I have a house plant that is watered automatically, but not based on any pre-determined schedule. I have the plant's livestream and its moisture level available publicly on pleasetakecareofmyplant.com and the decision to water is crowd sourced on reddit.com/r/takecareofmyplant by way of a daily vote.
Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?
141–150 of 722 posts
Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?
#142Wrote a script to sort tattoo artists coming to a convention by Instagram followers. Saved me wading through dozens of artists to find one that suits my style.
Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?
#143I 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 now 'open' ". They will close the application intake when they have reached X number of applicants. So timing is very important.
So I hacked up a script which diffs their home page every 10 minutes for "open" regex. When there is an "open" keyword in the diff, the python script calls twilio API to make a phone call to me along with an SMS.
So this script was running in AWS for many weeks and one day I got the call. Logged in to Saskatchewan's immigration homepage and applied. Now I am in Canada as a permanent resident. Thanks to Twilio. edit: add H1B to make clear which type of immigration is broken IMO.
(This comment is from my previous HN account, for which I lost my pwd.)
Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?
#144Backups à la Time Machine on a Linux system.
Rsync (with rsync-filter files on every directory to exclude files, similar to .gitignore) to target drive or remote server. Then take BTRFS snapshot.
Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?
#145Creating Dungeons & Dragons characters. I found that for first time players it is difficult to overcome the initial onslaught of information and rules. So I created a form-based questionnaire that abstracts out most of the uninteresting parts of creating a character, their stats. Based on how a player answered the questions, they are emailed a filled-out character form along with relevant information to their character if they want to read up more.
This saves me and each player a fair bit of time, as every new player gets a personalized starting point, making explanations shorter and more relevant.
Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?
#146One of the biggest automation arena improvements I've made in my life is creating visual cue reminders and systems for a sort of stateful orderliness.
When the laundry basket gets full past the painter tape line, I do a load. I load the dishwasher after dinner, and unload it in the morning regardless of the volume. Got a roomba that runs every other day and cries when it's full of dirt.
I have NFC stickers that link to start webapp timers in my smart phones browser (just a url to googles timer web app, pre populated with time, I get push notifications and all that) tea brewing timer, Laundry+ Dryer, cooking, all cheap NFC sticker+ webapp
I also wrote a bot that alerts me when 3D printer deals from trusted retailers are going on. I just bought two for $160 each, with free shipping!
Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?
#147I automated downloading and reconciling my financials from all my bank accounts. https://disjoint.ca/projects/ledger-reconciler
This is great, would love to see support for more data sources.
ledger-autosync [0] does similar things with more data sources available
Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?
#148I have a house plant that is watered automatically, but not based on any pre-determined schedule. I have the plant's livestream and its moisture level available publicly on pleasetakecareofmyplant.com and the decision to water is crowd sourced on reddit.com/r/takecareofmyplant by way of a daily vote.
Very cool! Can you share the hardware setup you have?
Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?
#149I have a house plant that is watered automatically, but not based on any pre-determined schedule. I have the plant's livestream and its moisture level available publicly on pleasetakecareofmyplant.com and the decision to water is crowd sourced on reddit.com/r/takecareofmyplant by way of a daily vote.
This couldn't backfire. I like it.
Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?
#150I automated the birth announcement of my child using Tropo. Basically I had an app where, when I sent it the magical command ("here"), it generated a text and call to all family members with a canned message. Saved me a bunch of time :)