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Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#681

Post by banterfoil »

I'm writing a service that downloads content from Reddit. Usually I just want to see the top video of the week, or maybe the top 5 pics from /r/pics every day or something like that. The service has handlers for various kinds of URLs. For example, if it detects a youtube URL, it utilizes "youtube-dl", or if it's an image link it will use curl, if it is a text post, I might download it as a json object from the reddit API.

This serves two purposes for me: 1. I can be more specific about how I want to consume reddit. ie, I can fine tune parameters for each subreddit. 2. The download destination is directly to my NAS, so I can hoard it. (Bit of a datahoarder here)

It's been a fun learning experience identifying the diversity of URLs/Domains that are posted to reddit. Definitely a different perspective.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#682

Post by magduf »

klekih wrote: post #414
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #284

I have semi-automated cooking for the week ahead. We recently started cooking meals for the week ahead on Sundays and then freezing them. The aim was to give us more time with the kids and to cut down on housework. To save time on the Sunday cooking session I have cobbled together a very clunky, and I mean VERY clunky semi-automated cooking system. It comprises a Raspberry PI which controls a couple of WiFi mains swi…

And how much time did you spend automating those things? Is it worth? i.e Is the time spent on cooking minus time spent on automating a positive number?

Sometimes it's not just the time saved over doing it by hand, which assumes that when you do it manually, you do it correctly. Automating things also removes potential for human error: when doing something by hand, you might screw up, which could cost you far more time (and materials). You should factor this into the "do I bother automating this?" decision.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#683

Post by terrie_coach-me »

pimeys wrote: post #108

I've automated almost all of my diabetes management into a level I basically can look into graphs and decide the level I want my glucose to go. For glucose monitoring I use Dexcom G5 sensors[0] and xDrip[1] open source monitoring application for Android. Insulin delivery is handled by a Accu-Chek Spirit Combo[2] pump, that is one of the rare pumps with a Bluetooth connection. The entity deciding the basal rates and c…

This is fantastic. In a reply, you mentioned that you were interested in writing more about your setup and findings. I would love to pay you for a full article from you on this for Better Humans. See our "Write for Us" page here with instructions on submitting a proposal, or drop me a note via email - I'm terrie at coach.me. https://betterhumans.coach.me/write-for-better-humans-4c6c98... I have been looking for someone with experience monitoring and using their blood sugar data to manage diabetes, so I hope to hear from you!

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#684

Post by wristmittens »

skate22 wrote: post #523

For the first 9 years of my life, my family either did not have a PC or I was not allowed to use it for more than a few minutes. My parents relaxed a little bit and allowed my brother and i to read for an hour to play video games on the computer for an hour. I played an online game called runescape where you could trade items to other players, but it was tedious and required a lot of repetitive typing: "buying chaos…

https://xkcd.com/1319/

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#685

Post by sangnoir »

sjg007 wrote: post #602
anoncoward111 wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affection as a service. Automation in 2018 is looking grimmer and grimmer :)

This is like boyfriend or girlfriend as a service.

It would be more profitable to automate both ends of the relationship, so the humans won't even have to look at their phones while sweet nothings are pinging between servers in your data center/ scalable cloud.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#686

Post by Toast_25 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #338
EdCoffey wrote: post #304

1. When I plug my camera's SD card into the front of my Linux server it automatically copies off any new photos and sorts them into a YYYY/DD/MM folder structure. 2. I wrote a cryptocurrency trading bot because I'm too lazy/uninterested to actually learn anything about the market. It seemed to do pretty well when the market was flat or going up. Hard to tell if it's doing badly now or if it's just reflecting the stat…

For #1, do you have any way of detecting dupes? For example if you inserted the same SD Card twice would you get two copies of the photos?

If you really wanted to avoid dupes you could just hash the pics, save a list of hashes in a txt and then lookup against new ones, but it's less efficient than what OP proposes.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#687

Post by jklein11 »

driverdan wrote: post #621
marcol1n0 wrote: post #544

My mum did run a B&B, in Italy, on the sea. Me and my sister do live in different cities. She was quite old, but did not want any help from strangers. She did refuse to use a computer keyboard, since she hated informatization, and her sight was short. So I did automate a system for her to scan the guests documents, detect the data required by local police for registration via OCR, fill up the form to send those data,…

> detect the data required by local police for registration What data do the local police require?

It is typical to need to give a place of residence when entering a country (even if you are on a travel visa.) Immigration departments will reach out to these places of residence if they are concerned of someone overstaying their visa. The B&B or hotel will show them the copy of the Visa stamped in the passport and their check in and check out time they are in the clear.

Specifically in the case of Italy it seems like it is to be compliant with long standing legislation called TULPS.[1]

1.https://www.quora.com/Are-hotels-in-Italy-required-to-take-a...

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#688

Post by INTPenis »

atmoz wrote: post #665
Numberwang wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fathers automower got destroyed when a moose decided to stomp it. Also in southern Sweden.

Reminds me of a similar incident in Norway, caught on tape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho8o92Ro-Ig Some CS students even made a game based on the hilarious video, where you play as the moose and must eat apples while defending against incoming lawnmowers: https://joelspeanuts.itch.io/elgspillet

Moose are huge and scary. I've heard more stories about smaller animals like badgers attacking the lawnmowers. Or at least making noises at the lawnmowers whenever it approached the lawn boundary where they were hiding.

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#689

Post by hollerith »

Whenever my emacs starts up and the horizontal resolution of the display connected to the computer has changed, that fact is recorded to a file. That file is consequently a record of when my computer and consequently I arrived at and left my girlfriend's place (because the resolution of the monitor I use there is different from that of the monitor I use at home).

I also record the start and end times of any intervals during which I do not interact with my emacs. (I'd rather have a record of intervals during which I don't interact with my puter, but that would prol require me to write a kext.) This is useful for reconstructing when I left home and when I came back, among other things.

(One file records only intervals of idleness 49 minutes or longer. Another -- the one I refer to the most -- records intervals 7 minutes or longer. Another, intervals of one minute or longer.)

Re: Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?

#690

Post by dest »

rtkwe wrote: post #668
dest wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know MP3 is kinda like a FFT right?

Yeah, but if you lose enough info such that it doesn't play like the original or can't be reconstituted into the original it's still large enough of a change that it should steer clear from copyright issues. No one's really tested exactly where the distinction falls.

Agreed
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