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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?

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to program the Roomba.. just add image recognition and spray paint module..

Too many potholes for a Roomba, need a drone with a spray paint can. Hell, just scrape seeclickfix for reported pothole locations, have the drone fly there and draw a dong, and boom, instant fix.

Ah, yes, this will not end well, but I will enjoy reading about it!

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

#452

I have a script on AWS which scrapes the UK National Rail website for my commute every few minutes between set times in the morning and afternoon, and sends me a Slack notification if there are delays or cancellations. I could check manually but train problems are actually infrequent enough that I usually don't bother, although they are highly disruptive when they do happen.

Hey, I work for company that works with UK National Rail. Where are you located? Are you looking for a job? Which technologies have you been using?

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

#453
Built an automatic outdoor watering system using a zwave-controlled power outlet, a 120v AC solenoid valve, and a simple linux server running openHAB. I trigger the watering system using a script that checks the weather and sunset time for that day. If there was no rain and it's 2 hours past sunset, the script turns the watering system on for a set period.

Makes supporting a large garden while frequently traveling doable.

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

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another question is if this will be admissible in the court.

I am not a lawyer but it would seem if you attest to the fact that it is reliable data it would be admissible. Lying under oath and fabricating evidence is still against the law.

> To disprove her allegations I wasn't involved in the kids school and activities...

There don't seem to be any criminal charges here.

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

#456
post #334
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…

If you want to build stuff like this in future, check Page.REST a simple API I built. You can pass a query string `contains=TEXT` to check the existence of a word or a phrase. Here's a Postman collection of all possible options with the API https://app.getpostman.com/run-collection/620bbe44b6ecc6c2e3...

You can maybe add a glitch repo to make it easier to get started.

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

#457
I automated waking up at 5:30 AM without feeling miserable when I had a remote work job[0]

It's not terribly sexy and was really simple to get working. I purchased the highest wattage LIFX RGBA bulbs and a high wattage (350W Incandescent equivalent) to replace all of the lighting in my bedroom, where I worked most days[1] and replaced the lighting in my bedroom with them.

I then used IFTTT to do the following:

(1) Over a period of 45 minutes ending at 5:30 AM, all of the LIFX bulbs gradually go from 0% to 100% in a cool blue-white hue. At 5:30, the 350W equivalent turns on (using a Belkin WeMo switch). The 350W turns off at 8:00 AM.

(2) At sunset, but no later than 7:30 PM (northern summers can be much later than this), the lights eliminate the blue hues and shift to warmer colors over a period of 45 minutes

(3) Over a period of 45 minutes ending at 11:15 PM, the LIFX bulbs go from 100% to 0%.

It took me a few weeks to arrive at the exact times and timings for each of these steps, as well as color. I kept a daily log of when I started feeling tired at night and a (very subjective) log of how tired I felt in the morning and what time I actually got out of bed (I had an alarm set, but only as a failsafe which was set for 8:00 AM while "testing" the settings). The 45 minute time frame was landed at after trying as low as 15 minutes. 45 minutes is the longest duration that's allowed or I would have tried longer, but it is just about right. It's really difficult to detect the brightening/dimming while it's happening and impossible for me to tell the color is changing during the day.

Unrelated, but as an aside -- quality of sleep and waking up early is something I struggled with all of my life until I started doing this a few years ago. In my 20s, I was jealous of my friends who regularly went out until 2:00 AM and somehow functioned the following day at 8-9AM when they had to be at work. I could never do that -- I'd literally fall asleep every time my eyes closed if I made that mistake. And worse, I could go to bed at 6:00 PM and 7:00 AM would still feel awful. I followed a few other techniques: Whenever possible (most of the time), I'd follow the rule to "go to bed when I am tired". If it was the afternoon and I started feeling exhausted, I'd go to bed -- sometimes just a nap, on rare occasion, a full afternoon-night's sleep. If I woke up in the middle of the night, I'd get up and do something until I was tired again, but for the first several months, regardless of the day or how tired I felt, I woke up at 5:30 AM. If I awoke within 45 minutes of that time, I'd stop trying to sleep and just "get up"[2]. I'd tried all of these techniques in the past and failed horribly, but after setting my lighting up, I noticed I was waking a lot easier and with a lot less effort. I added back in these techniques and the result was perfect. It's now just "habit" - I am up early, I'm in bed between 9:00 and 11:30 every night and I rarely wake fully in the middle of the night. I'm rarely tired. All of that said, if life and job circumstances would allow it, I'd prefer doing 8:00 PM to 5:00 AM over a day-job, but doing the day-job shift doesn't bug me a bit anymore.

[0] I'm in an office job, now, so some of what I did doesn't affect me like it used to. I was waking this early, originally, because my team was in the UK and I wanted to maximize the amount of time I spent with them despite the 5-hour time skew.

[1] For whatever reason, working from bed turned out to be very relaxing and helped me to put in longer hours without feeling like I was putting in long hours.

[2] One observation I made was that if I awoke and there was less than an hour before I had to be up -- even if I was still very tired and could fall back asleep within a few minutes -- falling back asleep resulted in me feeling substantially worse when that alarm sounded (and it would stick with me most of the morning). If I get up when my brain wakes up the first time, that tiredness wears off within a half-hour. I ditched the "snooze" habit. I don't get right out of bed, but gradually work myself out every morning (I have the time, after all, since I'm getting up so early).

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

#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 stuff so it feels super normal to the players. My favorite part is that I don't use jQuery. That was just a little challenge I created for myself for fun.

Now my rooms have a login prompt of any kind, and I can then create windows with any kind of HTML/JS/CSS content for solving puzzles, extra clues, etc. I can use an RPi and control maglocks from the computer, light up LED's, or even communicate with wireless props.

I run a kiosk add-on for the browser and physically hack the keyboards so certain keys don't even work in the rooms. No F11 or Ctrl-Alt-Del without access to the netbooks or RPi's locked away in hidden compartments.

I also created a lot of room management software for timers, sending hints into the rooms on tablets, etc.

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

#459
post #4

My photo organization workflow. https://medium.com/@jmathai/understanding-my-need-for-an-aut... https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-personal... https://medium.com/@jmathai/my-automated-photo-workflow-usin... https://medium.com/@jmathai/one-year-of-using-an-automated-p... https://github.com/jmathai/elodie

This is great! I’ve been wanting to do this for years. I’m still amazing something everyone should want is so difficult.

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

#460

I have a system built on top of Calibre's "recipe" scripts which scans a set of RSS feeds every day at 3am for new articles, scrapes and cleans the full content where necessary, bundles them into .mobi ebooks, and sends them to my Kindle's email address. Amazon's network wirelessly delivers them overnight, and I wake up in the morning with a fresh batch of reading material. It's like a personalized newspaper subscrip…

This method of downloading a website for later viewing is how Richard Stallman uses the web.

https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

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