Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#481

Post by KolmogorovComp » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 2:09 PM UTC

A_Venom_Roll wrote: post #432

marginalia_nu wrote: post #354

I was annoyed by Wikipedia's noisy design choices, so I built a very scaled down read-friendly mirror of Wikipedia that presents the text as though it was a book, doing away with inline links. It's desktop-first as I don't really use mobile browsers, my fingers are too big. https://encyclopedia.marginalia.nu/article/Hacker_News

I like this. How does this work? Is there an api you use to obtain the text from the wiki articles?

> The wikipedia contents are from OpenZIM dumps, which typically lag behind the main Wikipedia project by up to a year.

(edit: too late)

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#482

Post by PBnFlash » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 2:10 PM UTC

Scheduling events with lots of people and timezones was always a pain. Stick an epoch time into a url for a static portable timer.

https://aisle99.com/cd/?d=s5ub7o&t=Game%20Night!

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#483

Post by DecoPerson » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 2:10 PM UTC

Using TypeScript + Node + esbuild + my own build system (that lets me do hygenic macros!! and also codegen), I have made:

Accounting system (creditors/payments, debtors/billing, bank reconciliation) with optimised workflows suited to our businesses (which exports to Xero so we have a “real” accounting system too). Has a touch of AI — I use ChatGPT to help with bank reconciliation.

Lots of tools related to the above. Like automating budget reports and stuff.

“megasearch” which is just a lightweight interface that wraps full text search queries of Everything (for files), Microsoft Graph (for emails, tasks & calendar), and Fuse.js (for iMessages, Telegram, & WhatsApp messages that I manually import). I really want to automate message importing, and I really really want to make this search actual file contents (alas Everything gets slow if you index content), and I really reallly really want to make this use a vector DB and AI search!

“video-clone” — paste any video url and it downloads it using yt-dlp, uploads it to my file server, and gives me a public URL.

Parcel inventory system for our post office. This was the most involved. I made an Android app AND REGRET USING REACT NATIVE! Version 2, which is nearly done, is a simple Java app with a web view. Version 1 has been used by staff since September 2022, handling thousands of parcels per day, with very little maintenance! It’s mostly a CRUD app, but I’m quite proud of it.

I also use this Node platform for random stuff — like one-off scripts for scraping web content, or crunching some spreadsheets in a way that’s annoying to do with just formulas or Excel’s other features.

Having an environment that is batteries-included, debugging-friendly, logged, connected, scheduler’d, web UI’d, CLI’d, etc, plus that I’m familiar with makes programming far more suited as a pocketknife tool. Oh, especially when it comes to dates, times, and datetime formatting! TC39 + my helper methods = less fear of dates

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#484

Post by msdrigg » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 2:10 PM UTC

I created a Roku remote for macOS. Before I made the app, there was 50 iOS remote apps but none of them had a native macOS version. For a while I used the testing client that I found on Roku’s developer site, but it didn’t have volume buttons.

Building it gave me a chance to learn modern iOS dev and SwiftUI. And I even had a bit of fun playing around with audio streaming protocols to get the private listening feature working!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/roam-a-better-remote-for-roku/...

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#485

Post by danmaz74 » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

I created an app to improve faster at chess using puzzles and spaced repetitions. About a year ago I converted it into a public web app: https://chess.braimax.com/

Right now I'm in a hiatus in development (as I had to find a new job) but I'm planning to go back to it in some time.

Tactically I achieved a substantial improvement using it.

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#486

Post by linsomniac » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

The beginning of October I started working on an experiment: What if Ansible used python syntax instead of YAML. I'm focusing on a single-machine use case, and also Cookie Cutter use cases.

https://linsomniac.github.io/uplaybook/tutorial/

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#487

Post by Ilasky » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

I'm making Snapress[0] as a way to stay connected with family & friends in my upcoming travels. It instantly prints a picture on my family and friends' printers as soon as I take it. Just need a raspberry pi or spare computer to run it.

I like to think about it as a Polaroid where the camera and printer are on opposite ends of the world.

[0] https://snapress.com

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#488

Post by justsaynope » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

Minor annoyances turned into OS projects:

* gui to start a timed shutdown on windows: https://github.com/a-sync/shutd.exe

* shell command to send or pipe content to slack: https://github.com/a-sync/slackr

* a discord/telegram/slack bot to show live server info, player list and population graph https://github.com/a-sync/game-server-watcher

This one was just for fun, a synchronized video player/chat app to watch movies/shows together online: https://a-sync.github.io/ws.cinema

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#489

Post by artemave » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

Years ago I switched from Firefox to Chrome and I was badly missing "translate on mouse hover" from Google Toolbar plug-in. Ended up writing it: https://github.com/artemave/translate_onhover/

I also spent years searching for a way to open file links in vim (all within a tmux session). Ended up writing it: https://github.com/artemave/tmux_super_fingers

Re: Ask HN: What apps have you created for your own use?

#490

Post by c0wb0yc0d3r » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

rlonn wrote: post #135

franze wrote: post #124

I mostly code my own games with a target group of 1, my favourites are http://lalo.li/lsd/ https://updownredgreenetc.franzai.com/ https://spinner.franzai.com/ https://dance.franzai.com/ (basically a lava lamp you can interact with) from the app side i like https://qrpwd.franzai.com/ coded to save my 2 factor backup codes qr encoded and encrypted in my photo stream and https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/thisismy a com…

http://lalo.li/lsd/ was really cool. You should make a mobile app out of it

It worked just fine on my phone