Ask HN: Tools you have made for yourself? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Tools you have made for yourself?

#261

Post by lukaszkups » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

https://www.npmjs.com/package/tavuelo - I've created own Vue.js table plugin because I was so annoyed with customizing another table from UI library for the 100th time to achieve similar result so I've created a dedicated solution that will cover most common problems/requirements I need to develop at work.

https://github.com/writteli/writteli - I've created static site generator because I've wanted something that suits my needs for 100% and I won't need to "fight" with the 3rd party solutions to achieve what I want. Also I've wanted to learn something during the process. I'm using it on daily basis to maintain my website (https://lukaszkups.net) and also now I'm working on a desktop app that will be compatible with it.

https://github.com/mrmnmly/scaffolder - I was sick of creating boilerplate code over and over again when I was doing my baby steps with Meteor.js so I've created a stupid simple bash script that will generate it for me.

Re: Ask HN: Tools you have made for yourself?

#262

Post by bool3max » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

fikama wrote: post #180

bool3max wrote: post #166

I recently wrote a shell script bound to a keyboard shortcut, that pops up a window with a text input field that accepts LaTeX input, and immediately converts it to a JPG that is then copied to the clipboard. Super useful.

Sounds cool, but do you use it for anything other than math equations? I am just curious

Not really, though I can provide any valid LaTeX input and get the appropriate result back. To be honest the setup is not ideal, as the input is first converted to a PDF file (that has to be saved in a temporary directory, along with other residual files, as "pdflatex" doesn't support stdout/stdin, for some reason), and only then to an image. Still though, it's much snappier than relying on online "latex to image" converters that basically do the same thing on a server somewhere.

Re: Ask HN: Tools you have made for yourself?

#263

Post by vsto » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

deckard1 wrote: post #174

k2enemy wrote: post #28

Probably not the kind of tool you are asking about, but I made a pair of woodworking planes that cut a quarter inch wide, quarter inch deep groove a quarter of an inch from the edge of a board. This operation is commonly needed for drawer bottoms and raised paneling. Two symmetric planes are needed so that you can always work with the rising grain of the wood. You can buy adjustable grooving planes and old molding pl…

The amount of woodworking jigs and tools people develop on their own is fascinating. Some of these woodworkers on youtube spend more time creating jigs than actually building things. Matthias Wandel for example is a wizard. It's really similar to programming tools. Often, tinkering is more fun than finishing large projects.

The guy from "Aging Wheels" at YouTube, who by the way is a former software engineer, has a second woodworking channel channel called "Under Dunn". The last video was about a DIY Centrifugal Dust Separator [1]. It was a pretty cool video.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2OStvRteRE.

Re: Ask HN: Tools you have made for yourself?

#264

Post by corny » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

I wrote a command line journal called 'did' that shows me what I did on this day over the last five years (like a 5 year diary). I enter a ton of items every day which all end up in text files. Only items including an asterisk will be repeated back to me in future years.

Inspired by: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17538697

Re: Ask HN: Tools you have made for yourself?

#265

Post by bool3max » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

aloisdg wrote: post #257

Recently I released a webapp to fix a problem I faced. I can paste any image from my clipboard (mostly screenshot in my case) to get its base64 version so I can integrate it directly in any markdown: https://paste64.vercel.app/ It was also an excuse to try out Svelte with TypeScript: https://github.com/aloisdg/paste64

Seems like a fun learning project, but in the real world it's very counterproductive. You can obtain the base64 representation of the current clipboard contents very quickly using a single terminal shell command.

Re: Ask HN: Tools you have made for yourself?

#266

Post by franze » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

My SEO Live Test Framework

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/franz-enzenhofer-s...

Runs a lot of SEO checks (including Google Search Console Data) over your websites Static,Rendered and Idle DOM

Built it cause I can and put lots of my technical SEO edge cases knowledge in there.

Re: Ask HN: Tools you have made for yourself?

#267

Post by agency » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

A couple years ago I moved somewhere where my only internet option is satellite (HughesNet). The data caps are pretty low (50 GB per month) but if you use data on the “bonus zone” (midnight to 8am IIRC) you get an additional 50GB quota, so I wrote a tool that lets me queue up YouTube videos to download in the middle of the night. It’s a pretty simple collection of scripts that shell out to youtube-dl. I wrote it in TypeScript just because that’s what I was writing at work at the time: https://github.com/dylanscott/downlater

I’m still using it often a couple years later, though I’m hoping my Starlink pre-order will come through soon and render it obsolete.

Re: Ask HN: Tools you have made for yourself?

#268

Post by gmac » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

Really simple mouse gestures for macOS (after xGestures became unreliable for me). Right-drag to the left to go back, or to the right to go forward. Only a few hundred lines of Objective-C.

Then I cleaned it up a bit and submitted it to the Mac App Store, and was pleasantly surprised it was approved. I think it’s the only mouse gestures app on there.

Re: Ask HN: Tools you have made for yourself?

#269

Post by mattkevan » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

This isn’t anywhere near as impressive as some of the examples here, but anyway:

I run an Etsy store that sells artwork. One of the most time-consuming tasks was creating the mock-ups for product listings, so I wrote a shell script that used Imagemagick to automatically generate all the images.

I was pretty pleased as I’d never written a Bash script before and it saves hours and hours of work.

I also wrote a Ruby script that uses the Etsy API to generate a fully-working Jekyll e-commerce site from my Etsy store’s listings. Much better that paying Shopify plus a bunch of other apps for pretty much the same thing.

Re: Ask HN: Tools you have made for yourself?

#270

Post by benfrancom » Sat, Jun 12, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

A window sill-desk/laptop stand. I could place my laptop on this and look out the window at the same time whilst working. At the place I used to work we had some awesome views of the mountains, especially on the upper floors. I couldn’t stand staring at cubicle walls, so I would take breaks to walk around and see the amazing views. Eventually, I made the sweet desk. I could have my laptop on top with a wireless keyboard, or put the laptop below. I cut it to the dimensions of my height and where I like to rest my hands. There were some silicone strips/bumpers underneath to keep it from slipping or sliding or scratching the wall. Pics: https://photos.app.goo.gl/VJLQqUhzHjPt4uCB8