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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?

#661
post #511
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just realized that [7] probably works only because of [8] - I always give my Twilio phone number to people and pretend with my family that this is my main number.

That is why he mentioned "verified phone number" I guess. When you have verified your own phone number you can send texts from it as well.

According to twilio's documentation you cannot send sms messages from verified phone numbers, only twilio owned phone numbers.

https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223135427-What-...

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

#662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working on my own classifier for updating my ledger because I struggled too much trying to get other people's stuff to work. I'm getting about ~90% accuracy using a SVM from scikit-learn, but it can only ever be semi-automated. My plan is that every month I'll go through my various accounts and help to update my ledger. One thing that I don't think other software does is automatically remove the duplication…

I handle transfers between accounts manually - as in when I see duplicates show up, I remove one of them. A neat thing that ledger-reconciler does is to print the balance (as listed on the banking website) for each account. That information combined with Ledger's balance report tells me immediately whether something is off and if investigation is needed. This in itself has saved me so much time that I can deal with m…

I tried reckon amongst other things but couldn't get it to read my CSV files properly. I got frustrated enough that I thought writing my own would be easier.

Putting the account balances in the ledger file is certainly a good idea. At least one of my bank CSVs provides the balances with each transaction. It doesn't seem too hard to automatically merge the transfers between accounts, though. But maybe there is a difficult I haven't thought of yet.

Where there will definitely need some manual tweaking is on the those transactions where ledger really shines: many to many transactions. Have you built in some functional to flag a transaction as TODO when you know it will need manual tweaking later?

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

#663
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able to preserve the original caller ID when forwarding SMS?

Twillio has to validate the number before allowing you to use it: https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223179848-Using...

That's only for calling. Twilio's docs say they do not support SMS sending from verified (not twilio owned) phone numbers.

https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223135427-What-...

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

#664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a link to the packet thing?

Sure, there are a few implementations: https://www.google.no/search?q=tplink+hs110+github&oq=tplink... Not too secure, you're right.

thanks that's awesome! pip had it (pyhs100) and so does npm (i should have looked earlier), discovery failed but direct to ip works well. this should be a thing anyways, since i don't think tp-link has an api

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

#665

Dodging the f *ing lightning in the desert area of FFX. I spent hours in that section as a kid, never managing to dodge more than 20 bolts in a row... When it came out for PC, it was time for revenge! I captured video input with a simple python+QT script and emitted a button-press whenever the screen flashed. The best part was that the script didn't interfere with my controller - I could run around the area opening c…

On the video game kick, I remember needing to do a massive number of laps in Gran Turismo 3 to unlock something. Turns out the low-tech solution of using an insanely fast car (Escudo), taping down the controller's gas button and just letting it do laps while grazing the wall worked. Some time later I looked back and had won.

I remember using a rubber band to tie the thumbstick of my Xbox controller in a forward position when playing Morrowind.

This made your character run into a wall, but keep running on the spot, thus levelling up your "athletics" stat.

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

#666
post #463

I got a Nest thermostat a few years ago when I was working from home and sat at my desk most of the day. This meant that I seldom walked past the Nest, meaning that after a while it would assume there was no-one home so would turn the heating off. I wrote a Windows app [1] in C# that would ping the Nest API to keep me at "home", so long as the PCs screensaver had not come on (in which case I would have probably _actu…

Interesting that a product that is marketed as one that "learns" and adapts your specific patterns couldn't learn this common one (someone working from home)

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

#667

I have an ultrasonic sensor on top of my monitor to tell the computer when I'm in front of it or not. If music is playing when I walk away from my computer, it pauses the music player. When I return, it starts playing again. It will also wake the monitors from power saving mode when I return, too. https://www.michevan.id.au/content/are-you-there/

Which gives me this idea to train my loud music playing neighbor to behave. A sensor listens for his music to go beyond a certain level and triggers my Pi to play loud music back to him. Then stop and check if he has lowered his volume, else rinse and repeat. I know its evil, but apartments in Montreal are so bad.

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

#668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of "a battery of scripts" I wonder about legality if say your code scrapes sites or does something uncool. Anyway, yeah I've got that problem right now wrote code for a specific stack need to just drop it into a server that's not mine/easy for client to use. I'm kind of curious about #1 regardless of the price you buy? What if it was like that day the ICO was banned and it dropped like $800 or whateve…

Wouldn't it be good to buy on the day it dropped $800? Then you have either - more BTC than expected for the same $ - spend less $ on the same amount of BTC

Yeah it would be good in that case but would the buy go up since it was cheaper and go down when it was more expensive sort of thing.

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

#669
post #458

Does it count if it doesn't FEEEEL like work??? I started an escape room business for fun, and have been enjoying the heck out of writing custom software for the rooms. Both in-room and for administration. My favorite is a javascript "OS" that I use to put imaginary windowed environments in the room, but the players never actually leave a full-screen browser. It does full window management and all the regular UI stuf…

nice. Still dreaming of open my own computer shop or more preferrable something like those japanese gaming/cmputer/anime/movie/manga cafes.

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

#670

I wrote a bot to read the top article titles and comments (10 articles at a time) on Hacker News and it just runs every hour. Plays out loud on my speakers. Uses a rapsberry pi, python and AWS Polly, I put the code up on github if anyone is interested. The voice kind of gets monotonous but I've found Kendra's voice to be the best IMO. Last edit: since the free tier has a 5 million character per month limit (AWS Polly…

Video of it working skip to 23 seconds https://youtu.be/fWfatVYML9o

Odd it broke today, been running for I'd say several weeks. Connection aborted will see what it means. Hasn't been on for a while though since I haven't been on/since I posted about it, coincidence probably.

Nope, now it's working no code changed, guess that one or two requests failed

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