you had to suggest 1 person developers should follow, who would it be?
If you could teach every 12 year old in the world one thing, what would it be and why?
Read books and practice your skills a lot every day at all times
If I gave you $10 million to invest in one thing right now, where would you put it?
I would invest in a fund to increase the usage of blockchain and crypto in my country Nicaragua and help people who received money from their families around the world to get it with less impact on their economy. I would push to create a big exchange for central America and beyond.
If I gave you $100 million to invest in one thing right now, where would you put it?
I would undoubtedly contribute to the growth of the independent cinema industry. Also, I would fund a stable coin to build and exchange for Latinamerican countries so they can use it for trade, business, and more. El Salvador already is moving forward so we need to follow and make it easier for other countries.
What are you currently learning?
WatchIt pushed me to explore blockchain technologies and today I am diving deeper into Defi and Tokenomics. I am exploring a lot about AAVE (Non-custodial liquidity) and its Flash Loans. I am also very fascinated exploring the world of tokenomics and bonding curves, continuous tokens and ultimately exploring liquidity pools with uniswap.
What have you been listening to lately?
Listening to a great podcast from Mark and Samuli about OrbitDB
How do you separate good project ideas from bad ones?
The good ones are generally associated with real needs, the bad ones will always be what I think of while watching a sci-fi movie. Generally, science fiction movies stimulate the imagination a lot and I usually have futuristic ideas that are not viable today or they are simply good but really complex ideas like artificial intelligence that discovers the cure for cancer.
Why was Watchit started?
I have always been a movie fanatic and I really love independent cinema but access to these movies was always an odyssey on the networks, I usually found them on certain sites with poor quality or with too many ads (everyone knows how annoying that is). For this reason, a team of friends with the same ideology and need decided to take this crossroads to search, collect and expose a safe resource with quality films, and that is where Watchit was born.
Where did the name for Watchit come from? :)
It's pretty simple Watch = Watching + It = movie
Who, or what was the biggest inspiration for Watchit?
The biggest inspiration for me has been the content creator filmmakers who work very hard to project their films with very low budgets and achieve great results. They inspire me!
What is the most challenging problem that’s been solved in Watchit, so far?
There is a very obvious problem in blockchain today, specifically speaking of Ethereum and its fees, this has led blockchain developers to put a lot of effort into optimizing their contracts. We were not the exception and it is that for us to handle the IPFS CIDs as a reference of each NFT in the contract we needed a format that would allow uint256 to be used as a type, which in terms of efficiency could be considered better than string or bytes32, therefore, to be able to transform a CID that at first was v1 and then became v2 and with a lot of research we were able to determine that using CID v2 with hash function blake2b-208 a format convertible to base16 was achieved, which then removing the first character and passing it to hexadecimal was able to obtain a uint256 value that was easy to reverse to get the original CID, what this basically allows is that the URI that the contract returns for each NFT is dynamic and does not require manual replacement.
Are there any competitors or projects similar to Watchit? If so, what were they lacking that made you consider building something new?
I think the closest thing to this so far are things like LBRY and dTube. These are more pay-to-play, and based around shorter content like YouTube. WatchIt is meant to be more like Netflix - a curated selection of high quality, long-form video content by indie creators from all over the world
What was the most surprising thing you learned while working on Watchit?
I had many ideas in the past that I tried to push on my own and had no positive results. With Watchit, the support of the community and its willingness to contribute has been surprising and really satisfying. I learned to be humble enough to know that I can't do it alone. Thank you community!
What is the release process like for Watchit?
The process is quite simple and starts with an issue or proposal from the community or staff, the team or the community issues a pull request with the changes and goes through a review process by the team to then integrate it into the principal branch. In each branch there is an action that is responsible for running tests and static analysis to later deliver the app to the different distribution channels (package or web app)
Is Watchit intended to eventually be monetized if it isn’t monetized already?
WatchIt is not currently monetized, but the plan is to monetize via service fees during the NFT minting and transfer workflows.
How do you balance your work on open-source with your day job and other responsibilities?
Generally, I work hard to find a balance, I have a small son and 5 dogs so I have to know how to organize my time. I usually wake up very early, my activities start at 6:00 AM, I usually read an article of interest and organize my work tasks, I give any extra time to Watchit.
Do you think any of your projects do more harm than good?
I am not sure but probably if somebody uses it for porn distribution then could be really bad this is why we plan on curating our content. The curation process basically consists of the actions of the users, they are the ones who decide through their votes which movie meets the legal and ethical requirements to remain on our platforms.
What is the best way for a new developer to contribute to Watchit?
We have an amazing dev team right now but probably need input from economists who want to help the monetization process.
If you plan to continue developing Watchit, where do you see the project heading next?
I would love to see Watchit as a robust tool for the development of streaming, monetization, and infrastructure platforms in the independent film industry that allows users to control their content.
What motivates you to continue contributing to Watchit?
Mark:
The thing that drew me to WatchIt at first was the design. It had a polish that many projects in the Web3 space lack. It just looked great and I wanted to be involved with a team that prioritized this - the fancy distributed tech stuff can wait until we get it right. That’s what keeps me coming back now, the challenge of trying to make this work in a decentralized way.
Geolffrey:
I continually return to the development of Watchit because of my vision and because I really like programming.
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