NPCC Newsletter #8: Home server, family trip gamifier, language app, babies, oopsies, et cetera
Welcome to Newsletter #8!
Here's the rundown:
Welcome new Nerdy Parents!
April 26 meetup recap
Member project highlights
Next meetup is season finale (Sunday, May 31)
Odds & ends
Lost & found
1. Welcome new Nerdy Parents!
Kevin Shen, Justin Feng, Dan Hermann, Satabdi Das, Anne Saini, Greg Marra, Max Guilbert, Summer You, and Alex Showers.
Thank you for joining and hope to see you IRL soon!
2. April 26 meetup recap
We had another thought-provoking meetup on Sunday, April 26. Royce Cheng, Rob Emery, and Satabdi Das presented projects that capture three very different ways technology can relate to family life: Royce uses AI to make parenting harder, not easier; Rob is bringing his family’s digital life back home to take control away from big tech; and Satabdi is filling a gap in mainstream apps. More details in the next section…
Beyond the projects, parents shared their latest parenting oopsies, which left us with several important lessons:
Babies may seem perpetually hungry, but they will in fact throw up if you keep feeding them.
To get your heart rate in zone 4 quickly, let your 8-year-old experience independence, for example by playing outside in the neighborhood hoop court without adult supervision.
When you microwave ice cream, count backwards from 10. Don’t go anywhere, don’t talk to anyone. Stay put, stay focused.
If your child is training to be a prep cook at age 7, have them use these, not Ginsu knives.
New moms should take drumming classes. (Why? Ask Naila.)
Speaking of oopsies, I instantly feel more forgiving of myself and other parents when I remember that we’re all encountering parenting situations for the first time, all the time. Even if you have 2, 3, or 4 kids, that's actually still a miniscule sample size (training data?) in any other domain!
Speaking of miniscule sizes, two tiny people were in attendance: Alice and Sahaana, 7.5 and 11 weeks old respectively at the time of the meetup. Or three, if you count another baby who was approximately negative two weeks old. I was randomly curious how they shifted the age statistics in the room: According to my rough math, they brought the median down by one year and the mean by four.
3. Member project highlights
Scavenger Hunt Builder (Royce Cheng)
Royce came up with two refreshing inversions: First, he's using AI to make parenting harder (!), not easier. Instead of just optimizing chores away, why not optimize toward more ambitious family adventures? Second, he's using AI to push families into the wild, not away from it.
His project, Dali, is a scavenger hunt builder. The first hunt he made sent an extended family exploring the Mohawk Trail for a weekend, chasing clues from a fictional grumbly old guide who knew the landscape's secrets. A long drive across western Mass turned into eight chapters of a story that the whole family stepped into, which were better than eight stretches of “are we there yet.”
What surprised me: Royce demo-ed setting up a brand new hunt live in front of us, grumbly voice instructions and all, and it took less than a minute. Before this reveal, I had guessed at least 30 minutes. So, the threshold for “let's make a custom adventure for this trip” has collapsed from a weekend project to something you could do in the car on the way there.
Next chapters Royce is exploring: re-themable hunts beyond the Trail, location-aware unlocks with GPS and photo proof, and a no-code authoring tool so any family can host their own.
Curious to try it for your spring/summer family trip? Check out Royce’s slides for now and stay tuned for further updates! Royce’s got something cooking…
Home server (Rob Emery)
When Rob joined NPCC back in September, he introduced himself with a memorable tl;dr: “As my wife is growing our new baby, I'm doing my best to grow our home server.”
Baby Alice has now arrived, and Rob's home server is growing up alongside her: It's their Google Photos (Immich), Netflix (Jellyfin), cable DVR (HD HomeRun), and smart home brain (Home Assistant), all running on a single Raspberry Pi in his home, fully owned and managed by him.
Rob has a great analogy for explaining home servers: think of digital services like your water supply. You can hook up to the municipal line and let someone else manage it, or you can dig your own well. Both get water to your tap. One gives you control over what's in it.
How did Rob figure this all out? In his own words: “Curiosity, persistence, belief in myself as a problem-solver, and spite against Big Tech.” Plus ChatGPT (soon to be decommissioned and replaced with self-hosted AI), YouTube tutorials, and the Self Hosted podcast.
Next on Rob's list: Mealie (self-hosted recipe manager), Nextcloud (private cloud), Tailscale (private internet), and self-hosted AI.
Can't wait to see these next pieces come alive!
Check out Rob’s slides here.
Bengali Learning Hub (Satabdi Das)
Bengali isn't on Duolingo, so when Satabdi wanted her kids to have a fun, gamified way to pick up the language, she built it herself. Bengali Learning Hub is an interactive web app covering the Bengali alphabet, vowel marks, vocabulary, pronouns, postpositions, even verb conjugation. Plus audio pronunciations, quizzes, and games. All of the content, including the audio, was generated with Claude and Gemini.
The kicker is that Satabdi built all this during maternity leave (after having Sahaana, her second child). I don't know about you, but I was barely surviving during the newborn period. It was all a blur of feedings and zero higher brain function.
Even more superhuman: Satabdi had a hip flexor injury that made working on her laptop difficult. Did she give up and pause the project? Of course not! She pivoted to OpenClaw and continued to build the app on Telegram from her phone. She PM'd, the LLM coded, and the app is now live for everybody to use.
4. Next meetup is season finale (Sunday, May 31)
Our next monthly meetup will take place on Sunday, May 31, 1-2:30 pm at the CambridgeSide community room.
As always, let me know if you’d like to talk about your project. We have just one presenter slot left, so claim it quick if you want it!
This will be our last meetup before we take a summer break. So, mark your calendar and don’t miss your chance to mingle with the group before everyone gets busy with hiking, biking, swimming, sailing, sunbathing, camp-chauffeuring, and all that good stuff.
5. Odds & ends
In case you missed last month’s newsletter, Nate Aune put together a great starter kit for parents who want to introduce their kids to building games with Godot using AI agents: Godot Game Development with Kids.
Add your projects to the NPCC project wall.
Follow NPCC on Instagram to see event photos.
Want other NPCC parents to know who you are? Visit the NPCC member directory and complete your bio interview.
6. Lost & found
Is this dreamy blue dino a family member of yours? If so, message me so it can return home.
Thank you all, and see you around!
Wendy
PS: Your much-appreciated contributions to NPCC have helped cover the costs of software, refreshments, supplies, and other miscellaneous expenses. To make a donation to NPCC, visit NPCC’s Venmo or scan this QR code:
