Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

I struggled with procrastination a lot so on top of Pi-Hole I built myself an automatic procrastination tracker and blocker, this setup helped reduce my procrastination from several hours a day to almost nothing (over the period of several years of slowly unlearning the bad habits)

I live in a Hurricane/Typhoon zone and wanted a way to watch storm live status without all the panicked commentary. I had an old Chromecast laying around and discovered that it is just a web browser so I built a simple html image bouncer that auto refreshes the latest satellite image of the storm, lets you crop in, etc. It works amazingly well for days of peaceful live coverage. An unexpected side perk is my kids can now tell the category (strength) of the storm based purely on the satellite image. Turns out the code works for pretty much anything with a browser and any situation where there is an updating image at a static URL. So I’ve used it for a number of other things too. I put it all at https://github.com/antgiant/GOES-East-Big-Screen

I've written a bouncing color bar for Amiga, which was running without the processor.

Amiga computers have

- a main processor (MC68000 or higher),

- a bit blitter, which can perform memory various operations in memory (using 3x source and 1x target, it can AND, OR etc. them),

- and a Copper, which have own "program", it can interpret 2 type of instructions: WAIT for a scanline position (4-pixel precision), and COPY value to a specified regsiter.

It was the name, which made me think: "Copper" is coming from "coprocessor". Well, it can run WAIT and COPY instructions, but the program's time-scope is somewhat restricted, the program is running every screen refresh cycle only once. Is it possible to write a program for Copper, which is doing some more, like animation?

I've generated several color bar frames for Copper, which adds up as a bouncing bar, and as the last instructions, I've added a COPY instruction, which sets the address of the Copper List to the next frame (the last one pointed to first frame).

So, it worked, the bar was bouncing without any support from the processor (besides initial generation and setting of the Copper List address first time).

Blitter and audio DMA is fantastic, it's a big help that the processor just puts an order to a hardware and it executes, but Copper is a degree more bigger magic, it can make things autonomously, which I was demonstrated.

This has big Anno-series "You've been playing for [x] hours!" notification energy. I love it. Both of those game series are incredible time sinks.

I recently constructed a compact compost freezer. In San Francisco, we have a municipal compost collection service that picks up large bins from the curb. However, using a smaller container on the countertop often results in unpleasant odors, flies, and torn, soggy bags. My (now) wife introduced me to the idea of storing a small compost bag in our freezer, which solved these issues but consumed valuable freezer space. To address this, I designed a mini freezer with the form factor of a small floor trash can, featuring a foot-operated lid.