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Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#401

Post by jjgo »

nicoburns wrote: post #392
schappim wrote: post #391

I made a macOS script that OCRs text on screen. It is super handy for dealing with everything from scanned documents with account numbers to web pages with text in images. When I press F16, I get an image capture cursor, and the area selected is turned into text. Example: https://files.littlebird.com.au/Screen-Recording-2021-05-17-...

Can you share it? That sounds pretty useful!

Not op, but I wrote something equivalent based on a linux script that I found [1]. Here's the mac version of the script [2]. You need tesseract [3] installed for the OCR. For launching it using a keyboard shortcut I use a hammerspoon [4]. Example of how I bind it [5]

[1] https://github.com/sdushantha/bin/blob/master/utils/ocr

[2] https://github.com/JJGO/dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/bin/ocr

[3] https://pypi.org/project/pytesseract/

[4] http://www.hammerspoon.org/

[5] https://github.com/JJGO/dotfiles/blob/master/mac/.hammerspoo...

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#403

Post by jjgo »

deepdmistry wrote: post #397
schappim wrote: post #391

I made a macOS script that OCRs text on screen. It is super handy for dealing with everything from scanned documents with account numbers to web pages with text in images. When I press F16, I get an image capture cursor, and the area selected is turned into text. Example: https://files.littlebird.com.au/Screen-Recording-2021-05-17-...

Please share if possible, this is very useful

Not the original poster, but this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27177609) how I do the same thing

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#404

Post by acj »

Last year I built a tool for visualizing log file volume (based on time) in your terminal [1]. Similar tools exist, but none were fast enough or easy to set up in a hurry, e.g. when you're investigating a production outage.

The year before that, a tool for visualizing ping latency as a heatmap [2]. My laptop's wifi had developed a severe latency stutter every ~500ms that was driving me nuts when using SSH and other interactive tools, not to mention killing my throughput. Once I could visualize it and saw the pattern, it was very clear that there was a system-level issue. Eventually traced it to a virtualization product's network driver.

It's definitely a pattern for me -- feel frustrated with diagnostic and data viz tools that are either too slow to handle or too complex to configure when I need them, and try to build simple tools that solve exactly the problems I keep bumping into. These smaller projects also provide good opportunities to practice with new languages or frameworks.

[1] https://github.com/acj/krapslog-rs (also krapslog-go)

[2] https://github.com/acj/pingrok

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#405

Post by djedr »

majewsky wrote: post #264
djedr wrote: post #205

Created TAO[0] -- a minimal syntax that's even simpler than S-expressions. Building notations on top of it, currently focusing on one for data -- an alternative to XML, JSON et al. Open-source, prototyping on GitHub[1]. Keepin' it simple ain't easy. [0] https://tree-annotation.org/ [1] https://github.com/tree-annotation

Is this not too little syntax, though? The two JSON documents { "foo": true } { "foo": "true" } would both have to map to the same TAO representation: foo [true]

Yes, Data TAO as shown on the website maps to a subset of JSON with only one primitive type (string).

However this is by design.

The idea is to provide only the most generic constructs, decouple specialized data types from the core syntax and enforce/interpret them on a separate layer.

An ad hoc (but perfectly sensible IMO) way to apply this idea to the example is: if foo is supposed to be a string then no need to do anything (that's the default primitive). If it's supposed to be a boolean, then parse it as such (e.g. 'true' -> true, 'false' -> false, error otherwise; or even error if typeof JSON.parse(value) !== 'boolean' in JS).

A non-ad hoc data type layer for TAO is something I've thought about a lot and it's still baking.

Two basic (non-exclusive) ways to do this:

1. Inline/mixed with the data -- type annotations, op-based literals

2. Separated from the data -- schema-based

Example designs for the 1st point:

    foo [`t]
    foo`: boolean [true]
    foo`: json [true]
All of these would associate the boolean `true` with `foo`.

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#406

Post by NetOpWibby »

nlh wrote: post #206

I built an open source library/mini-framework to seamlessly integrate a Svelte (JS) frontend with a Crystal backend. It's really fun to build apps with this! https://nlh.me/projects/celestite Still very much a WIP, but it works. You can build your front-end in pure Svelte components and it supports server-side rendering, client-side hydration, and all that good stuff. I did this entirely to scratch my own itch - I lo…

I find Crystal fascinating but I haven't been able to internalize non-web languages just yet.

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#407

Post by schappim »

jjgo wrote: post #401
nicoburns wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share it? That sounds pretty useful!

Not op, but I wrote something equivalent based on a linux script that I found [1]. Here's the mac version of the script [2]. You need tesseract [3] installed for the OCR. For launching it using a keyboard shortcut I use a hammerspoon [4]. Example of how I bind it [5] [1] https://github.com/sdushantha/bin/blob/master/utils/ocr [2] https://github.com/JJGO/dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/bin/ocr [3] https://pypi.org/projec…

Nice, I started with tesseract, but moved to Google Vision as the quality was better.

Azure's offering was better for hand written notes.

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#408

Post by NetOpWibby »

h3rald wrote: post #270

Here's most of the stuff that I built myself (and that I still use on a regular basis): - fae [ https://h3rald.com/fae ] · a minuscule find and edit utility - h3 [ https://h3.js.org ] · an extremely simple javascript microframework - hastyscribe [ https://h3rald.com/hastyscribe ] · a professional markdown compiler - hastysite [ https://hastysite.h3rald.com ] · a high-performance static site generator - herald [ https…

Well damn!

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#409

Post by djedr »

neolog wrote: post #299
djedr wrote: post #205

Created TAO[0] -- a minimal syntax that's even simpler than S-expressions. Building notations on top of it, currently focusing on one for data -- an alternative to XML, JSON et al. Open-source, prototyping on GitHub[1]. Keepin' it simple ain't easy. [0] https://tree-annotation.org/ [1] https://github.com/tree-annotation

Is your project related to the tree notation project or are you the same guy?

If you mean https://treenotation.org/ then it's completely unrelated.

I saw this recently on the front page. Was pretty confused myself. Domain name is very similar and what the project is about seems to overlap, but ultimately it goes in a different direction.

TAO is my independent original project, but it makes sense that there is > 1 person making an effort to figure this stuff out.

Re: Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?

#410

Post by shinycode »

I made an iOS app that is structured around the same idea of a Bullet Journal. Is allows me to segment my tasks by priority of today / this week / this month and later. Even on paper that’s a nice system that works pretty well to get things done.

I also built an Apple Watch that set a timer by adding prime numbers up to 59 minutes. That was fun to do as an experiment. I use more often the other way of setting the timer: by choosing the end time. It’s faster than the default app and when I can’t use Siri.

https://bulletweek.app

https://primetimer.app

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