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Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

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Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#431

Post by pavel_lishin »

kingkool68 wrote: post #321
tfolbrecht wrote: post #146

One of the biggest automation arena improvements I've made in my life is creating visual cue reminders and systems for a sort of stateful orderliness. When the laundry basket gets full past the painter tape line, I do a load. I load the dishwasher after dinner, and unload it in the morning regardless of the volume. Got a roomba that runs every other day and cries when it's full of dirt. I have NFC stickers that link…

One of the best life hacks I found is to buy those stackable laundry baskets and sort them as you wear them instead of dumping them all in one and sorting right before doing laundry.

99% of my clothing are pants, shorts, underwear, t-shirts and socks, and I've never felt the need to sort them - everything goes into a washer, then a dryer, then gets sorted into dresser/closet. Are your clothes significantly different from mine, or is there an actual benefit to washing your socks separately from your pants?

(Or are you talking about separating things like sheets, towels, etc?)

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#432

Post by needcaffeine »

chrsstrm wrote: post #375
artpi wrote: post #102

I have set up a battery of scripts on google app engine and Im pretty happy with it. 1. I have a script to automatically buy small amount of BTC every day 2. For the more knowledge-dense books I read, I write summaries of them ( https://piszek.com/books/ ). I have a script that puts a random book review to my pocket for reviewing every week 3. I have an instagram account of lego minifig ( https://www.instagram.com/le…

Why doesn't #7 send a message to you so you can wish them happy birthday?

Because a calendar reminder was already not helping himmer send out the greeting.

Source: doesn’t work for me.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#433

Post by jumelles »

chrisseaton wrote: post #380
santaclaus wrote: post #86

In college I wrote a script to register for classes. I'd input the potentially-full classes I'd like to register for, and it would just hammer the registration site repeatedly until someone removed themselves from the class at which point I'd be registered. I'm still amazed IT didn't pull the network connection to my dorm room or have any kind of rate limiting. No 8am sessions for me!

I occasionally hear about students in US colleges having to compete for places in classes like this. How does it happen? Why does the college admit more people than it has class space for? In the UK they don’t enroll more people than they can teach so everyone has a place.

Also keep in mind that usually in the US, college students can sign up for any class as long as it doesn't have specific prerequisites - at large schools that means you'd be able to take just about any intro-level class you wanted to, regardless of your major. I'm not sure it works like that in the UK.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#435

Post by havetocharge »

kristofferR wrote: post #325
_tsz4 wrote: post #87

Passive learning. Whenever I come across something cool or interesting, I put it into a chrome extension I made called "Harvest". It sends me email reminders of what I've added on a spaced repetition schedule (1, 7, 17, 35 days into the future) for optimal retention https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/harvest-grow-your-...

Man, this is awesome. Now that Firefox has become so vastly better than Chrome (who would have expected that a year ago?) you should port it to Firefox too.

How much better? Any reference to a comparison?

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#436

Post by yorwba »

When I connect to the Ethernet cable at home, my laptop automatically goes into hotspot mode, so I can connect to it with my phone. The router I share doesn't have a strong enough signal in my room.

When I connect to the WLAN at uni, my speakers get muted. I'm never the guy who wakes everyone up during a lecture because he left his speakers on.

After 23:00 my browser gets killed and the screen is locked. It has worked quite well to make me go to sleep earlier.

I also have a script to lock my screen every full hour for a break. That has worked less well, since I tend to be in the middle of something and log right back in to finish it "quickly".

Those are all implemented as messy Bash scripts that poll some commands and grep for keywords, but it gets the job done.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#437

Post by jaxn »

I am in a entrepreneur support group with 6 other founders. We have a little health contest going to encourage physical activity. We also have a GroupMe (this group has been together for 6 years).

I used Zapier to create a GroupMe bot (webhooks) to watch for posts reporting activity and logs it to a google docs spreadsheet. It also watches for requests to see the current score and reports the score.

The whole thing is just GroupMe, Zapier (with about 10 lines of JavaScript as one of the steps),and a Google doc.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#438

Post by taneq »

t1o5 wrote: post #228
snadwich wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you convert this into a paid service? Sounds amazing!

I did, hosted at sinpnotifier.com, Saskatchewan province is not that attractive for skilled immigrants. Had one sale though, then I shut it down.

Well, you'd want to make it a /bit/ more generic, surely? Like, "load this url and send a text to this number if the (page text | diff) matches this regexp"?

Even allow people to create presets that would then be added as a generic thing. You could use it for camping all sorts of intermittent online things (web site specials, online ticket pre-orders, etc.)

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#439

Post by chrsstrm »

needcaffeine wrote: post #432
chrsstrm wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't #7 send a message to you so you can wish them happy birthday?

Because a calendar reminder was already not helping himmer send out the greeting. Source: doesn’t work for me.

You must miss a lot of meetings and appointments.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#440

Post by coda_ »

fomojola wrote: post #99
coda_ wrote: post #25

I used a raspberry pi to control my TV using HDMI-CEC and exposed a subset of the controls through a web API allowing me to turn on/off my TV from my phone or voice controlled from a google home. I did this because a chromecast will turn on my TV and set it to the correct input, but it wouldn't turn off the TV. Turning the TV off was the only reason I needed to touch my remote control at all. But just recently google…

Side note: what TV do you have? I've found that most Samsungs and many other TVs don't respond to the HDMI-CEC off signal. Was quite disappointed.

Hey, I have a Sony. it supports being turned on and to the correct input by a Chromecast using HDMI-CEC. I think, like the other guy said, there may be a setting to enable it on your Samsung. I know someone with a Samsung that it works for (the turning on works for sure, not sure about the changing input and turning off). It may be called something different in your tv settings though... I'm sure you can google it. Good luck!
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