Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? • Hacker News Board

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

#491

Post by teacpde » Thu, Oct 12, 2017, 5:37 AM UTC

sasaf5 wrote: post #485

My girlfriend needed to be texted everyday otherwise she would turn sour. So I made an sms generator that randomly composed sentences combining words from three tables and sent to her at random times. It took her many months to notice. When she found out, she was angry for 10 seconds, but that anger faded to curiosity about how the random sentence composer thing worked. After I showed it to her, she got mad at me aga…

I have thought about doing this so many times, and yet dare to make the move. It will be fun at first but not so much after she finds out.

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

#492

Post by alaties » Thu, Oct 12, 2017, 5:50 AM UTC

verelo wrote: post #468

alaties wrote: post #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 do…

What solenoid did you use? I was looking into this and struggled to find an affordable valve for the water, the zwave switch is simple and I love that part of this solution!

I've had good luck with the 3/4" brass from both U.S. Solid and HFS. Both are 110 AC and range from $20-30 US on amazon. You'll have to solder on a male plug on both of these, but that's pretty straight forward. I also recommend waterproofing the wiring with some liquid electrical tape.

I've been messing with a 12V DC valve by SparkFun as well. It runs around $8, but it doesn't hold up well under high pressure. Great for a low pressure/gravity fed system though.

Also, you don't have to use zwave for the plug if you don't want. There are all sorts of remote controlled outlets now for whatever wireless standard/protocol you want to do your automation over.

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

#493

Post by pfalke » Thu, Oct 12, 2017, 5:51 AM UTC

zeristor wrote: post #486

pfalke wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn’t Ghostery an ad-blocker? I can’t see anything else with that name. All the references in this thread are great tips, so I’d like to track this one down too.

Thanks for commenting - it was Ghost Inspector

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

#494

Post by fermuch » Thu, Oct 12, 2017, 6:12 AM UTC

mintplant wrote: post #329

djhworld wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is cool. I wonder how effective it is though these days, I'd say 70% of my RSS feeds are either truncated forms of a full article (with a 'click here to continue reading!' link), or just summaries.

That's what the scraper scripts are for. For each site that does this, I have a bit of code which visits the article URL and pulls out the full content.

Most site also display data in a much easier way if you identify as googlebot

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

#495

Post by heelhook » Thu, Oct 12, 2017, 6:12 AM UTC

artpi wrote: post #102

I have set up a battery of scripts on google app engine and Im pretty happy with it. 1. I have a script to automatically buy small amount of BTC every day 2. For the more knowledge-dense books I read, I write summaries of them ( https://piszek.com/books/ ). I have a script that puts a random book review to my pocket for reviewing every week 3. I have an instagram account of lego minifig ( https://www.instagram.com/le…

I gotta say, #7, if something were to happen to you would be pretty scary. Have you considered that scenario? Tying the delivery of messages to some kind of manual online activity (e.g. recent emails sent)

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

#496

Post by ivan1931 » Thu, Oct 12, 2017, 6:16 AM UTC

I automated my housing search. When I moved to a new city (Cape Town, South Africa), there are a wide range of different classified websites that advertise house sharing. The market in Cape Town is extremely competitive and does not favour tenants. I wrote a series of python scripts that trawled through these online classified and automatically created responses to them. The aggregation of content and the auto creation of emails saved me a great deal of time and allowed me to quickly respond to hundreds of adverts from a variety of sites almost as soon as they were created.

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

#497

Post by entelechy0 » Thu, Oct 12, 2017, 6:18 AM UTC

I build my website from the terminal from markdown files. This greatly improves my blogging workflow.

See: https://github.com/mikedesu/pagegen

The main "livethoughts" feed: https://www.evildojo.com/livethoughts.html#edlt-10122017

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

#498

Post by mfrye0 » Thu, Oct 12, 2017, 6:19 AM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #431

kingkool68 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the best life hacks I found is to buy those stackable laundry baskets and sort them as you wear them instead of dumping them all in one and sorting right before doing laundry.

99% of my clothing are pants, shorts, underwear, t-shirts and socks, and I've never felt the need to sort them - everything goes into a washer, then a dryer, then gets sorted into dresser/closet. Are your clothes significantly different from mine, or is there an actual benefit to washing your socks separately from your pants? (Or are you talking about separating things like sheets, towels, etc?)

I sort mine too - depends on the color. Darks go in cold and whites generally on hot.

I wear a lot of white sports socks. All of them are pure white after years of having them.

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

#499

Post by orbifold » Thu, Oct 12, 2017, 6:19 AM UTC

arkades wrote: post #385

pfalke wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it is a passing thing. Germany recently legalized Gay marriage and presumably that lead to a huge backlog of gay people finally wanting to marry.

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

#500

Post by flying_sheep » Thu, Oct 12, 2017, 6:23 AM UTC

I automated my resume upload system because Dropbox does not allow static website hosting anymore. Whenever I run an command, it will create an empty folder in AWS. The folder name contains company name and some secret code (to prevent brute-force listing). Therefore I can keep copies for all the resumes I sent.

It must be emphasised that job seeking is not part of work LOL.