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Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

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Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#241

Post by jldugger »

marvinpinto wrote: post #45

I automated downloading and reconciling my financials from all my bank accounts. https://disjoint.ca/projects/ledger-reconciler

On a related note, I have gnucash set up to autocreate a ton of transactions 90 days in advance. Rent, salary, typical bills, student loan repayment, etc.

At some point my plan is to automate the following tasks:

1. Sweep checking into savings based on forecasted transactions. Useful since interest is like 10x more in savings. 2. Update asset values daily. 3. Update autocreated transactions as the invoices are emailed to me. 4. Calculate a rebalancing strategy that factors in allowed rollovers and expense ratios.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#242

Post by threeaccents »

rrggrr wrote: post #230

1. My former spouse wouldn't answer the home phone when I talked with the kids during the divorce. I wrote an app that texted her and logged the attempt for reporting to the guardian ad litem. 2. She also wouldn't answer the door when during kids pick-up. The same app texted her when I was outside. 3. To disprove her allegations I wasn't involved in the kids school and activities I used Android's Locale app to trigge…

Did you have to prove your system was logging real data?

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#243

Post by ebrewste »

I got an Amazon IoT button and made some super simple back that will remind me to clean the pet’s water fountain every n days. I just push the button when I clean the fountain. I would horrify how gross it was before when I would remember to clean it. It’s much more humane now.

Also made Arduino boards that are dedicated timers to blink a light: - 2 minutes to empty my coffee when brewing in a Aeropress. - 24 hours to empty the cat's litter box.

Both of the timers are so simple. It doesn't sound like much, but the hyper focus on the task use case makes it actually improve my life in a small way.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#244

Post by t1o5 »

parthdesai wrote: post #236
t1o5 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did, hosted at sinpnotifier.com, Saskatchewan province is not that attractive for skilled immigrants. Had one sale though, then I shut it down.

Maybe you didn't market it to right crowd? I know a lot of South Asian people who go to Saskatchewan just to get their PR. There are a lot of Software Engineering/Development jobs in Toronto or bigger cities so people in those fields wont leave these bigger cities.

The problem with monetizing this service is because there are many immigration watsapp groups with many members in it. So when one member buys this service, he can simply broadcast this notification to his watsapp groups. I even made the service free, but no takers. Anyways it worked for me, changed my life !

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#245

Post by pavanred »

I had just moved to USA from the other side of the world as a student. And, most of the sports I follow like F1, tennis, cricket, football (soccer) were happening mainly in Europe/Asia/Australia, and that means most of the live action happened in the middle of the night for me because of the timezones. I started missing lot of sporting action that I used to follow. I used Linux Mint + Cinnamon back then, so I created an cinnamon applet that displayed live scores, upcoming games and recently finished results on my desktop menubar.

cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/applets/view/115

I don't maintain it anymore, and I donated the applet to the linux mint team (they moved many applets to the main linux mint cinnamon spices repo recently)

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#246

Post by mrfusion »

tfolbrecht wrote: post #146

One of the biggest automation arena improvements I've made in my life is creating visual cue reminders and systems for a sort of stateful orderliness. When the laundry basket gets full past the painter tape line, I do a load. I load the dishwasher after dinner, and unload it in the morning regardless of the volume. Got a roomba that runs every other day and cries when it's full of dirt. I have NFC stickers that link…

I’d love to get a 3d printer for 160! Can you point me in the right direction? (Or add me to your alert)

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#247

Post by hellothere007 »

kakwa_ wrote: post #187
hellothere007 wrote: post #5

I had a cron job that sends automatically a text to my wife each morning along with a joke, she's in another country so is something I did to keep the communication open

Reminds me of the day when, while helping debugging stuff on my father's old Solaris server, I came across a email_birthday.sh script run by a cronjob every year at my mother's birthday. They are happily married for more than 40 years and counting ^^.

this is another webjob I did but for my father's business, it sends the company's clients an email and text wishing them happy birthday :)

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#248

Post by emodendroket »

colemannugent wrote: post #172
LukeLambert wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who clicks the unsubscribe link? I live by Inbox Zero and I've been giving out my email address for over a decade (500+ sites and services in 1Password), but I very rarely receive marketing emails because I always unsubscribe. In the US, it's a law that businesses must comply with opt-out requests. Do most people feel their inbox is too far gone to manage manually?

I ignore them mainly because it's easier. Facebook alone might send me 10 emails a day begging me to come back. If someone was smart, clicking the unsubscribe link would only validate that the address the mailer was sent to was being used. I suspect that several services do this either via the unsubscribe link or a pixel tracker.

Yeah, but that's now illegal, so only the real reprobates do it.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#249

Post by mrfusion »

tfolbrecht wrote: post #146

One of the biggest automation arena improvements I've made in my life is creating visual cue reminders and systems for a sort of stateful orderliness. When the laundry basket gets full past the painter tape line, I do a load. I load the dishwasher after dinner, and unload it in the morning regardless of the volume. Got a roomba that runs every other day and cries when it's full of dirt. I have NFC stickers that link…

Can I set up a nfc system like that for iPhone??

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#250

Post by mrfusion »

tfolbrecht wrote: post #146

One of the biggest automation arena improvements I've made in my life is creating visual cue reminders and systems for a sort of stateful orderliness. When the laundry basket gets full past the painter tape line, I do a load. I load the dishwasher after dinner, and unload it in the morning regardless of the volume. Got a roomba that runs every other day and cries when it's full of dirt. I have NFC stickers that link…

How do you make the roomba cry?
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