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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?

#381

Post by richev »

t1o5 wrote: post #143

I was in the US and want to immigrate to Canada because of US broken H1B immigration system ( for me it will take 9 years to get a greencard). Here is what I did - The immigration website of Saskatchewan province opens up randomly to apply for immigration. I missed it many times because there is no indication other than the "Apply" button being enabled and a small text in their homepage which says "Applications are n…

https://visualping.io/ can do this, although it sends email alerts rather than SMS messages.

I used it to notify me of new Hololens events, listed on this page https://www.microsoftevents.com/profile/web/index.cfm?PKwebI...

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

#382

Post by ThinkingGuy »

anotherevan wrote: post #353

I have an old analogue modem which I use to pick up caller ID information for incoming phone calls using NCID[1]. When a call comes in: * Automatically pauses the music player on my PC. * Looks up the number in my address book, and displays the information on my screen. Also sends to the two Kodi/OSMC servers, for people watching TV. This assumes it is not on my block-list. If it is on my block-list of known scammer…

I used to have a similar setup, except it announced the name/number using festival TTS. Now I've replaced the landline with VoIP and an Asterisk server, so instead I just use a perl script that does the same thing, with the added functionality using my local LDAP server to match names with numbers. Having all my friends, family members and contacts in LDAP has made it easier to automate another task: keeping my antispam white list updated.

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

#383

Post by emodendroket »

kbutler wrote: post #298
emodendroket wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that's now illegal, so only the real reprobates do it.

Trouble is there are just so many reprobates... (See also robocalls)

Most of the unwanted mail I see (at least what makes it past the basic automated filters) is from legitimate companies who think I'd like to hear about product updates every two days rather than Viagra pills or whatever.

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

#384

Post by tylerjaywood »

greenfork wrote: post #308
tylerjaywood wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some have tried, but it would take some coordinated effort over several weeks at this point to over or underwater the plant. I've found that the folks who consistently vote take it relatively seriously to the point they have discussions about optimal schedules and for the most part stick to them.

I'm glad that these people exist but on the other hand It's hard to imagine what they do in everyday life that this topic is so interesting to them, that they want to feel this responsibility for the plant.

They've also done a lot to enrich the whole community. The daily plant gifs and a monthly voting graphic overview post have been put together by folks in the community.

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

#385

Post by arkades »

pfalke wrote: post #352
t1o5 wrote: post #143

I was in the US and want to immigrate to Canada because of US broken H1B immigration system ( for me it will take 9 years to get a greencard). Here is what I did - The immigration website of Saskatchewan province opens up randomly to apply for immigration. I missed it many times because there is no indication other than the "Apply" button being enabled and a small text in their homepage which says "Applications are n…

Did the same thing to get a wedding registration appointment with the Berlin city administration, but used Ghostery instead of AWS+Twilio. The responsible administration department currently doesn’t give out appointments and advises not to plan weddings because they are so understaffed, but I didn’t feel like waiting. Got a notification email from Gostery in the middle of the night, registered the only available slot…

Can you please elaborate on the state of your bureaucracy. It'll make me feel better about American politics.

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

#386

Post by bemmu »

Before moving to Tokushima, Japan, I wanted to get the best possible information on available apartments. Specifically I wanted to get a map which would show rental / sales prices at different locations, like AirBnB. So I wrote a scraper that went through all the local apartment rental sites and imported the data to Google Earth.

After spending several nights on this app and happily browsing the data, my wife then went to a local rental agency and just got some place they recommended.

While a bit annoyed my effort was in vain, after years of living here and often browsing the local apartment listings, I've come to realize this was actually a really good choice!

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

#387

Post by shadefinale »

Sholmesy wrote: post #297
shadefinale wrote: post #235

I'm fairly interested in the competitive smash bros scene - a common occurrence is that one might record a few hours worth of gameplay after an event and then be too lazy to split the recording into the individual matches, leaving a lot of recorded dead time where nothing is happening. I learned how to use the gstreamer and opencv libraries to automate recording gameplay only when a game is in progress - it is still…

Awesome! Fellow smash player on HN! GeekyGoonSquad started doing something similar when they were still around/streaming, and automated the uploading to youtube. Re: automating the player names, on a non-stream set up, I think it will be difficult to get the names from players in a standardised way. My first thought was webcam + the players venue pass to get the competitors name, but even that is a little fiddly. Bes…

I've just been fiddling around with things that can be attached to the end of the controller plugin such as rfid stickers, with a reader of some sort near the setup.

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

#388

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

richev wrote: post #381
t1o5 wrote: post #143

I was in the US and want to immigrate to Canada because of US broken H1B immigration system ( for me it will take 9 years to get a greencard). Here is what I did - The immigration website of Saskatchewan province opens up randomly to apply for immigration. I missed it many times because there is no indication other than the "Apply" button being enabled and a small text in their homepage which says "Applications are n…

https://visualping.io/ can do this, although it sends email alerts rather than SMS messages. I used it to notify me of new Hololens events, listed on this page https://www.microsoftevents.com/profile/web/index.cfm?PKwebI...

This is awesome, thank you.

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

#389

Post by anotherevan »

ThinkingGuy wrote: post #382
anotherevan wrote: post #353

I have an old analogue modem which I use to pick up caller ID information for incoming phone calls using NCID[1]. When a call comes in: * Automatically pauses the music player on my PC. * Looks up the number in my address book, and displays the information on my screen. Also sends to the two Kodi/OSMC servers, for people watching TV. This assumes it is not on my block-list. If it is on my block-list of known scammer…

I used to have a similar setup, except it announced the name/number using festival TTS. Now I've replaced the landline with VoIP and an Asterisk server, so instead I just use a perl script that does the same thing, with the added functionality using my local LDAP server to match names with numbers. Having all my friends, family members and contacts in LDAP has made it easier to automate another task: keeping my antis…

I use NextCloud (fork of OwnCloud) to manage my contacts[1]. It has a CardDAV interface. Synchronises contacts with my phone, and live lookup for my email client too. Very nice having a single-source-of-truth contact list.

[1] In fact, that's all I use it for. Don't use any of NextCloud's other functionality.

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

#390

Post by jpster »

accidentalrebel wrote: post #355

I had some Vape related items to sell. From where I'm from a lot of people buy and sell these kind of items through Facebook groups. I then made an iMacros bot that would automatically search certain Vape related keywords on Facebook, filter by Groups, and then log the different Facebook groups details along with the number of members so I can pick which groups are worth my time to post on. I also wanted to make a sc…

Will the search pick up your terms when they occur in Groups that you’ve not joined yet? Any chance you can share the code on Github?
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