Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#301

Post by robxorb » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 6:26 PM UTC

ycuser2 wrote: post #202

I made a small tool that takes a screenshot all 5 minutes and stores it in a password protected zip file, but only if something has changed on screen. Sometimes I go through the old screenshots and get nostalgic as the oldest are 10 years already. I spend so much time of my life on my computer, so why not take photos of it?

That is so cool! It'd be amazing to see a timelapse of the past ten years of someones computer life.

Assuming 8 hours/day average of active screenshots every 5 minutes, would be (8*60)/5 = 96 shots per day. Times 3650 for ten years is 350,400. Divide by 60fps is 5840 seconds, by 60 is 98 minutes. So a decent movie length, as a single video.

Though, I imagine it'd be unfeasible to go through every screenshot and remove sensitive information.

(At a rough ballpark: if it took 20 seconds on average, to analyse and either bin or selectively-censor each screenshot, it'd take about a full working year, 8 hours per day.)

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#302

Post by dhuan_ » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 6:28 PM UTC

I built mock, an api tool and testing utility to be able to quickly manipulate API responses and act as a proxy server at the same time.

After some time, I decided to open-source it:

https://dhuan.github.io/mock/

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#303

Post by uptownfunk » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 6:28 PM UTC

why does everyone make their own note taking app - is it easier to specify the app in code than to build an app that gives you what you want?

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#304

Post by windowshopping » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 6:29 PM UTC

Yeah, built an entire magic the gathering sandbox to play online with friends because I wasn't happy with existing options. Mentioned it once in another thread here but have otherwise never shared it.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#305

Post by idatum » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 6:30 PM UTC

Often for me, it's building my own software around another FOS project. Home Assistant (HA) is a good example. I have several sensors that I collect via my own Zigbee, BLE, and RTL-SDR clients which output readings as MQTT messages.

The only thing HA does it display them via their MQTT sensor/event entities. I'm not a big fan of developing UIs.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#306

Post by SimpleCaveman » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 6:30 PM UTC

The last thing I made exclusively for myself and nobody else was a shopping list calculator that added tax to the shopping list as a kid on my TI-83 graphing calculator. Programmed in Basic, and I would use it to add up the items going I to the shopping cart while my parents shopped at Sams club as a kid.

And I'd tell them what the final total would be when we were standing in the checkout line.

Very small and basic, but I thought it was the coolest thing in the world as an 11 year old back in 1996.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#307

Post by _lvbh » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 6:30 PM UTC

I have a bunch of random scripts, executables, Python files, etc scattered all over my computer.

Some more often used ones: - A script that manages my Music files (add/rm/search) and syncs them with my phone when connected via ifuse+rsync

- a CLI to really easily deal with port forwarding because I run a lot of stuff on my raspberry pi and old laptop which goes out to the internet via WireGuard & forwarded from my VPS

I also have local forks of a few abandoned projects with a few bug fixes or minor added features. Ought to find alternatives but too lazy

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#308

Post by aranchelk » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 6:34 PM UTC

Assistive technology, I made a head-tracking mouse replacement. I’ve now used it almost every day at work for a decade. It’s open source but AFAIK no one else is using it:

https://github.com/aranchelk/headmouse

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#309

Post by ceritium » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 6:34 PM UTC

keepthis.site its open, i did It for me, there are some signip but i think i am the only active user.

Also consumebefore.jose.gr and a few small tools you can find on my blog.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#310

Post by burlingplane » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 6:34 PM UTC

I've been incrementing on a Next.js app for three years now, which helps me tracks all sorts of things that used to be scattered across different apps.

It holds stuff like:

- A daily journal, plus a curated photo for each day that I can put on a calendar

- Random habits I want to track, like how many cups of coffee I had, did I do my morning stretches, etc.

- Fill-ups and mileage on my car, time to next oil change

- Restaurants I've visited, plus ones I want to visit (I use the Google Places API to search for restaurants)

- Books I've read/want to read

- Movies/TV shows I've watched, and ones I want to watch (I use TMDB to pull in metadata about movies/shows). I also sync my watchlist from Letterboxd

- Strength exercises I do, plus runs + bike rides that I pull in from the Strava API

I used to use several proprietary apps to track these things (Letterboxd, Goodreads, etc), but it's great having them in one place, and with tight control over the database. It's amazing how useful it is to have a log of everything you've done to look back on. Even simple stuff like, last time I was at this restaurant was 2 years ago. What did I order and did I like it?