Ask HN: What tasks do you automate? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#261

Post by thirdsun » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 7:01 AM UTC

shade23 wrote: post #34

- Downloading a song of youtube, adding meta data via beets and moving to my music lib - Adding tasks to my todolist client from every app I use(including my bookmarking service when I bookmark with specific tags) - Changing terminal colours based on time of the day(lower brightness in the evenings and hence dark colours, too much sunlight in the mornings and hence solarized themes) - Automatically message people who…

> - Downloading a song of youtube, adding meta data via beets and moving to my music lib

I don't want to be that guy, but a music collection made of probably repeatedly lossy encoded Youtube rips sounds as if it doesn't deserve the name. Not to mention the whole piracy angle - I'm not trying to claim moral authority, but music is DRM-free and reasonably priced these days. There are hardly any arguments for piracy left.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#262

Post by reddavis » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 7:09 AM UTC

I automated my dehumidifier.

I wrote about it here: https://red.to/blog/2016/9/15/automatically-controlling-a-de...

and OS'd the Rails app: https://github.com/reddavis/Nest-Dehumidifier

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#263

Post by egypturnash » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 7:10 AM UTC

murukesh_s wrote: post #255

TruthSHIFT wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some news for you. You are a programmer.

I was wondering who he thinks a programmer is?

She.

A programmer is someone who can program a computer, and chooses to call themselves a programmer. If absolutely nobody is willing to pay them to do so then maybe they're lying when they call themselves one.

If you ask me what I do, I'm not gonna say "I program computers", I'm gonna say "I draw comics and stuff". Because that's what I spend my work life doing. And occasionally I need to do some tedious task, and find a way to automate it, because I spent enough time in my youth fooling around with programming that I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty now and then.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#264

Post by glaberficken » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 7:23 AM UTC

ajarmst wrote: post #22

I'm the kind of nerd who greatly prefers writing automation code to doing anything remotely repetitive. (I'm afraid to work out the actual timings because I'm pretty sure that I often spend more time coming up with the automation than just doing the task would take). I've got a script that automatically rips, converts and stitches together audiobooks from the library so that I can play them on my phone. It just beeps…

>(I'm afraid to work out the actual timings because I'm pretty sure that I often spend more time coming up with the automation than just doing the task would take).

You can use this calculator to estimate how much time is worth investing in automating a particular task =)

https://c.albert-thompson.com/xkcd/

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#265

Post by ldp01 » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 7:27 AM UTC

Clicking! I wrote a powershell script for Windows which mimicks the autoclick functionality which Ubuntu has in it's accessibility options. I also added double/triple clicking by twitching the mouse a bit.

It takes some getting used to but I feel it helps avoid forearm soreness.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#266

Post by l0b0 » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 7:28 AM UTC

Some of my own projects that I've ended up using frequently - you can see what they do from the command structure:

  mkgithub ~/dev/new-project

  fgit pull -- ~/*/.git/.. ~/dev/*/.git/..

  ~/dev/tilde/.screenlayout/right-tack.sh

And some less frequently used tools:

  mount-image ./*.iso

  vcard ~/contacts/*.vcf

  ~/dev/vcard/sort-lines.sh ~/dev/vcard/sorts/Gmail.re ~/contacts/*.vcf

  img2scad  example.scad

  indentect  example.scad

  schemaspy2svg ~/db

So yeah, automate all the things.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#267

Post by w3news » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 7:39 AM UTC

I write a browser extension so i dont have to click or type a lot on some websites. Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickr/ Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clickr/kbegiheknic...

Also very usefull as web developer to test some javascript on a website.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#268

Post by ragebol » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 7:39 AM UTC

kiith_naabal wrote: post #259

egypturnash wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If doing that stuff over about 4 or 5 years or so makes me a programmer, then I'm also a carpenter, because I've put together a few pieces of furniture over the same span.

My personal definition is that a programmer is someone who can write a computer program, and a developer is someone who writes computer programs for money. So you're a programmer, but not a developer. In the same way that you might be called a woodworker, but not a carpenter.

I like to think that a 'developer' or 'software engineer' is someone who can program not to just make it work, but addresses other concerns as well.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#269

Post by nitemice » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 7:40 AM UTC

tjalfi wrote: post #176

saimiam wrote: post #124

My day to day decisions are mostly automated - what to eat for breakfast? what clothes to wear any given day of the week? when to walk my dog and for how long? When to leave work and which back roads route to take to get back home? Lunch options? When to call the folks? Exercise schedule? All automated. It gets a little repetitive and boring at times but I'm able to save so much time and energy this way to focus on w…

This reminds me of a quote from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynmann! . When you're young, you have all these things to worry about - should you go there, what about your mother. And you worry, and try to decide, but then something else comes up. It's much easier to just plain decide. Never mind - nothing is going to change your mind. I did that once when I was a student at MIT. I got sick and tired of having to decide…

I've started to adopt a similar practice, although a somewhat more flexible one.

Whenever I'm at a restaurant, or ordering food for whatever reason, I will check the menu for an item that prominently contains mushrooms. If such an item exists (and it doesn't sound awful or ridiculously expensive), then that's what I'm getting. Decision made.

I started doing this mainly because I like mushrooms, enough that it felt like a really easy way to hand off decision making. It's also good in that, unlike the above, I don't get just the exact same thing every time (although mushroom burgers are starting to seem pretty same-y).

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#270

Post by MichaelMoser123 » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 8:01 AM UTC

singold wrote: post #208

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #88

In 2003 I had a perl script to query the job boards for keywords , scrap the result and send out an application email with CV attached to it (I took care to send one application to a single email). I think this was a legitimate form of spamming - at that moment the local job market was very bad.

That's cool, did you manage to get a job that way back then?

positive. Also I think to have mentioned it at the interview, it seems to have made a good impression on at least one interviewer.