Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself? • Hacker News Board

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

#791

Post by gniv » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 5:57 AM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #53

I built carefulwords.com simply because I wanted to type a word into the address bar and get a large list of synonyms and some historical quotes using the word quickly. For example: https://carefulwords.com/solitude https://carefulwords.com/think etc. Also unlike thesaurus.com, the search bar actually focuses so you can just start typing! It's not perfect, I need to do a lot of editing, but nonetheless I use it almos…

I like it, especially the quotes. Reminds me of linguee.fr, which I use often while learning French.

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

#792

Post by roeles » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 5:59 AM UTC

A few years ago, before the rate limits on Google maps, I wrote a script that analyzed my commutes. Per week it produced a standard deviation of the travel time for every departure time. The result was a nice graph showing peaks of traffic. I dodged quite a few traffic jams using those graphs.

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

#793

Post by votick » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 6:04 AM UTC

I tried to implement the TCP/IP protocol of internet from scratch + radio transceiver

https://kyle.af/internet-from-scratch

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

#794

Post by awestroke » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 6:12 AM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #10

Smart RSS reader that, right now, ingests about 1000 articles a day and picks out 300 for me to skim. Since I helped write this paper https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0312018 I was always asking "Why is RSS failing? Why do failing RSS readers keep using the same failing interface that keeps failing?" and thought that text classification was ready in 2004 for content-based recommendation, then I wrote https://ontology2.com/es…

Skimming 300 articles per day sounds exhausting

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

#795

Post by gcanyon » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 6:19 AM UTC

I wrote an AppleScript and cron-ish schedule to automatically archive anything on my desktop or downloads folder. It checks once an hour, and if there is anything there that is over a day old, and not tagged, it creates a folder in an archives folder, named for the date and time, and moves the items there. So I always have a clean desktop and downloads folder (and later I modified it to organize my documents folder).

I wrote it up a long time ago. I need to clean it up, but you can probably figure it out from here: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/keeping-a-clean-des...

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

#796

Post by cutler » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 6:24 AM UTC

I wrote a Python script which checks the version of every programming language, JDK etc. on my Mac then scrapes the website of each language to compare it with the latest version. Simple but a great time-saver.

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

#797

Post by ronnyamelo » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 6:50 AM UTC

spacec0wb0y wrote: post #716

I recently took up the banjo and as a musician who learns by ear, I wanted a way to quickly loop a phrase of music, slow it down and learn by repetition. Speeding it up as i go and moving on to the next phase. So I built https://looptube.xyz It takes a YouTube ID input and allows you manipulate the video to loop and change tempo

This one is so Simple, yet so cool, one of my favorites so far

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

#798

Post by akg_67 » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 7:04 AM UTC

pigcat wrote: post #760

My grandmother has dementia. About twice a day, she calls my parents every 5 minutes, forgetting that she just hung up. The calls are always the same: "You live there now. Yes you have money. We came to visit you yesterday." This can go on for an hour or so. My parents are incredibly patient, but after a couple of these calls, they'll just leave the phone to ring. The soundtrack of the phone constantly ringing in the…

I didn’t see in your profile any way to contact you directly, so this comment. Can you send me an email (address in my profile)? I would like to learn more about your setup and challenges you encountered.

I am actually a volunteer at a non-profit in Japan. The NPO provides very similar service using volunteers for elderly people. I have been looking into automating some of the call handling/routing, personalization, and increasing family participation.

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

#799

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 7:36 AM UTC

evandev wrote: post #560

I created a todo thermal printer so that I can write messages whenever I remember something. For example when I'm lying in bed and I remember that I have to do something or reading a book and think that's a great thought that I should look more into someday. Basically I have a mobile app that I can send a message to a api. Sometimes it's just a note, sometimes it is a todo item. Then I have a raspberry pi that polls…

[deleted]

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

#800

Post by chaitanyapramod » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 7:36 AM UTC

I made a chrome extension[0] to search MDN from address bar more than a decade back. It served me well and has since picked up a loyal set of users. I'm glad it is helping new developers as they venture onto the journey I really enjoyed my time with.

[0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ffpifaemeofjmncjdb...