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Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
161–170 of 484 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#162Several -
My most recent was to manage dumbbell work outs.
Problem:
1) I hated changing weights in the middle of a session
2) Wanted to manage progression
Situation - I have 4 metal sets of dumbbell handles, a plastic set, some individual 3 - 5 pound pairs. A single, dial the weight dumbbell. Plates in metal range from 10 lbs to 0.25 lbs.
The SW:
1) using SQLite for DB
2) One application to calculate optimum weight settings - typical run takes 100 to 200 tries to get the best set.
3) Another application to present / track sessions. It was a BIG timer display to ensure I do not do the workout too fast (goal is 45 sec a set)
4) A tracking report.
Complexity issues: Not all dumbbell handles weigh the same - even the tightening nuts vary. Solution was to weigh everything and pair up the nuts so that each dumbbell handle with nuts matched its pair - oh I color coded the metal dumbbell handles.
First algorithm took too long - my first version would calculate ALL combinations of all weights. Then select the optimal solution - before adding the 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1 pound plates would take between 15 to 30 minutes to run. This was solved with a slightly more complex algorithm. I calculated the all combinations for each dumbbell. Merged those lists into a big list, Found the perfect setting for each exercise. Check for conflicts. When a conflict occurred, found the exercise with the least delta from optimal and changed it to the next weight setting.... Check for conflict. Now it takes no more than 20 sec and reports 100 to 200 times it hit conflict before solving.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#163A set of Python PIL scripts for generating background / wallpaper montages. One of the output montages is here :
https://jimlawless.net/magsbooks.jpg
A Perl script that formats a bbcode-like markup to HTML for some of my web pages.
A mostly-Powershell script that stops all Windows features and apps that I don't want running. Some features/apps start up again after Windows updates, so this shuts them back down.
Some SMTP/POP3 scripts that I use in various languages to automate email management.
An ffmpeg script that converts an MP3 coupled with a static image to an MP4 so that I can upload podcasts to YouTube. I did provide this on a Twitter/X post once, so maybe it's not something I've kept to myself very well.
Some ffmpeg scripts to convert M4A audio file to MP3.
I have a web page that just displays the current time every second that I use when timing things. It's all very simple client-side JS.
...and others.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#164I built a hydroponic garden as a covid hobby. I wrote software to maintain the garden, water it on schedule, apply ph changes to the water, turn lights on / off, humidify, as well as monitor statistics (temperature, humidity, water temperature, water ph, water conductivity). Rough guess would be that I spent 50 hours actually working on the software. There's a handful of raspberry pis involved. I wrote everything in…
That is AWESOME! I would love to see what you did for this. Even more I would love to build the same.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#165I created a pollution-tracker app with functionality so i can track pollution i remove and GPS-tag it.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#166I was unhappy that bike share app in my city does not do a good job displaying availability of bikes or docks on the map so I wrote my own web app that gives me color coded availability of bikes and bike docks near my home, my typical destinations, and my current location (geolocation is supported, had to figure out https for it).
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#167I was unhappy that bike share app in my city does not do a good job displaying availability of bikes or docks on the map so I wrote my own web app that gives me color coded availability of bikes and bike docks near my home, my typical destinations, and my current location (geolocation is supported, had to figure out https for it).
I'll go one better, the bike sharing app in my city exposed an API which I scraped for a few weeks and then built a predictor for the nearest stations to work and my home given a certain day, time and station "loading".
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#168I have a 3-letter domain that I use as my personal playground (think "xyz.com"). It features: - One-click anonymous upload of text, clipboard, and files. So from any computer, I can visit xyz.com + ctrl+v to upload the clipboard, write notes to myself, drag and drop a file, etc. It's a risky feature, but there's nothing to attract attention and you don't even get a URL back. - Authenticated sessions see a list of upl…
This is like 90% of what I need to setup on a server for my personal usage. Issue is I don't do front dev at all so I never really start working on it. Any chance you've open sourced it ? (Or if not opensourced but you're willing to privately share the code, you can reach me at hn [at] manoz [dot] co)
I sent you an email with the code and instructions. I won't share it openly because I don't want to tempt people into finding security flaws for fun.
It's definitely not code that I'm proud of, but it's been serving me well for many years, and might help you get started.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#169I have a bunch of small scripts I wrote to help me out when I'm working at the terminal. Most of them I've embedded in some way in my Prezto setup with ZSH. As the ecosystem develops though, I try to abandon my own code in favor of community code that's likely better maintained.
In general, I take a different approach than most folks, if at all possible I try to avoid writing any code whatsoever, after that I try to do it with glue code only, and I prefer scripting over compiled applications. It might be the ops/sysadmin in me, or it might just be because I'm lazy, but I really try to avoid just starting from scratch and building something.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#17040 lines of C to control brightness on Linux in the way I like (Pressing brightness up key should make it go up more than pressing brightness down key makes it go down). It took 20 minutes to make. Used as a keyboard binding. TODO list program and the list is periodically printed on my desktop with conky Software to automatically book reservations at good restaurants on Resy. Supported proxies, multi account, automat…
Love the Resy one!