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

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

#351

Post by micvbang »

I've had many use cases for using an event broker, but never found one that was simple enough that I would venture into hosting it myself, or cheap enough to rent/host that it was feasible. Once I realized that cloud object stores fit this problem perfectly (they provide durability and are cheap to use), I realized that it would be possible to write one myself. I wrote a post on it here, along with a tiny performance evaluation: https://blog.vbang.dk/2024/05/26/seb/

I spent the better part of a week working on it full time, but spread over months. I use it daily - it's serving the needs of multiple projects that I needed it for :)

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

#352

Post by aspenmayer »

gwbas1c wrote: post #155

I have a lot of DVD-Audio and BluRay audio disks that I rip to play in Kodi. I wrote a utility that scans through audio files to generate a list of track names, and script to encode images for each track into a video (without sound) to multiplex with the audio. Years ago, I wrote a .exe to change screen resolution, and then revert when closed. I used it when my old laptop had a composite out, and I would watch moves…

> More recently, I wrote a quick-and-dirty utility to restart explorer.exe, because it has some really silly multi-monitor bugs that require restarting the process every once in awhile.

I have had some weird issues similar to this, which the following keyboard shortcut was helpful with:

> Windows Key + Ctrl + Shift + B - Wake up the device when black or a blank screen.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/keyboard-shortcu...

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

#354

Post by qup »

galdosdi wrote: post #41

Reminds me of a classic story that makes a good programming parable: Back in 2011, my girlfriend was working at a catering company that announced shifts via a webpage and workers had to sign up for them. Other workers tended to pick them up very quickly, so it was hard to get too many shifts. I wrote a quick web scraper to automatically accept any shift offered and email her. For a couple weeks it was great, suddenly…

How'd she take it?

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

#355

Post by KerbalNo15 »

I have a lot of things like this. Mostly one-offs for bizarre stuff, like a FUSE plugin that saves data to FAT-formatted image files. Some things, though, I consider useful enough to post on Github for people who might need it. My favorite (and most-used, personally) is an app I made to copy files off of my Panasonic cameras. They still work perfectly well, but the official app no longer works to send pics via wifi. I had to reverse-engineer the entire protocol stack from network traffic, it's a doozy. I ended up implementing SSDP from scratch and faking DLNA server support, along with the miserable SOAP protocol. It's a beautiful mess, but it works. Got me back into Android development too.

https://github.com/kerbalno15/shutterlink

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

#356

Post by Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe »

I'm a medical student with FOMO and who loves AI stuff. I have about 70 public github repos that nobody uses even though I take pride in at least trying to use good code and documenting everything.

Here's a highlight (edit: more like an ego dump)

I couldn't keep up with my news so I made the perfect summarizer that goes through the thought process of the author : https://github.com/thiswillbeyourgithub/DocToolsLLM/

I needed an AI based system that go through my anki cards, but might as well make it able to read dozens of file formats. Now I can put entire medical youtube playlists, conferences, anki databases, hundreds of PDFs and ask a single question across all of them at once : also https://github.com/thiswillbeyourgithub/DocToolsLLM/

I couldn't keep up with my anki review so I made an embedding based review reranker (one of my first ever project!) : https://github.com/thiswillbeyourgithub/AnnA_Anki_neuronal_A...

I needed to make my sleep more efficient : micropython to the rescue : https://github.com/thiswillbeyourgithub/sleep_tracker_pineti...

I wanted to store everything and anything in Logseq ttps://github.com/thiswillbeyourgithub/LogseqMarkdownParser and https://github.com/thiswillbeyourgithub/LogseqPDFImporter

I was so late for my medical exams I needed to learn FAST : I made an incredible app that turns hours long recordings of you talking aloud while reading your PDF into hundreds of flashcards that learns to mimic your style by using previous validated answers etc. Using stt and LLM. This one is not out yet but will be.

Also I made scripts that automatically reformulate old bad anki cards into more appropriate ones.

As well as creating complex mnemonics stories and images automatically added to your anki cards. Not yet public.

I needed help to sort through my many todos so I made an ELO based reranker made to be used in the CLI (careful, wet paint) : https://github.com/thiswillbeyourgithub/mini_LiTOY

I wanted my anki OCR to be more legible so I made tesseracts try to preserve spacing : https://github.com/thiswillbeyourgithub/OCR_with_format

I lost my voice for some time but needed to be heard so I made speech.sh : https://github.com/thiswillbeyourgithub/speech.sh

And quite a few others.

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

#357

Post by al_borland »

I made a stupid little utility to let me calculate how long to cook something in the microwave. Most instructions are written for 1000w or 1200w microwaves, and mine is only 800w.

I put a little NFC chip near my microwave, so I can tap it with my phone to open it up when I need it.

I also run into various scenarios where I need to copy some text, do something with it, and check it off a list, over and over. It’s not worth automatic each ad-hoc thing, so I made a little webpage where I can put it all my items and when I click one, it copies the next to the clip board, checks it off the todo list, and keeps track of the last item copied for reference.

Nothing huge, just little helpful things like that.

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

#358

Post by gwbas1c »

aspenmayer wrote: post #352
gwbas1c wrote: post #155

I have a lot of DVD-Audio and BluRay audio disks that I rip to play in Kodi. I wrote a utility that scans through audio files to generate a list of track names, and script to encode images for each track into a video (without sound) to multiplex with the audio. Years ago, I wrote a .exe to change screen resolution, and then revert when closed. I used it when my old laptop had a composite out, and I would watch moves…

> More recently, I wrote a quick-and-dirty utility to restart explorer.exe, because it has some really silly multi-monitor bugs that require restarting the process every once in awhile. I have had some weird issues similar to this, which the following keyboard shortcut was helpful with: > Windows Key + Ctrl + Shift + B - Wake up the device when black or a blank screen. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/keyb…

Not the problem I'm having at all.

What happens in my case is that Explorer forgets the "When using multiple displays, show my taskbar apps on..." setting. It just randomly changes the setting in memory: I can either change the setting back and forth, or restart Explorer, and then it works correctly.

It's the oddest bug I've seen.

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

#359

Post by mimischi »

guessmyname wrote: post #172

Financial Tracking Application. I’ve been developing this app for five years. During this time, I’ve integrated it with all my bank accounts to automatically fetch data needed for creating daily graphs and analyzing trends. This allows the app to generate predictions for long-term net worth growth. Additionally, I’ve integrated the app with Yahoo Finance, Fidelity, and Morgan Stanley to monitor my Restricted Stock Un…

God, I’d be curious to see what you’ve got there. But no way in hell I’ll know how to guess your name to lookup the details.

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

#360

Post by ramenbytes »

smeej wrote: post #181
cellularmitosis wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cancelling your ISP doesn't leave you surrounded by peers who default to solving problems from scratch.

This is the same problem that comes with my desire to give up a smartphone. Getting rid of my phone doesn't make other people know how to give me directions to their house without GPS (among other problems).

At least with GPS, I've found a reasonable substitute to be an honest-to-god map. Here in LA the Thomas Guide is fantastic, but other places have "road atlases" that function similarly to my knowledge. In some ways I find it better than Google maps, because it's actually designed to be a map instead of a robot overlord dictating what you do.
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